Flowery language, highfalutin' sentiments, human drama, this short play Call of the Revolution based on a work by Leonid Andreyev, had them all, and this evening, you, my students, really got into it. The two parts, a husband and a wife, were distributed around the room since you were almost equally male and female.. Sometimes the lines were short, a few words, and sometimes extended, but you all got a chance to express the heroic or idealistic sentiments.
We'd begun thinking about script-reading last class, but tonight we had two full run-throughs of the eight page play. How engaged even the quietest and most held-back of you were as your turn came to say the line which would take the dialogue the next step. When one of you read the words aloud as so often you do in class, affectless and monotone, the rest of you groaned and urged more expression.
There were quick lessons on key words to accent, on pacing, on intonation as we tried to find the right way to deliver the words with the feeling the play seemed to require, and amazingly they made a difference.
The second time we did it, two students took two pages each in order to better get into the flow. As we gave our increasingly dramatic reading, you were sitting agitatedly on the edge of your seats, your faces flushed, your attention rapt.
It amazes and moves me to see how powerful play-readings or proto-performances can be in an ESL class. Reading aloud at all, much less fluently, is challenge enough but a play, the right play, quickly moves us beyond the mechanics into another realm, first of just scripted interaction, and then dramatic or comic expression. For whole moments, I can see you becoming the originators of those words you speak and participants in those amusing or moving scenes.
It's not just you, my students, who readily respond to plays and readings. I remember a colleague to whom once I gave lines from Poe's The Raven to recite, and who then thanked me for the opportunity. Perhaps we've become too literally ourselves and need opportunities to wear masks and costumes, try on new voices, adopt attitudes and poses, and generally be other than our oh-too-familiar selves for a little while. Is this why charades was always such a hit at my family parties?
I can find reasons for the lesson vis a vis my syllabus but the real justification tonight was the way we were all caught up in a story of a man and woman ready to throw their lives into a risky political moment and who discover each other afresh as they do. If English is not for this, then what?
We'd begun thinking about script-reading last class, but tonight we had two full run-throughs of the eight page play. How engaged even the quietest and most held-back of you were as your turn came to say the line which would take the dialogue the next step. When one of you read the words aloud as so often you do in class, affectless and monotone, the rest of you groaned and urged more expression.
There were quick lessons on key words to accent, on pacing, on intonation as we tried to find the right way to deliver the words with the feeling the play seemed to require, and amazingly they made a difference.
The second time we did it, two students took two pages each in order to better get into the flow. As we gave our increasingly dramatic reading, you were sitting agitatedly on the edge of your seats, your faces flushed, your attention rapt.
It amazes and moves me to see how powerful play-readings or proto-performances can be in an ESL class. Reading aloud at all, much less fluently, is challenge enough but a play, the right play, quickly moves us beyond the mechanics into another realm, first of just scripted interaction, and then dramatic or comic expression. For whole moments, I can see you becoming the originators of those words you speak and participants in those amusing or moving scenes.
It's not just you, my students, who readily respond to plays and readings. I remember a colleague to whom once I gave lines from Poe's The Raven to recite, and who then thanked me for the opportunity. Perhaps we've become too literally ourselves and need opportunities to wear masks and costumes, try on new voices, adopt attitudes and poses, and generally be other than our oh-too-familiar selves for a little while. Is this why charades was always such a hit at my family parties?
I can find reasons for the lesson vis a vis my syllabus but the real justification tonight was the way we were all caught up in a story of a man and woman ready to throw their lives into a risky political moment and who discover each other afresh as they do. If English is not for this, then what?
No comments:
Post a Comment