Using Classical Drama as a Teaching Resource: A Proposal Based on Aeschylus’s Oresteia

Abstract

The didactic possibilities of the theater are well known, as demonstrated by its use in the field of Primary Education, in the Language and Literature class to promote everything related to literacy through dramatizations and other theatrical tools and in the teaching of foreing languages -for example, the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language-. This use of theater in teaching is not new, since colloquia and school theater performances were common in the Renaissance, both at the University and in Jesuit schools, to improve, for example, knowledge of Latin. In this paper, after reviewing its use as a propaedeutic tool in these areas, we make a proposal to draw on texts adapted from The Oresteia by Aeschylus attached with a questionnaire, as a complement to the theoretical study of tragedy within the subject matters of Greek literature in high school.