“We must all do theatre to find out who we are and to discover who we could become”.
Augusto Boal
However, that does not seem to be the understanding among most parents. We often come across children who want to do drama, but their parents are telling them it’s useless as they don’t want to become an actor. Why is this performing art often undermined and how can it be a useful tool in the development of children?
There is a misconception that drama is all about plays, costumes, lights and script writing. Yes! drama does do this thereby enabling children in developing their creative side and helping them nourish their imagination. Over a period of time, engaging in drama and theatre can play a vital role in child development as children improve their self-confidence, grow academically, enhance their creativity and social skills along with being empathetic. These skills are acquired through games, activities and exercises used in drama classes encouraging spontaneity and the ability to think on their feet in a fun and fantastic manner.
Academic Growth: Drama improves education or academic life. Education is the key for parents as it helps with landing a successful job. Drama teaches children to listen and think critically as they are constantly following instructions for the next role play or activity because of which there is substantial academic growth across subjects James S. Calterall a professor at the University of California at LA undertook a study and found that children who participated in drama achieved highly in classroom. How does drama do this?
Firstly, it improves organizational skills as students are given dialogues wherein, they need to prioritize their schedule and learn them.
Secondly, they have to often memorize their dialogues and remember them throughout their performance enabling them to focus.
Self Confidence: Drama teaches children to be a part of a group and work with other children within that group. It works very well with children who are introverts and differently abled as drama classes encourage input from every child and not just the confident few because all ideas are welcome and encouraged so that children have a sense of positivity which in turn boosts self- worth.
Teamwork: Drama encourages teamwork in children which enables them to work with others, make new friends, and come out of their comfort zone not only during school but even later on in life.
Emotional Wellbeing: Drama is a very powerful mechanism to improve emotional wellbeing as it encourages children to respond to situations. As mentors, we pay close attention to a child’s reaction to certain scenarios thereby understanding their emotional quotient and advising the school accordingly.
Creativity and Critical Thinking: Theatre exercises and activities often require children to instantly come up with creative dialogues and actions, so they become more spontaneous and are able to think on their feet. When you are put in situations to think out of the box or on your feet, it improves creativity and critical thinking which are skills that help even in your academic subjects. Children become more confident about their ideas and are able to put them across to people.
Cognitive Development: Theatre also works on cognitive development of a child like thinking, reasoning, remembering, imagining, learning words and using the language. For example, when you do a play in class whether it’s a fairytale or a classic, children are told to read the story, go research their character in the play, as they are asked about the character, body language, accent and other things all leading to cognitive development.
Theatre is actually a very powerful tool that works not just on cognitive development but also helps children grow up to be confident adults as it works on 21st century soft skills like teamwork, creative thinking, critical thinking, academic growth, emotional wellbeing, self-confidence and coming out of their comfort zone.
Augusto Boal Again!
Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.
Think & Act about it!
Author
Deepanjali Singh
Director, LearnTaastic
LearnTaastic | Learning in a Fun and Fantastic Way : Personality development through Drama
Deepanjali is currently working on her next children’s book and a poetry collection. She is an author, poet, painter and educationist and loves working with children.
