Teaching Culture and Civilization by Role-Play and Drama

Christina Nechifor

Cristina Nechifor is professor at the "Mihai Viteazul " National College Bucharest, Romania. She is also BETA President - RATE branch.

In a computer-ruled world, with children and teenagers bewitched by the fair amount of and easily accessible information by means of and only 'tool', teaching culture and civilization, to both intensive and regular classes, has become a real challenge .

With me, it all started with Shakespeare (luckily present in the 9th grade syllabus) as a brick to build my defence against 'the precious' (though necessary) tool that had made youngsters a bit lazy and skeptical, as far as the written text - in general - and classic literature - in particular - are concerned . Before that , with Chaucer, the audio-cassette of "Past Into Present" by Roger Gower had done the job for me, stirring their interest and amazement at the sound of Middle English (as no one but a native speaker could have read and interpreted the old text better, to make it attractive to such a technically -oriented generation). We, then, worked with the text ,like puzzle, trying to identify , as in a competition, the words of French or Latin origin in the text .As a writing project of ' narrative essay', I, then, stimulated them to write their own 'frame story' a more modern location (in time and place).

Shakespeare was too famous and complex to approach just by listening and text analysis. A video-cassette (that had been presented to us by a former teacher-trainer in the 90's, Annette O'Dell, made the introduction. Two famous directors from the `Royal Shakespeare Company"( John Barton and Sir Peter Hall) were splitting the text and reciting in Elizabethan English , insisting on the vocabulary, lexical innovative gift of Shakespeare, showing them the man and the genius . Famous quotations were revealed to them as having first been used by ' great Will', in his plays, and becoming, ever since, heritage of the English Language :

- 'We are such stuff that dreams are made of'
- 'This precious stone, set in the silver sea'
- 'Frailty, thy name is' woman' "
- 'More in sorrow than in anger'
- 'The time is out of joint'
- 'More matter with less art'
- 'To be or not to be'
- 'The Lady does protest too much '
- 'To the manner born'
- 'Brevity is the soul of wit'
- 'I must be cruel only to be kind'
- 'The play's the thing'
- 'The rest is silence'
- 'A horse! My kingdom for a horse !'
- 'Nothing will come of nothing !'
- 'Oh, brave New World !'

and many others , alike.

Then, I remained alone with the text and I thought of continuing its approach in the same spirit of verisimilitude; so , I presented Sonnet 18 to them ( I must confess I have always been attracted by the stage!) as a dialogue with an imaginary friend, speaking it rather than reciting it, like a diary page, out-loud. After the theme and the message were identified by the students, metaphors, personifications, rhetorical questions, syntactical parallelism were easily exemplified in the text. We found clear and beautiful embodiments of these, otherwise too theoretical, issues, for example.:

a. 'Shall I compare thee with a summer's day?'(rhetorical questions)
b. the eye of Heaven" / ' 'Thy eternal summer'( metaphors)
c. ' ..and often is his gold complexion dimm'd '/' Nor shall Death brag thy wonders in His shade' (personifications)
d. ' Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst
Nor shall Death………..'
' So long as man can breathe and eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.' (syntactical parallelism)

Sonnet 130 brought him closer to them by an unconventional portrait of the beloved woman, built by rejection of the traditional clichés of the Renaissance sonnet and that of the love poetry (old or new) ; they had fun !

' My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
Coral is far more red than her lips red.
If snow be white, why, then , her breasts are dun ?'…..

The romantic girls were reassured by the message ( love is unique, and needs not be adorned with false images) while the rebellious teen-age boys were delighted by the so modern , contemporary rejection of sentimentalism , that lack of 'syrupy-sweet taste of traditional love poetry.

"Julius Caesar" , with the selection of two masterful speeches (Brutus' and Mark Antony's) brought history and politics into real life. I acted the two monologues myself , exaggerating a bit on gestures and poses so I could point at the differences between the two great speakers( and friends of Caesar's) as well as to emphasize the language gift of Shakespeare who made of them an idealistic philosopher (Brutus) and a down to earth strategian (Mark Antony).

The students were , then, given the roles of the citizens , who were interfering and commenting the speakers' words; I was thrilled to see how they were trying to imitate my intention of showing character by interpretation. They were allowed to read the text (first) silently, and afterwards, together, on roles, they commented upon their characters making assumptions , using the language used by the characters in the text as support-arguments for their observations on : social class, level of education, character features.

THEY WERE MINE !

The text had hooked them and I was happy to have helped ( even though by the dramatic strategy) .After all, we always have to put up some acting skills in front of them, putting ourselves in other shoes each time we teach a new topic, don't we?

The evaluation of Shakespeare-unit was both a challenge and fun for both students and myself : they had to select a scene or a longer monologue from any play they wished (from Shakespeare) , act it in front of the class, and then answer some questions about the philosophical and prosodic peculiarities of the text. They prepared , got costumed, were nervous , funny and… gorgeous ! (I often meet ex-students who can still quote line from Shakespeare : so , it wasn't in vain !)They started enjoying literature by looking at poetry and drama from an other perspective.

With prose, role-play also helped .Let's take Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", for instance: omniscient narrative approach, difficult language (architectural terms, especially) tragic topic… It had to be brought down to their age by something: role-play. The 'vocabulary' section was of help; whether it is scheduled for that unit or elsewhere in the text book , the vocabulary of 'crime and law' was (by me) before the text from "Tess". (legal terms, type of crimes / criminals , punishments etc). The students had been asked (at the beginning of the school year ) to read the novel . The evaluation project combined both vocabulary and literature: 'The trial of Tess D'Urbervilles' (from the perspective of the 21st century ). Students were divided into groups (of their choice, so they could better cooperate ): judge, prosecutor, defence lawyer, bailiff, witnesses, jury . They had to watch (for 3 weeks - the project dead-line) detective movies and put down specific expressions used in Court , meet for working at the cross-examinations questions (we also had a class dedicated to putting things together (on groups), presenting the evidence (especially quotations from the novel)and objects brought along by them for that purpose.

I was amazed to see how involved they got into the process of gathering facts from the novel , or , during the trial, in defending or accusing Tess, giving arguments , building (and acting ) their pleas like real lawyers. According to the eloquence of the barristers she was found either guilty as charged (!) or institutionalized on the grounds of 'temporary insanity'. They practiced their knowledge and apprehension of the novel , their vocabulary and also , their moral principles. I'm sure they acknowledged ,in a more realistic way , the novel, the 19th century moral and social background as well as the differences that the 21st c brought about.

My revelations on the students skills and potential gave me the idea of forming a drama group first ( we staged: "Hamlet"- a 4 hour-show, with sound track, costumes, effects and all , "The Importance of Being Earnest", "Pygmalion" and some Romanian plays as well ) with which we won quite a lot of prizes to their satisfaction, our Principal's and my joy. This April, on behalf of the Bucharest English Teachers Association and by the help of open-minded and supportive educational Institutions, I initiated an International Drama Festival , called "Shakespeare's Heritage" that included 18 drama groups from Romania, Belgium and Croatia, a jury made of Romanian actors and directors with international experience (Maia Morgenstern - who played the Holy Mother of Christ in "The Passions of Christ"; Adrian Pintea, also with a Hollywood experience ) as well as Mr. . Paul Edmondson - Director of Education at "Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford" and Mr. Paul Goetzee, dramatist(Liverpool).

I am convinced, now, that, by putting yourself as a teacher, as well as the students, in the shoes of the characters, can bring history and literature closer to their hearts .

Please check the Creative Drama For The Language Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.