Drama 1: Characterisation with the Green Children

The drama workshop this week introduced us to a variety of dramatic techniques, using the text ‘The green children of Woolpit’ as a basis.

We started by posing questions and facts we know from reading the text. To contextualise the text, we drew maps, and found that each group brought different perceptions and interpretations to the table.

Green Children story map

Sculpting the characters

We then constructed a freeze-frame of the moment the country people discovered the green children, and noted the differences in status, mood etc... created by the different compositions. A lot could be communicated non-verbally with body language and facial expressions. Other activities we used included a gossip mill and hot-seating with a group of students as a character. I liked how this removed the ‘spotlight’ effect that may cause shy students to retreat from performance. Improvisation also creates a ‘mantle of the expert’, where there is no right or wrong answers. During these activities our teacher guided us softly and without authority.

We also embodied the characters in the text using sculpting, which I can see has use in helping students develop empathy for characters.

Role on the wall

Lastly, we brainstormed words to describe each character in ‘role on the wall’. Although this activity is limited by the student’s vocabulary, if we referred back to it periodically during a unit, you would see how a character evolves over time, with students gaining more insight and empathy and descriptive richness to a character in a text. 

In this way, there are strong links to English outcomes in each of these activities.