Fiction and Drama Workshop
DRAMA
For many decades, drama has been in our world. It gives us feelings, emotions, morality and sometimes quotes. What is drama exactly? Is it a play? An action? Or just an entertainment? Hamilton Carole in his article “the study of drama” defined Drama to be a representational art, a visible and audible narrative presenting virtual, fictional characters within a virtual, fictional universe. Also he stated “Dramatic realizations may pretend to approximate reality or else stubbornly defy, distort, and deform reality into an artistic statement”.
I look at drama as a tool, a way to make learning exciting and entertaining, allowing students to become participants rather than passive listeners. Drama is most often associated with the idea of action, this is because drama is intended for performance, drama can ‘bring to life’ things that would ordinarily be quite to dimensional. Examples of drama can be found everywhere; we can find it as written text, a piece of theatre and on our television and cinema screens. The purpose of these pieces of drama varies but they also have things in common. This is because drama does not have one definable purpose but several. “We need to get this right the drama text is not the same as a novel or a poem. And stage drama is different from television drama which is different from film. Although we have the printed text, in one sense it only becomes realized in performance, in front of an audience. It is also not definitive in most cases the text is “re-written” with each performance or direction”. (Sanger, Keith). Raymond Williams has recently insisted that “a play can both be literature and theatre, not the one at the expense of the other, but each because of the other. And of course the ordinary honest and intelligent play goers have always sensed that the good play was both to reconcile literature and theatre is not to compromise and lose something from each, but rather to understand what dramatic dialogue is and do”.
For many decades, drama has been in our world. It gives us feelings, emotions, morality and sometimes quotes. What is drama exactly? Is it a play? An action? Or just an entertainment? Hamilton Carole in his article “the study of drama” defined Drama to be a representational art, a visible and audible narrative presenting virtual, fictional characters within a virtual, fictional universe. Also he stated “Dramatic realizations may pretend to approximate reality or else stubbornly defy, distort, and deform reality into an artistic statement”.
I look at drama as a tool, a way to make learning exciting and entertaining, allowing students to become participants rather than passive listeners. Drama is most often associated with the idea of action, this is because drama is intended for performance, drama can ‘bring to life’ things that would ordinarily be quite to dimensional. Examples of drama can be found everywhere; we can find it as written text, a piece of theatre and on our television and cinema screens. The purpose of these pieces of drama varies but they also have things in common. This is because drama does not have one definable purpose but several. “We need to get this right the drama text is not the same as a novel or a poem. And stage drama is different from television drama which is different from film. Although we have the printed text, in one sense it only becomes realized in performance, in front of an audience. It is also not definitive in most cases the text is “re-written” with each performance or direction”. (Sanger, Keith). Raymond Williams has recently insisted that “a play can both be literature and theatre, not the one at the expense of the other, but each because of the other. And of course the ordinary honest and intelligent play goers have always sensed that the good play was both to reconcile literature and theatre is not to compromise and lose something from each, but rather to understand what dramatic dialogue is and do”.