Drama Tuesday - Belonging

What does it mean to belong to a community – a guild – of drama teachers? 

In setting up the drama teaching course at Murdoch University in 2002 I involved two metaphors

• building a reporter of resources to support teaching drama on Day 1

• enrolling students in a guild or association of drama educators.

It is useful to think about why I find the concept of belonging to a group of drama educators an important foundational concept. 

It is not simply because as a graduating teacher i had impressed on me the importance of belonging. Though that is part of it. I have in professional life always been a joiner. 

This post is reflecting on the role of belonging. 

Wikipedia

Teaching drama can be isolated. Unlike, say, teaching English, in many schools, as drama teacher you are on your own because there may be only one of you in a school. 

There are many ways of belonging to a community even if you are a one person band. 

• You can establish networks and use buddy systems.

• You can be a member of a community when you are not physically located together.

• You can belong to a virtual community.

• You can belong to a corresponding community exchanging emails and snail mail and telephone calls.

• You can belong to a community by reading what others say and write and do by reading professional journals.

• You can contribute to your professional community by writing of your experiences in professional journals yourself.

• You can take responsibility for the future of the community. You can be a leader and a worker for the field. You do that from inside your drama workshop but also beyond. What you say and do with colleagues in your school, in your profession is a necessary part of contributing to the future of drama as a part of the curriculum for all students.

Belonging means that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time

Drama Victoria Facebook

One of the difficulties for productive and creative teachers is that they often reinvent their  particular wheels. Rather than efficiently re-using and re-cycling their teaching notes and resources, they make new ones each year. 

So, isn’t the issue: how do we better organise our pool of resources so that we can effectively and efficiently access them when we need to? And adapt them as our thinking about teaching drama changes, develops and grows

Using available resources better

Similarly, there seems to be a rejection of commercially published materials and textbooks. While I have never been able to use one textbook and one textbook alone, I do draw from many sources in my own teaching. But the most useful resources are people - and that brings us back to why it is necessary to have a sense of belonging.

Drama Tuesday - A Cyrano for the Times

“Take it, and turn to facts my fantasies.”

― Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

An antipodean and retro Cyrano with high school kids

Armadale SHS Production 1986

Airing on SBS this week is a delightful recent French comedy film Cyrano My Love (In French released as Edmond).

A fanciful tale of Edmond Rostand “writing” Cyrano in a madcap few days with inspiration gleaned from his actor friend’s love for a costumier; a over the hill actor desperate for a leading role; a chaotic and comedic backstage account of the writing and staging of the play before going on to be a significant success with over 20,000 productions in the 20th Century alone. 

You can take the “historical accuracy” with the pre-requisite pinch of salt. But it doesn’t make it any the less funny. The scene where Edmond improvises (in verse) the famous “nose speech, drawing images and metaphors out of thin air in a backstage walk is delightfully inventive. If you are in anyway familiar with the play (or its many adaptations like the limp Roxanne with Steve Martin) then there are resonances to be milked.

This was a play that celebrated the very theatricality of theatre – the long tradition of the playing within the play. 

But having watched it (when I probably should have been tucked up in bed) I was transported to the production that John Foreman and I did at Armadale Senior High in 1986. 

Who on earth would have thought that it was a good idea to tackle this High Romance from the French Belle Epoch? People must have thought that we had rocks in our head to even contemplate it. But we did it. 

More than that we had the reckless and rash notion of re-shaping the play into a 1960’s setting! And that we would intersperse rock songs throughout (to move the whole 5 act structure along at a cracking pace).

It was an act of hubris (of the kind that drama teachers are so fond of).

But… it did work.

And the students did respond to the text and built their own connections. 

The closing scene with the mortally wounded Cyrano finally revealing his true love for Roxanne was introduced by the melancholy of the Don McLean song American Pie

Something touched me deep inside

The day the music died

Not surprisingly, I am fascinated by these plays about plays. 

I return (as a teacher) to sharing Stage Beauty about the transition point in Restoration Theatre when women were able to take roles on stage. (Directed by Richard Eyre. The screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher is based on his play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which was inspired by references to 17th-century actor Edward Kynaston made in the detailed private diary kept by Samuel Pepys.

Of course, there is Shakespeare in Love  with all of Tom Stoppard’s wit.

“- Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

- Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

- Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

- Hugh Fennyman: How?

- Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.”

“Cyrano, My Love,” was written and directed by Alexis Michalik, adapting his own acclaimed play,

Like any high school production there were rough edges and some bumpier performances, but what this production did was to open the doors to a kind of theatre that was not harsh realism or Brechtian alienation. It opened minds to theatre seen through the lenses of time and continuity. It opened hearts to how music swells dramatic action. 

It’s a long time since that production – and those actors are now out there in the world with fading memories. The disintegrating paper scripts sit on my shelves slowing dissolving into dust (and who knows where the disc is – or if there is any technology that can possibly read it). But I wanted to remind us as drama teachers that sometimes we need to take bold and huge risks and to step out into the vast planes of imagined possibilities. Too often now I see drama in schools shuttering down; what will maximise the ATAR score thinking. It’s not easy to be bold. It’s risky business to push the boundaries. When it works, it’s worth it.

The first page of the script evokes the vaulting ambition of our production.

Now all I have to do is find the images from the production. 

Drama Tuesday - Why Drama – preparing young people for uncertain futures

 For the past few years I have been working with drama educators in China through keynotes and workshops. IDEC one of the IDEA members located in Beijing has been a wonderful collaborator on the development of interest and enthusiasm for drama teaching. There has been remarkable growth in the field. In May 2021, IDEC are staging another conference (though, of course, limited in the Coronavirus Pandemic). They asked me to talk about ho drama prepares young people for uncertain futures. 

It is useful to go back to our fundamental understandings to remind ourselves of the reasons why we teach drama. 

I share with you the recording I have just finished. Text is included below. 

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic has taught us many lessons. One of the most important is being prepared for uncertain futures. We have learnt the importance of the need to respond quickly as circumstances change. Drama teaches us about responding. Drama teaches us about improvising without pre-written scripts. Drama teaches us to focus on what it is to be human in the world.

When our students have authentic opportunities to work with the Elements of Drama, they develop their skills of enacting role and relationships, telling stories creating dramatic action and situations. They understand how tension drives dramatic action using space, and time, voice and movement and symbols, language, mood and atmosphere. The drama they learn and create and respond to develops an awareness of their world and enables them to imagine their futures. 

Drama education provides opportunities for observing and understanding people – including themselves. Through playing these roles and exploring relationships, they understand what it is to be human. This is developing  personal identity. This is a key skill for understanding and engaging with our collective uncertain futures. 

Drama education provides opportunities for trying out possibilities and exploring alternatives. In drama we can stop the action and restart it differently. We can stop the drama and reflect on what happened and what could happen next. Drama gives the chance of playing and replaying action. We can test our futures.

Drama education provides opportunities for entering the world that we live in and exploring it. These everyday stories about ordinary experiences help us understand our sense of personal, social and cultural identity.

Drama education provides opportunities for exploring the choices that we make in life – the ethical choices and the values that we need for a successful future. In learning to express and communicate ideas and feelings through stories enacted for others, our students learn to make choices and learning about becoming good people – people who care for others, show compassion and empathy and understanding. 

Drama education provides opportunities for understanding and sharing emotions. Learning to express themselves and their feelings, helps prepare for a world where it is important to show who we are to the world with honesty and authenticity.  

Drama education provides opportunities for sharing the stories of the past – the ones that have been handed to us over generations. And to understand them for the future as we hand them to our future children. 

Drama education provides opportunities for creativity and play. whatever unfolds in the future, there will continue to be the need for creativity and play. Creativity to imagine and re-imagine possibilities. Play as a context for learning. 

Drama education provides opportunities for learning together and building teams collaborating

To summarise some of the big ideas of this presentation, drama gives us opportunities to rehearse the past and present for the future.

There has been a long history of “future thinking” – thinking about the skills needed for the future. 

Writing in 2018 before the Pandemic, Stowe Boyd identified 10 Work Skills for An Uncertain Future.

I share some of this this work with you to make the point that Drama education can and does develop these skills. 

To this list we can add that drama helps us respond to the uncertain futures through developing our skills in:

• responding to people, relationships and situations - drama is action and response

• problem solving – Drama is active problem solving

• working together collaboratively for shared goals – Drama is team work

• creative and critical thinking – Through Drama we ask questions and work creatively

We are not alone in seeking to re-imagine the world of learning for uncertain futures. As we meet in 2021, UNESCO is in the midst of project of magnitude that we should pay attention to. And we need to remind the decision makers and policy makers of the role of drama in educating for the future.

The playwright Shakespeare had Hamlet provide famous advice to players in hamlet prince of Denmark. There is good advice there for us to share with our students – don’t weave your arms around too much; don’t shout your lines; Suit the action to the word, the word to the action. And at the heart of drama education is his advice 

“the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature”.

We don’t know what the future will bring – some things good, some things uncertain. But we will always have drama as a powerful way of holding the mirror up to what we see. 

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. 

I am a proud advocate for the power of drama to enrich and enhance the lives of young people.I encourage you to be the voice and action of drama education in your world. It changes the lives of all who participate. 

You can find more of my thoughts and ideas at www.stagepage.com.au 

and through IDEA www.ideadrama.org 

Thank you for listening. 

Bibliography

Boyd, R. N. (1988). How to Be a Moral Realist. In G. Sayre-McCord (Ed.), Essays on Moral Realism (pp. 181-128). New York: Cornell University Press.

Drama Tuesday - Teaching Improvisation

How is drama travelling a year into the Pandemic?

We are a year into the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic. Even though the roll out of a vaccine is happening in countries around the world, there are still students not in classes – not in drama classes. In many places, theatres remain closed and creatives are out of work.

The immediate responses to the Pandemic are one sign of the vital concerns felt in the drama education community – a pragmatic response.(See, for example, the support from IDEA:  https://www.ideadrama.org/Supporting-teaching-drama-and-theatre-in-these-times)  

But how are we travelling now 12 months on?

If anything, the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic has provided increasing opportunities for these alternatives to drama teacher education to flourish. In the midst of disruption there are  entrepreneurial openings (for example, Roundabout Theatre Company, 2021. https://sites.google.com/schools.nyc.gov/theater-ralp/home). 

The rescue has two modules – with grade related resources. Module 1 focuses on using your voice; Module 2 is an Introduction to Design. There are lesson plans and video resources to support instruction as well as independent  student learning.

There are professionally produced videos with personable presenters published in a YouTube channel. Check out the Using Your Voice: Vocal Warmups video to see if it will work for you.

For teachers working in Zoom environments these are valuable resources.

As always, check that these resources are suitable for your students.  also, question whether the US accents are useful or helpful. 

Australia

Closer to home, the Inclusive Creative Arts digital teaching resources produced by the New South Wales Arts Unit are also worth considering. 

https://digital.artsunit.nsw.edu.au/the-arts-unit-home/art-bites?subject=drama 

These Arts Bites are another source for stimulating drama activities. The accents are Australian and the presenters are enthusiastic and focus on speaking directly with students. 

The question still remains

What is unclear is how they present antidotes to trends towards dis-embodied drama education. The lure of the on-line world and the ZOOM meeting present traps for embodied drama learning and teaching. 

Drama is practical, hands on, embodied learning. How does that change in the “new normal”?

Whatever approach is taken to drama teacher education, there needs to be an underlying robust, durable, practical schema to serve as a living and responsive guide to our work.

Learning to teach drama focuses on embodied learning in the arts  (Bresler, 2004). Through practical, hands on experiences in the drama we model the ways that your students learn the arts and ways that you teach the arts. This engenders embodied teaching.

Bibliography

Bresler, L. (2004). Knowing Bodies, Knowing Minds - Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Drama Tuesday - Recipes for making drama teachers

Making a drama teacher is not constructing a robot – the mechanical bolting together of components bought off the shelf or from mail order catalogues. Though maybe, we need some AI learning emerging from that worldview. 

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-recipe/ 

A more organic metaphor is needed. 

From nature we might see the seed, sprouting seedlings, searching out shoots toward the light; nurturing rain, soil and  seasons; budding, fruiting, maturing; cycles of growth, decay, dormancy and rebirth.

From our need for nourishment, we might settle on a kitchen metaphor. What are the ingredients you need for a drama teacher?

Introduction

There are many ways to make a drama teacher. This is one of the most useful I have developed through my years of working as a drama educator.

Ingredients

Interest and desire – copious amounts

• The inclination and desire to teach drama (rather than teaching something else)

• A disposition for experiential learning – where priority is given to embodied learning

• The vision to see the potential of drama for learning and teaching

Knowledge, understanding and experiences in the art form of drama and theatre – dollops

• How drama grows from and extends play

• How drama works through taking on role – mimesis and identification

• How drama tells stories

• How drama enables us to express and share with others explores, ideas, emotions and experiences

• How drama uses the Elements of Drama – role, character, relationships, situation, focus, tension, space and time, voice and movement, language, contrast, symbol, mood, atmosphere and audience

• How drama uses skills and processes to make and share meaning

• How drama uses forms and styles

• How drama stays the same and changes across time and place

Knowledge and understanding and experiences of teaching drama – spoonfuls

• How we learn about, through and with drama

• How drama curriculum is structured and used

• How we draw on a range of drama teaching and learning strategies so students learn drama

• How we we shape and plan drama learning experiences

• How we co-construct meaning with student

• How we shape learning and teaching environments and contexts responding to the emotional, social and physical needs of students

• How we learn from others making and teaching drama

• How we reflect on, assess and report student learning in drama and our effectiveness as drama teachers

• How, as drama teachers, we have a number of related but distinctive roles: teacher, curriculum designer, director, role model, mentor, resource and facilities manager

Directions

None of these ingredients on their own make a drama teacher. 

It is how you bring them all together. It’s the sifting, blending, creaming, combining, folding, together. 

Remember: The process is never fully completed. It continues to happen even as we add more and more ingredients.

We taste test as we cook. The eyes, ears, taste buds of the cook are in play at every moment. Is this the right mix? Does it need more time? Are my directions clear and focused? Am I moving too fast? Too slow? Am I sustaining the tension, focus, sills and processes, mix of Elements of Drama?

We reflect. We learn. We sometimes fail. But we always keep trying and learning. 

We ask questions. We belong to guilds of drama teachers who openly share discoveries and learn from each other. 

Finishing the Cake

The drama cake is never quite finished. It is always in the process of being made.

And, one final essential for this recipe: in the end, as a drama teacher I am the sum of all that I know and do. Each time i step into the drama kitchen I bring with me knowledge and experience that i share with others in that specific place and moment, with that distinct group of people. It is not mechanical. It is not even following someone else’s recipe. It is creating our own recipe. As a teacher I am the sum of all that I am – combined with the people in the learning space with me. 

It is not so much what we do as much as who we are.

By the way, there are academic and theorised names for this stuff and researched realities to call on. 

There are links between disciplinary or content knowledge of drama and pedagogical content knowledge (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005).

In learning to teach drama we do so by:

• Engaging in a activities like the ones we use to teach drama

• Having a specific knowledge base about the content of drama

• Knowing and being able to use specific drama teaching strategies

• Belonging to a community of drama teachers

• Having resources

In addition to these points we also need capacity to be reflective and reflexive about drama teaching.

From Learning Drama | Teaching Drama Robin Pascoe and Hannah Pascoe

From Learning Drama | Teaching Drama Robin Pascoe and Hannah Pascoe

Bibliography

Darling-Hammond, L., Hammerness, K., Grossman, P., Rust, F., & Shulman, L. (2005). The Design of Teacher Education Programs. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing Teachers for a Changing World What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.

Drama Tuesday - A Code of Ethics for Drama Teachers

All day long as I have been driving through the South-West heading to marking Year 12 Drama Practical Exams, the car radio blasts: Drama teacher on trial for sex offences with her fifteen year old student. Scandal cries the tabloid headlines.

A fuming parent knocks at the door of the drama office, complaining that his daughter has been at rehearsal from 10.00 AM to 10.00 PM on Sunday, even though she is in Year 12. The word passed around the carpark before morning school is outrage.

Restlessly, the cast of seventy in the school musical, wait as the Director rehearses the “star” of the show. Frustrated, the Director turns and blasts the waiting students for chattering: just wait your turn. Whose time is more valuable?

A Principal in a school taps his fingers on his desk waiting for an explanation from the male drama teacher about rehearsing late at night with an all girls class production. 

Another parent rings because she’s heard that in drama class, students are expected to lie on the floor in darkened rooms, being told to clench buttocks in a breathing and relaxation routine. She complains about this “meditation stuff” and calls it a cult.

There are questions raised about the local Saturday morning drama classes seemingly repeating each term the same tired exercises and not progressing kids learning. 

A Youth Theatre Director is using psychodrama techniques and is stunned when one participant discloses an episode of sexual abuse within her family. The Director is not a trained therapist. 

In a Shopping centre Mall, a cutie pie performance by a local drama talent school is taking place with associated stereotypes, over-acting, stage door parents and ego-centric “look at me” teacher.

These are some stories gathered from the field of drama teaching. 

There are many more.

The purpose of this post is to ask these questions rather than answer them. 

I know that it would help me as a drama teacher educator if there was a well-developed and widely known code of ethics for Drama Teachers and Drama teaching. 

It should be:

• Voluntarily accepted by us as a profession (always keeping in mind that there are now legal requirements to be observed)

• Transparent

• Published

• Owned by practitioners

• Endorsed by government agencies, parents, schools, community.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are many drama teachers who establish special but healthy relationships with their students. Drama teaching is relational. It thrives, when well managed, on co-construction of learning, friendships and relationships of trust. The learning in drama builds on participation, negotiation, student-centred learning and collaborative working relationships. With this learning is a need for a moral and practical compass based on clearly stated standards of practice. 

What is in your Drama Teacher code of ethics?

Drama Tuesday - Participating in Drama in virtual space

Ihave been preparing a recorded presentation for IDEC in Beijing China. The presentations focus on Building Confidence in Drama Teaching and on Progression in Drama. As part of this preparation there is a Question and Answer section and I share part of a really interesting question: 

问题：戏剧是在虚拟的情景进行体验。但有时幼儿对虚拟的场景感到害怕或不愿意参与。比如，教师构建了一个在森林里的场景，但是，个别幼儿表示不愿意去森林探险。这个时候，是否应该允许幼儿进行旁观？或者进行引导？

Question: Drama is experienced in a virtual situation.But sometimes young children are afraid or unwilling to participate in the virtual scene.For example, the teacher constructed a scene in the forest, but some children expressed their reluctance to explore the forest. At this time, should teachers allow children to be an onlooker? Or teachers should do some guidance?

To answer this question I started by thinking about participation in drama.

What is participation in drama learning and teaching – either in the virtual classroom or in the shared physical space of the drama workshop. 

In drama teaching we design our learning activities so that there are opportunities for students to participate physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. 

By this we mean that students are actively using their physical bodies. They move through space and time. They interact with each other. They use their voices. They use their muscles and limbs and move with a sense of weight, time, space and energy (Laban).

They use their minds and thinking in collaboration with their physical selves. They explore ideas, express and communicate with words, thoughts, images and imagination. 

They interact socially – having a sense of themselves and their personal identity that is shared with others in developing social and cultural identity. 

They engage with their emotions, recognising their capacity to experience and share feelings. 

In drama we want students to be doing, thinking and feeling. 

As teachers we will encourage participation at all these levels and help students understand what we are looking for from them. 

What is the application of these ideas of participation in  the virtual drama classroom?

Learning drama in the changed world means that we are all coming to terms with teaching and learning drama in the virtual world. 

We need better research to guide us. But here are some starting thoughts about 

diagnosing the issue of participation in drama with the student in the virtual space. 

To understand the issue, let us ask ourselves some questions:

• In the virtual classroom, what screen is the student looking at – an iPhone or similar? A laptop? A TV screen?

• How much space is there for moving and participating?

• Who else is in the space with the child? Is she on her own? Other there others who are watching? Is there someone like a caring parent or other who is supporting and encouraging them?

• What is the time of day? Is this part of a routine of on-line teaching or a one-off session?

• What other experiences has the child had of online learning?

• Are they confident communicators?

• What is the child’s age and stage of development?

The reason I ask these questions is because the context matters. We need to diagnose what the underlying issue is.

• Is this a drama learning issue?

• Or a general learning issue?

• Or is this a technology issue?

Some students will respond well in the on-line environment and others will find it difficult. It may be that their language competence and confidence is not yet ready for the online learning situation where their voices and images will be mediated and shared. It may be  that their technology access or confidence is limited. We need to look at the student’s situation to understand the problem.

The first thing that we must do as drama teachers in the virtual classroom is to talk individually with each child and ask them for their answers to why they are reluctant about participating. To have that conversation we need to build rapport with the individual child.

For example, 

• What is the image of us as teacher that the student has – how do we fill the frame of the screen? Are we close to the camera and look directly at them on the screen?

• How are we using our voice? Are we quiet and close or are we using our teacher voice when we have a classroom of students?

• Have we adjusted our pace of speaking? Our tone? Our vocal dynamics?

• Do we listen when the students respond?

• To work in the virtual drama classroom (or any drama class) students need to have clearly explained expectations. We call this the drama contract.

We need to establish with these students in the virtual space our drama contract. Students in the virtual classroom need to know some basic information about drama learning. As teachers we need to explain and students need to understand that: drama is practical and embodied learning. We need to explain to all our students that while we know that students have different ways of showing their learning, in this class you need to show your participation by doing, thinking and sharing your feelings. 

In practical terms, it may be that we need to show reluctant students what we are hoping they will do in the drama lesson. We could show them video clips of students in drama and explain to them what the students in the video clip are doing.  

As with all teaching, we need to plan with a sense of progression – of planning activities in drama that match the age and stage of development of the children in our class. 

Teaching drama is a complex skill and these are some of the things we consider as we plan our drama teaching.

Bibliography

Goksel, E. (2018). Exploring Drama in Education. An Interview with Professor Jonothan Neelands. ETAS Journal, 35(2 Spring), 13. 

Neelands, J. (1984). Making sense of drama : a guide to classroom practice. In (pp. 24-32). London Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books published in association with 2D Magazine.

Drama Thursday - Space as an Element of Drama in changing times

In a year when we are thinking about Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic, we have become conscious of social distancing and of teaching in virtual space. Audiences are not yet able to be in the same physical space of theatres. Classrooms have been shut down or moved on line. Yet we still think of space as one of the Elements of Drama. For example, the Australian Curriculum the Arts (ACARA) includes Space and Time in the elements of Drama:

The elements of drama work dynamically together to create and focus dramatic action and dramatic meaning. Drama is conceived, organised, and shaped by aspects of and combinations of role, character and relationships, situation, voice and movement, space and time, focus, tension, language, ideas and dramatic meaning, mood and atmosphere and symbol.

https://australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/the-arts/drama/structure/ 

But, trying to pin down how we use the term space in drama can be tricky. At one level, it’s obvious that when we talk about space we mean the physical immersions of areas in which we work, the height, width, depth within which we move. This is physical space in which drama happens. 

Within this physical performance space we can make choices about how we use space to create dramatic action and show relationships between characters. 

In this scene from a drama performance in Nanjing, November 2020, students show the action of a group of soldiers, tied together in a forest during the Sino-Japanese War. The action of being physically and symbolically tied together amplifies the relationships between the individual soldiers.

You can see how this is developed in the video of the unfolding dramatic action.

This is embodied space – using our bodies to show space. 

In drama we can also show social space between characters to tell the story. Placing actors close to each other, or far apart can provide audiences with ways of reading the social relationships. (the term used is proxemics)

We can also talk about emotional space between  characters. When characters are intensely involved with each other sharing dependency and status – who has high status and importance and who is subservient. 

In this example also from students in China, the relative heights of the actors, and the eyeliner focus of the actors, tells us as audience about the interconnections between these characters. 

Space is also a factor in movement. Laban identified that movement is a combination of Weight, Space, Time and Energy in movement. How we move through space shows character and dramatic action. In the video example from Nanjing, the struggle of the actors is shown how they are constrained in this moment in the story. In drama actors are able to move through space, directly or indirectly; quickly or slowly; with increasing or decreasing tempo; they can be still in the space. There can be contrast between how characters move through space to show the differences between them – an aged or older character moving more slowly, with effort and deliberation contrasted with a younger character moving with freedom and flow. 

One aspect of being in lockdown COVID-19 spaces of learning is how we include and explore the element of space in our lessons. 

How do we think about space in drama in our changed worlds?

It is one thing to talk or write about space but that is not the same as experiencing the use of space in drama. Drama learning must be physical and practical and embodied. Our challenge in these times is to make space the focus of the student learning.

  Bibliography

Laban, R. (1980). The Mastery of Movement. 4th edition revised and enlarged by L. Ullmann. London, MacDonald and Evans.

Pascoe, R. and H. Pascoe (2014). Drama and Theatre: Key Terms and Concepts (3rd Ed.). Perth, Western Australia, StagePage.

Drama Tuesday - Before I Hang Up My Hat

A guest post by John Foreman

After around forty years of teaching Drama, there are a few of my students who stand out in my memory and underline the importance for me of teaching my subject. In each case, they were kids who never stood out to an audience in performance, but they were recognised by their classmates and by me.

The first, I’ll call Brian. It was he who arrived to our Sunday rehearsal at 2:50pm. We all stared at him. Why was he late? Why was he turning up now? “You said the rehearsal was 10 to 3.”

At the outset, Brian couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. By the end of our run of four performances he could. Just. The rest of the cast, eight girls, mobbed him. They knew. His journey was far greater than any of the others, and there was a couple of very talented performers in that group. His parents were proud and probably the only ones in the audience who even noticed him.

The second we’ll call Richard. He turned up in my year eight Drama class. He possibly spoke half a dozen times in the semester. Shy. Solitary. Avoiding all attempts to engage him. As year eights, all students were assigned their classes. The following year, there he was again – his choice. And he did engage a little more. 

Year ten, there he was yet again. And this time for our end of year Panto. 

I asked him, “Richard you’ve done this for the past two years, and you hated it. Why are you here?”

“Yes, Mr Foreman, I hate Drama, but I NEED Drama.”

Such insight for a young man.

So, much as many of my young charges want to make it in the ‘Business’, and a few have, Brian and Richard underline for me what teaching Drama is all about.

We are here to foster some confidence, to nourish creativity, to expose our students to the world of performance, both their own and, hopefully, that of professional theatre.

At a promenade performance at University of Western Australia of the medieval mystery plays, I found one of my students in a corner at the interval crying her eyes out.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s so beautiful.” An ‘angel’ had just sung from the top of the clock tower. And, yes, it was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Grace’s reaction.

I often wondered why so many students wanted to be in those end of year Pantos. I wound up writing walk-on roles for those who were in Maths or Art or... and at least one for an ex-student. 

One of my practicum students told me simply it was my passion for Drama. Really? I just loved what I was doing. 

During the audition process for one of those Pantos there was one boy who said, “I thought Drama was going to be fun.” Before I could respond, one of the class jumped in, “It is! It’s serious fun.”

Perhaps my one huge disappointment is that over the years I haven’t seen that enthusiasm for drama in high school students carry over to attendance at professional theatre after they leave school.

For at least thirty of the years I have been teaching Drama, there have been upwards of 1000 students per year graduating across the state with Drama as one of their subjects. Their ‘high school love’ of their subject has not transferred to attendance once they leave school. It saddens me.

That being said, I still love that moment when a pair of Year Sevens nail a duologue to the point of bringing me to tears. Or when Year Elevens take over the design for their Antigone production, stage, make-up, costuming and poster. Or when a grandma hugs me after a performance, saying how proud she is.

Teaching Drama has been an unexpected joy. 

[I trained as an English Teacher.]