The Technique of Role Playing
The Technique of Role PlayingPhilosophy in Practice
One of the techniques used most often by theatre high school teachers is role-playing. The reasons that this technique is often used are numerous. When students read a text silently some of the nuance contained in the meaning can be lost. This is particularly true when dealing with a play, or anything containing multiple characters. Reading the piece aloud can help them to understand the connotation as well as the denotation. In the theatre, how a passage is spoken will determine the feeling that it carries with it. Lines of dialogue can suddenly become funny or sad once given inflection. This is the prime reason role-playing is used. The prime time that this technique is employed is when teaching the works of Shakespeare.
The usual set up for a role-playing exercise is as follows: first the teacher will have the students read the text by themselves, then he/she will define any strange or outdated language used in the text. Often with Shakespeare students find the use of the King�s English confusing and therefore do not understand the piece. Once the terms used are understood, the teacher can ask students to read sections aloud that they may hear how the words flow together. Then two or more students are chosen to act out the section with some minimal movement. This added blocking creates the idea that the dialogue motivates the actions.
When doing this type of activity it is best to employ a combination of two different teaching philosophies. One of...
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