Rise Up - Practical Exploration of a text

Learning outcomes
These resources are designed to continue to embed ideas and dramatic techniques explored in Rise Up into the student’s learning and assist them in applying these ideas to their own work.

Summary
Students will have the opportunity to develop their skills in numerous areas within the Drama curriculum. The plans aim to enable students to create monologues, build character backstories and imagined future life, explore ideas around segregation and the marking of territory, investigate the role of performance poetry within plays and narratives, draw upon the example of the Freedom Riders to recognise and fight oppression in their own lives and
on gain more information on writing reviews. These session plans may be adapted or combined to suit the needs of your pupils. We’d be very pleased to hear your feedback, or any suggestions you have for developing these resources further.

The Play
Rise Up by Lisa Evans. Age advice 13+
The tide was turning – though local governments disagreed, it would soon be illegal to segregate black Americans from white Americans on public buses, in waiting rooms or in restaurants.

And yet – in the early 1960s, many states across the south of America kept discriminating against African-Americans…

In modern day Britain, four actor-storytellers tell the stories of the Freedom Riders – principled citizens riding buses across Alabama and Mississippi, drawing attention to this illegal discrimination, and facing up to terrifying violence with peaceful resistance.

The story of the Freedom Riders is one of ordinary people becoming a civil rights movement, taking on the establishment and changing the world. In a time of Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin, and Mark Duggan, what does it mean for people to come together and rise up?

**The lesson plans contain extracts of the script and a full copy of the text can be purchased directly from the Theatre Centre website.