Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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Teachers’ Guidelines

Homepage > Teachers’ Guidelines > Theatre as Experiential Learning Tool

The role of theatre as a site for learning in a community context and how it can provide informal learning opportunities for young people experiencing social difficulty

Theatre as Experiential Learning Tool:
Step by Step Process to Implement Theatrical Laboratories in Classroom

Table of Content

7 The Typology of Final Feedback Expected (Performance, Written Papers, Video)
The final feedbacks of OFF-Book Theatre Lab depend on the type of work done, the group characteristics, the educators’ skills, the students’ proposals, and after all the availability of spaces and times provided by the school or the organizers.

A final performance, to be effective for OFF-book, needs to be designed and written by the students. The educator has to accept their proposals, turn them into scenes, build a highly emotional performance for boys and girls and for the audience too. The students need the right time and method to be ready to tread the boards, feeling secure and appreciated, supported by the whole group, and the dramaturgy of the show. Acting, doing and saying things they wrote, will have a powerful effect on their growth, self-confidence and relational skills. That's why we consider the final performance an important step of the path. A show, in oreder not to be harmful, must be a team performance, where everyone participates equally, according to each one's possibilities. This type of final feedback is not recommended when the path is short-lasting. The emotional strain to handle is high and dangerous, if not well trained.

The educators and the teachers must absolutely avoid the classical theatre patterns: delivering a script already written, assigning roles and characters. It would be against the OFF-Book method.

Other types of feedback are available. Travelling performances, for example, remove the problem of having a theatre or a stage to be set up. Performances are more interesting than shows due to the option for the audience to actively participate. It is a sharing event, which can move along a path and in every stop something happens. This kind of experience can take place everywhere, by building the performance site-specific.

A team performance can take place also in the city spaces, squares, parks, streets, preparing small actions to be done in groups, involving people passing by and residents. Being like a party or a meeting, this feedback can be positive, also for the fact that the students are welcomed in a community.

Other options are the work demonstrations: open lessons, the audience are invited in to watch the work of OFF-Book from the inside and perhaps to take part actively in a work session.

There are also not performative responses that can be essential - collective or personal feedbacks. For example, written papers, drawing, anything the students leave at the end of the lab as a sign, a goodbye, a word of thanks.
Online Resources
  • Examples of final OFF-BOOK Theatre Lab performancesTeatro Stabile di Grosseto addresses its main attention to the world of childhood and adolescence through the production of theatrical performances focused on educational issues of great impact:
       • acceptance of diversity
       • inclusion
       • correct use of media and Internet

    Through the web link mentioned, you will discover final Theatre Lab performances. "Giorgio Gaber Award in New Generations - Freedom is participation" annually it hosts three workshop experiences for each of the 20 Italian regions for a total of 60 theatrical educational projects, covering the whole Italian school system according to each grade. Groups of thousands of students and hundreds of teachers exchange their experiences in a shared three-day session, which represents an important moment of encounter, dialogue, human exchange and training.

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.