Educational Theatre Essay

We have been trying to put these issues into different types of drama and trying to put across all the different sides to these issues. For example rape: Is one rapist, worse than another? In this essay I am going to be explaining what we did to put these issues across in a form of drama, what complications we came across, what my part in each drama was and what went well and what went wrong. My group set about the task of putting Surrogacy across by trying to look at every aspect of it. Our aims were to show how many different people come into it and how it affects each individual involved. For instance, I played the part of the surrogate mothers employer. Before the surrogate mother had decided that she would carry the baby, she came to me as her employer to explain the situation. What was going through my mind was things such as: How much time off work she would take, how much it would cost the company etc. So I was reluctant to let her carry this baby but was persuaded in the end. We also looked at other aspects that would affect the Surrogate Mother. These included: How her social life would be affected, how her friendship with the person she was carrying the baby for would develop, her family and how she would be affected financially. One problem with the surrogate mother in our play had been that she didn’t have the backing of her parents. I also played the role of her father and insisted that I wouldn’t speak to my daughter again. This was because I was playing the role of someone with very old-fashioned values and thought that what my daughter was doing was disgusting and not very ethical. This put a massive amount of strain on the surrogate mother. She basically had to pick between her friends and family. In the end she chose her friend though because she knew how much she wanted a baby and how much it would mean to her. So our group basically tried to show all the different sides there are to surrogacy, its not just about someone carrying a baby for someone, it’s about a lot more than that. What I think went well was how flexible the people in our group were. We all played 3 or 4 different characters during the play and we all managed with this really well. I played a counsellor, the surrogate mums father and her boss. Another thing I think we did well was our setting out of the stage. Between each scene the stage had to be rearranged quite a lot and the members of our group did this quickly and efficiently. The things we did badly I thought was the acting of emotions. Most people of the age of the members in our group have had little or no experience with an issue such as surrogacy. Therefore they did really well to act as they did but I still don’t think we done it quite as good as we could have. My conclusion is that educational theatre is the most gripping type of theatre. And to do it well you need actors and good stage directions. If I were to work on this project again I would make sure that a lot more research had been done into the issues we had to deal with in these plays. I think this would make the acting a lot more realistic and give the actor/actress a bit more of an idea of the role they are playing.