3/30/2023 0 Comments Sisyphus task![]() ![]() We discuss the consequences and outcomes of teaching drama remotely. We explore the approaches we took to encourage student participation in this new forum, trying to find dramatic strategies to mitigate some of the problems that arose. We compare the expectations and interactions of a traditional drama classroom with those online. They are part of the generation defined as Gen Z (Beresford Research, 2022), "digital natives who have little or no memory of the world as it existed before smartphones" (Parker & Igielnik, 2020., para. In this article, we focus specifically on the Year 9 drama students, the youngest year group at secondary colleges in New Zealand. Like Sisyphus, we have, at times, felt the task of teaching drama cannot be truly accomplished. ![]() Drama is, at its heart, an embodied, interactive "subject", requiring collaboration, cooperation and participation. The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the 'unreasonable silence' of the universe in response. Influenced by philosophers such as Sren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche, Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd. For drama, this disrupted the very essence of the praxis. The Myth of Sisyphus (French: Le mythe de Sisyphe) is a 1942 philosophical essay by Albert Camus. For all teachers, this meant that students were no longer in an actual classroom with their peers but met in a virtual space as a series of little icons on a screen. We became adept at using the school's chosen online platform, in this case, Microsoft Teams. At times we have felt like Sisyphus, forced to push a boulder uphill forever. Using the allegory of Sisyphus from ancient Greek mythology, we examine the problems that arose while teaching Year 9 drama classes online during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in Aotearoa, New Zealand. ![]()
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