Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Page 162
One could say that while drama can be useful for foreign lan -
guage learning, so too can foreign languages be useful for drama.
Several years ago in Sheffield, uK, one of the authors (Milde) was
hired by an independent theatre company to teach actors some
german phrases and pronunciation which they needed to use in
several scenes. The actors didn’t speak much german (or hadn’t
been been using it for a long time), and in order to make german
their own for the play, they experimented with the german script
and the german language, its sounds, pronunciation, intonation,
and its words to explore and develop their roles.
One actress had a role that involved speaking English with a
german accent throughout the play, so her way of playing with
the language was different from the other actors as she didn’t
have to memorise any sentences in german. Together we (Milde
and the actress) worked on the actress’s basic knowledge of
german phonetics and phonology (using my own teaching ap -
proach that would be useful for the actress in that particular con-
text) which enabled her to develop her role and to be consistent
in her accent throughout the play. In this case, experimenting
with a foreign language clearly helped to support the actors in
their artistic work, and it helped the audience to understand the
meaning of the play.
2. Theatre, “paroles”, learning
In France I (Ingibjartsdóttir) learned how to speak French, and it
was doing theatre there that helped me most to develop a feel for
the language and to experience emotions in it. It was an amazing
experience to be able to connect with the text (script), and to use
my life experience to express my interpretation of a French text.
Even if they were not my own words, I still felt that it was me who
was expressing these words. My relationship with the French lan -
guage started to change. I was less afraid and I had the feeling that
it could become a part of me or I could become a part of the lan -
guage. That was the time when I decided to become a French
teach er. Since then I have always been concerned about how teach -
ers can stimulate students’oral expression, and how students can
CrEaTIng SPaCE
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