Incorporating Drama
Soap Operas and Greek TragedyThroughout the unit on Antigone, my seniors showed little engagement with the text. They complained about reading assignments, and many of them openly admitted to not completing them. Attempts to help them connect to the play through drawing scenes and keeping a quote log seemed to do little to remedy the situation. Nonetheless, most of them seemed to acquire a basic awareness of the story and characters through what were often very teacher-centered in-class discussions, during which I drew their attention to themes such as love, family drama, and civil disobedience. At the end of the unit, as something of a last-ditch effort to get the students to interact on a more personal level with the play, I asked them to tell me everything they knew about soap operas. They brainstormed the following list:
I then introduced an article (right, top) that draws parallels between Greek tragedy and soap operas. When the students realized that Greek tragedy could be described in very similar terms to the ones they had used to describe soap operas, they almost immediately became more interested in it. To further pique their interest, we watched a recap of the television series Revenge (right, bottom), which follows the soap opera format and includes elements consistently found in Greek tragedy, such as the effects of moral corruption and deep, dark family secrets. |
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As the culminating activity for the unit, I had the students create skits that modernized Greek tragedy (below).
The class was split into four groups and given the option of either modernizing Antigone or creating their own story featuring themes and elements common to soap operas and Greek tragedy. Students were allowed to pick their own groups, as well as which option they wanted to do. Two groups chose Option 1, and two groups chose Option 2.
Students then spent two days writing and rehearsing their skits before performing them for the class. While preparing their skits, I observed a level of excitement that had been missing throughout the rest of the unit, and I began to see evidence of an aesthetic stance being taken. The best example of this came from a student from one of the groups that chose to modernize Antigone. When I stopped by the group to check in and asked him how things were coming along, he told me that he was going to play the part of Creon and that he was planning on affecting a Russian accent "because villains always have Russian accents." This shows that the student was not only experiencing his own interpretation of Creon as a villain (arguments can be made for him as a tragic hero instead), but that he was also bringing to this interpretation his own prior knowledge of what being a villain means. |
Given the success of this activity, it is unfortunate that it did not occur until the end of the unit, when students had already finished (or already given up on finishing) reading the play. Teaching Antigone in the future, I would introduce the soap opera model much earlier in the unit, so that the students could use it as a frame of reference as they read. This would give them a familiar lens through which to view the text, which might make it more accessible.