Drama classes are said to have many different benefits for those who take part: self-confidence, self-expression, life skills, personal development, creativity, critical thinking, teamwork–some even remember to mention fun. All of these are valuable skills for young people to learn, but how does drama help them with this?

Nearly four decades of MTA drama education in school drama lessons, extra-curricular classes and open workshops have given a lot of young people benefits that have lasted them into adulthood. Many of our students have gone on to careers in the performing arts; for a great many more, their lives have followed different paths but the skills and experiences they have taken from our classes still helped to shape their lives. This post will look at some of the real transformations that we’ve observed in our students.

Drama is education

Theatres put on plays, and plays are taught in schools in English lessons, so a bit of extra practice at reading and examining plays is bound to be beneficial. But the benefits of the script work that we do in drama go a lot deeper.

In school English lessons, plays are often taught as literature to be read, but, as any playwright knows, a play’s true meaning only comes to light when it is performed by actors. When we look at scripts, we consider how the way we perform them can add to their meaning and make the play enjoyable, not just see it as an academic exercise.

Drama can help with reading, writing and communication skills, all part of the English National Curriculum, but it can be helpful in other subjects too. When we create a piece of drama, we learn, through the stories and characters, about different opinions, cultures, periods of history and subjects. We may look at topics as diverse as Shakespeare, Greek mythology, folk and fairy tales, World War I and II, Dickens, panto and a great deal more. We have devised performances involving research into the Holocaust and into life in Denton and Manchester during the English Civil War. A larger Mainstream production based around local historical figures was performed both locally and at the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena) in London.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is about both analysing the world around us to create stories that relate to it, and about examining our own work and that of others in the group in a positive, helpful way in order to improve it.

In class, we encourage students to constructively comment on the work of other students and also to take on board criticism from others and use it to improve their work.

But it is also a very useful skill to have in life in the modern world. The same tools that we use to analyse characters and their actions in a drama class can be used to examine how advertisers, politicians, pedlars of pseudoscience, newspapers, social media ‘influencers’, Internet scammers and people who spread conspiracy theories and ‘fake news’ try to manipulate us, helping us to make more informed decisions.

Physical training

A performer needs to be physically fit to take on a singing and dancing part in a musical, but an actor performing a lead character in Shakespeare for eight shows a week will need to be just as physically and vocally prepared and trained to make it past the previews.

Not everything in drama requires fitness as a sportsperson might understand it. Acting requires an awareness and control of the body for the performer to transform physically into a character unlike them, to make an audience believe that something fake is real or, in the case of mime, to conjure up whole worlds that aren’t really there.

Self-confidence and self-expression

It is often assumed that anyone who can stand up on a stage and perform to an audience must be naturally confident, but some of the greatest actors are actually pretty shy when they aren’t hiding behind a character and may come offstage after holding an audience spellbound and tentatively ask a stagehand if their performance was okay. On the other hand, people who come across as supremely confident are often frightened to drop their guard enough to be able to play on stage anyone other than themselves.

It’s always very satisfying when a student who used to hide at the back starts to find the confidence to speak up and contribute more to the work of the class. We’ve seen this happen many times, but one girl in particular barely spoke to anyone when she arrived and went on to play leading roles in many of our shows before studying drama at university.

In a one-off mask workshop in a secondary school with a GCSE group, there was a girl who was extremely shy with a pronounced stutter. The students started to work with the masks, and as soon as she put hers on, this girl suddenly came to life. Using physical rather than verbal communication, she gave the most expressive performance of the whole session, to the surprise and delight of everyone, especially the regular teacher.

Leadership and teamwork

Theatre is dependent on teamwork as much as many sports, but there is no opposition to beat or prize to win; it is about pooling everyone’s ideas, skills and resources to produce the best possible work.

Leadership is linked to self-confidence, in that the people with the most creative ideas aren’t necessarily the first to speak up in a group. Over time, with some encouragement from the teacher, they can learn that their ideas are as valuable as anyone else’s and that they won’t be told off or laughed at for getting it ‘wrong’, helping them to grow in confidence.

We have worked in pupil referral units, for young people with serious emotional, behavioural and educational problems. On one occasion, a boy whose behaviour could be seriously challenging and often violent took charge of a group that were devising a piece of drama, directing them enthusiastically. He clearly loved what he was doing and wanted to do it well. The only time it looked like the situation could turn was when he got angry at a boy in his group whom he didn’t think was trying hard enough and was spoiling the work.

Not everyone is a leader. Some people are great at coming up with ideas but not so great at developing them, whereas others may struggle to come up with something original but be good at building on someone else’s ideas. Other people may be better at taking direction to produce an impressive performance of something created by someone else. A good drama class is often a mixture of all of these, and all can play a part in creating effective theatre.

Fun

This is an easy one to skip when we are listing serious benefits of drama, but it is important. We learn better through play, investigating scripts, topics, characters and issues through games and stories, than we do by learning from a book for an exam or essay.

But fun is important as a life experience, not just as a way of making learning easier. As we’ve come to MTA’s 40th birthday, we’ve heard stories of past students who still remember their experiences of ten, twenty or thirty years ago in our classes and shows. Knowing that people still think fondly back to those moments, still treasure them and perhaps even tell their own children about them makes it seem worthwhile and spurs us on to create memories that our current students may remember warmly in ten, twenty or thirty years’ time.

David Chadderton 
Head of Drama Education