Theatre at school

The theatre is a wooden stage where people go out. No it's people who go out to perform a play they feel something they want to perform for example friendship. In the end people applaud but they applaud two things: the sacrifice that the artists make to do it well and the work of the one who has written it and has done it. This is how a nine-year-old girl expressed herself in 1976 one of my first drama students when I was starting to teach. If I were to ask any of my students today I would not differ too much from that definition. Another 10-year-old girl wrote: A drama teacher is easily distinguished from other teachers because he is friendly and his classes are very pleasant. Besides he doesn't send much work home although he does send some. The class he gives us doesn't look like a class since they are very short. Before starting those first theatre sessions with children I had a series of questions to which I am still searching for answers today. They are questions that every professional (or not) in children's and young people's theatre should ask themselves from time to time so as not to lose the sense of what they are doing.