Drama Performance
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Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916-2000)
During his career he won three National Theater Prizes (in 1957, 1958 and 1959), a National Theater Prize for all his career in 1980, the National Literature Prize in 1996, and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Spain's highest literary honour, in 1986. From 1971 until his death he was a member of the Real Academia Española.
From 1934 to 1936 Vallejo studied art and painting at San Fernando Escuela de Arte, in Madrid. During the civil war, he served as a medical aid in the Republican army. After the war he was imprisoned for six years. After being released he wrote Story of a Stairway in 1949. This work presented a graphic picture of Spain after the Civil War and won the Lope de Vega Prize, establishing Vallejo as one of the foremost authors in Spain. While other authors left Spain to escape Franco's censorship, Vallejo stayed in Spain and used symbolism to criticize the government. In 1971, he was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy. In 1994 he was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts and the Gold Medal of the Society of Authors of Spain.
A common theme in his work is Spain's problems during and after Franco. In the tragedies there is always a sense of hope for the future. His works make frequent use of the symbolism of the senses—for example, using the "fiery darkness," in which the protagonist cannot see, as a symbol of Spain's dark situation.
Awards
Works
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Historia de una escalera ("Story of a Stairway")(1949)
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En la ardiente oscuridad ("In The Burning Darkness") (1950)
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La tejedora de sueños (1952)
PLOT
"Historia de una escalera" (Story of a Stairway) is a three-act play in which Buero Vallejo analyzes post-war Spanish society with all of its injustices, untruths, and ruthlessness. The action takes place in a small apartment building with a stairway that leads from street level to the living quarters — a landing in the stairway is where residents often run into each other. Each of the three acts takes place at a particular time separated by 10 years: the first act right after the civil war, the second 10 years later, and the third 20 years later.
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EVALUATION OF ACTIVITY
Drama Performance
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This activity drew out lots of months because it developed in more steps. We started in November with the preparatory phase and finished in May with the final performance
Its aim was to increase students’ competence in English and I.C.T., to help them discover their abilities and capacities, express their creativity in a variety of ways, gain self-esteem and confidence, get over their insecurities, feel accepted by the others.
It was a stimulating activity also for the teachers because it helped create a dynamic and innovative learning and teaching environment. Parents were formally invited to see the drama performance and they became aware of their children education improvements
All stakeholders realized that the benefits about Theatre and Drama activities affected both the academic and emotional side
In all six schools, the workshops were held once a week. At each school, twenty to twenty-four students participated in the activity with different tasks and roles like: being actors, being in charge of video and edition, designing the invitations, etc.
At the beginning of the workshops students agreed on the difficult relationship parents-children. After that students started motivating their choice of such a problem. Most of them told about their lack of communication with their parents, some of them admitted feeling alone and not loved by one of the parents /being jealous of younger brother, etc.. So just telling their emotions, their feelings they came up to the idea of finding a song or a piece of literature which shared their mood, their feeling.
We all started this activity with the discussion about how to select plays whose theme was LOVE, Students worked in groups of 5, with the help of teachers each group chose a play and presented the plot of the selected work to the others. In all cases, students felt captivated by this task and the followed discussions gave them the chance to compare the original versions of their authors and their own works.
More school subjects were involved in this activity: 1st language, English, History, Art, I.C.T.
In Italy for example, students decided to work on “Rugantino”, a comedy, which belongs to our theatre tradition, set in the papal Rome of the 19th century because it combines drama performance, music and dance.
In the case of Spain it was about “The story of a staircase, by Antonio Buero Vallejo.
In all other schools, the same pattern was carried out.
Firstly all the students had to read the script of the play, the next step was to rearrange it , in consideration of the duration of the performance of about 20 minutes, planned by all schools partners
The students did they best to reduce and adapt the scripts.
After, they translated it in English for the subtitles. Students accepted this challenge with great eagerness.
The teachers decided to leave the students’ translation (in spite of some mistakes) in order to give value to the students’ great efforts.
After that, a small group of students, both selected by all the students and on a voluntary basis, participated in the preparation of the performance
Some students designed the invitations to be sent to parents, teachers, friends.
The performances were held in all our six partners schools at the end of May. When the perfomances ended, the audience were asked to express their evaluation by a mark on a paper . In all our schools, the results was excellent: 10 over a maximum of 10 was the evaluation given by 90% of the audience and 9 by 10%
This activity highly motivated the students participating in it. The videos of the performance were uploaded on you tube.
These are some of the links :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JGjaK0MsLn_zliK6RpxWWf7HmF8Pqfih/view
At each school, from twenty to twenty-five students:
80% of students worked really hard, with great enthusiasm and regularity, they enjoyed it very much and could express their creativity a lot. They all told they gained self-esteem and confidence, got over their insecurities, felt accepted by the others and developed a great sense of working in a team.
8% of them liked the activity but couldn’t attend regularly all the meetings for different reasons
12% of students quitted because of the overload of study in preparation of the University Access Tests in the six school countries involved in the project.
