Using ready-made scenarios
If we are using play creation and performance as a stimulus for second language development, then it could well be that the class time that we can allow for this is very limited because of the huge constraints placed on us by other areas of the curriculum, exam preparation etc.
In this case it’s important to prioritise the parts of the playmaking process which are most conducive to language development. Coming up with stories and agreeing on which story to turn into a remote play is a creative, enjoyable and motivating thing to do but it isn’t necessarily the part of the process which most promotes language learning. For a start, even at very high levels, both the thinking involved in composing a story and the discussion involved in choosing a story is likely to happen in L1.
So it may be more appropriate to give learners ready-made scenarios in small groups and ask them to start working on turning them into scripts straight away. This way students are challenged to understand and process a short story and to convert it into dialogue. There is an immediate focus on spoken L2 and, because the learners know that they are going to be saying the lines that they are writing, there is an inherent need for what is written to be accurate, appropriate and clear. Learners will also automatically start mentally preparing themselves for saying the lines if they know that the lines are part of a dialogue.
Young people in Gaza collaboratively writing a script to be performed remotely by themselves.
The play scenarios here are all written with remote theatre performances in mind. In fact some of them were originally submitted as complete plays for The Hands up project’s remote theatre playwriting competition for young people in Palestine. If an original is available, it may be motivating for the learners to see it once they have created and performed their own ones.
Another motivating way of organising things, is if two teachers in two different locations give the same scenarios to their students. When they are ready with their scripts and have practised and learnt the lines, the students can perform them remotely to each other. Similarities and differences can be discussed between the two versions of the plays and the class could even vote on which one they think is the best.
1) Welcome to Earth
An alien spaceship has landed on earth. One of the aliens tries to make contact with their home planet through the video screen. He tells the aliens on the home planet (the audience) that they are going to do a report about what they have discovered about earth. The other aliens have gone to explore different aspects of earth – the landscape, the environment, the climate, the way people live etc. When they return they each give a brief report through the screen about what they have discovered. Now they have to make a decision. Are they going to stay on earth or return to their own planet?
(this scenario is based on a play by Ghada Hamdan’s students in Nablus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYZUPddoAK8)
2) The hospital window
Two women are lying in bed in the same hospital room. One has a bandage over her eyes as she is waiting for them to heal. She is really depressed about her situation. The other is sitting up and looking out of the window (the audience). The two women talk a lot about their lives and the woman by the window describes all the beautiful things that she can see out of the window to cheer the other woman up. One day the woman by the window dies peacefully in her sleep and soon afterwards the others woman’s bandages are removed. Her eyes are better, and she looks out of the window only to see…a brick wall! The woman can’t understand why the other woman was telling her about all of the beautiful things that she said she could see. The nurse explained that the other woman was blind and she said those things just because she wanted to make her feel happy.
3) The sparrow
A mother and daughter are sitting in the garden. The daughter is reading a book. They hear a sparrow singing in a tree above them. The mother asks the daughter what it is. The daughter tells her that it’s a sparrow. The sparrow sings again a little while later and the mother asks the same thing again. This happens at least three times and the daughter keeps getting more and more frustrated with her mother. Finally, the mother brings her diary from many years before when her daughter was very young. She gives it to her daughter and asks her to read a page from it. It says this “Today, my 3 year old daughter was sitting with me in the park when a sparrow sat in front of us. My daughter asked me 21 times what it was and I answered all 21 times that it was a sparrow. I hugged her every single time she asked me the same question because I was so happy to hear her voice" The daughter felt sorry that she lost patience with her mother. (this scenario is based on a play by Maysoun Shahada’s students in Beit Lahyia, Gaza
4) The door
Some young people are playing football against a wall when they suddenly discover that there is a small locked door that has appeared in the wall at ground level. They are amazed by this because they know that it wasn’t there yesterday and they start speculating about what could be on the other side . They try to open it, eventually discovering that if they collectively will the door to open it does. It’s just big enough for them to go through and they crawl through it, one by one. But what is on the other side? (this scenario is based on a play, written by author Jill Florent for the Hands up Project)