Theatre in Pedagogy: Theatrical Devices as Classroom Resource

The paper primarily demonstrates the use and role of theatre arts as an enabling resource in teaching pedagogy. Theatre inherently has tremendous potential to deal with variations of ability, performance and cultural plurality. With a propensity for allowing narrative authority, theatre provides pedagogy with a slant for facilitating individual identity. India being a land of contrasts abounds in inequity, linguistic multiplicity and ethnic plurality are. the defining character of the Indian mosaic. Several homogenising forces dominant in schools often negate the multiplicity of socio-cultural identities. Tensions between social diversity and academic conformity impose a problematic contest for children's cultural confidence, making schools sites that impact the lives of children in unintended ways. The paper deals with multi layered representations of life at school such as influences of growing in terror prone areas which mark children's out of school lives. Using theatre as a classroom device connects teachers with glimpses of how children grow. This personalizing of pedagogical space honours children and schools become supportive in letting each child carve individuality despite being part of a collective negotiating many market forces. I attempt to generate a compelling concern to use methods of theatre and drama in pedagogy for knowing children's socio-cultural selves. Through the processes of theatre educators revisit the experience of childhood, reconstruct images to reorient their own adult psyches towards the spirit of childhood.