Playing with plays

Ajitha Paladugu

To all those teachers who struggle to “teach” a play to the present generation of students who have grown up on an overdose of visual stimulation and interactive modules of learning and are hooked to virtual reality, you can take comfort in the fact that no matter how advanced (read tech-savvy) our students may be, we can still lure them to the magic of drama. Our challenge is to make it appealing for them by funneling their interest and involving them through what Coleridge called “willing suspension of disbelief” and providing a vicarious experience for their complete attention. This works well on the premise that everyone loves a good story. A well-planned structured learning activity designed around a literary text can help fulfill the learning objectives without the learner even being conscious of “learning”. They can gently be goaded to appreciate timeless classics, engage in meaningful discourses, take up nuanced study of various themes and in addition to all this, even provide a fresh perspective and contemporary twists to a literary text written centuries ago.

The daunting task of taking up a play with these objectives left me with a lot of misgivings until I stumbled upon a simple and yet effective method of extracting the desired outcome by channelizing the students’ areas of interest and expertise into reading, understanding, and interpreting a play. And thus project-based learning proved very resourceful and effective in transforming a “boring” component of the syllabus into an enjoyable learning medium, not in terms of language acquisition goals alone, but also for forging good group dynamics and self-discovery.

Though project-based learning is being used by educational practitioners worldwide, is a popular choice for self-directed and customized pace of learning, is advocated by curriculum designers, and vouchsafed by teachers as an effective learning strategy, it wasn’t until recently that I discovered the efficacy of this method.

Teaching a play written in archaic English with redundant words, long winded, complex sentences with subtle tongue-in-cheek humour is not everyone’s cup of tea. Trying to paraphrase witty repartee and humorous passages kills the very purpose of reading a play and appreciating its literary merit. My first experience of teaching The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, the prescribed long reading text for class 11 as part of CBSE’s English core course, wasn’t a satisfactory or enjoyable experience either for me or my students. Seeing the lukewarm response of my students, I wondered where I had gone wrong in trying to inculcate love and appreciation for a classic piece of literature.

Determined to engage the students in a productive manner and engage them actively in reading the play, I carried out an experiment. Instead of “teaching’’ the play in the class, the students were asked to read the play on their own with the help of secondary resources given to them along with the original, unabridged version of the play. To consolidate their learning, they had to work on assignments of their choice and submit it for evaluation. Having seen how students internalize learning through activities, they were given opportunities to understand, interpret and give creative/critical expression of their response to the text. This approach of giving the students space and freedom to choose how they would like to engage with the text, contributed to the success of the experiment.

The project method accommodated different learning styles and also catered to the multiple intelligences of students. It was also an opportunity to learn to collaborate, synergize, and exercise team building skills. Apart from serving the purpose it was intended for, i.e., making the reading of the play fun and meaningful by critically appreciating the various aspects of the play, project-based learning brought out not only the students’ creativity to the fore but also provided a platform to hone their leadership and communication skills.

Students could choose from a variety of projects, including dramatization/adaption of the play for performance (recorded videos were submitted); creating a comic strip; giving an alternate ending; writing a “ghost story” inspired by the play, or writing a contemporary version of the play (in modern English). Those who preferred to work alone could do individual projects.

When students started turning in their projects, I was simply astounded by their exceptional work. I had underestimated their capabilities. I realized how given the opportunities and right stimulus, children could surprise even themselves by the quality of work they are capable of doing but seldom do so, owing to the dull ways in which a literary text is “taught” and the routine assignments that teachers usually give them.

The author is a reflective teaching practitioner who believes in the transformational nature of education imparted with true commitment to the larger objectives of this noble endeavour. She teaches at Delhi Public School, Coimbatore. She can be reached at ajithapaladugu@gmail.com.