First Experiment with Process Drama

After attending a TESOL 2015 preconference workshop on process drama last March, I was inspired to try it out with my intermediate-level adult ESL class.  The hard part for me is to come up with a Big Human Question.  Questions like How can we achieve world peace? may be do-able, but I felt like I needed to start smaller.  I had already planned a unit on technology, and serendipitously, the Austin newspaper had an article the day before I returned from TESOL about how smart phones are here to stay, so we might as well get used to them, so I played with the idea of smartphones as the introductory topic for talking about technology in general.  Smart phones may not pose a Big Human Question, but our increasing dependence on them is viewed by many as the path to perdition (thus, a problem) while others see them as an enhancement to quality of life, thus the existing social debate. Furthermore, and I believe this is the key principle of the Big Human question issue, the question has to be of social and/or ethical importance and one to which the teacher does not already have an answer. This question isn't shared with the students, but it is the focal point of all the problem-solving activities carried out in the process drama and the teacher's guiding light through the process. My question was, Is it a good thing for children to have their own smart phones?  The following activities took place over two class periods of about two hours each.

1. I started with vote with your feet to determine smart phone use among the students and their families.  First I asked everyone to stand up and students who have a smart phone were to go to one side of the room and those who don't were to go to the other side. Surprisingly, everyone went to the designated spot for "have a smartphone." This wouldn't have happened in any of my classes a year ago! Then five out of 16 students went to the location for having a child with a smart phone.  Then two students went to the location for having a parent or grandparent with a smartphone.
2. After we discussed the results of the first activity, I showed a very short PowerPoint distilled from the aforementioned newspaper article.introducing the prevalence of smartphones in our culture.  The PowerPoint was titled "Smartphones: Good or Bad?" and ended with the question, "What do you think?"  This was the discussion starter for groups of 3–4. When Ss reported back out of groups, I listed their ideas (e.g., not for young children, not at the dinner table, too expensive, ...)
3. I then had students read an article from The Change Agent written by a father whose teenage daughter wants him to buy a smart phone for her, but he can't afford it.  He asks what he can do and why the phone companies have to keep coming out with newer, more expensive models.
4. The article reading was followed by another group discussion with 3 groups. Group 1 students brainstormed arguments the daughter in the article could make; Group 2 students brainstormed suggestions for the father; Group 3 students brainstormed suggestions for manufacturers and service providers to make smartphones more affordable.  Again, I recorded the groups' ideas when they reported out to the whole class.
5. Tableaux/Thought Tracking: I asked students to imagine they are the father who cannot afford a phone, doesn't think his daughter needs one, and is unhappy and worried because his daughter is angry with him.  I instructed Ss to walk around the room as the father thinking about his problem .  My students had difficulty with freeform random pacing.  They wanted to go in a circle, all in the same direction.  I had to interrupt, demonstrate, and redirect several times, but they finally got the idea. ThenI had them stop walking and hold their positions (Tableaux) and tapped three students on the shoulder and asked them what they were thinking (Thought Tracking).  We did two or three cycles of this activity.
6. Conscience Alley: One student volunteered to be the father and the rest were good/bad angels giving him advice. The "good/bad angels" lined up in parallel facing rows, good one one side and bad on the other, and the "father" walked between them, listening to advice from each one. Even the lowest-level students could say as much as "don't do it" or "buy the phone"; more advanced students offered more elaborate advice ("you can't afford it"; "she's a good student and she deserves to have a smartphone").  As in real life, in the end, after listening to all the conflicting opinions, the father still couldn't decide.
7. Improvisation: I divided students into four groups of four. One was to take the role of father or mother, one was to take the role of son or daughter, and the other two would be family members or friends of the family.  Each group had two stronger, more vocal, English speakers and at least one who was at a more basic speaking level.  The stronger students took the roles of parent and daughter, and I was pleased to see that they made an effort to bring the beginners into the improv by asking their advice or asking whether they agreed.  The lower-level students' contributions were minimal, but they were involved in the discussion.  After students had worked on the problem for a while, I asked for groups to volunteer to re-enact their improv for the class. All groups volunteered.
8. Out of Role Discussion: In a whole-class discussion of the improvisation activity, students generally agreed that it was valuable because they had to think in English as they spoke; they weren't able to write out what they were going to say.
9. Writing in Role: We finished with a writing activity with each student deciding to be a parent or a child and write a letter to the one they were not (daughter/son wrote to parent; parent wrote to daughter or son) explaining their positions on the cell phone dilemma. Those who wanted to shared their letters with the class.

With this experience, I only dipped my toes into the process drama waters. I'm planning to do more with it next school year. For more process drama conventions, you can download a pdf of Susan Hilliard's 2011 slideshow from TESOL's Electronic Village Online.  I would love to hear about your experiences with process drama.