As I mentioned in the last homeschool blog post, Carnival of Educators -Drama Club Edition, I am in the middle of tech week for my kids Drama Club which is an extention of their once a week homeschool program. As a quick refresher, my kids attend Artios Academies which is a once a week homeschool program where kids learn about a different time period each year through the arts. (This post explains the program in more detail. You may notice there was a name change for the “school” my kids attend.) They study visual art, music, drama, dance, etc, of each time period in a form of immersion education.
My kids are in the conservatory program which is for kids who have been in the base program through all of the time periods and/or are older and plan to have a career in the arts or study the arts in college. A large part of that program is the Drama Club.
The fall production for this year is Pride and Prejudice. It is in line with the time period being studied this year, the Early Modern Time Period (1600-1850). I sat in on a dress rehearsal last night and found myself transported back to that time period (1797-1815). During that time period, the Napoleanic Wars were going on, and the English were strictly separted by class and governed by rules of civility and social scale.
The young actors truly took on the nuances of the characters they portrayed. They acted with a level of exactness and precision that made it clear to me that they understood the level of formality exhibited in those days in addition to the rules and motivations behind each action.
You might think that being able to act out a part is just a diversion to education, but it is actually an integral part. In understanding nuances of the time period, students will have an easier time committing facts and events of the time period to memory. While the play, Pride and Prejudice teaches more of a social history of gender attitudes and class structure, it does not take much effort to add historical facts to that knowledge that the students have obtained throught putting on a stage production.
This website can give you a better idea as to how a production of Pride and Prejudice, or just the studying to this and other Jane Austen Books can be used to immerse a student into the historical time period and give them a better understanding of history in general.
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