Mar 15th: Drama

On 15^th March, we worked on our pieces of Theatre in Education further, whether it was going over a scene or blocking the next one or improvising.  Frankie had the script on her hard drive but unfortunately, it wouldn’t print out so we decided to do a bit of improvising to see if we could get any fresh ideas.  We had established that it was going to be based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood as Frankie and I found a politically correct version online and thought maybe we could do a parody of it as it included quite a few references to gender and sexism.  We decided that Olly and I were going to be the quarrelling narrators sat at the front reading the story as Frankie and Jack acted it out behind us.  We then thought, what if Olly was rather clumsy and said quite a few sexist remarks as we read, not realising what he was doing and the scene would change behind us as we discussed what actually happened next.  For example, Olly says “Little Red was skipping through the woods...” to which I intercept and say “No she was just walking normally!”  As this happens, Frankie changes what she does as we narrate it so she starts off skipping as Olly suggests then once I’ve said she walks, she does so.  Miss Woffinden then suggested that maybe we were re-writing the story of Little Red so we could change it as much as we like.  I really like this suggestion but we didn’t have enough time to put it into action as we had to perform what we had worked on in the lesson to the rest of the group.  Imogen asked me to take notes of the feedback she received so she could use it so I did so.  Miss Woffinden said Imogen’s group was “well written using other peoples work.  The language is a bit adult for Year 8’s.  Ask about the skeleton in the workshop and address misconceptions”.  I also took notes for Seb’s group as Miss Woffinden said that “You’ve given space for the audience to think.  Explain why you’ve chosen the freeze frames and the dialogue”.  The feedback we receives for our groups piece was “Maybe Olly’s character should not realise he’s being politically incorrect-more clumsy (as in the first draft Olly was intentionally sexist).  Make the wolf’s comment more obvious.  Set the theme of rewriting or directing a new version”. 

What was meant by the comment “Make the wolf’s comment more obvious” was Jack, (the wolf) was supposed to say something really sexist such as “A little girl shouldn’t be wondering the forest alone as girls are so week and feeble compared to the manliness strength of us boys”, but it didn’t come across in the piece as it wasn’t as melodramatic as it needed to be.  This quote is very significant as this is the cue for me to get up from my place narrating and become the joker saying something along the lines of “Now that is not on, I wouldn’t let anybody talk to me like that would you?  Now does anybody want to come up here and show us what he should have said or how Red Riding Hood should respond?” leading us into a piece of forum theatre.  It is important that Jack’s comment is obviously inappropriate and wrong so the pupils pick up on it without any prompting.  Looking at my research of the knowledge the Year 8 pupils already have on sexism and gender equality, I don’t think this will be much of a problem as they have a basic understanding already.