From time to time in our professional lives, we turn again to ideas from the beginning.

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In 1974 (in the last century) in studying my teaching major for Speech and Drama, we were introduced to the video documentary (on one inch videotape) Three Looms Waiting about the work of Dorothy Heathcote (1972). I found her work inspirational and influential.

Heathcote influenced many drama educators (not without some controversy). She had a long career and visited many places. Her work was written about. She wrote herself about her emerging ideas about the field as it was becoming more widely accepted and practiced.

This post is prompted by coming across the words of one of Heathcote’s last workshops in New Zealand in 2009. In that year Heathcote gave the keynote address at the Weaving our Stories Conference at Waikato University, Hamilton, New Zealand. Entitled, Mantle of the Expert: My Current Understanding, Heathcote was typically pragmatic reminding us that This will not be an academic treatise. I'm a practising teacher still – learning as I go.

Three Looms Waiting is available on Youtube

The original document is handwritten (as is so often the case – I have another of her handwritten transcripts from a presentation in Turkey around the same time). The transcription was made by Dianna Elvin and published by Dr Viv Aitken (see Viv’s website: https://mantleoftheexpert.co.nz/new-blog-mantle-of-the-expert-my-current-understanding/)

For a detailed commentary on this text, please visit http://vivadrama.blogspot.co.nz/ .

This is a long winded introduction to thinking about one – just one – of Heathcote’s ideas that has been like a beacon in my own understanding and thinking.

The DNA of drama is the contrasting impulses of tension.

I have made a short video to focus on these ideas and also include the slides themselves.