In the west, "educational drama" is a common way to teach children. Even from kindergarten, children perform dramas by themselves. With the improvement of domestic living standards and the change of ideas in recent years, this form is gradually introduced, and more and more primary and secondary schools have started the educational mode of "educational drama". It is nothing new for middle school students, even primary school students and kindergarten children to perform in some large theaters such as the National Grand Theatre, poly theatre and Mei Lanfang Theatre.
John, a British primary school teacher, dramatized the theme of the course and conducted constructive situational teaching. He published "Teaching Drama Methods" at 19 1 1, and was regarded as the first teacher to teach drama activities in class. Later, people in Britain and America constantly applied storytelling, drama performance and improvisation to the classroom.
In the 1960s, educational drama has developed into a universal teaching, and most British schools have corresponding subjects. In the 1970s, Dorothy Heathcourt, a British drama teacher, and Burton, a scholar, advocated that drama should be used as a medium, and students should "experience" past experiences to explore and learn. This teaching method establishes the mainstream theory of using drama in classroom teaching. In 1980s, public schools in Britain, Canada, Australia and some Nordic countries included drama in the syllabus, and it was also used in language classes. In the 1990s, parliaments of various countries passed the related art education bills, including drama learning.
In Chinese mainland, it was not until 2000 that educational drama gradually entered people's field of vision and continued to heat up. 200 1 national art curriculum standard for full-time compulsory education (experimental draft) lists drama in several categories of comprehensive art curriculum for the first time, and points out that "the art curriculum in the basic education stage is becoming more and more comprehensive, and not only music and art begin to cross and merge, but drama and dance also enter the art classroom."
Educational drama is the best integration tool of diversified art education, an important comprehensive art education course, which plays an active role in ideological and moral education of minors and is the new "focus" of today's juvenile and preschool education.
As a means of education, educational drama is little known in China. However, in recent years, active children's stage plays have been accepted by more and more parents. Generally speaking, children's stage plays have the following characteristics:
1. Strive to create an artistic image of truth, goodness and beauty, and help children establish life coordinates.
Because children are young, have poor judgment, have less opportunities to get in touch with society, have strong dependence on the external environment and strong absorption psychology, there are few shadows of killing and hatred in children's stage plays. The purpose is to establish an image of truth, goodness and beauty for children, so that children can follow this example and learn to imitate in life.
2. Simple structure and clear clues
The structure of children's stage plays can be divided into several stages: beginning, development, climax and ending (some have prologue before and ending after). But the plot should be developed quickly, and the plot clues should be concise and not too complicated. Because children's self-control ability is poor and their attention is easy to shift, children's stage plays firmly grasp the hearts of small audiences with compact plot structure and clear clues.
3. The plot is vivid and story-telling
Drama tells a story in the form of performance. When children appreciate the drama, they are most concerned about the story. They are used to understanding the nature of people and events in the process of story development. At the same time, they have a natural affinity for novelty. Vivid plots and strange stories will bring great aesthetic enjoyment to children.
The audience of children's stage plays is undoubtedly a special group. They are sincere and natural, distinguish right from wrong, like to be angry, but they are also unstable, difficult to concentrate for a long time, and like relaxed and changeable art forms. If the stories on the stage are interlocking, the actors have distinct personalities, the performances are naturally in place, and the beautiful dance design is brightly colored, which is properly integrated with the whole drama, then the reality will be forgotten and brought into the drama involuntarily.
If the play is tasteless and artificial, the children can see through it at a glance. No matter how famous screenwriters, directors and actors are, no matter how much they spend on sound, light and electricity special effects on the stage, they will drink water, eat popcorn and go to the toilet immediately. Those well-designed plots and educational lines have long gone to Java.
4. Excellent movements and rich childlike interest
Action is the foundation of drama art Aristotle's expenditure in Poetics: drama must be expressed through the actions of characters. The intuition of drama art requires that the script must consider designing some suitable stage actions to better express the characters, unfold the plot and truly reflect life. Children are naturally active, good at imitation and like dynamic scenes, so the action requirements of children's dramas are more prominent than ordinary dramas. Secondly, we should have children's interests. Children's interests are not simply fun, but express their temperament and interests through distinctive language and action images.
As a stage form of drama, children's stage play is deeply loved by parents and children, and more and more parents choose to take their children into the theater on weekends. But many children's plays are performed by adults and watched by children. The child is just an audience and does not fully participate in the children's stage play. Imagine if children can act in such a children's play by themselves, is it cooler and more meaningful than just being an audience? This kind of "experience" of deep participation is something that only one audience can't experience.
In the process of participating in children's stage plays, children can be cultivated: the most basic ability-imagination and expressiveness, and the most important ability-creativity and communication ability.
Without imagination and creativity, human beings will lose the motivation to move forward and the pleasure of being a "person". In modern society, children are dealing with machines more and more, learning languages with machines, losing the process of communicating with children of different ages and gradually losing human sociality. Through the study and training of children's stage plays, it is the best way to train children's interpersonal skills to get along, communicate, learn and even quarrel with children of different ages. We often see children arguing or even fighting over a problem, but soon they make up again. It is in this process that they complete their self-growth and self-learning.
Even if an individual is competent in other aspects, he still can't excel if his expression is insufficient. If you want to be recognized by the society, you must first have a strong expressive force. A child needs expressiveness to make progress and get the teacher's approval. If you want to be promoted and recognized by your boss, you need expressiveness; Even in a harmonious and happy family, it needs expressiveness. Expressiveness is a basic ability that people must have, and everyone should have expressiveness. Learning drama performance is the best shortcut to cultivate imagination and expressiveness.
Therefore, it is very responsible for parents to say that educating children from an early age is not only to cultivate skills, but also to cultivate abilities, and educational drama is an effective way to cultivate children's comprehensive abilities. It is a very good experience for children to perform their own children's stage plays.
The second recruitment competition of 20 17 "I am the protagonist" sponsored by Walter Children's Theatre Academy will hold a press conference in Shenzhen on July 30th. The competition will promote children's stage plays for children all over the country, enhance children's aesthetic experience and bring children closer to the world from an artistic perspective. Advocate children to write, direct and perform children's dramas, so that children can grow up happily in children's dramas.