In this study, the aim is to develop participants’ body awareness, dance and movement skills, and body expression skills through the creative drama method.
In creative drama workshops, which are group activities, participants communicate both verbally and non-verbally, just as they do in their daily lives. During improvisations, the spontaneous verbal and physical dialogues determine the beginning, development, and conclusion of the improvisation in the role the participants embody. However, in this process, participants may shift their focus more towards verbal communication and speaking, putting the communication they establish with their bodies in the background. The predominant focus on verbal communication in improvisations and the lack of non-verbal communication can occasionally lead to stagnation, resulting in an improvisation that solely consists of sentences.
The aim of this workshop is to focus on the function of movement, the most important element of daily life, within acting functions and to examine how these functions transform into a means of expression in the participant’s body. The workshop’s outcomes are defined as helping participants develop bodily skills to enhance a powerful form of expression, such as physical expression throughout the performance phase of creative drama workshops, raising awareness about the fundamentals of movement, and ultimately improving their ability to use the body as a means of expression. While conveying emotions and thoughts through the body, movement is involved, allowing the opportunity to think and express within the movement. Thus, it becomes important to carry out studies aimed at enhancing the fluidity of participants’ bodies in verbal and non-verbal communication during creative drama workshops and increasing their movement and motivation.