To think that GCSE drama productions should not involve sexual content?

[legalalien]

Or am I an old prude? I'm all for sex education and stuff, but not sure about classes of teenagers making up and acting out plays with sexual content.

Background, have just been reading this employment appeals tribunal decision concerning the dismissal of drama teachers who allowed their class to put on a production depicting sexual abuse, incest and masturbation and my initial reaction was wtf were they thinking; but presumably they must have had some reason to think it was ok?

www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2012/0155_12_2310.html

Note, lots of the decision is about whether the right process was followed rather than the acceptability of the production per se.

..sometimes you DON'T need to define....

sorry multi tasking...

Sugar - yes I agree - loose language on my part - discussing a lot different from "role playing" sexual crime / sexual abuse

I'm clearly an old fashioned fuddy duddy but I would have been appalled if any of the drama teachers I've worked with had thought content like this was acceptable. There's a huge difference between a saucy Shakespearean scene and oral sex between a father and a daughter!!

The kids might be 15-16 but not all of them would be sexually active - it's probably put some of them off for life!

If one of my daughters had been in the class, I'd have gone ballistic.

Even if they ARE sexually active, I doubt they're mature enough to deal with the things being brought up. I wouldn't want to act those things out on stage and I am almost 30. And very sexually active.

But this was a piece of drama devised by the pupils themselves, not one imposed on them by the teachers.

Like I said themumsnot can you really not imagine one or two getting carried away and the others going along with it? And even if they'd written something, do they really have the maturity to decide if it is appropriate or not? Or if they're comfortable with it or not?

I should elaborate. I trained as an actor, worked as one for many years and as such spent most of my teenage years in youth theatre....preparing for drama school.

I was in a number of productions from age 14 in which I wore quite flashy and revealing costumes. Guys and Dolls, Bugsy Malone....they're seen as staple kids productions but to prepare for them, we learned all about prostitution and dance hall B girls (The kind that used to get paid to dance but were really prostitutes)

We did improvisations in character about how it felt to be a prostitute.

It never harmed me and we all loved the gritty stuff. Most kids watch Eastenders....that's worse than most things!

We did Billy Lair, and some parents weren't best pleased as it has a snogging scene it (that and my friend who played Billy's snog partner really went for it as she fancied the pants off the guy playing him). My group did Inspector Calls, and my character was meant to kiss another character (in part 1, we did it in different acts) as they get engaged. We decided not to, and the teacher was fine to let us choose.

I do think you have to consider that teens are different animals to what they used to be, I'd suppose most, if not sexually active, are at least knowledgeable on the topics covered in this play- even Eastenders and Hollyoaks both of which are pre watershed have covered homosexuality, teen pregnancy, incest, the lot.

I think they'd have been unreasonable if not every child wanted to take part, but elsewise, with drama the teacher's always let us lead them. When I was in year 9, we had a teacher who I loved, she was name checked in a band at the times song who we all loved. Anyway, she used to give us a topic and we'd brainstorm in a circle out loud then develop the play around it. One week, the topic was "embarrassment" and of course you had very tame ideas given by the majority, until one boy said he was embarrassed as one of the girls had stayed over at his house with his sister and had seen him naked, at which point the girl shouted out about a certain piercing the boy had down there . Teacher made no attempt to stop this discussion, and the play ended up being about a parent walking in on members of the class snogging, but we were all allowed to be very open with this teacher. Perhaps too open, but she never contributed to it at any point.

I watch eastenders. But I don't remember seeing eg fathers forcing their daughters to perform oral sex acts on it, any time recently.

The very fact that one of the actors was puking afterwards suggests that this was ill thought out.

can't check the link.

Generally I reckon YABU but within limits. I guess for productions that any kid can go to they should stick below what would have an 18 cert at the cinema.
THe list above in one of the post is just plain silly though - who really thought that was OK?

Our schools have done scenes from Chicago recently including the 7 merry murderesses which was pretty raunchy (the boys from the boys school were virtually hanging over the balcony with their tongues out).

Also they performed the whole of Cabaret, which is very sleezy /sexy in content and "two ladies" .... umm yup!

Not to mention the rape scene in West side story...

Actually all the musical performances seem to have leggy 6th formers in Basques and fish nets!(including emcee in Cabaret, which was really not pleasant !) Well apart from sweeney todd where they were all modestly dressed but murdering and eating the " best pies in london" LOL

My kids are more into the musicals than the straight drama so I haven't seen any non shakespeare yet.

Oh God, don't even start me on "leggy sixth formers".

legalalien no, it wouldn't have shown something as strong as that, but you did have the Whitney storyline where her Step Dad and her had a sexual relationship- we never saw sex take place, there would be uproar, but the suggestion of it was enough. You also had a few years back Little Mo being attacked in the bathroom by her husband. You didn't see this happen but the suggestion, again was there due to the noises you heard. It was very powerful if I remember.

Can I just say, I am finding this interesting as it goes to show that what people think is "acceptable to discuss openly" may well have changed. Still not sure about getting class groups to do this kind of stuff though - not least because of potential impact on some class members who may have experienced abuse. I vividly remember going to see the film Once Were Warriors in my early 20 s and there were adults in the audience who became hysterical , physically ill etc . The whole audience was in shock because it was all too real.

Fellowship - yes, and also the subsequent storyline with Whitney and the dodgy "boyfriend" - was it rob? The one with little mo still sticks with me.

Yes that's right, she ended up very nearly being forced into prostitution.

You've had many storylines which perhaps were slightly too far for a evening soap, but, these are some of the most watched TV shows, our whole attitudes to certain subjects have changed. Perhaps for the better. I have to say, I think when you consider what is going on in the press regarding cover ups of abuse, we need to be more open with our teens regarding them knowing they can be tell us if something inappropriate happens. If we continue to not have abuse of any kind as an open subject (it certainly was never ever discussed in my school days and I left at 17 in 1998) then the secretive nature of it will never cease.

Find it odd that they wrote it but then one threw up whilst performing it!

What I mean was when they started rehearsing that no one said "actually, I don´t like this".

That no one complained to another teacher/the head or to their parents!

diddl a lot of teenagers that age don't have the confidence to speak up.

didl maybe it was the high of performance nerves combined with the touchy subject.

As a 17 year old in youth theatre, we had a residential course and a very well respected (read famous) actor came to do some stuff with us...he did a course on Theatre of the Oppressed which for some reason, entailed him egging four of the lads to "kidnap" 3 of the girls....tie them up and blindfold them...then take them off in a car to disorientate them....when they got back, they chucked them in a sort of pit thing n the grounds and chucked water and things at them.

Now looking back I'm about what this was meant to teach us...but drama is a bit like that...sometimes it's about experiencing emotions and parts of ourselves which wouldn't usually get tapped.

We need EvilTwins on this thread.

FWIW DD1 is Y11 and doing Drama. She has done a fair bit of forum theatre where they improvise around scenarios like teen pregnancy and so forth. I think it is a necessary part of the GCSE drama syllabus. In this case perhaps some of the improvisation went over the line, but without seeing the production it is hard to know for sure.

If what facethemusic says is an accurate description of what's in it then the boundaries have collapsed and the teachers should have told the children not to do it.

I did Lisystrita (spelling is off) for my GCSE drama, it is an ancient greek play about how women decided to stop their men fighting by putting them on a sex ban. It was very benny hill, but through producing this play we all learned a little about sex, sexuality, history, 'girl power' etc., it was enlightening.

If they were doing a porno I'd be a little but most plays with sexual content have sexual content for a reason... at 15 I was very 'emo' and loved darker plays (I was pissed off initially with lysystrata) we'd do improvs and polished improvisations about what affected us.. not the lame old musicals we'd been used to, and the parents did feel uncomfortable, but we didn't do it for them.

I remember my mum being quite shocked (and appauled) at one presentation that explored abuse and rape. However, she did admit that it was thought provoking and made her realise that I had actually THOUGHT about the darker things she'd always tried to protect me from AND it was the first time she realised fully that I wasn't a little am dram queen anymore but took drama more seriously.

YABU. Unless there was no warning, in which case YANBU because it could have been innapropriate for a younger viewer.

Oh we also did do a Musical "The Rocky Horror Show". Good days.

Once Were Warriors is a GREAT film. Hard but brilliant. I watched it at about 14. It was not an easy watch, at all, but it wasn't innappropriate.

All this "yes but they're having sex anyway" I just think we're learning nothing. Teenagers below sixteen are not adults. They are different from adults and should understand the difference. And so should adults and so should these teachers. What do you think Savile did and all those other revolting people did, and are still doing? They're treating teenagers as though they're adults. They're taking advantage of the fact that they're naive, their future view is about an hour long, that they want to be big and clever, they want to be part of an adult world and that makes them prey to real adults who can see straight through it and how to exploit it.

Brycie - all very well but I'm struggling to understand what that has to do with a bunch of teenagers creating some improvised issue-based drama for their GCSE drama exam.