Drama Ed Weekly Newsletter

I had the pleasure on Friday to be invited to be a judge in the Western Australian heat of the ROBOCUP JUNIOR AUSTRALIA Tournament. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, students are required to design, build and program a robot, or robots, to complete a range of tasks. Teams competed in five categories:

I was judging the Dance category and saw an amazing array of machines and programming sequences that the students had created. It was great to see students willing to take risks and push the limits of the design and capabilities of their robots. We saw robots that danced break beat moves to the hip-hop stylings of Eminem, a dancing "granny cheerleader" who strutted her stuff to the tune of "Mickey"...

All in all, the competition really brought home the changing nature of the way we teach and think about arts practice and the increasing nexus that is developing between the Arts and technology. Sadly to say, I seemed to be the only Arts practitioner/teacher in the mix and the whole project was guided by Design and Technology, and Information Technology staff... why were there so few Dance teachers involved in the process... are we as Arts Educators going to allow the future of our subject to be determined by the "shed boys" and "techno-geeks"?

I think this type of event offers fantastic opportunities for Arts Educators to really demonstrate the versatility of our subjects and the ability to enhance a wide range of other learning areas... and yet... we seem to be absent from the process.

Preliminary analysis of the recent Digital Drama survey indicates that only half of Drama teachers have actually attempted to use innovative technologies in their practice. Could it really be that there is still a prevailing attitude that the domain of Drama education is still limited to theatre games and second rate acting classes? I certainly hope not!!

Here's a simple lesson idea that will help ease the way into using technology. It is easy to achieve and adds a dimension of variety to your regular Drama activities. There's nothing overly challenging but it does generate some material that can be used in later Drama classes. This idea was inspired by a recent episode of the BBC TV program [ s p o o k s ] - In fact there are a range of ideas that can be gleaned from their Episode Guide and Games Section] - Read the synopsis of Episode 5 and you'll have a good sense of what this lesson sets out to achieve. There are very useful links on the page that connect the fictional representation with real world considerations. Here is the text of that synopsis.

It was just another Friday morning for Tom Quinn. He had coffee with his girlfriend Vicky and arranged a lunch date with her. Arriving at work, he was introduced to Harry's guests Bridget and Mark. But Danny was late, and just as he arrived outside the pods a huge alarm went off and the team were thrown into an EERIE exercise.

The exercise had to be treated as reality, and as EmEx officer, Tom was now in charge. It was against regulations, but Tom decided to let Danny in. The team quickly set about gathering facts. A dirty bomb had gone off in Parliament Square, and the senior government officials had been evacuated. As they tried to establish communication lines they discovered that the officer in the Duty Room had been affected oddly by the crisis and shut down most of the essential systems.

Despite this Malcolm managed to make contact with an emergency response van who tell them that the bomb contained VX. Radio 4 goes off air, and as the team gain access to cctv footage from across the capital, they start to realise that this is not just an exercise. Ruth connects the attack to a known security risk and deduces that there are plans to attack 10 cities in this way.

As it became clear that Harry was suffering from VX poisoning, Bridget and Mark got increasingly mutinous. The final straw was when the heard the governmental helicopters had come down, and Tom was forced to declare a state of emergency. Mark and Bridget were determined to make a break for it, believing they could escape to a safe-house in Ashford.

Tom knew that leaving the Grid would not only mean certain death for them, but also for the rest of the team, when infected air was able to enter the room. He had no option but to hold them at gunpoint. They were trying to break the seal on the pods, so Tom pulled the trigger.

As the shot rang out, the electricity suddenly came back. Harry emerged from his office and congratulated everyone on a job well done. They were stunned to discover it was all an exercise after all. Harry invited them all down to the pub for a liquid lunch. As the last of the workers left, a category A alert flashed out from Ruth's screen, across the empty office.

You will need access to a simple conferencing, even a basic messaging, software application. Internet searching facilities (or access to a decent electronic encyclopaedia or other information base) is helpful and helps to build belief in the situation. If you are confident with technology you can add webcams and audio, etc...

The Scenario of the episode was a training drill for a national emergency that was pushed to the extreme to test the leadership capabilities of one of the MI5 team. This lesson is a pale imitation of their process.

Make sure your class has access to a small suite of computers. Ideally you can use projection so the non-participating members of the class can see what's going on. As teacher you will be on one computer and providing plot complications and outside communications... be ready to improvise and get really creative. You will be guiding the dramatic process by traditional side-coaching but also by inputting via the computer as remote characters.

Prepare some character outlines. You need a leadership team, some investigators, office staff, and other departmental personnel.

Each character should determine their age, time on the job, family situation, goals, ambitions, attitudes and demeanour, etc...

Establish the scenario. The students are to be playing the roles of MI5 (CIA, ASIO, Mossad, any such agency) personnel. They are in a secure facility and are part of the key communication network for national security. They have all turned up for work. It helps if the students have established really believable family and relationship details for their characters.

Once the characters are established in their working roles an emergency alert is activated. All communications are temporarily offline and they find themselves in lock-down - no-one can enter or leave. Soon they get partial information coming through via the COMSAT - (your messaging/conferencing software) that something has gone awry outside.

With teacher guidance (both as present teacher and "in role" as remote characters) the students play out the scenario.

This process can be done in real time with an audience watching. The situation can be modified to time-limit the process - they have only 20 minutes before the next phase of the attack... It is useful to play the scenario to a logical conclusion and then the material created can be used in a variety of ways - you can analyse aspects of leadership, "greater good", self sacrifice, relationships, what's really important... the forum for discussion is immense.

I realise this is a brief overview of a substantial lesson - as always, it is designed to promote experimentation, not to carve in granite an absolute. This type of lesson requires a very proactive, and responsive teacher who has taken the time to get some measure of the software used. In this instance the IT componentry is a part of a fairly traditional improvisation and role-play activity. With skilful side-coaching and artful teacher-in-role work it is possible to create an incredibly useful activity. You will need to adapt to your circumstances, and consider the sensibilities of your school community. It seems that the more we face global terrorism the less people want to consider it as part of school curriculum... my belief is that if students are able to openly discuss their perceptions and concerns then they are better prepared should the worst ever eventuate - it also helps to balance the emotional finger-pointing and pot-stirring that the media is so set on initiating.