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.