Rachel Wycoff
Dr. Lee Nickoson-Massey
ENG 484
21 April 2008
Enter Stage Right: The Use of Theatre in the Literature Classroom
The multi-tonal groans travel from student to student every time an educator in the field of English hands out a play. They get the look on their faces that is halfway between disgust and contempt and complain loudly, asking why they have to read “this stuff.” Students always make that wonderful groaning sound when they get frustrated or don’t particularly want to read a certain selection. However, in the literature classroom, students are supposed to be presented with the best possible examples of literature from around the world. Through this practice, students are supposed to gain significant cultural knowledge along with the content of the actual text. The best possible examples of literature come in many forms: short stories, folktales, novels, poems, and fortunately, as someone who heartily enjoys theatre and all that comes with it, play scripts. Plays seem to have become the red-headed stepchild of literature. They seem to have become a sticking point for many students who are often ill-equipped to read plays. As a student of, and participant in, theatre for over ten years, I find that theatre may be overlooked in many literature classrooms because teachers fear, not only their students’ capability to comprehend the play, but also their own ability to teach the play correctly and in an interesting fashion. There are many ways in which an instructor can incorporate theatre into the classroom that involve student work and participation, as well as the opportunity to sit back and enjoy a good performance. Of these many ways in which a student can engage with theatre in a literature classroom, most of the engagements that students of literature may have with theatre can be positive experiences which hopefully will instill in students of literature the deep love and respect for theatre that so many possess. In short, because the positive aspects of theatre usage outweigh the negative, the theatre arts should be a more integral role in the literature classroom.
Often times, literature and theatre are split in two, and plays, except of course for the great canonical god, Shakespeare, are left in the dust to be discovered later by some ambitious student. However, in some classes, literature and plays have twined into a conglomerate idea. Thus, play scripts, when taught in literature courses, are taught as just that, literature. In this approach, students are taught to focus on the things they focus on in literature: themes, the actual text, the major ideas. In this approach, the performance aspect of the theatre is lost. Play scripts were written to be performed, are meant to be performed, and when the performance is absent in a literature classroom, some students may miss the thought that plays weren’t just meant to be read. The literature approach to written plays is not without merit. It engages students with the text itself. Students are able to look at the play as text that just happens to be dialogue and find the major themes, characters, setting, and everything else that comes along with textual analysis in literature. Often though, they may miss the emotion that a voice behind the words could offer. Teaching plays as literature also gives the student a great deal of imaginative leeway. Many students who have a hard time keeping names straight will cast the show mentally from their friends or even from Hollywood to have a face to go with a name. The imaginative effort of many students is enough to add in the detail that may be lost from not actually teaching the performance of a play, but some may need a little extra help.
Another way a student can take in a play script is through watching an actual performance of the show. The student as an audience member is a wonderful presentational way for a student to understand what the actors are saying and how they are saying it. Showing a student how one company would perform a script would allow the student to understand certain parts of the text. They would see how one actor and director understood a certain scene and how to justify in the actions within it. Sometimes without a little help, justifications for actions are hard to make, but when they are handed to a student on a silver platter via an actor, they are a little harder to miss. A performance could also present the student with a different take on a text than they had previously imagined. One thing that a teacher must be wary of when seeing a performance is the possible detachment from the imagination that a student may feel. If the student had imagined something differently than what they see, they could question their own correctness. Attending a performance could also encourage patronage to the arts. If students hadn’t previously experienced a theatrical performance, they may be encouraged to appreciate it that much more. A student could then be encouraged to understand theatre a little more through watching any performance. Or a student could be bored in the performance and never want to see another play again. Students could be either intrigued or bored by watching a performance, so this approach is more of a judgment call based on how a teacher thinks students would react to sitting for at least an hour and a half watching people talk on a stage. Personally, seeing a performance of a play would be a supplement to reading the play closely in class. Seeing a performance should be more of a tool to teach rather than the entire lesson itself. When used as a tool, rather than a lesson, a teacher can help explain difficult things through the text and performance, rather than just the performance or just the text, lending a new idea or a new look to whatever lesson is being taught.
One more way students can partake in the theatrical arts within the literature course is to write their own scripts. Usually the written element of theatre could be lost in the performance, and some instructors could forget that a play script, while untraditional, could be another way of turning in a written assignment. Additionally, students writing scripts could be more useful in promoting understanding of difficult materials. In a few of my college courses even, professors have used the tactic of allowing students to rewrite the script in their own words to help understand it. For example, Shakespeare, who is more likely than not the only playwright’s work most students in the literature classroom will see until they reach the college level, is generally hard to understand because of his language. His archaic structures and words sometimes fly right over the heads of students. However, those same students who cannot understand the Bard could take passages and rewrite them in modern English, with some help of course, and could make those passages readily available to themselves and to others. This exercise in translation and transmutation can not only promote student understanding, but can be fun as well. There is nothing more engaging that having fun in class. Some could say, though, that this approach to theatre in the classroom, shows that one can violate the so-called sacred texts of the literature canon with slang and modern language, which, of course, is on par with blasphemy. Because students are not engaging with important literature in its original form, they are not really engaging with the literature itself, more like an adaptation or translation in which something is lost between the old and the new. This can be a very true objection. Sometimes, in the changing of words to create understanding, the themes and other important parts of what is deemed the original can be lost beneath the natural jargon of the students. However, allowing a student to put his words in the mouths of famous characters creates a certain ownership of and camaraderie with the text. Rather than fearing the archaic words of Shakespeare, they can understand what he says through their own words. Using playwriting to further understanding is a wonderful tool, and with a great deal of instructor guidance, at least the first time anyway, students can come up with working scripts that are both entertaining and maintain the commonly understood themes of the play or other literature that they are translated and adapted from. Translating a play into a play is not the only way this tool can be useful. Another way to create scripts is to turn other forms of literature into theatre. Novels, short stories, anything really, can be placed into dialogue and performed. In this approach though, an instructor must use the act of translation into a play as a tool to create understanding, and then have the students actually perform what they have written. Playwriting and play performance, in this case, are not exclusive things. They come hand in hand; they have to. However, the fact that an instructor must use both aspects of theatre can help lessen the work load on each individual student. The work can be divided and when each group has come up with a working modern script, they can be performed in order. This way everybody gets in on the action.
In addition to using performance in conjunction with rewriting a piece of literature as a play or as a slightly more understandable play, a literature instructor could allow students to produce small sections of a play as is. Through performance of a selected piece, the group that performs will have a much greater understanding of what goes on in that particular section. By having groups concentrate their efforts on one section of a piece of literature and then perform it, everybody can partake in the learning that they had as they worked on their section. A presentation in the form of a performance, in my opinion, is far more interesting to watch than a PowerPoint presentation or a simple lecture. Also, it gives the opportunity for students who have anxiety about being in front of the classroom the chance to get over their fears. By creating a safe environment where students are encouraged to perform and are encouraged to participate helpfully in others’ performances, students who are reluctant performers can flourish. They can gain confidence that they otherwise would have lacked. Also, while performing a piece, students must come up with a way in which to perform it. They have to come up with the way in which the character would say the words that are written. They have to, basically, become actors and justify their decisions with emotion and actions. Simple acts like this can give students a much better understanding of characters than they could ever have had simply reading a play. Because the character that they see has, not only a voice and emotion, but a face, it may be easier for students to remember characters and what they do. Personally, one of my major problems with reading plays is that I do not have a name and a face to put together so I forget who people are and who said what. I get lost very easily, but if I have a face to put with a name, and voice to hear in my head as I’m reading, I can achieve a much deeper understanding of what is going on in the context of the show. By allowing students to have themselves be a character in their own production of a play gives students some idea of the emotion behind the words they are reading. Rather than reading the work students experience it. One pitfall of using performance in a classroom to teach a play is that students may become more concerned with the performance aspect of the activity as opposed to focusing on the script and portraying a certain thing in front of their peers. They could get lost in the thoughts of costumes, if they are readily available, and staging and props that they may forget that the exercise is for educational purposes. This reaction to performance may be rare, but it is nevertheless something to be wary of if one was to want to use performance as a way to engage their students with literature. One of the great things about performance of theatre is that it can encompass all of the ways in which a student can experience theatre in a classroom for English. Performance, in conjunction with all of the other ways in which students can experience theatre arts in classrooms, can create deep understanding as well as appreciation for the craft. In encompassing all, students can discuss a certain play as literature, focusing on themes and text. They can take the understanding that they have of the words that they read from literature based discussion into rewriting a script. Through the rewrite process, and with proper guidance, students can come up with a script that is both entertaining and true to the work that they are adapting to their particular classroom needs. The students can put their words into the mouths actors who have to justify them. When students perform their own words, there is a greater understanding present than when they perform others’ words. Students can justify character choices and provide new insight into a character that others may not have had. In addition to the performance, there is always the audience. Watching their peers perform parts of a script that they too have worked on gives the audience a greater investment in what they are watching rather than just going to see a play performed by professional or amateur actors. Students in the audience, then, must make a concerted effort to pay attention the way in which others are presenting the materials, thus making them much better audience members than they might otherwise have been. In this sense, theatre is probably one of the most effective tools that an instructor could use.
All in all, there are so many ways that theatre can be incorporated into any classroom, but it could play an especially profound role in the literature classroom. Many of the greatest works of the literature canon are plays. Their use in the classroom provides ample opportunity for students reach out and exceed through writing, discussing, performing and watching. Through each of those engagements with theatre deeper understand ensues. So, let the students groan and sigh. When the end of the year comes, and they have a firmer grasp on theatre literature than they ever had before, they will thank the literature instructor who showed them how to engage with theatre from all angles, and in all situations. Hopefully, a little of what was taught will make them not need to groan about theatre any longer.
