Olives Drama Club
Early on in our relationship with Olive’s Steven had shared with us a wish to get a Drama Club started with the kids. Though no students had any idea what Drama Club was, they trusted that Steven and I had something fun in mind and were willing to give it a try! First we discussed some of the concepts of Drama: what is an Actor? What do they do? What do they use? When we finally determined that the only tools and actor really has are her body and her voice we began to play some Drama games to start using our tools!
Teacher Jane, GVI volunteer Barbara and the Olives students drama club
After our warm up games we moved on to make human sculptures of each other. Barbara and I demonstrated – I placed her hands on her belly, tilted her head back and had her smile a big open-mouthed grin. The kids immediately recognized this as “laughing” and quickly went to work to create their own human sculptures. Their inventions were so playful and inventive that we frequently found ourselves immersed in laughter and applause at all the sculptors’ creations!
After this we went on to create pictures – images where actors create a relationship and we, the audience, guess what we are seeing. Perhaps the most enjoyable Picture, however, was the creation of Haller Park! The kids have visited this Wildlife Reserve with GVI and so are quite familiar with the many animal species present there. The actors created many scenes within the Haller Park excercise: giraffe feedings, crocodile viewings, tour guides leading groups of students (Olive’s kids perhaps?) who were studying the animals at the park.
Students posing in the corner as shy antelopes
The entire animal collection at Haller Park - giraffes, antelopes, monkeys, crocodiles, birds....We ended the day with a “mirror” excersise. Again, modelling the activity we encouraged the students to partner together and follow the movements of their “mirror” image. During the course of Drama Club we even had three curious boys join us and I was so impressed to see how well the group adapted from an all-girls activity to a mixed gender drama club.
There was a bit of giggling at the start but soon after the kids got right down to work and really blew us away with their focus to the team activity and willingness to create something new with their partner. The little classroom at the new school became an artist’s studio full of young actors creating stories together! By the end of the session we had named ourselves Olive’s Actors and decided that we wanted to hold a regular Drama Club! I look forward to more adventures with the Olive’s Actors Drama Club!
- Sara Mayer
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