Memo #5- Dizzy Drama: The Confusing World of Teaching Playwriting

Yet again time has gotten the best of me. I was unable to contact people who developed outside playwriting programs around the state. I was hoping to see why they created these programs and what their reasoning’s are for teaching students how to write plays.

There was one good deal of information that came out of this week and that was when I did a workshop for the Week of the Arts at Seton Academy in Central Falls. I had borrowed the workshop that was presented at the Rhode Island Writing Project Conference: Dizzy Drama. For those of you not familiar with what that is here is a brief rundown. Each student must create a character on their own. From then they are told that they will have to incorporate that character and other student’s characters into a skit. They are already assigned a setting and a prop that they must use in their skit. 

I adapted the workshop for my age group (4^th and 5^th graders) and I focused the workshop on character building and skit writing. I gave the students time to create characters from the worksheet I was given. Then I made each of the students get into group (that I assigned) and create their short skit. The workshop ran for about an hour and forty-five minutes. 

At the end I gave them a survey to fill out and here are the results: 10 out of the 11 students said that they enjoyed the workshop. Most of the students chose this workshop over others because they are interested in theatre arts. None of them chose it because of playwriting in particular. I asked the students if they even enjoyed any type of writing (I made this question very vague). 6 said that they enjoy writing, 1 students said they did not enjoy writing, and 4 said that they “kind of” enjoyed writing. Out of the 6 students that said they enjoyed writing 2 said that they would not want to do this kind of writing in school. Out of the 4 students that kind of enjoyed writing 2 said that they would not want to do this in school. Of course, the person who did not like writing did not want to do this type of writing in school too. 

Something I had posted last time from one of my source was that students who are not exposed to plays don’t have much to draw on. These students had only seen about one or two shows each and that was reflected in the work that they produced. If I were to do this workshop again I would focus more on theatrical aspects of it rather than the writing. The students need to understand theatre before they can create it. I also doubt at such a young age that these students had even been introduced to what a script looks like.

I have been lacking in secondary sources again. I found a magazine from 1999 titled: Creative Drama Magazine- A resource for drama educators. Underneath that are the words “Students as Playwrights.” Inside are lessons to do with students to develop their skills as playwrights. They have helpful hints for teachers as well as many sources that show students should be learning this in the classroom. 

I know now from my research that teacher do not have the time to teach playwriting because of mandatory state testing. They need to look to outside sources to come in. I have also learned that not every student is going to love writing and that is ok. As long as they can retain the skills to be successful in life that is all we can hope. I would still like to still talk to outside playwriting sources to see their outlook on the topic. What frustrates me is that teachers want to bring the creative arts into the classroom but do not have the time or resources to do so. I hope to find a few more secondary sources to round out my research. Teaching theatre arts to children can be a long but very rewarding process. It is getting them started early that is the hard part.

Memo #4- "Writing is a marathon"

Contrary to what I thought prior to this week, my finding have been quite extraordinary. Since last week I have been thinking about how I was going to get in contact with my various people to interview them. Somehow life just has a way of working itself out.

I met with Dr. Ann O' Grady, executive director of Rhode Island Youth Theatre. Her and I have worked together for the past 6 years and she is my ultimate source when it comes to anything theatrical. With both of our busy schedules it seemed impossible to meet, but because I needed to rent some costumes from her I was able to meet at her house and interview her for my I-Search.

A little background about her. She taught in the Warwick School Department for 29 years (1971-2000) at Aldrich Junior High School. I asked her if in her many years of teaching if she ever did any playwriting with her students? She told me that she did. Her students had created a musical one time about hunger. They all collaborated in writing it, designing the sets, picking the costumes, and eventually performing the show. She said that there are many benefits to playwriting in the classroom, like research skills, teamwork, and learning a different form of art, but she says that these are moments that stick with children; these are moments that make an impact on their lives. She also taught them prepositions, but when they see her now some of her students still remember their lines, not prepositions. This project, she told me, was done over the course of 6-8 months. "Writing is a marathon," she emphasizes.  I would have to agree. We talk about the writing process and here it is being used in a different format than the five paragraph essay.

My next find was quite amazing actually. After posting the video last week on the Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School in New York I decided to take Professor Collins advice and try to contact Shannon Reed the English teacher at the school who headed this playwriting project. I first went to the high school's website, but found nothing on faculty there. I went back to her blog she had posted, but again no contact information. I searched high and low for some way to contact this teacher. I even tried to connect to her on Linkedln. Finally I just did a general google search for her name and she had her own website. I saw a link on her page that said CONTACT ME, and so i emailed her asking if she would take part in my I-Search project. She responded in less than 24 hours saying she would be delighted to help. I sent her a list of about 15 questions and she responded back with full detailed answers. Although I would love to copy and paste her answers, a brief summary will do for now.

She told me that she has been teaching for 8 years. She has taught 6th grade through 12th grade. She loves theatre and got her undergraduate in acting and directing. She was told by someone that she should start writing plays, so she did, they got produced and she had been hooked ever since. Since BTAHS had an arts integrated curriculum she wanted to find another way to teach writing since her students did not seem to want to do your traditional five paragraph essay: "in general the students there were interested in expressing themselves but were bored by (or flatly refused to do) typical English assignments like writing essays or papers. I thought they may like playwriting, though, and I was right!" She says that she thinks many teachers don't teach playwriting because it is not something themselves they feel comfortable with. She also says that playwriting can be difficult if students have not read and seen plays. Ann agrees saying that students will usually copy things they see when creating and are usually inspired by a show they have seen. A benefit Shannon sees in playwrting is the ability to express yourself creatively. Her students were so much more engaged so therefore they wrote more and in turn learned more. She is no longer at BTAHS and is now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She does not do any playwriting in her college level class because the curriculum is pretty much set. 

These two professionals have really opened my eyes to the impact that playwriting can have on children. I see now that not may teachers are doing playwriting in schools nowadays. I want to look now at resources that teachers can find outside the classroom. Since most teachers probably don't feel comfortable that could be why they are inviting in the experts. I hope to find out what these young playwriting companies are doing for students.