Activities

• Pre-show activities
  • Still images
  • Defining space
• Post show activities
  • Meetings
  • Diaries

Pre-show activities

Still images

Discovering Preconceptions of Revolutions

Giving the Class the three titles or ‘Dictatorship', ‘Revolution', ‘Victory', allow the class to formulate three freeze-frames to correspond with the titles. Discuss who, what and why the freeze-frames represent. By allowing an economical and controlled form of expression which is then able to be read by observers, peer teaching is invoked, allowing the students to share and solidify there knowledge of the meanings of the words dictatorship, revolution and victory.

Defining space

An Exploration into Physicalising Oppression 

Using available resources imaginatively groups build cells that consider and represent the effect of oppression on people living under a dictatorship.

These cells should have dimensions and what is inside the cell can be seen.

The ‘cells' are then compared and discussed. By negotiating the way a place should look and representing meanings the spatially the class are clarifying the affect oppression has on people while being able to creatively use material and furniture in an imaginative way.

1. Ask your students when they feel oppressed. Discuss what they feel is oppressing them, whether it be society, authoritarian figures, their own desires and expectations?
2. How would they feel is all the rules could disappear? Would they impose their own rules upon their environments and selves?
3. Make a list of every reason that they felt oppressed, be it youth/class/stereotyping/race/gender etc. What do they think would happen if all these things disappeared?
4. Explore the materialist feminists' ideas of all those things being constructs of society. What would it mean for the student individually if all those constructs disappeared?

Now discuss how they can use these constructs to fight oppression, with the knowledge that if it decided that if it was more productive, a construct could be unlearnt, it would be?

Post-show activities

Meetings

"Too fight or not to fight!"

Chaired by the teacher, a meeting is held to decide whether the students as Romanians should start a revolt in their small Romanian town. It is known by listening to illegal international radio stations that there has been up-risings in Timisoara but to revolt would mean possible death and the eradication of the town by the Securitate.

Simulating this meeting allows the students to make collective decisions while solving arising problems. This activity has emphases on negotiation and bargaining as the students are required to balance individual's needs and interests while calmly considering alternatives.

Diaries 

Diaries, Letters, Journals, Messages: The Selection of Content and Managing Alternative View Points

After viewing Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest ask the students to write:

• As Ceausescu's wife, write a message to Iraq, to Ceausescu warning him of the riots in Timisoara
• Three of Radu's diary entries about the Romanian Revolution
• An American newspaper article on Christmas day of 1989
• A letter from Rodica to her mother on Boxing Day
• A list of teachers that have been black-listed and why are they, to be compiled by Ion Iliescu's new government officials.

This activity will encourage reflection on the Romanian Revolution and how it affected individuals with opportunities to adopt appropriate registers and vocabulary, form unexpected or cryptic messages and provide imagined audiences for writing.