Drama

Students in Drama began our warm-up by playing a treasure hunt! Every week, the class is tasked with hunting for specific, everyday household items. Apart from warming up their minds and bodies, this activity challenges students to change the way they react when they cannot find one of these items and encourages them to think fast and be creative in finding a solution. 

Students then continued their investigation in how plays, films and television use music to help tell stories and create an emotional journey. 

In particular, we looked closely at singing, why we sing and particularly why we sing within films etc. We found that singing is something we do when we feel an emotion so deeply and communicate it through words in a much more heightened way than through normal conversation.  

We watched different examples of singing within films throughout history such as The Lion King, Singing in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, Moana and The Greatest Showman. Students were asked to identify what emotion the characters were trying to express within the songs and why they were feeling this way. It was wonderful to see how quickly students were able to detect for example Dorothy’s loneliness on the farm and longing to see the outside world “over the rainbow”. Students also identified how this feeling of wanting to push beyond the boundaries of everyday life were also echoed within Moana. 

It was wonderful to hear some students summarise their understanding by using some of the words we have explored in vocabulary games within previous Drama classes.