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Aged 13, I was lucky enough to have a drama teacher who had spent 13 years as an actor in the RSC. His boundless enthusiasm, knowledge of the industry and attention to detail transferred itself brilliantly into our class and we all became budding actors, directors and writers.
As a young student, it is not the facts you remember, not the exams and not the subjects. It is the great teachers that will always stick with you.
It is 2005. I am about to sit GCSE Drama. It is a demanding paper that requires me to write in meticulous detail about sets, performances and actors I have seen on the West End stage over the course of the previous year.
The questions are typically worded in a jargonisitc style: 'to what extent is R.C. Sherrif's Journey's End a play that allows actors an opportunity to display their range? and 'how do the design choices of the show you have seen complement the action?'
These questions are infuriating. Having asked students to engage with a text (emotionally, intellectually and linguistically) examiners then drop all such interesting enquiries in favour of tedious box-ticking exercises and 'assessment criteria.' But drama needn't be this tedious. It was for the duration of the exam, but not for a single one of the many wonderful hours we'd spent as a class up until then. I will now explore why.
My drama teacher was always excited by the material. He never ceased to find new ways of making it interesting; using visual exercises, improvisation and writing techniques to keep us all motivated. The play that we were studying, Journey's End, was at no point a boring piece of paper, but always a developing, exciting form.
For all of the fun that we had in lessons, there was always a rigorous structure and discipline imposed upon them. We all benefited from this, as we knew that waffle about 'performance art' would not help anyone.
At no point were we ever left with the impression that the exam was the only goal. We always felt that we were learning about drama as a whole, about what it takes to be an actor, and what it means to be part of a great play about the war. This fueled our curiosity in the wider subject, and is the key to teaching. Where students are interested and motivated, they have an incentive to learn. Our whole class was awarded an A* in the subject.
