Málfríður - 15.12.1994, Side 27

LITTLE RED RIDES AGAIN
The interesting article in the
spring 1994 issue of Málfríður
showed that Little Red Riding
Hood, with or without her
grandmother, could suffer a
variety of fates: being devoured
by the wolf, saved in the nick of
time, or freed from the wolf’s
stomach to leap out, crying
“How dark it was inside!" Ah,
but there’s yet another one...
Following a suggestion that
appeared in an article in English
Teaching Forum some time ago,
I set my classes the task of doc-
toring up the old tale of Little
Red Riding Hood. They were to
think about it outside of class
but rewrite the tale as a playlet
in class. The only “rule“, aside
from no talking Icelandic in
class, was that they were to
thoroughly modernize it, using
any jazz, hep vocabulary and
plot that they chose.
Come the “great day“ the
classes were always eager and
there was no trouble getting
everyone to participate. Each
class produced either a two-
scene or more commonly three-
scene version of the tale, with
dialogue to present the story. A
few words set the stage for each
scene before the dialogue
began. Usually the Wolf was a
drug dealer. The beginning var-
ied: was Little Red (the stu-
dents picked her name each
time) a hyper-sexed teenager
escaping a mother who refused
to let her go out with a man or
was she off to meet her drug
dealer? Classes differed as to
whether Little Red or
Grandmother was the drug
addict, however; after all, the
original Red Riding Hood did
take a basket of “goodies" to her
grandmother. The ending again
varied: Did the good guys catch
the drug dealer? Did he get
away? Or did Little Red run off
to live with the Wolf?
My role in this was minimal,
tough I did stand at the black-
board and wrote the dialogue
down. I encouraged setting the
scene each time and somtimes
had to sort out the different
suggestions as to what should
be said next, but basically paric-
ipation was excellent and the
class as a whole co-operated
well to produce the playlet. By
writing it on the board I could
provide the little direction that
was necessary, as well as prop-
er spelling and grammar.
This was one of the most suc-
cessful projects I tried to gener-
ate conversation in English. For
all of us it was a fun day. In
keeping with the Forum article, I
tried one other folk tale, but
Little Red was a run-away suc-
cess. Have fun!
Terry G. Lacy.
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