The Role of Story in Drama and Theatre Education - Literature review Example

THE ROLE OF STORY IN DRAMA AND THEATRE EDUCATION Introduction Theater education is very importantin the process of teaching people important and various aspects of life and other themes. Theatre education aims at helping people know how to express themselves through various performances like drama, poetry among other forms of oral literature (Wilson 2006). Additionally, theatre education has become an important tool through which some of the major cross cutting themes in the society can be expressed in the most entertaining, yet educative way. Most people are increasing appreciating the role of theatre education in the society, because of its effectiveness in achieving its goals and objectives. It is important to appreciate in the recent past; the success of theatre education has been largely attributed to the application of various skills in the process of planning and delivering the intended message to the selected audiences (Wilson, 2006). In many communities, drama and other aspects of live performance like drama have been essential in passing the values of the community to the succeeding generation. In fact, many schools have included theatre education as part of their oral literature in order to not only train their learners to love the discipline, but also to educate them on how to live and manage their life in the community and the large society when they complete certain levels of education. In theatre, people write and choreograph different kinds of plays and dramas for educative and entertainment purposes. The dramas and composed in theatres depends on various things, the authors could be motivated by things happening in the social environment at any point in time, or he could just create fictitious stories that people can enjoy watching and learning from. The most important thing in this whole process is for the performer or performers of the particular item to ensure that people or the targeted audience gets to understand that intended message. Learning through drama The use of drama is often very essential in providing diverse opportunities for multisensory and diverse kinds of kinesthetic responses to most of the stories narrated to various targeted audiences towards learning through performing different things at various levels. At the most fundamental level, it involves listening and offering responses to the various stories. At the basic level, the audience has to follow the story through leaning how to mime, make sounds, related gestures and imitations in the process of showing their understanding of the story. This is also important so that the audience can illustrate their association between the corporal expression and language. This kind of approach enables the audience to link words, actions meanings and memorization of key aspects in the language in a manner that is enjoyable and natural. When the audience becomes more familiar with the story being told, the extended dramatical activities offer important opportunities to be used in recycling the language and acting it out. In this case, it is evident that in drama, focus and support is often created for the children to learn how to use language, in this case, they can effectively build their self-esteem and confidence. Some of the techniques that are commonly used in drama like role-playing gives the audience a chance to go past the stories explained and start exploring some other issues emerging from the main themes in the drama. This is important because the audience can effectively develop creating and critical thinking skills and strategies, towards making use of the message being passed across. Storytelling lends itself naturally, to dramatic presentation. Storytelling helps the audience to nurture a feeling that greatly assists them in considering themselves as creators that in turn builds self-confidence (Stinton 2002). This is because of the effect created by the acts of body movements and sounds that in turn create meaning through the performance and building on their imagination. The stories allow the audience to select and derive sense from the characters, predicaments, events as well as the solutions. When the audience takes on and cast off a given role right from one moment to another in made-up drama, they create a sense of authority over what or who they are, thus finding safety in learning that they have the authority of substituting one responsibility or condition for another (Worth 2008). In order for drama to meet this important objective, individual or other groups undertaking the performance have to ensure that they rely in the proper styles that people can identify with in the most effective way. When the intended message is not passed out in the drama or any other piece of art, then the performers often fail in their performance (Wilson 2006). They need to have a prefect understanding of their audience and the different ways in which their message can be passed onto them (Worth 2008). This paper examines the use of stories in the process of making a drama in the theatre, examining its effectiveness in delivering the intended message to the targeted audience. The Story telling part- Thumbelina by Hans Christian Anderson Andersen worked primarily together with his own imagination, taking part in upon his own experiences. He freely admitted that almost all of what he wrote was a mirrored image of him. Each character was from life. He was familiar with all of them. During this manner, despite coping with lots of episodes of individual suffering, he typically avoided the crueler, additional distressful situations of traditional knowledge that the Grimms had come into being to gather and preserve (Diane & Frank 2005). Chesterton (1987) 0bserves that, though kid death and pining were among his favorite preoccupations, these received softness by a sentimentality that his early translators increased. Additional completely, and additional tolerably to later readers, such themes were touched within the finish by a visionary quality that raises them higher than each sentimentality and pietism. Another of his preoccupations, relation attachment, command and to some extent still holds a special charm for the younger audience. It is attainable to mention constant as of his gift for invigorating the abstract or inanimate, a present that has created him an extremely cogent figure within the field of childrens literature. However, maybe his most enduring charm lies in his demonstration that, as Chesterton (1987) places it that the dignity of the fighter is not in his bigness however rather in his littleness. Rationale for choosing the story An equally potent mixture of emotions, and their final sublimation, is feasible to examine in Andersens story concerning siblings. Instead, as Bredsdorff (1994) says, Hans Christian Andersen tends to idealize the brother-and-sister relationship. This story will have tale origins; one amongst solely nine such stories within the collection; however, the manner Hans Christian Andersen tells and ends the story is all his own. Grimms, succeeds in remodeling her brothers simply once she is on the purpose of burning to death as a witch. Hans Christian Andersen describes however innumerable roses, that blossom as if by magic from the fire at a lower place her, then encircled her. One white rose shines on top of her sort of a star. The outline attracts attention to her purity, and glorifies the sister like love, which just about turned her into a martyr (Jan 1973). Another facet of Andersens conquest of reality is, of course, his ability in humanizing animals and invigorating and giving speech to inanimate objects. Each devices were already acquainted from nursery rhymes and earlier fairy tales, like those translated from Perraults character assortment within the early eighteenth century. Small-scale ventures during this line received several trials additional recently, too. Howitts own known and solely enduring artistic work was the moral verse form mentioned within the previous section, ‘The Spider and the Fly, revealed in 1834, within which the spider invited the fly into his parlour. However, as Chesterton (1987) discovered, Andersens gift for this kind of issue was on a unique scale, quickly bigger and additional entirely natural. Message to story performers Thumbelina gets borne of a kernel of barleycorn. Thumbelina stays with a girl from the United Nations agency who needed her, with small possessions appropriate her size. She is a pretty girl, with a fantastic musical voice when singing. However, one night, a very unpleasant previous toad frog gets into the house and offers to sing Thumbelina a song. Thumbelina received a captive hold on a pad during a marsh; her salvation comes when a fish, which perceive her plight, severs the pad, permitting it to go. The birds she passes sing Thumbelina’s praises, and a butterfly befriends her when she sails downstream on her pad boat. Till on comes a dictyopterous insect that conjointly sees a possible spouse in Thumbelina. That can only happen until the opposite cockroaches convert him however ugly Thumbelina seems to be. Poor Thumbelina, rejected by a dictyopterous insect, though she had had no interest in turning into Mrs. Cockroach. Her self-image suffering, Thumbelina fares it alone for a summer, on the other hand the weather starts turning cold. Facing bound death, she found the house of associate degree recent field mouse and begged for food. The type recent field mouse accepts to live with Thumbelina, giving her food and warmth through company. Sadly, the sector mouse thinks extremely of her recent neighbor who is blind, the mole, thinking that Thumbelina can be a perfect match for him. Thumbelina realizes that she is made to face another associate degree unwanted wedding. However, at this point she does not need to scotch the recent field-mouse woman that has been thus smart to her. Thumbelina aids back to life a gulp left for dead, and one year after, he comes to avoid wasting her from the unfinished wedding ceremony. She wings on return to a beautiful hayfield, wherever she realizes that in every flower, lives a small person. Naturally, associate eligible aristocrat who bumps into Thumbelina, falling for her glamorous beauty, and Thumbelina looks okay with him too - seeing as however he is not a frog, roach nor mole. Thumbelina is given a new name, May Blossom, given a try of operating wings, and certain lives jubilantly ever when. Key images of the story and analysis  Thumbelina could be a flaccid character, the dupe of circumstances while her male counterpart Tom Thumb, one in all the tale’s inspirations, is an energetic character, makes himself felt and exerts himself (Diane & Frank 2005). Thumbelina may be a runaway bride story associated and it is an allegory regarding organized marriages, and a fable regarding being faithful one’s heart that upholds the standard notion that the love of a aristocrat is to achieve worth in particular else (Diane & Frank 2005). In Hindu belief, a thumb-sized called the innermost self or soul dwells within the heart of all beings, human or animal, which the conception might have migrated to European lore and brought kind as Thumbelina that ask for transfiguration and redemption. Thumbelina refers to Christ‘s suffering and resurrection, and also the Christian conception of salvation. Thumbelina was the primary of Andersens tales to dramatize the sufferings of one that is very different, and, owing to being totally different, becomes the item of mockery. It absolutely was conjointly the primary of Andersens tales to include the swallow because the image of the poetic soul and Andersen’s identification with the swallow as a migratory bird whose pattern of life his own traveling days were setting out to. Andersen articulates his feelings of social as well as sexual inferiority by making characters that square measure inferior to their beloveds. In the story Thumbelina, Andersen proposes the anuran, the beetle and therefore the mole square measure Thumbelina’s inferiors and may stay in their places instead of wanting their superior. According to Sale (1978), they are not inferior to Thumbelina but merely completely different. He suggests that Andersen might have done some harm to the animal world once he coloured his animal characters along with his own feelings of inferiority. Thumbelina could be a story of specifically for feminine direction. Thumbelina herself can be a grotesque, and observes the grotesque in children’s literature that is a necessary and helpful part, that enhances the psychological welfare of the young reader. Kids get attraction to the cathartic qualities of the grotesque. It is attainable to research the story from the angle of brain doctor depth psychology, because the story of feminine autoeroticism. Thumbelina herself may symbolize the button, her rose floral leaf spread the labia, the white butterfly because the budding private parts, mole, prince, anal and epithelial duct openings severally (Siegel 1992). The effectiveness of putting storytelling into theatre  So far, it is evident that the choice of Thumbelina by Hans Christian Anderson is important aspects towards helping the audience understand some of the moral stories. In this story, the audience can easily connect with the various issues that the author is trying to communicate in this story. Generally, as pointed out earlier, use of stories in drama plays an essential role towards understanding the moral of the story and other important aspects needed to deliver the intended message to the targeted audience. In the story above, the narration helps the audience to effectively understand the roles played by the different characters. In this case, in the actual drama, the audience can easily understand the moral of the story. Conclusion With stories in drama, the audience can affectively have an understanding of themselves as well as the world around them. The story of Thumbelina by Hans Christian Anderson is a good example of how the audience can effectively interact with the themes being highlighted in the particular story. The roles that the characters play in this story are critical towards helping the audience to explore some of the significant issues that are relevant in their lives in the most enjoyable manner. It is important to note that the effectiveness of stories and dramatical plays in advancing certain important moral lesson in the societies continues to find relevance in people. The many groups of people that are showing preference for these activities illustrate how effective dramatical plays are in teaching some important aspects of life. In this regard, it is important to understand that learning institutions continue to value these activities as important instruments though which they can use to train learners in various ways. Bibliography Alfreds, M 1979 A shared experience: the actor as storyteller. In: Theatre Papers. ed., Devon: Department of Theatre, Dartington College of Arts Alfreds, M. 2013 The Empty Space & Actors as Storytellers. In: Then what happens? storytelling and adapting for the theatre. Nick Hern Books, London. Bredsdorff, E. 1994, Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of His Life and Work, 1805-75, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. Chesterton, G. K. 1987, Hamlet and the Danes, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, pp. 336-44. Diane C. F. & Frank J. 2005, The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, Duke University Press, London. Jan, I. 1973, On Childrens Literature, Allen Lane, London. Paley, V. 2004, A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play, IL: University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Sale, R. 1978, Fairy Tales and After: From Snow White to E.B. White, Harvard University Press, New Haven. Siegel, E. 1992, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women, Brunner, New York. Wilson, M. 2006. Acting and Storytelling. In: Storytelling and theatre: contemporary storytellers and their art. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Worth, S. 2008, ‘Storytelling and Narrative Knowing: An Examination of the Epistemic Benefits of Well-Told Stories’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 42–56. Read More