Dress up Day!

                               

Children love dressing up! It is just a universal truth. It transports them to a whole new fantastical world where imagination is the only limit. They can explore who they are, who they want to be and experiment with different characters. It is quite amazing to witness. The most timid of children can transform into a mighty ruler commanding respect when donning a cape and a crown, or the most serious child can become a frivolous fairy tale character or goofy court jester if they put on the right hat, or wings or shoes.

 

I think it is also about how tangible the character becomes. A prop or costume allows you to really become that character, live inside their skin as it were. 

Many of our activities are based on mime and using your imagination, pretending you are wearing a heavy coat or tool-belt or flowing skirt. But when they dress up, they can see and feel what it's like to be that character.

Frankly, I have a confession to make – we are amongst friends, right? I love the feeling of dressing up silly for a Fancy Dress party or Halloween. And secretly, I think all adults do. It adds a swagger to our step or invokes talking in an (often quite bad) accent. Even impersonating the character we have dressed as, swinging our pearls or looping our thumbs around our cowboy belt buckle. 

We are allowed for a short while to just be kids again.

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At Helen O’Grady Drama Academy we have a dress up activity for every lesson of Term 1, the students absolutely love it! They receive a list of what they need to dress up as each week and have to come up with their own costumes and or props – and the catch is, they are not allowed to go out and buy the costume, they have to use what they have at home... some even make their own costumes!

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This is a great creative exercise and helps to build the anticipation for their next lesson as they get a bit of a clue what the dress up activity will be about, but they don’t know exactly what they will be doing.

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This is also a great way to prepare the students for our year end productions which includes full costume. Now let’s be honest, as much as a costume can be the ultimate way to get into character, in more ways than one, a costume can also sometimes be a challenge. Most of the time children wear super comfy clothes to their drama class, something they can easily move around in. Whereas costumes can be stiff, or baggy or distracting. By doing the dress up days, children learn to be and stay in character even when they are not wearing their normal drama clothes and allowing the costume and props the enhance their character and not hinder them.

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Dressing up is also just a great way to entertain children and keep them busy for hours. Not a bad idea when we all need to come up with ways to entertain our children at home for the next few weeks!

Written by Charlotte Tervit - Vice-Principal, Helen O'Grady Drama Academy Pretoria