The Emperor’s New Clothes (include an American flag)

I took my this-semester class on their inaugural foray into classroom theatrics today. It’d been a while since I’d had a class willing to take part in an acting activity (or any activity, really, that involved them possibly looking like imbeciles), so when they seemed not only willing, but excited even, to put on mini-productions of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” well…I was ecstatic to say the least. It’s a big class right now because it’s still the first week, and they haven’t started to drop out yet. It always happens. You register 25 students, and by the end of the semester, eight of those are still coming every day with maybe two or three more showing up once a week or so, offering profuse apologies and then looking lost and dismayed for four hours because they haven’t been there for a week.

Anyhoe, I have about twenty right now, so I split them into two groups so they could each have a speaking part. Otherwise, half of them would play random, largely mute townspeople. I told them that they had to decide who in their group would play the emperor, the two con-men, the minister, the child, the child’s father, the townspeople and the narrator. I gave them paper, scissors, markers, random props I had hidden in my cabinet, and I put them to work.

Within minutes, I tell you, mere minutes, both groups had a crown and some sort of robe for their emperor (one group used a very large American flag…it was an interesting interpretation, I thought, of current U.S. politics), and the next thing I knew, one group had their emperor (male) in makeup. I look over, and there they are rouging his cheeks with another student’s lipstick. It was spectacular. What was even funnier was when I sent them on break in the middle of their preparations, and that emperor had to face his wife, who’s in another class, wearing another woman’s makeup.

After the break, I made sure that things were ok between him and his wife, and then they rehearsed some more. Then, during the last half-hour of class, they performed, and I know I’m completely biased, but it was one of the best ESL performances I’ve ever seen, especially considering the time they had to prepare it. In four hours, they heard the story for the first time, rewrote it in their own words, corrected their verbs (making sure they were telling the story in past simple), and brought it to life on stage (the “stage” being one half of the classroom). Fun times!

Then I had them list adjectives that described each of the major players in the story, which brought up the word “vain” (in describing the emperor), which was the PERFECT segue into tomorrow’s “You’re So Vain” activity!!! I tell you, when it’s a good day in class, it’s a good day, period.

There was one tee-tiny lil hiccup in that some of them failed to grasp the fact that the con-men weren’t making anything at all. I think some of the students thought that they really were making magic cloth, invisible to those who were stupid or unfit for their positions. Oh well. C’est la classe d’anglais. Hopefully we’ll do better tomorrow with the irony that anyone who thinks “You’re So Vain” is about them is right.

test Filed under music, ESL |