The Bells study guide enables teachers to explore drama as a mode of instruction. Adding drama to the classroom is an active, process-orientated approach to education in which the teacher and student interact together.

Drama-in-Education seeks to synthesize the activities of creative drama, arts-based curricula and theater conventions into experiences aimed at developing imagination, awareness of self and others, aesthetic taste and life skills. Often these goals are achieved through the examination of a particular theme or topic, which contributes to critical thinking about the world in which we live. By providing structures and contexts, which both excite the interest of participants and call for creative problem-solving, Drama-in-Education promotes deeper thinking about a wide variety of issues.

The Bells study guide has been designed for teachers to utilize drama methods in an exploration of the themes and situations presented in the play. We encourage you to adapt these lessons and activities to your individual teaching curriculum, and thereby discover the importance and power of drama in the classroom.

Drama praxis refers to the manipulation of theater form by educational leaders to help participants act, reflect and transform. At the core of drama praxis is the artful interplay between people, passion and space as leaders and participants strive towards aesthetic understanding.

Drama-in-Education is a mode of learning. This form can be utilized across the curriculum and serves as a useful tool to teach lessons with a dramatic skew. Through the pupils’ active identification with imagined roles and situations in drama, they can learn to explore issues, events and relationships. In drama, participants can delve into circumstances as a character, i.e. not as themselves. This distance allows the participant to experience metaxis, the ability to explore a situation through a character’s eyes while also seeing its relevance in the participant’s everyday life.

The following exercises will allow students to participate in the process of drama. If you choose, this process can be further explored and transformed into a ‘theater’ product. Again, please feel free to adapt these activities to accommodate your own teaching strategies and curricular needs.