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.

Select language

This section of the OFF-Book portal provides administrative information for the project contractual partners and for the European Commission and it is password protected.

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

1.3 ... to Theatre Laboratories
There are strong reasons why theatre must be a subject in schools:
  • Theatre is an incentive to escape one’s tension, anger, sadness, depression, frustration, inadaptability, giving room to tolerance, empathy towards the others and positive feelings about oneself;
  • Theatre makes students thoughtful and considerate towards the others, accumulating skills of team-working;
  • Theatre humbles egotistical performers and gives confidence to the shy ones, enhancing their self-awareness in their values and strength;
  • Theatre teaches open-mindedness and understanding;

As theatre itself may be focused on performance, the next step for education is the theatre laboratory, whose resources can be applied in any school. The most effective theatre games take place in theatre laboratories. Therefore, theatre laboratories are processes of acquisition of meaning, connecting thoughts and movements, verbal and non-verbal expressions towards a greater understanding of the self and of the others.

The role of the theatrical teacher / educator in the theatre laboratory is to provide the resources and situations most suited to help the students build their own selves and to promote a positive, affective climate, as only then – when they have the certainty of not being judged- will the students trust the environment and disclose themselves in relation to their age and the group. The teacher will provide an academic adjustment to the students with a physical or mental disability who identify themselves as such, trying to include them in the general group.

Along the years, the theatre games within the theatre laboratories were called “physical acting” or merely “movement” or “physical theatre training”. Regardless of what they are called, the technique is spread throughout the world in different fields, such as: team building sessions within companies, courses of all kinds and all subjects, camps and even gyms. Yet the most effective and appropriate is the technique applied to secondary school education, in the best period of students’ life: adolescence- when they have the chance to shape their personality themselves.

Another reason these games seem to be designed to be used nowadays is that the human beings live more and more in a virtual world, so, more than ever, they need an education that is adapted to substitute the real world in the classroom and to prepare them to communicate, to express themselves in the real society.

For students, theatre games are expansions of getting at ease with each other and with the surroundings in an imaginary world prior to their classroom lessons. They represent a clarifying reinforcement of students’ statements encompassing both story and subtext. Theatre games are meant to launch emotional recalls in students, which means they find their own personal, parallel and emotional situations that merge with the given settings of the games (“Affective memory” according to Stanislavski: “The language of the body is the key to unlock the soul” here quoted by Blumenfeld in Stagecraft, p.72)

The evaluation of the theatre games is made through:
  • Personal reflection;
  • Personal / group analysis
  • Journals
  • Game reports at the end of the session

Many theatre/drama centres deliver theatre education, but the method of theatre laboratories is still not spread in schools as much as it should be.
Online Resources
Other Sources
  • Importance of Theatre in School Curriculum by The Progress Teacher, July 11 2017 LearnThroughExperience.org;
  • Gas, M.A., Gillis, H.L.,Russel,K.c., (2012) Adventure Therapy: Theory, Research and Practice, New York, NY: Routledge.

Follow us

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.