Why be a tree?

One of the biggest jokes for any stand up routine on doing drama at school or university is being asked to be a tree.

This week I went to the Hockney exhibition which made me consider being asked to be a tree in drama as a child. Most of us made the same shape as that of the yoga position. Some people are very good at it as I remember from a beach in Devon where my dog peed on a woman in a black wet suit who was in the yoga tree pose on the beech. We were very embarrassed when we had stopped laughing but she had a great sense of humour and simply shrugged it off thank goodness.

For many of us though - and all jokes aside - drama has moved on. Looking at Hockney, his exhibition is all about changes in seasons and I stopped to consider how this could be used as a stimulus for drama sessions. Still images are a wonderful way into drama.

We can use ideas of change with students to look at their own lives. Ask them how they would show family life, creating still images through drama and asking them to portray relationships and change. We can incorporate this into working with texts as well.

For more stylised work we could look at how pictures can be represented as a 3d image in a workshop. Perhaps ask the group to choose 5 pictures as individuals or together and then ask them to represent them and move from one to the other using space, levels and movement. You could add sound to give a sense of movement and flow and to add another sensory level to creating the pictures.

This could also be used as part of devising a scene - it may have a different perspective and theme but could be about change and growth and therefore relate to the themes Hockney was exploring in his paintings.

So we may ask children to be trees but we can do so much more than that.........