Drama - Stimuli

So far, in tutorials, we've seen two stimuli used as the basis of the drama activities. The Green Children and The Werewolf Knight. We've also seen some potential stimulus in the lectures for all the creative arts subjects. In one lecture we saw a black and white picture of a girl staring out at the audience, which springs to mind as a particularly intriguing stimulus.

All three of these stimuli really gripped me. While participating in the drama activities I found them engaging and inspiring, and long after the lessons ended I found myself still thinking about them.

I've tried to work out exactly why they worked so well as stimuli and I think it's because:

• They all ask a question (or ask a number of questions) to intrigue and engage. 
• Should Feoulf share his secret? Did the princess do the right thing? What will the king do when he sees the wolf? How can there ever be a happy ending to this story?
• Where did the green children come from? How did they get here? Who are they? Why did the girl survive when the boy died?
• Who is the girl in the photograph and why is she staring at us so intently? What does she want? Where is she?
• There are all deeply unsettling, and so they linger in the mind.
• The Werewolf Knight is the story of a man who feels he is a monster and has a secret part of himself that he is determined to hide from the world.
• The Green Children is presented in an incredibly matter-of-fact way, as if something like this could really happen. And then there's the not-so-subtle subtext: assimilate or die.
• The mist, the shadows and the expression on the girl's face all combine to make the photo incredibly creepy.
• They are all open-ended and relatively detail-free, leaving the drama students free to add their own person details and be creative.
• The Werewolf Knight was paused at many times in the story, which allowed us to imagine what might happen next, and even the ending of the story is very open ended. How did the princess manage to become a wolf? Does the king and court know? What will happen next?
  Also, while The Werewolf Knight is set in some sort of medieval world, there is little in the story (especially if the pictures are kept hidden) to tie it to any one time or place.
• The Green Children barely gives the reader any detail at all, keeping only to the bare necessities, and does not even begin to explain the mystery. This gives a drama class plenty of opportunities to explore different ways of filling in the details.
• The black and white photo is set in an unclear location, in an unclear situation, in an unclear time-period. There is plenty for the audience to ponder-over and plenty of ways of explaining exactly what might be happening. 

Having attempted to analyse what I've found engaging about the stimuli we've seen thus far, I thought it would be useful to find some stimuli of my own, that are open-ended, unsettling and intriguing.

Pretty much every story that Gary Crew has written is intriguing, unsettling and open-ended. Old Ridley could be read with or without showing the illustrations by Marc McBride, and the reading could be paused at many points throughout the story. Activities could include:

• Hot-seating, to focus on Old Ridley's motives, the tutor's thoughts and the absence of the parents, 
• Mantle of the expert, where students are turned into eminent scientists, who discuss Old Ridley's final invention.
• Conscience alley, at the moment when Old Ridley first realizes that he's being watched.

This video provides a sparse illustration of a man, a woman and their relationship. Activities could include:

• Defining space and sculpting, to focus on the movements in the video.
• Mime inspired by the video, to focus on conveying emotions without using words.
• Telephone conversations, where students take on the role of one of the characters and pretend that they are calling the other.

This animated photo came from this website, which has many animated photos. They would be great for still images and thought tracking, with students depicting what happened before and after the photo was taken.

The creators of this video have made many short, bitter-sweet animations. This video in particular seems great for exploring the passage of time. Students could be sculpted into the man at different stages of his life, they could move around the room walking and talking like the man. They could also create characters who knew the man during his life and use role-play or hot-seating to explore what will happen after the video ends.