Speech and Drama

They come in all shapes and sizes, all ages from about four to about sixty-four. From lispers to film stars in the making. That’s my speech and drama pupils.

I love teaching such a variety of people. I enjoy the literature too – which ranges from Shakespeare to poems like ‘Pussy Talk’. Most of the pupils love it too.

I switched from English teaching in high schools to speech and drama teaching at home in 1985. Actually there were several years in between when I cleaned houses to pay the rent and wondered what I could do for a well paid living apart from being all but a police woman in high schools. (By the way, for those of you who are successful high school teachers and thrive on it, congratulations! It’s an incredibly important job and one not everyone can enjoy. But it was not for me.)

There’s a lot to be said for having a mid life crisis.

Finally I remembered my love of speech and drama at school, my wonderful times at Jack Thompson’s workshop (yes, The Jack Thompson) in the old Twelfth Night Theatre (thanks, Jack, they were lots of fun and very helpful too), and my year of workshops at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney. So I studied for seven or eight months with a private speech and drama teacher and managed to get my letters (ATCL) to teach speech and drama. And loved it.

Often I find myself thinking, “I’m actually being paid to do this!” as I enjoy a well-acted piece of drama or a cute child’s poem. Okay, I do the preparation too and do actually teach the pupils!

Many of my former pupils have done well. There are several who are speech and drama teachers themselves now. And there’s Anna in London – she won a bursary with the Rose Bruford College – and seems to be making a very successful career of acting. (I remember her as a skinny little girl with a barely-there voice with a beautiful if quiet tone and lots of expression.)

One of my recent ‘stars’ was Ariel Smith who learnt dancing as well as speech and drama. He managed to land a paid role in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang here in Brisbane. Ariel is eleven and is very good at drama, dance and even singing. A package deal! He wooed the adjudicator in a recent eisteddfod with his rendition of a poem about a kid not wanting to be in the eisteddfod. (It was alarmingly convincing!).

There’ve been many times when whole families have come to me for lessons. A parent would drop the ‘kids’ off after school, I would intersperse them according to their ages through the afternoon. At the end of the day a parent would pick them up.

I’m sure my place sometimes looks like a child minding centre. I enjoy the sound of the kids laughing as they play and wait their turn.

“What are you playing?” I ask them.

Hopefully it is a sign of success? - “We’re doing improvisations and acting exercises!” they reply.