Drama Tuesday - What is distinctive about Drama teaching!

From time to time in reading research you find succinct encapsulations of what we do as drama teachers.  The following comes from an article by Coleman and Thomson (2021) in a discussion and reflections about an experienced drama educator who recently transitioned from the drama space she ‘made do with’, into a purpose-built ILE (Integrated Learning Environment) school. 

In the opening sections,  as good researchers do they declare their positionally.

Positioning Our Pedagogy

We approach teaching and learning in the arts and the generation of knowledge as a shared responsibility between students and teachers. This sociocultural approach emphasises the significance and development of the social competencies most likely to engage students in creative, flexible learning. Competencies likely to prepare them for the complexities of living in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.

Drama relies upon dialogic and relational pedagogy and the creation of a community of learners. Teaching episodes in drama often involve flexible, active creative processes that invite students to determine and reflect upon their own work. While teachers require curriculum knowledge, it is their ability to foster creativity and criticality in students through this complex human art form, that is of central importance to facilitating drama (O’Connor et al., 2016). As a collaborative art form, drama requires a high level of emotional safety. Participants, through drama, enter into a creative partnership (Eisner, 2002). The alchemy of quality drama teaching and learning rests upon the interdependent and relational nature of these elements.

So many points of resonance for my practice. 

They also provide an effective “definition” of drama education which I was particularly taken with. It is a useful echo location beacon for contemporary thinking about our field. 

Drama Teaching drama is unlike teaching any other school subject; it is experiential learning involving each of the senses, body language, and emotion and is often a way of engaging students who have been otherwise alienated by the rest of the curriculum (Hatton, 2020, para 9).

Drama in schools incorporates both drama as an aesthetic discipline and as a

pedagogy for exploring and creating. As a pedagogy it is often valued in schools for its ability to engage students with other curriculum areas (Wilhelm, 1998). Drama invites participants to explore complex responses through fiction and employ both their affective and cognitive faculties to engage, resist and act (O’Connor et al., 2016).

As a pedagogy, drama welcomes play and experimentation for possibility thinking and problem solving, aligning it with the current educational focus upon creativity, resilience and flexibility (DICE Consortium, 2010). Educators acknowledge that drama elicits the playful, critical, the collaborative and the opportunity-seeking behaviours essential to the unpredictable future of our twenty-first-century learners (Pascoe, 2015). Drama can activate soft skills and engage diverse learners through integrated learning experiences in an imagined setting (Anderson & Dunn, 2013; Jablon, 2017). As Luton (2016) acknowledges, when drama entered the Aotearoa New Zealand curriculum in 1999 as a distinct subject, a number of schools were unprepared. Years later, drama classes continue to struggle for space, resources and expertise. Despite these hurdles, as an active and embodied medium, drama remains inclusive and accessible to a range of learners (Stinson & O’Connor, 2012).

In Aotearoa New Zealand, drama practice is underpinned by a strong ethic of manaakitanga (the shared values of integrity, trust, sincerity, equity) and ako (to teach and to learn). These two Māori concepts facilitate the shared negotiation of a kawa (etiquette or protocol) and provide a living agreement for praxis (Cody, 2015; Te Kete Ipurangi, 2011). Ensemble building within drama classrooms relies upon the creation of whanaungatanga or sense of family connection. Such a connection is supported by the dialogic relationship of teacher and student, which upholds ako through the provision of a space in which students are valued and validated (Cody, 2015). Enhanced by the physical, drama spaces work towards the ongoing development of learning communities that are democratic, and inclusive in which participants are heard and repositioned learners (Leggett & Ford, 2013).

As noted earlier, the majority of Aotearoa New Zealand drama teachers are particularly adept at flexible pedagogy and the challenges of adapting spaces. As detailed by Luton (2021), drama teachers have a greater reliance upon open spaces than others’ and accordingly make space for groups, rearrange furniture, or get rid of it. When teaching the default position of many drama teachers is alongside students in a circle to ensure interactions between both teachers and students (Kariippanon et al., 2017) This provides an embodied commitment to a collaborative pedagogy and the creation of an inclusive, democratic space (Vettraino & Linds, 2018). The drama classroom and its capacity to be open, transient and responsive lends ‘itself to transformation by participants and the teacher’ (Nicholls & Philip, 2012, p. 584).

Absent from the drama teacher’s classroom are the obvious distinctions between the teacher space and student space. As Lambert, Wright, Currie, and Pascoe (2015) explain the drama classroom is one dedicated to students’ becoming and offers a flexible space that can adapt to ‘varied pedagogical approaches and purposes’ (Nicholls & Philip, 2012, p. 586). It operates as a brave space for learning and creating that welcomes the ‘strengths and weaknesses of participants’ (Nicholls & Philip, 2012, p. 584) and is negotiated in partnership (Rands & Gansemer-Topf, 2017).

While there are parallels in the pedagogical strategies of the drama teacher and those advocating for ILE’s, little research currently exists on ILE classrooms and teaching in the arts. Designed to cultivate flexible, adaptable and mobile citizens for the competitive global economy (McPherson & Saltmarsh, 2016) the utilitarian goals of the ILE classroom remain problematic for the arts practices.

Does this resonate with you?

The contextualising for New Zealand is also interesting as Australian educators, take more notice of First Nations ways of thinking and knowing and being. 

References

Coleman, C., & Thomson, A. (2021). No Drama: Making Do and Modern Learning in the Performing Arts. In N. Wright & E. Khoo (Eds.), Pedagogy and Partnerships in Innovative Learning Environments. Singapore: Springer Nature.

Drama Tuesday - What's in a prop?

 “What is this quintessence of dust?” 

Duchess is looking for his brokendown drunk father, a former Shakespearean actor reciter in vaudeville houses. He does not find his father but he is handed something left behind by his father.

 At the height of his father’s fame, when he was a leading man in a small Shakespearean troop performing to half filled houses, he had six of these cases and they were his prized possessions.

The gold embossing on this one was chipped and faint, you can still make out the O for Othello.  Throwing the class, I opened the lid. Inside there were four objects resting snuggly in velvet lined indentations: a goatee, a golden earring, a small jar of black face, and a dagger. 

Like the case, the dagger had been custom-made. The golden hilt which had been fashioned to fit perfectly in my old man’s grasp, was adorned with three large jewels in a row: one ruby, one sapphire, one emerald. The stainless steel blade has\d been forged, tempered, and burnished by a master craftsman in Pittsburgh, allowing my father in Act 3 to cut a wedge from an apple and stick the dagger upright into the surface of the table, where it would remain ominously as he nursed his suspicions of Desdemona‘s infidelity.

But while the steel of the blade was the real McCoy, the hilt was Gilded brass and jewels were paste. And if you press the sapphire with your thumb, it would release a catch, so that when my old man stabbed himself in the guts at the end of Act Five, the blade would retract into the hilt. As the ladies in the loge gasped, he would take his own sweet time staggering back-and-forth in front of the foot lights before giving up his ghost. Which is to say, the dagger was as much of a gimmick as he was.

When the set of six cases was still complete each has its own label embossed in gold: Othello, Hamlet, Henry, Lear, Macbeth, and – I kid you not – Romeo. Each has its own velvet mind indentations holding its own set of accessories.

P. 247 

Your challenge is to make imagined prop cases for other plays.

What are four emblems central to Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet?

What would you choose to symbolically encapsulate any other of Shakespeare’s plays? 

Or any other play that you can perform?

How might this activity of looking for the essence of a play help you understand a role?

Towles, A (2021) The Lincoln Highway, New York, New York, Random House, 

Drama Tuesday - Identification

The Experience of Humanity

Key to the experience of drama – as an audience member but also as an actor and director – is our capacity to empathetically identify with characters and situations in drama. 

That doesn’t mean that we have to “Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war” in bloody assassination or become a husband and wife team intent on regicide or be an abandoned fourteen year old swallowing a potion to fake death when abandoned by her lover. But, when we experience drama we share some of the emotion and thinking. We laugh or cry; our senses and emotions work in overload. 

This is a tricky issue (particularly for some parents and community members) who fret at the idea of children confronting issues and emotions – and fear of losing control. 

But at its heart identification is the concept of recognising that drama is experiencing the shared experiences of being human. Drama, particularly great and lasting drama, works directly on our senses of seeing and hearing. It impacts on our focus and attention , our thinking and emotions. It registers with us somatically, our breathing rates, our postures, our muscles. All of this physical action is directed towards the mental and emotional understanding of people (who could be like us, or not) in situations and relationships (that we can imaginatively enter).

As much as I can say, rationally, that what I am experiencing in drama is just an actor representing action symbolically, the significance lies in the connection with the human experience of others because I am standing in their shoes as if it were happening to me. 

To put it another way, identification in drama is the moment that has the Ah Ha! impact.

All of this is preamble for the following. An analogous experience in literature – reminding us of the connection between the arts

In a lifetime of reading, a new experience. 

I turned page 357 of Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land and find for the first time a fictional representation of Nannup. 

My parents Nannup wedding 1949

Nannup is my mother’s heart land. She grew in this South West Western Australian timber town. In school she won the prize as Dux of Grade 7 when she was 12. She lived with her mother Win and sister Carmel and brother Francis. After her death we found that she was born out of wedlock. (See the investigation by our Historian/Doctor son, Phillip, for that story.)

The black and white photo of her wedding shows her outside the wooden church with my father, Richard (mostly known as Dick). In summers camping at Dunsborough we would make family pilgrimages to Nannup – in scalding heat, of course. It is heart land for me too. Songline contours on my soul.

It is therefore strange to finally come across a fictional telling of Nannup.

I read on.

Drama Tuesday - If We Were Villains

 The Never Ending Quest – Stories of Drama Education

Let’s be clear from the very start – If We Were Villains (Rio, 2017) is a murder mystery (I will try to avoid any spoilers!). My interest in  this story is the specialist Shakespearean theatre and acting school context: the people and the setting.

The action takes place in a small liberal arts/performing arts college in an undisclosed location in the Mid-West in driving distance from O’Hare in Chicago. The action focuses on the seven remaining fourth year students in the Shakespeare Acting cohort. 

The author has neatly skewered acting types (and stereotypes) – hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, supernumerary, observer (though along the way, the roles change). These are the seven who have survived the end-of-yearly purges. Richard, pure power, six foot three, carved from concrete, black eyes, thrilling bass voice, playing despots and warlords. Meredith, supple curves, skin like satin, designed for seduction. Wren, Richard’s cousin, ingenue, girl next door, waif thin, Filppa, tall, olive skinned, cool, chameleonic. James, quintessentially heroic, handsome like a Disney Prince. Oliver (who narrates the story) sees himself as average in every imaginable way.

The staff are also deftly drawn – Gwendolyn, the bangle leaden, redheaded stick figure hippie acting teacher; Frederick, the chalk dust laden theatre history and text don; and, Camillo, the physical action, combat and movement teacher. And the distantly inspirational Dean of the Academy: I encourage you to live boldly … make art, make mistakes, have no regrets; we expect you to dazzle us and we do not like to be disappointed. (p. 36). The hothouse climate of selective acting schools is strongly evoked.

This group of students are all that are those remaining in the  elite program. The dark hints of savagery in the process are present from the start. Final year students focus on The Tragedies – following on from Third Year focused on The  Comedies – a Midsummer Night’s Dream production with Oliver and James as Demetrius and Lysander clad only in striped boxers and undershirts.

Their unfolding school year is effectively sketched.

The acting classes for the year begin with a ritualistic personalised purging interrogation in acting class leading to revelation and self discovery at the hands of Gwendolyn. How many times do we read accounts of acting schools setting out to break down and then re-build individuals. In so many acting school approaches this sort of blood sport is mandatory. Cathartic and cleansing and cruel. Questionable.

The text study class is full of fusty philosophy and dusty epithets. The first combat class gives a sound description of the business of the illusions of stage fighting – setting up for later as the rules of the game are disrupted when things get out of hand. The ordinariness of observations such as “being Monday, we all lined up to be weighed”, touch on the unspoken assumed practices of this sort of training.

Productions provide major plot points in the mystery and there are also well-drawn examples of creative challenges for acting students. Twice in the plot development, students are set “secret assignments”. For Halloween, each of the main characters are given roles from the Scottish Play and the instruction to learn the lines and talk to no one else about their role. On the night, they are told to turn up to the lake side with their provided costume and, without any rehearsal, play their given roles. This impromptu and high risk task is an adrenaline rush, calling on skill and trust. Oliver is assigned to play Banquo. The tensions revealed in the exercise set in motion significant plot developments. 

The second example of this is when the students secret assignment involves Romeo and Juliet for the Christmas Masque Ball. Oliver here plays Benvolio, reinforcing his status as the sidekick mate, at the edge of the main action. Passions unfold and swirl around him yet provide him with insight into his growing power as an actor. 

Major plot developments are embedded in two productions: Julius Caesar and King Lear. 

Another major feature of the writing is the frequent resort to the characters quoting from the wide Shakespearean cannon at apposite moments in their lives. As tempting as it is to skim them, each quotation is apt and pertinent to the character development. And serve as reminders us of how annoyingly obsessive and insular the lives of actors in training can be. They converse in their own language (borrowed language!) to the exclusion of all others. The quotations are wide ranging – and are a good primer for “best bits of the Bard”.

There is a deep wisdom put into the mouths of the characters. 

Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?

I blame him for all of it.

It’s hard to put into words. We spent four years – and most of us years before that – immersed in Shakespeare. Submerged. Here we could indulge our collective obsession. We spoke at a second language, conversed in poetry and lost touch with reality a little.

Well that’s misleading. Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.

A good Shakespearean actor – a good actor of any stripe really – does not just say words he feels them. We filled all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But the characters emotions don’t cancel out the actors – instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feel feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, just sort out which is which.

Our shear capacity for feeling got to be so unwieldy that we staggered untruths, like Atlas with the weight of the world.

The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent … He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief into triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough. (p. 248)

It’s important not to read too much into all of this. As I said the start – never forget that this is a mystery novel. It is designed to thrill and charm us. Yet, there is also something to tell us about acting schools. The small interchanges are revealing. (Often the text is laid out like a play script)

Meredith: “Welcome to our art school. It’s like Gwendolyn always says, “when you enter the theatre there are three things you must leave at the door: dignity, modesty, and personal space.

Philippa: I thought it was dignity, modesty, and personal pride.

Oliver: She told me dignity, modesty, and self-doubt.

All three of us were silent from moment before Philippa said Well this explains a lot.

Do you suppose she had three different things for every student she talks to me? Oliver asked. (p. 261)

Through the whole novel there is a melancholic recognition of Hamlet’s words:

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow." 

Yes, I did enjoy the mystery. I also enjoyed the portrait of the acting school and the people who live there. 

Is this a fair portrayal? 

I open our discussion to stimulate the debate.

Currently, there is turmoil in many of the known institutions – acting schools amongst them. It is reasonable, in these times, to question the practices of some, maybe all, drama schools. What lies behind the seductive images of Lotus Eaters and sirens? Why are some drama schools churning and turning themselves inside out over casting, choices of texts and practice? It is important to remember that there is a climate of disruption in the wider academy that has found its way into acting schools. 

What could be the way forward for these troubled spaces?   

Oh, and,  who killed the actor? It’s a mystery. Or, tongue in cheek, to quote from Shakespeare in Love :

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.

Bibliography

Madden, J. (Writer). (1998). Shakespeare in Love. In. United Kingdom: Universal Pictures, Miramax, and The Bedford Falls Company.

Rio, M. L. (2017). If We Were Villains. New York, NY: Flatiron Books.

Drama Tuesday - Drama Teaching in action in the Media

Part of my ongoing quest is to find examples of drama teaching happening – in novels, stories, television and films. In Generazione 56K – a show on Netflix produced in Italy – one of the secondary characters runs a drama group for underprivileged young people. We see scenes of him working with them on a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are scenes of warming up with vocal exercises; behind the scenes teen romance between actors playing Titania and Bottom; and, the obnoxiously sweet kid whose answer to everything is to give the finger. and the production that we see scenes from sends the audience into polite slumbers.

Yes, its’ a secondary story and likely to be of interest in passing. But it’s yet another example of contemporary interest in drama teaching. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13524842/mediaviewer/rm51640577/ 

Have you found any more examples to add to the collection?

Julius Caesar - WAAPA Third Year Students at the Subiaco Theatre Centre

 The Pandemic has meant that I have seen this cohort of graduating WAAPA students less than previous ones. I was eager to see how this group of students were progressing

From the opening the production had a strongly stated sense of aggression – an animal spirit that manifested itself in the mob. The panther like movements towards the corpse of Caesar during Mark Antony’s speech worked with a kind of savage ferocity that worked well.  

As always with being an audience for young actors I ask myself key questions. How effectively was the meaning of the text interpreted and communicated? How well was the physicality of the character shown? 

This production revealed some excellent text interpretation that captured the nuance of meaning and was well-paced. Having noted that, particularly in the scenes between Brutus and Casca,  there were some sections that were less successful. Part of the issue for us, is that we know so many of the often-quoted speeches so well, that we spot missed opportunities more easily. It’s not easy to carry off lines like Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war… or chart the nuances of shifting irony of the repetition of Brutus is an honourable man… But the play depends on them. 

There is a curious conundrum about this play. As is so often the case and also evident in this production, the title is abbreviated from the original: The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. How can this be a tragedy – in a classical sense – if the main character is dead by the beginning of Act 3 Scene 1? And what is Caesar's fatal flaw? Who are the real protagonists in this play? Brutus? Mark Antony? Casca and the Conspirators? One of the questions for this group of actors to answer: who do the audience most value as they leave the theatre? In this production I came away with a stronger sense of Brutus. I wonder if that was the director’s and actors’ intention.  

The animal imagery and savagery was evoked powerfully. Full blooded battle scenes were staged well. The costuming gave a vaguely stated sense of time and place. We have become used to cross-gender casting. Accepting the convention brings with it a blurring of expectations. But I was worried by some of the physicality choices in one cross gender role that relied heavily on contemporary gestures and body language from teen TikToc portrayals. The licking knives touches from schlock horror flicks also occasionally verged on the laughable. 

The simple setting of three broken columns and a simply raised dais evoked a sufficiently classical mood. Subtly through the action of the play, the broken columns changed lighting states, glowed from an inward lighting and, at the crucial moments of Caesar’s assassination, flowed with blood. Simple, but effective. 

The Subiaco Theatre Centre MainStage with its corner stage is a warm and forgiving performance space. It is kind on voices. The production made excellent use of the various entrances through the audience (though a couple of times, errant swords in hilts, might have been perilously close to those sitting in the aisle seats!).

As always, I am interested to see our forthcoming generation as they stand on the cusp of the profession. Overall, I was not disappointed by the promise shown. 

Drama Tuesday - Every Brilliant Thing – Black Swan State Theatre Company

One of my least favourite theatre forms is the one person show. Too often it is the refuge of theatre companies stretching their budgets. And as a Drama Marker I have seen literally hundreds of Original Solo Performances (a required component of Year 12 Drama in Western Australia). It is therefore great to report that I left this production with a sense of up lifting enjoyment and admiration for the skilful performance that engaged the audience.

Staged in the Underground Theatre, in the round (a more successful configuration than end stage), the audience are close to the action. As they enter, Luke Hewitt welcomes them into the space and hands out cards: some have a number and a single word like ice cream; others have longer words or phrases. During the show, when the actor calls a number, the audience member calls out what’s on the card. 

The action eases in. We meet a six year old who has to take his old dog, Sherlock Bones, to the Vet to be put down. A member of the audience is invited to be the Vet; the audience member’s coat becomes the dog. A pen is borrowed from another audience member to become the syringe. The empathy from the audience is immediately established. Quickly we move to a little while later in the boy’s life when his mum tries for the first time to commit suicide and his dad picks him up from school to go to the hospital. A different audience member is called on to be dad and they sit on two chairs added to the space. In a quick role reversal the actor tells the audience member to be the boy and to keep asking one question: why? The actor then becomes the dad inarticulately trying to answer the stream of why questions about what has happened.  

The boy’s response to his mother’s attempted suicide is to start a list of good things. Cue the call outs from audience members. The list helps his mother when she comes home from hospital. But is then forgotten until a later attempted suicide. Then squirrelled away. Then as a young man at University, he meets a girl and through the list shared, finds a life ordinary and suburban until she too leaves him. She leaves him the growing list and he continues until there are a million brilliant things on the list. 

This was a joyous production (joyous is not a word I often use). It creates a sense of community inside the theatrical event as audience members call out contributions to the growing list or are called on to become the Vet or the Dad or the Girlfriend. It fits within the current vision of Artistic Director of Black Swan, Clare Watson’s commitment to “promoting empathy and building community through collaboration”. 

As I said, I left the theatre feeling good. 

There is such skill in the way that the audience were gently and warmly led into the life of the action and how their responses were shaped and nurtured. Skilled acting (Luke Hewitt) and direction (Adam Mitchell). The audience bonded and collaborated and contributed in an unforced way (so often not the case in collaborative performances). Obviously, each performance will have a unique flavour and I hope that each audience member leaves with a similar sense of the power and satisfaction of theatre played well.  

There is much for Year 12 students to keep in mind for their Original Solo Performance. Of course, it is not possible in an exam situation to create that sense of collaborative bonding (it is after all, an exam). But they can pay attention to:

• Building an immediate sense of place and space in role and situation with minimal props or setting

• Bringing to life moments in time that make an audience (examiner) share emotion and identification – co-creating drama

• Creating and managing dramatic tension powerfully and tangibly

• Shaping dramatic action (within the time limits) to give a satisfying sense of rising action moving towards satisfying conclusion

• Applying skills, knowledge of form and style – the bread and butter of their learning in the course

Above all, stepping over the limits of being one person alone in the space. Most drama we see is not monologue, it is dialogue. It builds on the interactions between people and the dynamic of action created by ideas, circumstances and personalities. What Year 12 students do – and we forget at our peril what a demanding task this is – is to bring to life before our ideas a complete drama in a short span of time. When it happens, it is what theatre always does best – bring to life an enacted experience for an audience’s wonder and delight. 

It’s important to remind ourselves what we ask our Year 12 students to do in Drama. It’s a big ask and each year students respond by showing us their capacity to amaze. Every bit as challenging as Year 12 Physics (if I can climb onto that soap box for a moment). The power of drama and theatre reminds us, again and again, of why it enriches our lives.

Excellent and supportive resources for teachers and audience members are provided. https://bsstc.com.au/learn/resources

Just a  reminder about what our Year 12 Drama students are required to do.

https://senior-secondary.scsa.wa.edu.au/syllabus-and-support-materials/arts/drama 

Drama Tuesday - A little manifesto from 1996

Education paradoxically is both notoriously conservative and dangerously revolutionary – and mostly at the same time. Who would want to repeat the abject aridity of teaching english without literature, language without context. Who would want to teach the arts without the disciplines, lost in some abandoned contested territory. In affirming the value of conserving values in Arts education, we recognise the strengths of traditions and past contexts and cultures for their power to inform this moment in time. IN looking forward we recognise opportunities in new technologies. We value innovation and engage with it.

Think about the links between societies of impending change. What happened in societies where the sickle was invented. What is happening in our society where other technologies are changing the ways we tell stories, express ideas and communicate.

The world is not schematically simplistic – conservatism on one side dialectically opposed to brave new worlders. If it was, then the future would be written by soap opera outliners. We need a world view that recognises and celebrates complexity and exploits it rather than fights against it. The world is essentially muddy and we need to silt the mirky marshiness to make sense of our ways forward.

In case you haven’t noticed, the ways young people tell stories is changing. 

There are implications for education.

There are implications for the Arts. 

To make judgments we need shift our frames of reference. 

Instead of building a thumping pulpit of judgment – sickling tall poppies – let’s develop a climate that supports innovation, encourages questioning, values divergence and complexity and celebrates those who shift the focus. 

In case you haven't noticed, the ways young people tell stories are changing. The stories are none the less important nor the telling of them. But the influences of video clips, MTV, interactive multi-media, television and other advertising, new and evolving technologies, are re-shaping both the ways young people make sense of the world and the ways they express themselves.

Old hierarchies and orthodoxies are breaking down, new technologies make fresh links and connections, find new pathways; topics, themes and points of view are different; there are marked shifts back and forth along the objectivity-subjectivity continuum; the process of telling the story is as important as the story artefact. There's a useful image doing the popular rounds at the moment - surfing in hyperspace and that is an apt image for the process of developing an original piece of youth theatre for the 1995 Festival of Perth, called somewhat enigmatically: Here! Now!

This joint project of the Leeming Youth Theatre, WA Youth Jazz Orchestra and STEPS Youth dance Company has been an example of some of these key elements. Bringing together young people from three different but related backgrounds was only the beginning of a sustained collaboration.

Over almost eighteen months, participants have been asked to work from within their own discipline to reach out and make connections with other arts forms: dancers to use their voices as well as their bodies, actors to move, musicians to act and move. But more significantly, the process has focused on young people taking a driving role in the creation of the work. Ideas

have been sifted, explored, developed and shaped by the collective work of the members of the collaborative ensemble. The role of the adults collaborators - director, musical director, collaborator and dramaturgs - has been shaped by the driving wave of the ideas of young people.

To make a judgement about this project - and its short and long term effectiveness - we need to make a shift to a different frame of reference. This work has given rise to the awkward but accurate buzz phrase of the moment is "hybrid arts". While there's always a danger of overstating early trend signs, the work on the stage (can we even use that term any more?)

reflects a significant perceptual shift in story. There are implications for education. There are implications for the Arts. The process has been as fascinating as any product on the stage. The impact of the process on the dramatic text is notable. There is that crowding of ideas, conflicting values, elisions of narrative, experimentation with type, archetype and cliche characters from soap opera and worse. 

All involved have had to acknowledge and incorporate the ideas, values and limitations of an empowered group of young people. This has meant an intrinsically different way of working. As young people have been asserting their voice, style and approach to the product, the process has shifted from a hierarchical (sometimes seen as masculine) way of working to a collaborative approach. Writers, dramaturges and: directors have had to come to terms with different ways of working, different ways of telling , different forms and structures of narrative. As young people have been empowered b y the process, there has been a serious re-evaluation of the creative partnerships between adults and young artists. This sort of empowerment will lead to a questioning of the traditionally power laden role of the director - and teacher as director.

Can these young people ever go back to the theatre where actors are cattle (to remind us of Hitchcock's famous quip?. 

What is the role of the actor in the creation of the dramatic text? 

What is now the role of the writer and what are the limits and frustrations that are placed on that role? 

Can we ever again see the playwright as arbitrator on all matters as we find in the, say, the proscriptive and rather quaintly literary scripts of a George Bernard Shaw? 

Can the drama class be a tabula rasa for the teacher to scrawl and experiment on? 

Are drama students to be manipulated and pushed around?

In short, the obvious answer to these questions is no. There has been a significant paradigm shift. The debate that still needs to be faced centres on the question of whether this shift in thinking is desirable, general, irreversible? How will drama courses look if this empowerment of the ideas and values of young people is a general shift? What happens if there develops a number of approaches - ones that favour empowerment and ones that retain a dominant (writer/ director/ etc) and subservient role (the sort of master-student relationship so often seen in the traditional approach in the ballet studio)? What will happen when this generation of young actors enters the profession and runs headlong into that other tradition? Is this case being overstated? What are the limitations of the student actor as writer/creator/participant, controller of the creative text that emerges? Is there sufficient aesthetic distance m the process to enable ideas to be taken in, massaged, developed and realised.

What is happening in terms of the art of story is even more fascinating. The nature of story 1s changing m the face of many pressures. Dramatic texts such as Here!Now! reflect these shifts. By nature, the story is now more dynamic - in jargon terms, it is more interactive: the participants in the process have a role in the creation of meaning and the manipulation of what happens. The days of the "sanctity" of the text are numbered. As reader response theorists win the hearts and minds battle for education, so too do the ways stories are told by young people.

This is a (if not “the') cutting edge of narrative. When people try to apply different more traditional frames of reference, they find themselves confounded or perplexed or even confronted. To a mind set brought up on the well-made story, crafted and honed and even elegant, the roughness and unfinished qualities of stories like Here!Now! are questioned - perhaps even an anathema. But, it is timely to remember Peter Brook's exhortation to rough theatre where immediacy is more important than finish.

If you make an analysis of Here/Now! it is a thin narrative - that is not to say that there is not a throughline or characterisation or resolution of those characters and situation. But it is thin. The narrative can be simply stated:

Styx loses Stephanie to Kirby; there are those inside and those outside; those inside have the illusion of safety and those outside carry threat, but appearances are not reality.

It is a play on the old idea of the musical: boy loses girl; girl gets other boy; first boy is proven right but no one wins the girl. The nature of the throughline is different - there is the use of repetition, extension and variation, and time manipulation that breaks through

expectations of linearity and perplexes. But there is a narrative line, it is simply not the same complex throughline of drama from other perspectives. Does this make it any less satisfying or complete? Perhaps. I also makes it different and underlines the need to approach all drama with a clear understanding of its contexts. The judgements we then choose to make should be, at least, informed.

The depth of the narrative lies in the implicit complexity, not the apparent complexity. The narrative alludes to mythology but doesn't explain it; the action accepts concepts such as street kids, drug culture, etc rather than explains or fleshes them out as if the audience might have difficulty understanding them. These elisions in narrative structure are a problem for people who want to a spoonfed television generation who need resolution in a short time frame.

The dynamic of the group devised piece is different from the well-made play penned by the dominant playwright (with maybe a partner) and delivered through _a traditional, hierarchic system. The group devising process shapes a different sort o! performance piece. Group devised plays are more anarchic, free-form, associational, energetic, tension ridden and driven. They produce narratives of different sorts, derived from within other frames of reference.

Is this just a sign of these particular times - this so called Generation X-ness?

Maybe~ !hough I suspect there are deeper and more interesting, a recognition of the shift ~rom the traditional generational impatience - once cutely called the generation gap - to a more significant expectation from young people, a demand and assertion that they have a right to be heard. As the century has passed there has been a drift towards a different perception

of youth as a concept. As inexorable commercial and media forces have created and invented teenager-hood, so there has been a corresponding growth and acceptance of the idea that this is not just natural and right but expected and mandatory.

The dialogue in this piece does reflect soap opera qualities. In its predictability and triteness there are some hints of the role models and values of the society of young people. In a so-called post modernist society, there is also a questioning of a need for dialogue to be original and novel; there is a reliance on tried and tested language patterns perhaps underlining a need for familiarity and safety in unsafe times. The attempts to heighten the language through the use of repetition, vocal patterning, chorus work and what some call poetic diction, is an interesting response to a world where that very soap opera predictability is the dominant mode. ( And, it is interesting to note how few commented on this aspect of the Here! Now! project!) But there is a tension in this dramatic text between the intention and the result is the dialogue and language simply a reflection of what exists or a questioning. Is this piece a mirror held up to reality? Or does it attempt - and perhaps fail - to be something else?

Similarly, in world where realism is the dominant form of story telling - through film and television - it is interesting to see plays where this approach is questioned. The disjointing of reality in this piece is notable.

Traditionally, fin de siecle society is typified as lethargy, longueurs, entropic looking back through rose or jaundice coloured glasses. By contrast, Here!Now! shows an energy, a commitment, even a fervour that questions such a mannered and stylised approach. When you see the sense of passion and diversity in the face of the blandness of life around them, you can understand the impatience and underlying anger. As the world around them becomes homogenised, globalised and generally duller - the economic imperatives driving the social fabric into designer but duller mass production, is it any wonder that there is a sense of rebellion fuelled by

anger.

When the dramatic text produced is examined closely, it is interesting to draw the parallels. with the ideas and values of playwrights/directors like Brecht who over fifty years ago was advocating a similar dislocation of the conventions of drama m search of awakening the audience. In Brechtian drama, there is a deliberate introduction of distancing elements such as songs, fragments and incompleteness, the use of music, stylised setting and properties, episodes rather than scenes, and a deliberate move away from seeking catharsis. Similar elements are strongly present in Here! Now!

Developing this line .of :thought about the Here! Now! project is not to turn a blind eye to its limitations. Questions I continue to ask include:

• Has _the project been so inward looking that it merely delivers another version of teenage angst?

• Has !here been a narrowing of perceptions to the known, the safely predictable?

• Have the choices made been a reconfirmation of existing prejudices or narratives rather than a genuine opening up of possibilities?

• Has the repetition, use of predictable dialogue and situations been a limiting rather than liberating factor?

• Could there have been a more satisfying approach to characterisation and narrative throughline?

The answers will vary according to your frame of reference.

Reaching towards some conclusions

Education is paradoxically both notoriously conservative and dangerously visionary - and often both at the same time. The Arts are also.

Is this production a sign of something new and visionary? Or is it a blind alley at a time of great societal uncertainty and upheaval.

It is appropriate that dramatic texts such as Here! Now! do question and debate traditional forms and ways of working. However, equally do we want to repeat the abject aridity of that great experiment of English without literature, language without enriched contexts?

While it sounds like having a two bob bet each way, there is a place for education to both affirm and question. In affirming the value of conservative approaches, education recognises the strengths of traditions and past contexts. In looking forward, we recognise that arts education is a powerful opportunity to engage with new technologies and ways of telling. If we don't recognise the past, we abdicate the long trajectory of learning. If we aren't involved in the debate about new ways of structuring, we don’t have the credentials - the street cred - to critique them.

The reviews and reactions of many to this project has been an interesting insight into the limitations of some of those looking - and perhaps, equally, of some of those participating and shaping. It is perhaps typical of this Generation X approach to leave the issue unresolved with a metaphoric and stereotypical, frustrating, youthful shrug of the shoulders. But we should not read this as a sign of disinterest. Behind the carefully cultivated veneer of the young, their apparent insouciant lack of caring is a passionate and burnmg need to be heard and understood. They simply cannot be dismissed. Projects such as Here! Now! have a place, a right and need to be taken seriously - from their own frames of reference.

4 April 1996

Drama Tuesday - The past empowers us for the present

 In 1994 Wayne Fairhead was keynote speaker at The NADIE (National Association for Drama in Education – now Drama Australia) National Conference in Perth. Wayne spoke from his experience of drama education in Ontario, Canada but also from a local perspective as he was once a local lad. 

In 2021, as drama educators in Australia face a Review of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts being conducted by ACARA the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, it is timely to reconsider some of the ideas that Wayne spoke about back in 1994. There are powerful resonances 

Curriculum is in a state of profound and constant change all around the world. We are being asked to be totally accountable by a society that sees our tasks in contradictory terms. Hence the jargon and whatever you want to call these action objectives – learning outcomes, standards, targets, etc. As teachers I think one feels powerless when changes happened so suddenly and then so called experts suggest a seemingly new direction.

Educators who tackle restructuring are caught in a time warp between the old and the new. On the one hand teacher teachers are being asked to teach the students to think – to forsake superficial coverage of content for depth and understanding. On the other hand they are still judged publicly and privately by standardised tests that emphasise isolated facts, wrote learning and content coverage.

I am hoping that we can find ways of sharing Wayne’s whole keynote with the wider drama education community. His theme was EMPOWERMENT AND A CHANGING CURRICULUM. 

I don’t think that what effective teachers, and I mean drama teacher specifically, actually do in their classroom needs to change all that dramatically. What we have to learn to accept is firstly to live with ambiguity and secondly develop an ability to clearly state what it is we expect our students will learn. The ambiguity is not going to go away – change is too rapid and individual countries do not control their economies. No one has all the answers therefore the team becomes increasingly more important. We can only solve problems together locally nationally and internationally. This is where I wish to affirm the statement that NADIE is “pulling a lot of strings” at the moment. It is! Here in Oz you are indeed lucky. You are a national team to be reckoned with. In Canada it’s a constant struggle because of the regionalism that exists. 

And so where do learning outcomes fit into all of this-the empowerment process and ongoing curriculum change. They are an attempt to CLARIFY what it is we do in our classrooms. They endeavour to provide an OPEN agenda for students. 

The focus on students is a timely reminder. 

There is so much more in Wayne’s keynote (which I re-found in a fax from him after the conference and which I have now transcribed for, hopefully, another generation). 

There are many connections with Wayne as he visits his family here (when – in pre-COVID-19 times – he could) and we met on many occasions around the world through IDEA. In 2004 Wayne was the Director of the IDEA Congress in Ottawa, Canada and continues his life long support for drama education.  

It is important that we do not lose sight of the shared wisdom of the past particularly when it can enlighten us about the present and future. 

And the peacocks that rule the roost in The New Fortune, still parade themselves across the stage as a descant on Hamlet’s lament for Poor Yorick. And my sad commentary on what the University has lost. 

The New Fortune Theatre, University of Western Australia

Drama Tuesday - Spaces of Performance

 Connecting drama students with their immediate world

There is a useful introduction to outdoor theatre included recently in the TheatreFolk site:

https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/theatre-history-introduction-to-outdoor-theatre/ 

Drama has many spaces. It can be performed in purpose-built theatres. It can be performed in streets. with ingenuity, almost any space can be turned into a place to play. We teach our students ways about Spaces of Performance and recognising the challenges of making drama in found spaces.

Many schools in Western Australia have amphitheatres included in their design. Too often they become repositories of litter or passion pits for over excited students. Rarely, if ever, are they used for drama. 

There are obvious challenges in using an outdoor venue.

• The weather is always a risk. It can rain or you and your cast can swelter in the heat/cold/wind.

• There are technical challenges for lighting, sound equipment. What do you need so that your performers can be seen and heard? How do you run power? How do ensure that cables are safe (and safe in the weather)?

• There’s also security to consider – does an outdoor performance mean that you have to bump in/out all the technical equipment each time you perform?

• Sight lines and safety for audience (you don’t want to have someone’s Gran tumble down the steps).

• Most importantly, what do you need to do preparing and rehearsing your students for the space:

• Voice and projection

• Vocal safety and health in outdoor settings

• Protection from sun and wind

• Managing props and costumes (costume changes when necessary)?

Overall, there are many things to consider when you work alfresco. But the rewards for your students are many. 

There is also an important benefit in that students are helped to consider that drama doesn’t always have to be performed in a purpose-built venue. 

And that there are opportunities for drama in their immediate geographic location if they are open to them. 

I was reminded of this reason for thinking about exploring spaces of performance in the local community. 

Amphitheatre, Geraldton, Western Australia

I took this photo during my time as Consultant for Drama. I had been working in a local secondary school and the drama teacher complained to me about the lack of local theatre for her students to visit. She went on to add that her school did not have a performing arts centre or theatre space and she taught in an “ordinary” classroom. For most of my time teaching in schools, I too taught in classrooms where the furniture was pushed back and we competed with the ambient noise from other classrooms. In that situation, there is only one thing to do: to reach out to the local community. In Merredin, we worked with the local Repertory Club and used their space, the Cummins Theatre a refurbished picture palace (that had been at one stage moved brick by brick from Coolgardie). At Armadale SHS, we found a performance space in the Pioneer Village, a replica music hall. Down the road from Armadale, the drama teacher at Kelmscott SHS performed Alex Buso’s play MacQuarrie in the courtyard outside the canteen.  

Breathtaking under threatening skies

It is not the space that makes the drama.

What matters is how we fill the space. 

After I finished my conversation with the teacher, I had some time before getting back on the plane and drove around the local area. Outside the local Council buildings – 200 metres from the school – there is a full amphitheatre. I wondered if that teacher had ever thought of walking her drama class to the amphitheatre to explore ways of bringing Greek and Roman drama to life.

Drama spaces are waiting to found and filled by students.

The Theatre at Epidaurus