Drama Tuesday - The double gifts of Drama Learning

I am preparing a presentation to be given online for IDEC in Beijing. One of the questions they have asked me to focus on is about Why drama helps learning? At the same time I am co-supervising a Masters of Education Research student looking at how drama could help multi-cultural adolescents develop friendships as immigrants to Australia. In thinking about both, I come back to some earlier thinking I have been doing about the ways that drama learning works simultaneously at two linked levels. 

Drama learning is a double gift. 

In drama we are simultaneously in the embodied moment and in the wider learning moment about life.

It will help we think this as the double helix of drama learning. Just like the double helix model of DNA, there are two intertwined linked spirals.

In one spiral we learn drama through using the Elements of Drama to express and communicate ideas, stories and feelings through our bodies. At the same time, in a linked spiral we use those drama experiences to learn about life, people and relationships, story and literature. We learn about ourselves, our society and our culture through and with drama along side and with stories from life. These two spirals grow together, support learning in both.

This is why drama – when well taught – is powerful learning for life.

In the case of the research student, the drama acuities enable students to embody their experiences through doing, thinking and feeling (Applied Aesthetic Understanding, Wright and Pascoe, 2020). Simultaneously they are engaging in the matrix of experiences of multi-cultural friendships. This double linked spiral of experiences works at the same time where drama provides experiences of and insights into friendships across cultures while those same experiences of friendship deepen the drama.

Metaxis in drama learning

This model of drama learning draws on the concept of metaxis: simultaneously belonging to two worlds. Boal defined metaxis as "the state of belonging completely and simultaneously to two different autonomous worlds" (Boal 1995 p. 43) This dual state of awareness is a  key understanding in drama teaching. 

It can play out in a range of ways:

The tension between self in role and self out of role – and moving between these two states is a powerful reason why Process Drama is such a powerful learning opportunity. In this sense we can be participant in the dramatic experience (as actor) and also audience (responding to the choices made). O’Toole (1992) suggests that in theatre there always exists the dual awareness of being an actor and yet watching or being an audience to one's own performance. 

The relationship between the world of actors and their perceptions, and the perceptions of the audience. Boal coined the term spect-actor to identify the duality where  an audience member can step from being observer to actor in re-shaping the drama in forms such as Forum theatre. Metaxis is the where one can be both oneself and someone other than oneself.

Actors being and making decisions in role and out of role.

All of this matters in answer the question I started with: Why drama helps learning?

.Bibliography

Boal, A. (1995). The Rainbow of Desire. The Boal method of Theatre and Therapy. New York, Routledge.

O'Toole, J. (1992). The Process of Drama: Negotiating Art and Meaning. London, Routledge.

Landy, R. 1993, Persona and Performance, The Meaning of Role in Drama, Therapy, and Everyday Life, London: The Guildford Press.