World Theatre Day (WTD) is celebrated on March 27 each year since 1962 to create awareness about and realise the value of theatre as a performing art form. The observance is meant to 'act as a wake-up-call for governments, politicians and institutions which have not yet recognised its value to the people and to the individual and have not yet realised its potential for economic growth,' informs the ITI.
It is through theatre that “We gather to weep and to remember; to laugh and to contemplate; to learn and to affirm and to imagine,” conveyed Brett Bailey, Stage Director from South Africa, in an earlier message on WTD.
According to Dr Lalit Kishore, the simple theatrical skill in the form of pantomime works as effective tool for language development for children in age group three to five or the the foundational stage of education
A pantomime is a dramatic edutaiment and learning tool, in which a performer expresses meaning through gestures accompanied by music. Pantomime has a great educative value in the education of children in inclusive situation since it is related to brain education. It can be produced easily with with conventional and adapted rhymes. A gesture is pantomime is physiological stance to convey meaning. If used without music, pantomime is is viewed as an art of silence in which a character is portrayed through gestures, facial expressions, and physiological or body movements.
The study [1] "Dramatic Arts and Pantomime as a Unique Supplementary Methodology to Teaching English to Children under Age of 5" by researcher Saleh Haqshenas amply illustrates the value pantomime for children in the age group 3 to 5 years.
The study combines 'pantomime drama' and 'children's self-engagement' for language development for improved working memory. The study has been done on 400 children between the ages 3-5 for teaching English. It was found that words are taught through easy dramatic movements and pantomime, a teacher can teach 4 words in 30 minutes to his/her student but if he/she wants to teach through the traditional audio-lingual method, it nearly takes up to 50-60 minutes to teach those 4 words.
Citing Chomsky [2] , 1998, the author of study report, while stating that 'if teaching is not obeying a consistent and real theory and practicality, this may damage child ’s learning for a life time', writes that dramatic arts have been in the center of attention due to their multi-applicable functions and mostly as a tool for conveying literature and culture, yet, they do not wind up in drama and theatre and have recently been used in teaching English to children under age of 5 who are in the so-called 'critical period' when brain starts new and highly active functions.
The inset collage shows pantomime gestures of peaking, forgetful, disgust, quiet, settle down, idea, promise, kill, reading, sleeping, afraid and pray. A school teacher must have a gesture vocabulary of 100-300 words and more so by special educators, I think.
References
[2] Chomsky, N. Language and Mind Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2006. pp 163
Pic: Pantomime Gestures
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