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Why is drama part of our teacher training? Waldorf education is based on the understanding of the word “education” itself: we know that what we are doing is not merely the transference of information – but an acknowledgement of “edu-care – to draw forth”. Our teachers are learning to draw forth from the children their own imaginative capacities. How on earth do we do that? No matter what subject teachers are working on with their classes, their voice is their main tool. All the work that Steiner gave on speaking and drama was first given in exercise form to the initial group of teachers who worked with him to found Waldorf Education. This speech work was not in the form that most of us knew it at school – of elocution, or of a style of speech known to many as “the Queen’s English.”
We begin with investigating what it is that we are speaking with – and how we do it. The teacher must first learn to stand actively – seeking what Steiner tells us is the source of speech – and which lies far beneath our feet. Parent can notice that their child does not begin speech proper until they can not only stand, but balance and walk. When this is mastered speech comes tumbling after. Few people consider the significance of this, but Steiner observed it is only after this monumental stage of development that human speech can come into the child. An observant parent can literally see language tumbling into their young child from this point onwards. This language development requires the fully upright stance, and it is this we work on consciously. The second step is to learn, in imaginative form, to reach up and out to the stars of our cosmos. It is from them, Steiner tells us, that the sounds of speech themselves are given. (This is something most of us are no longer consciously able to apprehend. As in Steiner’s verse: “The Stars once spoke to us. It is world destiny that they are silent now. . . .”) The third step is to use all our breath exhaled into our speaking. Taruna students must learn to stand, reach down for the capacity of speech; lift themselves up and reach imaginatively for the divine forces of the sounds themselves, and then use all their breath to give the sounds of their words dynamics and to ring out into the world around them as creative deeds.
“The teacher’s inspiration is in direct relationship to the exhalation of their speech!” This is one of Steiner’s most common admonitions to his teachers. If you want to awaken the imagination of your students, you must learn to use the creative power of speaking to develop your own faculty of inspiration. It is only through the inspired speaking of the teacher that the children can awaken their own faculty of imagination.
Story telling and verse create the major early childhood introductions to the vast world of human speaking and interchange. Drama comes in slowly from third grade and teachers can witness the child’s longing for it by the fifth grade. From then on Drama is a powerful tool to help the child develop a great enthusiasm for life itself.
“The task of the actor is to learn inspired improvisation!” says Count Szabo in last year’s play, “Masquerade” – and what a great skill that is for teaching!
Our students not only learn the theory of drama but the need for it to be revitalised in today’s world where: in the words of Thornton Wilder, one of America’s great dramatists: “It has chosen to become a minor art and an inconsequential diversion.”
The students do this by putting on a play themselves. This year I have created a play using some of Thornton Wilder’s “Three minute plays for three persons” and by creating a role for Thornton himself. Thornton Wilder speaks directly to the audience about his ideals for drama and the vital reasons for it to be a creative and lively part of today’s education. He has much to say which is very thought provoking!
Even today we refer to those attending the theatre as “audience”. This word remembers that the most important part of a play is the words we hear. This is what we work on at Taruna College. Unfortunately much of what we see in the theatre today has become a ‘spectacle’ in the Roman sense of the word, and has little appeal directly to the human heart as it is appeals mainly to the eye. Our students learn that an actor’s true task is to become a ‘bearer of the word’ to the audience.
Robyn Hewetson with two of the Diploma in Rudolf Steiner Education students during an end of the year graduation. Robyn was an unexpecting 'star' of the show!
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