English Drama Camp

Last weekend, I traveled with a few other volunteers to Buri Ram province to help lead an English Drama camp there. We were working with the English teachers from a very large school (about 3,000 students 7-12 grade) near the small town where a volunteer lives. The school was trying to start up an English drama program, so they invited us to do a camp with their students and some students from a few other schools. The teachers were supposed to be watching the activities and taking notes so that they could bring the ideas back to their own schools.

Though only very few of the teachers participated and benefited from the camp, the students had a great time and surprised us with their English, creativity and acting abilities. The students were mainly 10-12 grade and most spoke English quite well.

We started out with some songs, games and team building activities

Here the students are crossing the "chocolate river" by jumping from "marshmallow" (piece of paper) to "marshmallow". They challenge was to get all 12 team members across with only 6 "marshmallows" - it was great fun and involved a lot of laughing, falling and holding on!

Next we started teaching some acting. One group stood in a line up front. The last person in line was told some sort of noun or verb (here liesbeth whispers the word) and they must pass the word, one person at a time, to the front of the line. It is called group charades and only one person can pass with one person watching at at time. Those watching have a great laugh seeing how the action morphs as it travels up to the front. The person to last receive the action must try to guess what it is. Usually their answer is quite different from the word originally whispered.

After some games, each group of students was given a shortened version of a play (about 1 page long). Next, the groups of students traveled to five rotations: acting (body), acting (voice), make-up, costumes and pronunciation. They learned acting techniques and practiced their scripts throughout the rotations.

Here two students help each other apply make-up. They are creating character make-up based on some techniques they learned in their rotations.

On day two, the students are ready to perform their plays. Most of the students had memorized their lines quite well and stunned us with their wonderful performance, which included: Cinderella, How the Frog got to Heaven, Snow White, the Wizard of Oz and Three Little Pigs.

The Scarecrow and the Corn in "The Wizard of Oz".

The Wicked Stepmother and stepsisters mock Cinderella as she cleans the floor in "Cinderella".