Visit an estate agent’s shop and ask for bundles of old property guides. These make marvelous props.
Recycle them in school and pass them round the English class, leaving each group of students with six houses to study. These six houses are on Compilation Street.
The students’ job is to populate each house with stereotypes. Nothing too vicious or racist… the grump, the neighbour who hates ball games, the dog lover and so on.
Each house should have at least two stereotypes living there.
The creative writing task is to plan conversations… perhaps over the garden fence… in the street…. getting out of their car… between these folk.
Remember drama thrives on problems so you could have a meek and mild librarian type having a word with their noisy ghetto-blaster-loving teenage neighbour about keeping the noise down.
Before you know it, you’ve got a Soap Opera script!
Different teams can act out their vignettes and the “Soap” action can then go down the street to another confrontation devised by another group.
