Productions: Year 9 "Respectfully Me" and Year 7 "Cybershorts" Tuesday 27th February
A drama production company presented six short plays this week in which Year 9 viewed "Respectfully Me" and Year 7 "Cybershorts." Each of these activities aims to educate students about issues of bullying, respect, cybersafety and digital citizenship. Years 7 and 10 have also had presentations in small groups from solicitors from Legal Aid and Child Legal services on this topic for World Safer Internet day earlier this year.
The content was as follows for Year 9:
Play One - The Disney Effect
Princess trout-pout thinks she is too fat and is concerned that the filters on her Snapchat have broken. Prince Big-Guns worries he will never get a girlfriend because his biceps aren't big enough and he cried watching the Bachelor...
This play takes a light-hearted look at how gender roles and expectations are represented in the media and empowers adolescents to feel more in control and alleviate the pressure to conform to certain ideals.
Play Two - Over the Line
Maya is having a tough time- she's been fighting with her best mate. She went through her boyfriend's phone and found messages to another girl and she failed a really important exam at school. Pulled into the Principal's office she's asked to explain her behaviour where she reveals that her life has been turned upside down by the announcement her parents are getting a divorce.
At the end of this play, the audience was asked to nominate a moment in the play that Maya's anger got out of control and affected her relationship with another character. They were encouraged to think about what went wrong and what choices Maya had available to her to make a better decision.
This play identified strategies and behaviours for negotiating respectful relationships in a range of settings.
Play Three 21st Century Bystander
Amelie and Lucy are best friends, but when Amelie kisses Tom, Caitlyn's ex-boyfriend, at a party all hell breaks loose in the group. Angry and determined to get revenge, Caitlyn creates a fake account online pretending to be Tom. What starts as a joke quickly spirals out of control when the fake Tom asks Amelie for inappropriate photos and then threatens to put them on a dodgy website. What hurts Amelie the most is when it is revealed that everyone was in on the joke and no one stood up for her and stopped it.
This was a clever play that puts the audience firmly in the position of the bystander. At the end of the play, using a version of Augusto Boal's forum theatre, the audience was asked at what point the bystander (themselves and Lucy) could have stopped the situation and created a positive outcome. The actors then improvised the chosen moment, incorporating the student's ideas.
A Q & A session followed that gave the students the opportunity to explore the choices made in the Forum Theatre section, plus detail the legal ramifications for all the behaviours demonstrated.
The Year 7 plays covered:
Social Not-Working_
Tonight is Mark's party and Lily has planned every detail of her outfit. When she fails to show up at the party, her friend Beth gets worried and goes to her house. What she finds is a dishevelled, emotional, exhausted Lily. Worried her outfit didn't work, Lily spent hours on Snapchat, AskFM, Twitter, KIK, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram trying to get everyone's opinion and was left far too exhausted to attend the party. This play takes a light-hearted look at the way in which social networking is taking over our lives.
at the end, a discussion was held about the issues associated with these sites.
Generation Text
In love for the first time, Brit's choices are coming back to haunt her. Photos that she has taken of herself and Snapchatted to her boyfriend have resurfaced after he screenshotted them and sent them out. The play picks up when Brit and her boyfriend have broken up, and she discovers he has made those photos public property. For every action, there is a reaction, and 'Generation Text' explores the consequences that ensue.
Improv Workshop (after Performance)
5 volunteers were given a different character from the play and were asked to answer questions about the emotional implications the scene has had on that person. Students were encouraged to explore the inner emotional state of the character. Students were asked to explain their emotional states and justify their choices. Characters portrayed were: Brit, Jess (friend), Eli (boyfriend), Brit's mother and her teacher.
Fakebook
Georgia has just met the guy of her dreams, without actually meeting him. He added her on facebook, they had some mutual friends, so she said yes. After chatting online she thinks that he may be the boyfriend she has been looking for. Little does she know, that this boy, Callan, is actually her former best friend Zara who is playing a prank by creating a character who will eventually break Georgia's heart. She thinks it's funny, a little harmless fun until Georgia stops coming to school.
'Fakebook' looks past the 'harmless fun' of the schoolyard and explores the many consequences that arise from Zara's actions.
Forum Theatre Workshop (after Performance)
After the play, the students were able to decide what could have happened differently to create a positive outcome, the actors then replayed the chosen scene with the changes in it. A Q&A session was integrated into this section to encourage the students to think about the moral implications of these actions.
A summary of safe internet guidelines can be found here:
The internet and mobile phones provide a great way to communicate and express yourself with others, but it's important to make sure they're used responsibly so that everybody has an enjoyable online experience. It's all about respecting yourself and others.
1. Use a strong password (a combination of upper and lower case letters, symbols and numbers).
2. Don't believe everything you read – make sure you know it's coming from a reliable source.
3. Don't give out any private information over the internet or through mobile phones about you, your family, friends or other people that you know.
4. Think before you send! You have to think about what you are saying and how the recipient/s may feel.
5. Don't hide behind a computer screen, if you wouldn't say it to their face, don't say it at all!
6. Don't post inappropriate or illegal content anywhere on the internet.
7. Make sure your social networking profile is set to private (check your security settings).
8. Only accept friend requests from people you actually know – even if it is a friend of a friend it's not a good idea to add them unless you actually know them.
9. Tell your friends to ask for your permission before uploading and/or tagging a photo of you on their social networking profiles.
10. Don't click on any links that are embedded in emails - type the URL into the browser and go from there.
Source: Australian Federal Police.
Here is a great website for parents wanting further info:
Adam Lawson - Pastoral Programs Co-ordinator.
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