Identity and Vulnerability: Autobiographical Storytelling in a Fourth Grade Classroom

Abstract

Fourth grade students at the Buckley School (9–10 years old) create solo, autobiographical performances as part of their year-long theatre curriculum. This paper highlights some of the games/exercises students play as they create this performance, discusses how students and teacher work together to provide formative evaluations of the students’ evolving work, outlines how the performances are shared, and thinks through some of the issues about the relationship between identity and vulnerability that arise as everyone in the classroom tackles this assignment.

The paper uses pseudonyms for all student’s names. The performances the paper describes are all imaginated works inspired by performances students have created.

Keywords: autobiographical performance, feedback, tensiveness, Spolin, gender