Class Plays and Theater as Tools for Learning
Theater is considered such an important educational tool in Waldorf education that most grades will perform a play together every year. These class plays have a wide range of benefits for both the individual students and for the class as a whole, including building self-confidence, teaching students how to work collaboratively on a complex project, helping students develop empathy, and allowing them to explore and develop their own identity.
For the younger grades, the play is often created by the class teacher, reflecting that grade’s curriculum, and considering each student’s developmental needs. For these reasons, this type of play is often referred to as a 'pedagogical drama' – although the students will perform their play to parents and friends, ultimately it is about their experience and what they learn from it. Waldorf teachers often stay with a class for multiple years in grades 1-8, getting to know each student and developing a deep understanding of their strengths and challenges. Class plays are another tool that class teachers can use to help students develop and grow - they use their strong understanding of each student to assign them a role that will challenge them, build their confidence, or help them work through a particular challenge.
In the younger grades, the parts are often a chorus, then as the students progress up through High School, students take on individual roles and the plays have added challenges and layers of complexity. As well as acting and memorization, they incorporate singing and music, costume making, lighting, and visual arts including creating the set and props. In High School, students deepen their experience with acting and staging through the 9th Grade Theater Skills block, followed by class play in 10th Grade. In 11th Grade they will try their hand at writing their own plays in the Children’s Theater block and enacting scenes from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, followed by a final class play in 12th Grade. The class play is chosen by the 12th Graders and performed as a parting gift from that class to the school community. The Senior Play is also a wonderful vehicle for students to enact roles that reflect their emerging adult selves, as well as an opportunity to work collaboratively one last time as peers before heading for new adventures on the world stage.
Developing Social Skills Through Theater
Each time the students participate in a piece of theater, they grow and develop both as individuals and together as a group. There is a sense of personal and collective responsibility even in the elementary grades – each student has their part to play, however big or small, and the success of every production depends on every student doing their part. Since the teacher is with their class for up to eight years and knows their students so well, they are able to distribute the parts for a play according to the developmental needs of each student. Sometimes they will give a student a part that is suited to their personality, or an attribute or outlook or emotional tendency that it would be helpful for that student to inhabit and explore, or at other times they may give a bigger role to a student who they feel would benefit from rising to the challenge for their social development or to build that student’s confidence.
Rehearsing a play is a great way for the students to discover new ways of interacting with each other, and the process allows them to naturally form stronger bonds with each other than they would be able to do if they were sitting at their desks all day. The teacher particularly encourages bonds to develop between students who may have been struggling to get along with each other and may assign parts in the play accordingly. The depth of social interaction created by learning a piece of theater also nurtures the growth of emotional intelligence, including increased awareness and empathy for each other. There is also a newfound appreciation for others because the students can see how challenging some of the parts are for their peers, and they help and encourage each other to rise to those challenges. In this way, new friendships are formed, and the students learn to trust and depend on each other. Important social skills are also developed, such as active listening, empathy, and trust.
Exploring and Expressing Identity
By the time they reach High School, the students are entering adolescence and are developing a greater capacity for critical thinking. The plays chosen as part of the Drama curriculum allow the students to explore complex themes and plot lines, and undertake a comprehensive, detailed analysis of individual characters. This deepens their understanding of character development, and, through acting in different roles in a play, they have the chance to experiment with how it feels to portray a character vastly different from their own personality. This is a safe way for teenagers to explore their sense of identity and to get to know the different sides of themselves. They explore their own strengths and weaknesses by recognizing some of these traits in the characters they are portraying. Their perceptive powers grow daily, and they start to find their sense of self.
Taking part in complex theater pieces is also a safe outlet for the students to express their inner emotions and adolescent difficulties in a healthy way. Where some teenagers can turn too far inwards and become absorbed by their inner turmoil, assuming an outgoing character in a play is a fun way to actively come out of themselves. Often, they discover a new side of their personality, which can boost their confidence and self-esteem. Pre-teen and teenage years can be emotionally fraught, so it is important for students at that age to have healthy ways to live with the intensity of their emotions, and theater provides them with a creative way to do exactly that.
An Opportunity for Deeper Understanding of Complex Subjects
In Eighth Grade, the students undertake a comprehensive study of a Shakespeare play, culminating in producing a performance of the play at the end of the year. They research the society of the period, including fashion, music, and architecture, and then make their own period-accurate costumes and stage props, and learn songs and music from that time which become incorporated into the play. The language of Shakespeare is not easy to master, and the students develop many of these skills as they strive to both understand and speak the language. Students who merely read Shakespeare in a classroom setting often struggle to find it meaningful and interesting. The process of taking on a role, memorizing lines, practicing scenes with your fellow classmates, and putting on a performance takes what, on paper, can appear archaic and difficult, and brings it vividly to life for the students. Through this process, they gain an appreciation of the beauty, brilliance, profundity, and levels of complexity within Shakespeare’s plays that students rarely get when they simply read a play once in a classroom setting. The class play often has a connection to the material that the class is studying and serves as another opportunity for students to relate more deeply to the subjects that they are studying.
Preparing for Adult Life and the Workplace
One of the most important lessons students take from theater into higher education and beyond is the work ethic and blending of solo work with collaborative work required to complete a major project. They are critical skills for later in life when those students enter the workplace. Through acting in a play, the students develop other key skills which are important in real-life situations such as self-belief, confidence, inner strength, and resilience. They will be able to draw on these skills when they are faced with challenges in their lives.
Another aspect of theater is creating work that is high quality and fit for the public. Each year, the students perform the play for their parents and the whole school, so an increasingly elevated level of performance is expected as they progress through their theatrical education. Being able to produce something to such a high standard is another essential quality in the workplace.
Having built up to performing complex pieces from playwrights like Shakespeare through years of class and high school theater projects and then performing their chosen 8th Grade and High School plays to a large audience, the students have not only gained valuable skills, insights into themselves, and stronger bonds with their peers, they also have cherished memories to take with them as they finish their final years of schooling before entering into the adult world. We often hear from our graduates years later about how vividly they remember the theater productions they participated in. The vitality of the experience is something that will stay with them, and it is no wonder that younger classes who watch the plays enthusiastically aspire to create a similarly vibrant production when they reach that age.
