Drama

Ipswich Little Theatre 

The Ipswich Little Theatre collection contains many images of dramatic stage productions. 

• Show students a selection of images and ask them to interpret what is going on. 
• For older students, can they identify the name of the play based on the image and a brief synopses? 
• Allocate or let students choose a still from one of the plays.  Taking cues from the action depicted in the image, students can write a short act. 
• Encourage students to review the images for costume and set design that may assist them with the creation of their own dramatic performances

The Ipswich Civic Centre

Like the Ipswich Little Theatre collection the Ipswich Civic Centre hub provides images and resources associated with the performances that have occurred there over the years. These can be used for similar activities to those at the Ipswich Little Theatre.

The Ipswich School of Arts

Although the Ipswich School of Arts no longer hosts performances it has a long history of providing entertainment for our residents

• The Performances at the Ipswich School of Arts page provides a list of some of the known performances at the building, as well as examples of documents and advertisements associated with these performances

Oral Histories 

Picture Ipswich has a rich collection of Oral Histories (transcriptions, audio and video recordings) that feature many Ipswich identities and cover topics as diverse as employment, cultural life, significant events, and life experiences.

• Have students perform monologues based on dialogue from an oral history.
• Have students identify related stories and combine to stage a verbatim theater performance.
• Have students compose a short play based on one of the oral histories.
• Have students consider the use of voice in the oral histories, what they may be able to incorporate into their own performances, or what may have been able to be improved upon in the recordings.

There are also a range of items associated with performances within Picture Ipswich's databases that could be used for similar purposes to those above.

These are just a few examples of how you could use Picture Ipswich in Drama classes.  If you have further suggestions, please add them as a Recollection on this page.