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Drama is a discipline that originates in the impulse to depict human experiences, communicate understanding about these experiences, and give them form and meaning. Drama is a powerful mode of expression that has evolved over time to include a variety of forms and styles. It seeks to bridge the real and the imagined, the concrete and the symbolic, the practical and the inspired. Drama is an interactive, creative process that engages students in relationships with others and with the environment. Drama education provides students with opportunities to examine human experiences through character and situation. It reflects a part of students' daily lives as they connect with others, experience tension, and resolve. Drama education helps learners make sense of their world by integrating experience with knowledge.
Drama is one of the most powerful ways to express emotions, thoughts and feelings available to mankind. If used properly, it can be a tool of change in individual lives and in the course of entire societies.
Drama can change the lives of individual students. In drama class, students are stretched to their very limits. They will be asked to push their comfort zones and to try things that they would probably never try otherwise, and do so in front of other people. By doing this, they may find the confidence to go out and push their limits in other areas of life - in "going all out" to achieve goals or to accomplish tasks. This in itself makes drama worthwhile.
Drama can also have a changing effect on the lives of those who see it, whether it is a couple of friends, or an entire society. In the Bible, God uses drama on several occasions to get his message across to mankind. After God had brought his people out of the captivity they faced in Egypt, he told them his laws through drama, by sending the leader of the tribes to opposite sides of a mountain and having them shout to each other examples of what they should and should not do. Jesus used figurative language and wrote his own dramas for his disciples and for all humanity. Stories like the prodigal son, the mustard seed, and the wedding banquet stir up powerful images and get the point across better than dry words ever could.
Students, too, can plug into the powerful medium of drama. In missionary work, drama can be used to bring the truth of the gospel across to the people of foreign lands who don't even understand our language. People may be more responsive to truths brought forth from drama than from a preacher standing on a street corner. Students with the desire to share the gospel can use the means of drama to bring about powerful ends.
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