An Introduction to Beowulf

A series of fifteen graduated drama workshops exploring the themes of this classical Anglo-Saxon poem, providing a creative means for teachers to deliver their students'drama entitlement in mainstream and special needs settings within an encompassing structure of traditional narrative verse.

The Drama Workshops are constructed to teach drama and theatre skills giving all participants opportunities to learn, practise and enhance their:
Creative expression (oral and written)
Concentration and focus
Listening and responding
Improvisation and experimentation
Role-play and characterisation
Social inter-action
Decision-making (choosing, justifying and discriminating)
Movement and dance
Body awareness
Self-confidence and self-esteem
Empathy (understanding of themselves and others)
Co-operation and tolerance
Sense of community
Spiritual development
Awareness of emotions
Self-discipline
Sense of enjoyment

In addition, the teaching of drama skills provides a powerful and creative tool in structuring elements of the National Literacy Strategy to ensure that all students have access to:
· A full range of literary genres
· A range of classical texts

This workshop series supplies a structure which employs a ' facilitator' to:
· Set the scene
· Tell the story
· Allow for flexibility and experimentation
· Provide healthy boundaries and containment

Each workshop contains some or all of the following elements which constitute a reliable and predictable format :
· An Introduction
· Warm-up Activities
· Drama Games (related to story themes)
· A Paired Activity
· A Movement Activity
· Guided Improvisation
· Story Development
· Story Enactment
· A Closure Activity

The additional structure of a narrative verse drama provides students with the experience of:
Rhythm, rhyme and analogy
Narrative verse to lead or reflect the workshop sequences
Verse speaking (individual or choral)

This also provides opportunities for teachers to develop and dramatise the poem in their own ways.

Interest and engagement in the story is maintained throughout the series by the provision of suggestions for 'Follow-up activities,' reinforcing each workshop and creating resources for subsequent workshops.

These activities relate to other curriculum areas including:
Design Technology
Art
I.C.T.
P.S.H.E.
Geography
Citizenship

However, it is not the author's intention that the detailed structure of the workshops should be adhered to so rigidly as to preclude the high degree of spontaneity, improvisation and creativity which are such essential elements of the drama process.

Indeed, the provision of such a defined framework is intended to supply the clear boundaries that will safely contain a healthy level of experimentation and adaptation, allowing for a variety of facilitators and participants bringing to the workshops their own unique contributions.

Additional Notes about the Narrative Verses to accompany the Workshops:

This adaptation of the famous medieval poem, 'Beowulf,' focuses on one of its hero's most acclaimed triumphs - the slaying of the monster, Grendel - followed by the hunting down and killing of Grendel's evil mother.

Being composed of short rhyming stanzas, it follows the classic form of narrative verse which is perfectly suited to the telling of stories, making their content more explicit and evocative and reflecting the poet's intention that they should be read aloud expressively and energetically.

'Beowulf' possesses, in abundance, the passionate themes of love, hate, envy, suffering, death, heroism and victory which are typically to be found in narrative verse, while the story's graphic depiction of the archetypal struggle between the forces of good and evil provides a dramatic example of the power of narrative poems to teach wisdom.

Moreover, the fact that Beowulf was a very human and vulnerable hero, needing to use insight, reflection and guile to defeat two of literature's most terrifying monsters, makes him particularly accessible to children and adults alike.

The narrative verse, used in conjunction with the drama workshops, provides clearly identifiable responses to the National Literacy Strategy document: ' Opportunities for Drama in the Framework of Objectives.'

In consideration of the book's additional relevance as a therapeutic resource which can be used in a wider context the workshop structures are addressed to a facilitator who may be a teacher or other professional.

Beverley Rees
August 2002