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Applying Storytelling Theater for College-level Drama Classroom: A Case Study of Medieval Morality Play, Everyman

This study suggests applying Storytelling Theater as a pedagogical approach for college-level drama classroom in English Literature Department. While minimizing out-of-class activities to lessen the burden students might have felt about drama classes, but still encouraging them to understand and experience the performative imagination or directorial intention embedded in dramatic scripts, we propose to utilize Storytelling Theater as an initial step to introduce the plays that are considered “too difficult” or “too distant” for the contemporary college students. Converging Paul Sill’s Story Theater, Physical Theater developed in America and newly emerged Storytelling tradition in England, we designed a class module incorporating narration play, choral speak and storytelling theater. To experiment its effectiveness for English major students, we chose a medieval morality play, Everyman, as a specimen text and conducted a Storytelling Theater workshop to check how it promoted students’ understanding of the play’s theme, technique and purpose. The participants demonstrated a better understanding of the role of Medieval ‘educational theater,’ experienced actual practice with the concept of allegory, and picked up the crucial themes that could be improved for more sophisticated discussion. Storytelling theater might not be the best or the only pedagogical solution to improve current drama classes taught in English department, but instructors might want to consider its strengths and loopholes to keep the balance between literary and theatrical education while teaching dramatic literature for English majors.