What is Theatre in Education?
Theatre in education (TIE) is a dynamically evolving approach that uses theatrical techniques and performances to facilitate learning and enhance educational experiences. The TIE is an approach that places the children and their developmental needs at the heart of its work. Cutting across the school’s divisions of children and subjects, content, curriculums and transactions, its concerns are focused on the children and their awareness and understanding of themselves and the world around them, and actively constructing and leading to knowledge building of their own.
Why Theatre in Education? Is it the Need of the hour?
At a time when education policies are pointing at making the grade level content more relatable and the pedagogic and transactional process more interesting, how does one do it? There are multiple quotidian activities that we do without consciously noticing how our body does it, like brushing teeth, tying shoelaces, fidgeting with an object when trying to remember something, etc. This is because these activities are fed into our muscle memory. These are activities that we learn by doing and remember by doing. Psychomotor skills and psychomotor memory play an important role in learning.
Art and art forms are a useful tool to tap into the mind and the body simultaneously while also incorporating entertainment and creative imagination. Art and applied theatre modalities supplement the curriculum by catering to the multifaceted development of body and mind simultaneously, with minimal effort. TIE is one such teaching-learning process which is a medium to generate, channelise curiosity, become a medium of expression, and enhances the process of learning and growth.
Why TIE? – Sneak Peek into our history, roots & TIE:
Theatre, a major art form in most cultures of the world, has, since recorded history began, been a vehicle of personal and community education. It has a central role in oral literary forms, in the recording of society’s history (whether actual or mythological), in religious and secular celebrations and rituals. Man’s fascination for transformation or role-playing, for witnessing and being affected by theatrical representations of life and mind, is seemingly universal and eternal.
As in the infancy of civilization we find Theatre, so in the infancy of each person’s life do we find it. To infuse life and character into a doll, to dress up and role-play Rama and Sita, are theatrical devices we have all instinctively used in our coming to terms with life during childhood. It is nature’s in-built method of learning; a meaningful and pleasurable way of dealing with life, its joys and its sorrows.
These natural methods of artistic expression and education have, in our era of specialisation, been divorced from each other. In Theatre-in-Education they are reunited and provide a powerful and effective learning medium for all categories of children, whether infant or senior, academically bright or illiterate.
How will it help in the field of education, in learning, growth & development?
Firstly, theatre is fun as far as the children are concerned, and that is to its great credit and importance in education, as it faces an increasing problem of motivating children (and teachers) in positive ways. It has great potential to assist in the formidable task of reforming and revitalising the syllabi, the curricula and the teaching methodologies that prevail in schools; to liberate the children and teachers from desk bound, book bound routines into something more exciting, creative and relevant to their needs.
Theatre involves all the language skills that are aimed to be taught in a classroom — listening, speaking, reading and writing. The soft skills, the 21st century skills, higher order thinking skills, the inter & intra personal thinking skills and all that is an added bonus that comes with the journey of experiencing, learning and doing theatre. It involves the body and helps in channelising both mental and physical energy and focussing it on a particular thing or action. Associating a particular piece of abstract information with an action and repeating it, playing with it, or engaging with it as a theatrical piece only aids in remembering that information better as it gets connected to more concrete muscle memory. To top it all comes the cherry on the cake – having fun while learning.
Theatre is a medium that naturally nurtures soft skills like good team work, empathising, being able to listen to another’s point of view, idea of give and take, of being able to accept criticism and to give it. It is a way of working out and dealing with suppressed mental and emotional problems. It encourages `divergent thinking’ as opposed to the `convergent thinking’ that most other subjects foster. It improves the children’s means of communication in verbal and non-verbal languages so that they become more expressive in their own persons and as actors. What other subject on the curriculum is concerned with what the children think and feel, dream about and long for? What other subject places the children at the hub of its freewheeling syllabus?
How is TIE different from Traditional Theatre?
In T.I.E quite contrary to the traditional theatre, a teacher frequently steps in and out of the whole performance. He becomes a participant as well as the student and also a critical observer– always contemplating the process and also the effect of classroom improvisation on the learning of the students. Gavin Bolton explains this unique situation: “when a teacher takes on a role as part of class drama s/he is, at a fictitious level, joining in with them, but at an educational or aesthetic level s/he is always working ahead of them, it is as Geoff Gillham has pointed out, “ it is as if there are two plays going on at the same time- the play for the child and the play for the teacher. ”
Is TIE for you?
Yes! TIE is for everyone! Indian Institute of Educational Theatre (IIET) offers workshops and training in TIE for diverse populations – students, teachers and teacher trainers, theatre professionals, women’s groups, development professionals, artists, activists and more. IIET offers workshops on various ways to integrate applied theatre as a modality in our content transactions in the classroom/ learning spaces. Our workshops are designed to meet your needs, and therefore we are happy to schedule them – number of sessions, duration and timings – as per your convenience. We offer workshops in three languages- English, Hindi, Kannada.
References:
Theatre-in-Class: Channelising Curiosity and Creativity – Azim Premji University
Sovereignty, Pleasure, Illusion and Play (Part I) – Azim Premji University
How theatre can facilitate learning by doing in the classroom – Azim Premji University
How UK-born Barry John turned generations of Indians into theatre professionals | Eye News – The Indian Express
Theatre in education – Teacher Plus