Teaching Life Skills Through Drama

Episode 123: Teaching Life Skills Through Drama Has anyone ever said to you “It’s just drama. It’s just theatre. It’s not important.” All drama teachers know the importance of their program. The drama classroom is one of the few places where real world  life skills are still taught: communication, self-confidence,  self-evaluation, creative thinking. These are skills all teens beyond the classroom, beyond school, and Shandra Gallant, Artistic Director of the Langdon Theatre Association thinks so too. Show Notes * Rainbows vs Bunnies: Annihilation Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 123! You can find the links for this episode at the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode123. Has anyone ever said to you about your program, “It’s just drama – drama. It’s just drama. It’s just theatre. It’s not important.” It happens all the time, right? All the time, it happens to me! And, you know, it’s because the drama classroom looks different and acts different than all the other classes. And so, it must not be like all the other classes and it must not be useful or important or worthy and it must not be worthy of being included in the curriculum which is a big problem because that means drama programs disappear. Except that all drama teachers know the importance of their program, right? The drama classroom is one of the few places where real world life skills are taught. You know them. Say them with me, everybody. Communication, self-confidence, self-evaluation, creative thinking – these are the skills everybody – all teenagers – everybody needs beyond the classroom, beyond school, right? A test – testing, one, two, three – testing does not prepare a student for the real world. Life skills, that’s what students need, and my guest today, Shandra Gallant, artistic director of the Landgon Theatre Association, she thinks so, too. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s get to it. LINDSAY: All right. Hello, everyone! I am happy to be sitting here talking to Shandra Gallant. Hello there! Hello there, Shanny! That’s what your students call you, right? SHANDRA: It’s true. Hi! How are you doing? LINDSAY: I’m great. Tell everybody where you are. SHANDRA: Well, I’m technically in my house right here in Calgary, Alberta. LINDSAY: Alberta, excellent! And the reason that we’re talking here today is that you have done some of our plays. SHANDRA: I have, yes. We really, really enjoy your plays and lots we’ve used for our final projects that we do with our group. LINDSAY: Yeah, and what is your group? SHANDRA: I work with the Langdon Theatre Association and we’re a little program. We meet once a week for a whole year and we work on life skills through theatre and we put on a final performance. LINDSAY: And that is something which was very interesting to me – the whole notion of using drama to work on life skills. That’s actually one of my big mantras, I guess, because I think drama is one of the few places where students are getting any backing in life skills. So, I’m really interested to talk to you about that. But, first, how did you get into this? What is your background in theatre? SHANDRA: Well, I have my BFA and I kind of dabbled in directing. But, originally, I was a stage manager and loved it, and this group actually hired me many,