DRAMATIC CONVENTIONS – Creative Learning

The dramatic conventions are techniques that we use in drama to structure the dramatic activity. We use the conventions to explore, to focus on a specific action, to promote drama etc. The following list contains some but not all the conventions.

STILL-IMAGE: The participants create an image, a picture with their bodies that looks like a photo or waxworks or statues.
INTERVIEWS: The participants act as reporters or detectives or historians looking for information. Convention used to promote drama, or to discover new elements or to understand a situation.
MEETINGS: Formal or informal meetings to present information, or to take decisions, or to plan the next actions, or to solve problems. Forms: Assemblies, family discussions, union meetings, protests etc.
THOUGHT-TRACKING: The revelation of the private thoughts of the child in role either by questioning or by presentation. To reveal hopes, fears, deep thoughts about the situation.
GIVING WITNESS: The description of an incident by someone who claims to have been a witness but not a participant in the situation.
COLLECTIVE DRAWING: We give a physical, collective image to represent the people, the place, the situation.
MANTLE OF THE EXPERT: Children become specialists on a field; historians, architects etc. The teacher is not the person with the most knowledge in the classroom. The power moves, shifts from the teacher to the children. The teacher explores with the children. The children have the skills and the know-how.
MAP-MAKING/DIAGRAMS: In or out of role the participants recreate the place where drama takes place (the factory, the forest, a village, a town, a laboratory etc).
ROLE ON THE WALL: The children draw a diagram/a frame of the human body using their own body on a piece of paper that they put on the wall, and on this they work the internal and external characteristics of the character.
HOT-SEATING: Children as a group ask open or close questions to different characters in the situation in order to discover the motives or the background of the characters.
TEACHER-IN-ROLE: The teacher adopts a role different from his teacher role in the classroom in order to move the drama on or to help the students in a possible dead-end, or to help with questioning, or emphasise a point.
IMPROVISATION: A spontaneous representation of a specific situation by the participants who have little time to prepare the scene. A given set of information is give but the children are left alone to create and bring themselves in the situation.
REFLECTION: It is a convention used in drama to reflect on events in role or out of role in order to enhance the understanding, to summarise or to answer any questions and solve any problems.
THE USE OF OBJECTS AS SYMBOLS: The use of objects to start or continue a drama.
VOICES IN THE HEAD: When a character in the drama faces a dilemma or a difficult decision, the rest of the participants become the second voice representing the contradictory thoughts of the character, or react as the collective consciousness of the character.
FORUM-THEATRE: A situation or an improvisation chosen by the children in order to investigate the particular experience, is presented in front of the rest of the participants. While the rest of the participants, “the audience”, is watching everybody has the right to halt the action when they think that the action does not lead anywhere and try to take on the role that they think is weak and try to enact it differently.
CAPTION MAKING: In groups the children create slogans, titles for the newspapers or magazines, Book Headings, or give titles to pictures.
DIARIES, LETTERS, JOURNALS, MESSAGES: These are written texts from the students or the teacher during or before or even after drama, in or out of role, and they are used for reflection, as evidence or proof or as a way to bring in new tension.
RITUAL, CEREMONY: The participants are faced with particular situations that have a traditional, particular, ritualistic character and which involve rules and codes. For instance, wedding, march, funeral etc.
ANALOGY: A problem is being handled not in a direct way but through a parallel situation that reflects the problem. Usually such situations are the very painful ones or the very familiar ones or the ones that can bring prejudice. Examples of analogy are the myths and the fairy tales.

REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Neelands, Structuring Drama Work, Cambridge, 1991

The dramatic conventions are techniques that we use in drama to structure the dramatic activity. We use the conventions to explore, to focus on a specific action, to promote drama etc. The following list contains some but not all the conventions.

STILL-IMAGE: The participants create an image, a picture with their bodies that looks like a photo or waxworks or statues.

INTERVIEWS: The participants act as reporters or detectives or historians looking for information. Convention used to promote drama, or to discover new elements or to understand a situation.

MEETINGS: Formal or informal meetings to present information, or to take decisions, or to plan the next actions, or to solve problems. Forms: Assemblies, family discussions, union meetings, protests etc.

THOUGHT-TRACKING: The revelation of the private thoughts of the child in role either by questioning or by presentation. To reveal hopes, fears, deep thoughts about the situation.

GIVING WITNESS: The description of an incident by someone who claims to have been a witness but not a participant in the situation.

COLLECTIVE DRAWING: We give a physical, collective image to represent the people, the place, the situation.

MAP-MAKING/DIAGRAMS: In or out of role the participants recreate the place where drama takes place (the factory, the forest, a village, a town, a laboratory etc).

ROLE ON THE WALL: The children draw a diagram/a frame of the human body using their own body on a piece of paper that they put on the wall, and on this they work the internal and external characteristics of the character.

HOT-SEATING: Children as a group ask open or close questions to different characters in the situation in order to discover the motives or the background of the characters.

TEACHER-IN-ROLE: The teacher adopts a role different from his teacher role in the classroom in order to move the drama on or to help the students in a possible dead-end, or to help with questioning, or emphasise a point.

IMPROVISATION: A spontaneous representation of a specific situation by the participants who have little time to prepare the scene. A given set of information is give but the children are left alone to create and bring themselves in the situation.

REFLECTION: It is a convention used in drama to reflect on events in role or out of role in order to enhance the understanding, to summarise or to answer any questions and solve any problems.

THE USE OF OBJECTS AS SYMBOLS: The use of objects to start or continue a drama.

VOICES IN THE HEAD: When a character in the drama faces a dilemma or a difficult decision, the rest of the participants become the second voice representing the contradictory thoughts of the character, or react as the collective consciousness of the character.

CAPTION MAKING: In groups the children create slogans, titles for the newspapers or magazines, Book Headings, or give titles to pictures.

DIARIES, LETTERS, JOURNALS, MESSAGES: These are written texts from the students or the teacher during or before or even after drama, in or out of role, and they are used for reflection, as evidence or proof or as a way to bring in new tension.

RITUAL, CEREMONY: The participants are faced with particular situations that have a traditional, particular, ritualistic character and which involve rules and codes. For instance, wedding, march, funeral etc.

ANALOGY: A problem is being handled not in a direct way but through a parallel situation that reflects the problem. Usually such situations are the very painful ones or the very familiar ones or the ones that can bring prejudice. Examples of analogy are the myths and the fairy tales.

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The dramatic conventions are techniques that we use in drama to structure the dramatic activity. We use the conventions to explore, to focus on a specific action, to promote drama etc. The following list contains some but not all the conventions.

STILL-IMAGE: The participants create an image, a picture with their bodies that looks like a photo or waxworks or statues.

INTERVIEWS: The participants act as reporters or detectives or historians looking for information. Convention used to promote drama, or to discover new elements or to understand a situation.

MEETINGS: Formal or informal meetings to present information, or to take decisions, or to plan the next actions, or to solve problems. Forms: Assemblies, family discussions, union meetings, protests etc.

THOUGHT-TRACKING: The revelation of the private thoughts of the child in role either by questioning or by presentation. To reveal hopes, fears, deep thoughts about the situation.

GIVING WITNESS: The description of an incident by someone who claims to have been a witness but not a participant in the situation.

COLLECTIVE DRAWING: We give a physical, collective image to represent the people, the place, the situation.

MAP-MAKING/DIAGRAMS: In or out of role the participants recreate the place where drama takes place (the factory, the forest, a village, a town, a laboratory etc).

ROLE ON THE WALL: The children draw a diagram/a frame of the human body using their own body on a piece of paper that they put on the wall, and on this they work the internal and external characteristics of the character.

HOT-SEATING: Children as a group ask open or close questions to different characters in the situation in order to discover the motives or the background of the characters.

TEACHER-IN-ROLE: The teacher adopts a role different from his teacher role in the classroom in order to move the drama on or to help the students in a possible dead-end, or to help with questioning, or emphasise a point.

IMPROVISATION: A spontaneous representation of a specific situation by the participants who have little time to prepare the scene. A given set of information is give but the children are left alone to create and bring themselves in the situation.

REFLECTION: It is a convention used in drama to reflect on events in role or out of role in order to enhance the understanding, to summarise or to answer any questions and solve any problems.

THE USE OF OBJECTS AS SYMBOLS: The use of objects to start or continue a drama.

VOICES IN THE HEAD: When a character in the drama faces a dilemma or a difficult decision, the rest of the participants become the second voice representing the contradictory thoughts of the character, or react as the collective consciousness of the character.

CAPTION MAKING: In groups the children create slogans, titles for the newspapers or magazines, Book Headings, or give titles to pictures.

DIARIES, LETTERS, JOURNALS, MESSAGES: These are written texts from the students or the teacher during or before or even after drama, in or out of role, and they are used for reflection, as evidence or proof or as a way to bring in new tension.

RITUAL, CEREMONY: The participants are faced with particular situations that have a traditional, particular, ritualistic character and which involve rules and codes. For instance, wedding, march, funeral etc.

ANALOGY: A problem is being handled not in a direct way but through a parallel situation that reflects the problem. Usually such situations are the very painful ones or the very familiar ones or the ones that can bring prejudice. Examples of analogy are the myths and the fairy tales.