Musical Theatre: Process for the Development Acting Skill of Students’ Performing Arts

Abstract

Bachelor of Fine and Applied Arts Program in Performing Arts (Performing Arts), School of Com-munication Arts, Sripatum University Chonburi Campus was first launched in 2015, aiming to de-velop the abilities and to support the students learn from the real experience according to the University’s policy. This article demonstrates an experience of drama processes for the devel-opment, using musical theatre in order to enhance performing skills of the students of Perform-ing Arts Program, School of Communication Arts, Sripatum University Chonburi Campus. There are 30 students participating in this activity. A concept of Drama in Education (DIE) where drama is brought to develop the students’ skills in the class is applied. The purposes are expanding at-tendees in activity, and focusing on student development rather than drama production (, 2014). Moreover, drama is applied for 3H development. The objectives are set to improve participants in 3 aspects which are 1) Knowledge (Head), 2) Skills (Hand), and 3) Feeling (Heart) (, 2009). The processes are created step by step for doing activities. Step 1 is the principles and thinking methods which is the development of musical knowledge, story telling, issue, and core. Step 2, tools are created and skills are improved which are divided according to musical theatre con-cepts: singing skills, dancing skills, and performing skills. Lastly, step 3 is experience exchanging where the participants share their idea and review themselves. In this step, the feeling and expe-rience are shared to the others through self reflection activity. After that, the data is collected and summarized from data collecting tools which are the lecturers’ and students’ notebooks, paintings, articles writing, and musical theatre performance. The data is analyzed in terms of per-forming arts in a concept of 3H that is mentioned above.
The result shows the students participating in performing arts development activity using musical theatre in 16 weeks have learnt and developed own skills which are singing, dancing, and performing through direct experience. When the troubles occur, the students are able to solve the problems according to their experience. The students understand knowledge in both theory and practice from self reflection activity, including gain new experience through the actual performance in a public.