Response to a six hour drama workshop.

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GCSE DRAMA PORTFOLIO

PAPER ONE – UNIT ONE “HISTORY / HIS STORY”

BY MURRAY FULFORD – 1107

RESPONSE

We held a six hour drama workshop in which a number of tasks were completed, studied and analysed. We concentrated on 2 drama texts, the first of which being an artefact – namely a shoe. We were asked to hold and look at it, so as to name it. I saw the shoe as old and well worn – with its tattered leather, putrid – from its long life and probably peculiar in the fact that is was by itself – not part of its original set.

The second drama text we used was Grandpa’s Shoes – Deborah Chandra. This was a poem that Mrs. Awbery read to us:

Lying by the back door,

Grandpa’s shoes

Speak in a husky whisper:

‘Step inside,’ they say.

We’re big and bruised

And scuffed, but

Down past the tough

We’ve worn ourselves soft

We’ve been somewhere.

I saw the poem as relative to the shoe that had been shown to us, as it was very similar to what I saw – big, scuffed and bruised which I interpreted as battered or well-worn.

We were asked to name the shoe’s owner to begin an identity of it. I worked with Sean for this task. Our ideas for the names were –

  • Steve – Sean and I met a one-shoed tramp named Steve
  • Half-dead Joe – a mutual friend has a similar pair of shoes and it immediately seemed to work, especially as the nickname – half-dead – could be used for both of them
  • Albert – again there are a great many old people named Albert, especially Grandfathers – as in Grandpa’s Shoes

The group then read out their ideas, including – Albert

                                                         Jack

                                                         Harold

The name agreed on was ‘Jack.’

Though-tracking

Though-tracking is an explorative strategy used to find out more about other’s ideas by creating a continuous piece of text whilst in character. We had to complete the sentence, ‘I can remember…’ which was used because it brought out many different ideas in different individuals as they could take that where they wanted. I found this a great way of producing my own ideas without influence from other people’s thoughts and fairly easy as I have an imaginative mind and I believe I write well.

My sentence was:

 ‘I can remember when we used this shoe to smoke a magical herb through to expand our minds so as to transport ourselves into a different world.’

Narrating / storytelling

The next activity we did was to continue with our story in groups of three, but due to the number of people, Sean and I had to work with no-one else. We were to take on the role of a storyteller with the other saying, “extend/advance,” so as to add more detail, but not too much. Firstly we had a brainstorm about how to tell an effective story.

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In the ‘Extend/Advance’ task there were three parts:

Storytelling – One person has to tell their story as well as possible

Extending – One person used this twice so the storyteller could add more      information and detail

Advancing – The last person says this only after extend has been used to indicate to the storyteller that he should carry on with the actual events

Marking the Moment

Marking the moment is used as a strategy to create the most important part in a story, using image through physically positioning and sometimes includes making objects ...

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