As strage as it might seem, but this placement was a chance for me to go back to where I did my A-Leve in Drama. At the time, the boy's school didnt offer an A-Level course in Drama, so I took my lessons over at the girls school. This may sound like a brilliant situation, but 2 years in a class being the only boy does open the floor for a little bit of playful bullying after a while...
Still, my old teacher Partick Lyden was an inspiration for me during my time at school. He was always so supportive and so enthusiastic - everything I aspired to be in my own potential teaching career. So it seemed like the best place to start my WBL adventure!
Aim: To work alongside Patrick Lyden to work on the devising process for a piece of theatre with A-Level students
Objectives:
- Work with Patrick to get an idea of what he wanted to achieve with the students
- Introduce myself and build a rapport with the students
- Work with the students to devise and learn a routine (including script and blocking of scenes)
- To be prompt for all sessions
For my first objective, I had a chat with Patrick about his vision for the piece. I found out that the students were putting on a run of “The Trial”, a play I had done myself in my first year of A-Level. We agreed that this put me in a good position to work on the piece. I was given the freedom to give my own input on top of his. I felt that this allowed me the opportunity to give my ideas without too much pressure from him to do exactly what he wanted. Other than that, he told me that it was much the same as when we did the play, so that meant I could get straight to work.
In the first session, I sat in with the students while Patrick was busy with other work. Some of the students remembered me from my time at the school which was nice. I feel this allowed me to break the ice a lot easier. This set a much better and more productive working atmosphere from the start. Although I only managed to attend 2 sessions due to conflicting work at college, I feel that I could have created a good work ethic with the group. However, I felt that I never got the time to establish myself as a constant presence.
With the 2 sessions I had, I was given a good amount of time to work on scenes with the group. However, due to time constraints I never had the time to go into aspects such as learning the script and having full run-throughs of the play. For the purposes of evaluation, I will focus on what I did achieve in my 2 sessions. I felt I made a positive start to my work with the group. They were quite receptive to my input and were willing to incorporate my ideas into the work they had already started on. I feel that if I had had more sessions, I would have fulfilled this objective to its full potential. As it stands, I still feel I made a positive start and consider it and objective achieved.
The final objective became somewhat redundant as it became obvious that I would not have the time to attend any further sessions. This was a great disappointment to me as I was very much looking forward to working with the group for a longer period of time. However, my main project at college was more important at that time, so it took preference.
All in all, this was a placement that never got the chance to live up to its full potential. However, I still feel that it was useful for maintaining a link with the school and with Mr Lyden. As a result, he was most keen to have us back to perform the play we wrote for our college project. I hope that we will meet again in the future, perhaps finding more time to carry on where I left off!
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