Drama Tuesday - Antidote

Drama Australia National Conference June 2-3 2023, Newcastle. University of Newcastle

 Excited to be at the Opening of Antidote the 2023 Drama Australia  Conference at University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia. Conference Director Christine Hayton (also an IDEA Elected Officer and member of the Drama Australia Board) welcoming us to the University of Newcastle. 

It’s wonderful to be back face to face. Last  time we were physically together was in Melbourne November 2018. A long time between drinks. So excited to be with colleagues and friends. 

The UON building is located on Hunter Street in downtown Newcastle. So many rich experiences to think about from a live  in-person conference. 

Day 1 Bookended by thinking about Popular Entertainment

The Opening Keynote by Associate Professor Gillian Arrighi (UNSW) posed the question:  What is it with Popular Entertainments? Researcher on Australian popular culture with a focus on the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle, the keynote challenged drama educators to think about why drama curricula give precedence to Western European legitimised theatre over the popular entertainments of music hall, magicians, singers, tap dancers  and animal shows. Gillian shared with us provocations from her course with students where they were required to research responses to exploring what popular entertainment offer to drama educators. 

The end of the day was a reception at the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle where we were regaled with popular entertainments and plied with wonderful food and drink. The entertainments were provided by Anna Gambrill (they/them) aka King Chad Love is a Sydney-based Drag King, Joel Howlett, Magician and a bevy of others including conference attendees. Much joviality and fun. 

I was entranced by the Victoria Theatre and will write another post about the experience. 

There’s more information on the Victoria Theatre available at https://www.victoriatheatre.com.au/home .

Celebrating and thanking

Drama Australia owes a huge debt of thanks to Christine Hatton and Kelly Young, Conference Directors. Thank you. Also, it is important to say that DA Board members were everywhere introducing papers and speakers, corralling the cats, making sure everyone had a good time. 

It was also a privilege to witness Christine’s paper (with Amy Gill) Reclaiming our estranged youth: Drama as  a remedy for fractured belonging. Moving. 

Drama Australia President’s Award

Colleen Roche

Congratulations to Colleen Roche, former President of Drama NSW and Drama Australia who is the 2023 recipient of the Drama Australia President’s Award in recognition for service to drama education. Colleen also serves on the IDEA Executive Council. 

Thinking about Conferences Post-COVID-19.

Being in a live conference also set me thinking about how things have changed and are changing. When NADIE (which preceded Drama Australia) was founded its charter was to run national conferences in all of the states of Australia. In 2023, Drama Australia faced a dilemma: the hosts of the conference signalled early in 2023 that they were feeling overwhelmed at  the prospect of hosting and Christine Hatton and the DA board stepped into the breach and took on the role. I am reminded of Liz’s experience with ANATS, the singing Teacher Association, whose National Board took on a similar tole when a conference was held in Hobart, Tasmania and the local association was very few in numbers.

Presenting IDEA book on behalf of IDEA President Sanja Krsmanović Tasić to Drama New Zealand President Annette Thomson and Jo Raphael, DA President

Is the prospect of running a national conference too overwhelming for stretched and hard working drama teachers? At an international level, is there a similar dilemma for IDEA? The financial, organisational and personal cost of running conferences is dauntingly huge. There’s also a changing climate of support from schools and universities about attending conferences (Registration for this 2 day event was $450.00; we were well fed and looked after but cost is still an issue). And, the issue of providing hybrid and on-line versions enters the frame. Interestingly, the decision for this conference was to not offer an online option [IDEA2022 Congress convenors also wanted that Congress to be mainly in person and had limited online offerings]. 

Is the day of the full conference experience over? 

Are we recalibrating the model of unperson sharing of practice and research?

Following a similar train of thought, it is also important to think about digital publishing. This Conference had online program – but  did not take the step into the conference app world where everything is online (which ANATS has done using Whova). 

There will be made available a collection of artefacts from the conference, from papers, etc. 

Is it time to take the step further? The world is changing.

Small enthusiastic contingent from Perth. Brooke, Felicity and Jess. 

Questions to be thought about for the next Conference – a joint Drama New Zealand and Drama Australia Conference in September 2024. 

So many other observations to make. 

More to write and think about.

For now, safely home (through a rain bomb over Perth Airport). 

Drama Tuesday - Drama education shape shifting

Reflection from the Drama Australia National Conference June 2-3 2023.

Drama is a shape shifter. Not quite in the dictionary meanings but in the sense that in drama when we take on role, we shift into the role.

I was struck by thinking about this during the Drama Australia conference over the weekend. It’s not necessarily a new thought but one to explore in this moment. 

Drama teachers are adept share shifters. 

When the drums of literacy beat, drama teaching shifts focus to bring to the foreground how drama supports language learning and use. When there is a focus on life skills, we assert the role of drama in building confidence. Drama claims a space in STEAM education with slick speediness. We hear calls for arts integration as the solution to the crowded curriculum and drama as a method. Feminist concerns remind us of the power of drama in raising issues. Similarly, as the currency of indigenous or First Nations inclusion increases, we need the reminders of the value of drama in that field. 

That is not to say argue against a need for greater diversity in drama education. 

Maybe this is a mechanism for coping with a search for reassuring relevance. Maybe it’s also politically savvy. In all of this soft shoe shuffling however, it is important to never lose sight of what drama is fundamentally and why it is a necessary part of a complete education. We need to remind ourselves that as each competing priority rings its bell, drama education is not just a vehicle for the topical or the passing educational pinup. We need to be alive to how the dominating voices are swamping or taking up all the available oxygen for arts education. We need to be true to the fundamental nature and purpose of drama education. In a world twisting and shaping itself to meet shifting educational fads, we need to plant our feet on the stage and deliver our lines with firmness. 

Drama is wily. Drama is clever. Drama is political and social and cultural. Drama is all these things and we in drama education have learnt the lesson well. But drama education needs to be true to its purpose. 

I know these can be seen as controversial thoughts. It’s not my intention to upset applecarts or to disrupt the parade. But sometimes these rebellious thoughts need a place in the conversation. 

What do you think?

Drama Tuesday - Once More Unto The Breach

 I am excited to report that I will be back in China once again from May 16-23 for the

9th IDEAC International Drama Education Conference, Zhuhai, China. May 18-21 2023. IDEAC, International Conference on the Application and Cooperation of Drama Education, the IDEA member. 

After the break of three years – the COVID-19 disruption to all our lives – I can meet again with friends and colleagues. During this time of enforced distance, we have stayed in touch and I have presented on-line workshops and keynotes. 

This conference is in Zhuhai which means flying into Hong  Kong Airport and then being swept across the The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge (HZMB is a 55-kilometre (34 mi) bridge–tunnel system consisting of a series of three cable-stayed bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands. It is both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link in the world.)

The conference will be held in the Zhuhai Grand Theatre. 

It will be wonderful to once again see IDEAC colleagues, Xiaohong晓虹 Fan范, Mr Wu and Yu Shan as well as IDEA President: Sanja Krsmanović Tasić .

For this Conference I am presenting a speech on AUSTRALIAN DRAMA CURRICULUM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 澳大利亚戏剧课程概览, a topic of great interest given the 2022 Ministry of Education policy announcements that provide an opening door for drama in schools. 

As well I am presenting a two day practical drama workshop for teachers. This process drama workshop is based on a visit I made to Xi Shi’s Hometown 西施故里 in Zhuji 2019 when I was at the IDEAC Congress in that city. I was inspired by the statues of the yarn washers and people of the village on the shores of the river. The tranquil atmosphere of the place inspired me to think about imaginatively exploring stories. This, in turn, led me to look at the story of Xi Shi as well as the traditional stories of Nü Wa. 

There are two Big Ideas to this workshop: 

1) we learn drama by making drama 

2) we learn to teach drama by reflecting on how we make drama. 

By engaging with the processes of drama, taking on roles, exploring situations and tension, time, space, and symbol, we learn to express and communicate through drama. By reflecting on the structures and strategies used in the workshop we connect with possibilities for our own drama teaching. We understand ourselves as drama makers and as drama teachers.  

Twelve hours of practical workshops has been a challenge to prepare but an exciting one. I am looking forward to working with Chinese drama teachers again. 

To support the workshop I have prepared notes for participants and slides [I like teaching with slides; they help the translators but, importantly, they help keep me on track]. and of course, I rely very much on the skill of my translators who are, in truth, co-teaching with me. 

The theme of the workshop is summed up in the title: Thinking like a Drama Teacher.

Dramathink is a wonderful term that I happily take from Nora Morgan and  Juliana Saxton, in their still inspiring book Drama: A Mind of Many Wonders (1989).

For me, Drama Thinking is making explicit for others, your thinking processes and routines. Plans for lessons are intrinsically limited to the words on the page. Drama Thinking is sharing planning choices and possibilities; it explores reasons why, taking apart the ideas, making links and connections yet staying open and flexible. 

In more recent times Peter Duffy (2015) posed the question: A Reflective Practitioner’s Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? This is sharing what I was thinking. 

This workshop draws from two StagePage publications: 

Learning Drama Teaching Drama Concepts and Strategies 

Drama Thinking. Thinking and Planning like a Drama Teacher.  

Both are available from www.stagepage.com. au. 

As always, I am happy to share my workshop notes. There’s a short version and a longer version which has a full workshop outlined interspersed with notes on key concepts included in the workshops.

You can download them here.  

I  invite feedback and ideas prompted by sharing the workshop outlines.

Drama Tuesday - The Qualities of Quality Arts Education

2022 Taiwan International Symposium on Cross-Disciplinary Aesthetic Education, 12 November 2022

This seminar is a practical outcome of Cross-Disciplinary Aesthetic Education, a country-wide educational project sponsored by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. The project is designed 

“…to develop and incorporate Arts-centric interdisciplinary courses into the curriculum at all K-12 levels within Taiwan’s education system. The main approach undertaken by our program is to  design interdisciplinary courses—which have Arts at its core—for non-Arts subjects, in order to incorporate various elements of Arts within, thereby fostering and elevating students’ aesthetic literacy and creativity”

Today was the culmination of thinking and writing about the markers of quality arts education – a long term research focus I have developed.

We negotiated the challenges of recording the presentation, setting up the links on Google Meet (two screens including presentation and translation  screens on separate devices). But it has been a fruitful and happy collaboration.

(https://www.sunburntfilms.com/) 

What is notable about the program in Taiwan is the links being actively made between arts education and aesthetic education, between arts and wellbeing in the broadest sense of the word. There are important lessons from the arts in schools for the wellbeing and health of our whole society. This is a theme picked up by Larry O’Farrell in a paper at the IDEA 2022  Congress in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he shared the work of the Canadian Network for Arts & Learning (CNAL) (https://www.eduarts.ca)  and the role of Arts Education for personal well-being, themes that I have written about with colleague Peter Wright (2014). Attention must be paid to the research on the links between arts education and health and wellbeing (see, for example, Fancourt and Finn 2019). This will resonate with the themes of the seminar and next phase planning for Arts and Aesthetic Education in  Taiwan.

The notion of the qualities of quality arts education draws on the concepts of a Project Zero publication of the same name (Seidel, Tishman et al. 2008).

A copy of the final paper can be found below:

Bibliography

Fancourt, D. and S. Finn (2019). What is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-being? A Scoping Review. Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report, No. 67. Copenhagen, World Health Organisation.

Seidel, S., S. Tishman, L. Hetland, E. Winner and P. Palmer. (2008). "The Qualities of Quality: Excellence in arts education and how to achieve it." from http://www.espartsed.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/pz-qofq-executive-summary.pdf.

Wright, P. and R. Pascoe (2014). "Eudaimonia and creativity: the art of human flourishing." Cambridge Journal of Education.

Drama Tuesday - Actors, theatre and superstition

From https://www.shakespearecompany.com/about-us/blog/the-macbeth-curse-a-history/

Hooking drama students

Drama teachers often pepper their lessons with little gems plucked from theatre history. They can be fun and can sometimes be what are the take aways from the lesson for drama students. As an art form that conjures a kind of magic through make belief, it is not surprising that theatre has many intriguing superstitions and stories. Perhaps this accounts for some of the suspicion awarded to actors and theatre.

There are many other nuggets of information for drama teachers.

For example, St. Genesius, is known as the patron saint of actors. In the third century, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, he is said to have worked as an actor in a number of plays. In order to get the Emperor’s approval, he played a role in which he satirised a Christian who was going to be baptised. In the middle of his presentation, Genesius was struck by the reality of what he was saying and was converted to Christianity on the spot, right there on the spot.

When he refused, he was put to death almost quickly after. 

It’s always worth checking  your community and attitudes to these small gobbets of  theatre history.

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/actor-anecdotes 

Or as the saying goes: break a leg!

IDEA DAY 2022

Drama Tuesday - IDEA 2022 Congress UPDATE

IDEA gathered for a Congress in Reykjavik, Iceland, July 4-8. after a hiatus caused by Pandemic and troubled times, it was a great pleasure to be with friends in person and face-to-face.

This is a link to my report from Drama4All.

I set out to capture experiences of the Congress through images, video clips and words. It is published as an ePub so that we can use technology to share some of the moments of the Congress particularly for people who could not travel to Iceland because of the COVID-19 Pandemic and other circumstances.

How do you access this Report?

StagePage has published this Report on Apple Books.

Here is the link to the Apple Books

https://books.apple.com/au/book/idea2022/id6443526061

You will be able to download to your computer and view on screen (fingers crossed the technology works for everyone) 

Part of a larger project for IDEA30

This report is a chapter from a larger project I am undertaking to celebrate 30 years of IDEA. IDEA Remembered is a personal memoir (Link here for opening pages of that project).

This chapter is shared free of charge as a service to the drama education community and IDEA. 

When IDEA Remembered is finalised in the next few months, it will be available to purchase by donation with proceeds to IDEA.

Arts Education – is it being lost in the thunder of the current election

 Arts and drama educators mostly get on with their day to day teaching. This week ACARA, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority launched The Australian Curriculum Version 9. On the whole, the focus of this major revision, politically driven, has been on strengthening Phonics in English and on headline grabbing issues amongst some such as “strengthening and making explicit teaching about the origins and Christian and Western heritage of Australia's democracy” (once again reinforcing the deep seated suspicion of dark motives in curriculum writers, sensed by some conservative Australians.

There are changes for the Australian Curriculum: The Arts – I will write about them in a later post. 

For now I focus on the relative quiet amongst the media and public about the changes in Version 9. Where is the uproar. Where is even the ripple of recognition that a change has been made that has consequences to teaching and learning?

Put simply, there is nothing showing on the Richter Scales of Education. 

The new version, despite the consultation that happened in 2021, is sinking like a stone unnoticed. 

In fact, Arts Education is not on many people’s radar this election. 

Not surprising given the focus on cost of living (petrol prices rising; inflation figures burgeoning) and the bickering and scrapping tone of the election and going for the jugular gotcha moments that dominate the media feeds.

But is anyone noticing that Arts Education is floundering in the quicksand of Australian education. Passionate few struggle to lift it up. But generally, as an education community, our focus is elsewhere. Not waving, but drowning.  

I share the media release from the National Advocates for Arts Education NAAE in full. 

Is anyone listening?

Certainly, this call falls on deaf ears of my rusted-on local representative.

ACARa advises. Version 9 will be implemented by states and territories according to their own timelines. ACARA will maintain the current Australian Curriculum website with Version 8.4 curriculum and both websites will remain live until such time as there is no need for schools to access Version 8.4 of the Australian Curriculum.NAAE statement about the 2022 federal election

Who we are

The National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) is a coalition of peak arts and arts education associations representing approximately 10,000 arts educators across Australia. NAAE members are Art Education Australia (AEA), Australian Dance Council – Ausdance, Australian Society for Music Education (ASME), Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM), Drama Australia and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). 

NAAE advocates for every Australian student in primary and secondary schools to have access to quality Arts Education across the five arts subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts.  We ask all political parties to endorse this principle.

Why arts education?

Australian and international research has continued to show the multitude of benefits that The Arts can have on student academic and non-academic outcomes. Arts Education not only fosters the development of artistic skills for art making, but it also teaches skills in collaboration, innovation, experimentation, resilience, confidence, problem-solving and communication.   Research finds that students who engage in The Arts do better academically in their non-Arts subjects than those students who do not participate in The Arts (Martin et al., 2013).

 There is ample global evidence (including Australia) that speaks to the explicit value and benefits of an Arts rich society. This enrichment begins and is contingent upon access to quality Arts Education. Arts Education plays an essential role in preparing young people and industry professionals to respond holistically, meaningfully, and purposefully to the impacts of global events. The long tail of COVID, coupled with catastrophic climate events and significant global conflict all point to the necessity of and need for Arts education in Australia. 

 It is now time to halt the erosion of support for arts and arts education that has occurred over the past decade. We ask for meaningful investment in quality Arts Education across all levels of Australian society. This means making a tangible commitment to providing increased support for rigorous and sophisticated opportunities for teaching, learning, making, producing, and creating into the future.

 What we are calling for

The National Advocates for Arts Education are calling for all political parties to consider and endorse the following policy imperatives.

1. NAAE urges all political parties to commit to the development of a National Cultural Policy that includes Arts Education and is developed in consultation with artists, arts educators, the community, and peak arts bodies to ensure a well-supported arts and cultural sector that is serving the Australian community.

2. NAAE calls for support for implementation of arts curriculums across the five Arts subjects in each state and territory in Australia from Foundation to Year 12 with targeted professional development, training, and education programs.

3. Halt the erosion of arts specific education training in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) to increase curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment course allocation time for The Arts. This extends to specialisations and time for arts learning in early childhood and primary education courses to ensure teachers are well equipped to teach at least one Arts subject in depth. See NAAE’s submission to the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review here.

4. Undo the current government’s university fee increase to Creative Arts courses. We call for an equitable tertiary education system that does not target Creative Arts degrees with increased fees on the false basis that this area of study does not lead to employment. See our August 2020 statement and September 2020 statements for more details.

5. Increase funding to the Australia Council for The Arts to specifically include funding for teaching artists in schools for existing and future programs, as well as support for arts engagement programs with students and for teacher professional learning.

6. The National Music Teacher Mentoring Program (established by Richard Gill and implemented through the Australian Youth Orchestra) be expanded with additional funding to ensure early childhood and primary school teachers also have professional learning support across the other four Arts subjects: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, and Visual Arts.

7. NAAE calls for the removal of political interference in Australian Research Council (ARC) directions for Australian research. Earlier this year we raised concerns about the increased level of government interference in independent peer-review processes, and major implications for the type of research that will occur in years to come.

8. Given the concerns raised above, NAAE calls for a federally funded Review of The Arts in Australian Schools. Within the past 15 years, two federally funded reviews have been conducted into two arts subjects; National Review of School Music Education: Augmenting the diminished (Pascoe, Leong, MacCallum, Mackinlay, Marsh, Smith, Church, and Winterton (2005) and First We See: The National Review of Visual Education (Davis, 2008). These have been significant, important, and valuable reviews that were completed before the Australian Curriculum: The Arts was endorsed in 2013.

It is now timely to recommend another review that will include the five arts subjects (Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music, and Visual Arts) included in the Australian Curriculum and how various national, state, and territory arts curriculum is being implemented and taught in Australian schools.  NAAE has proposed a draft terms of reference for the review which include:

• Relevant Australian and international research published in the last ten years, on national arts curricula in schools focusing on best practice delivery and resourcing models.

• Map current curriculum provision (intended curriculum) and implementation of curriculum (enacted curriculum) across the five Arts subjects in each state and territory in Australia from Foundation to Year 12 to ascertain: which Arts subjects are implemented in primary and secondary schools; which teachers implement the five arts subjects; how schools manage the time required to provide quality Arts learning experiences for students; and, what is the ‘actual’ time provided for each Arts subject. An analysis of the differences between the intended curriculum and enacted curriculum is required to investigate the elements that nurture and hinder implementation.

• Map current Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Early Career Teacher support offerings nationally in education courses (across early childhood, primary education, and secondary education) and identify lecturer expertise, assessment types, number of units, and hours allocated to Arts education.

• Examples of effective primary school programs that provide sequential foundational learning in the five arts subjects.

• Provide recommendations for:

  • future iterations of arts curriculum and implementation at a national and state/territory level.

  • provision of Initial Teacher Education for The Arts (and any implications for AITSL to consider).

  • improving Initial Teacher Education programs in Arts curriculum and pedagogy, across early years, primary and secondary pre-service teachers. o

  • ongoing professional learning for primary generalist, primary specialist, and secondary specialist teachers. Recommendations for the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, Teacher Accreditation Boards and Universities to consider.

  • a range of best practice delivery models of The Arts in Australian schools.

NAAE acknowledges the extensive research and industry evidence pointing to how and why Australian society looks to Arts Education to foster individual and collective resilience in crises. We ask our policymakers to do the same.

Meaningful investment, proper resourcing, and support in the form of sustained professional learning and adequate initial teacher education for Arts teachers are essential for how we leverage the unique skills and understandings obtained by the field in recent years. This is going to be essential for how we work together to understand how change is experienced on the ground, and deliver on the ambitions of version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum. 

For further comment contact: 

John Nicholas Saunders, Chair, NAAE at contact@naae.org.au 

Drama Tuesday - Casting the First Stone

In my previous post I noted the report on The West Australian about the school production of Grease being cancelled. 

…students have jumped on the bandwagon, forcing two of Perth’s most elite western suburbs schools –presbyterian Ladies’ College and Scotch College - to scrap a stage show next year.

According to the statement released by the schools’ heads: “A number of PLC students raised concerns about whether the musical was appropriate for modern times.

“Scotch College listened respectfully to the girls concerns and both schools agreed…” 

Leave aside the implied values of terms like “most elite”. I am no advocate for Grease. In fact, I have often wondered about its underlying message and depiction of gender issues. But I do open discussion on two issues about censorship and those who censor.

• What is (or is not) appropriate for inclusion in drama classes?

• Who makes the choices about what topics or plays are explored in drama?

Plato’s famous disparagement of theatre and forms of representation is often echoed in forms of distrust and fear in our own times. The Puritans – and the new Puritans of our own times – rail against drama. Sometimes out of fear and sometimes from misunderstanding the nature of the experiences of identification and catharsis that lie at the heart of what happens when we witness others taking on role. In a forthcoming chapter I mention that some people dismiss drama: “Drama is just pretending/a form of lying or dishonesty/unleashes undesirable thoughts and feelings/encourages rebellion/challenges authority/is subversive” (Drama teacher education – a long-view perspective Robin Pascoe https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9650-892X )

There are plenty of people with varied agendas who find the presence of drama in the school curriculum as challenging them and their authority.

But, it does bring us as drama educators to fundamental questions: what is appropriate content for investigation through drama? Is there any topic beyond bounds? Is there any language that is inappropriate? Are there any plays that we should keep away from children and students? (As often as Shakespeare is held up as the given canon for study, there are the critics like Dr Bowdler who deemed it fitting and proper to bowderlise the Bard – to expurgate,  omit or modifying the parts considered offensive and morally objectionable.

What is interesting about this moment in time is that we are seeing different groups of people taking on the roles of censors. The conventional image of the Mrs Grundy Censor – elderly, judgmental, narrow-minded – is giving way to an equally judgmental activist younger person. 

The debate on cancel culture is hot and divisive. At times it does call out questionable practice. It can also cripple debate. It is hijacked by political hacks. But the drama classroom cannot be immune to the culture in which we live. 

In the current unit I teach, I ask students to articulate their Theoretical Frameworks as a set of lenses through which to view Crucial Incidents in their Professional Practice. That involves stating and exploring their knowledge and theories of knowledge (epistemology); they need to explore their worldview (ontology); they need to recognise they have developed ideology; and, that their values (axiology) impact on their practice (praxeology). All those baffling scary –ology words

No drama teacher can retreat to a hermetically sealed drama room. 

Drama education must be a part of its wider world. 

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Mea culpa

I don’t want it to be thought that I haven’t been guilty about this issue. (One of my tag lines as a drama educator was that, with hand on heart, I could say that I teach from experience because I have made almost every mistake in the book and lived to tell the tale). 

Looking through old production photos I found this from one of our productions (production name and place discretely withheld; faces obscured). 

In the spirit of involving the whole school in the “school production” we persuaded the Student Councillors (male, of course) to make a cameo appearance as wandering desert Aboriginals clad in footie shorts and charcoal daubed bodies. Yes, looking back, it was a cringe-worthy moment. It’s no justification to say that there was only one indigenous student in the school (cultural issues of place meant the town was avoided) In the current climate and with what we now know and think, we wouldn’t do this. We were younger and greener. And, "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." (wrote L.P. Hartley inThe Go-between), echoing, perhaps, Kit Marlowe. 

Would I do it now? Of course not. But it is useful to remind ourselves that we change and grow and develop across our careers. We are not the people we once were when we began – and. that is mostly a good thing. The passion and the drive we began with still can burn but it needs to be tempered in the crucible. 

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See also https://ncac.org/resource/the-show-must-go-on the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA), in collaboration the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE), and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Foreman Funnies - Pranks

The ‘Last Night Prank’ is a staple of repertory theatre. You read about them often enough. Robin Pascoe has some doozies he might share one day (from the Merredin Rep Club).

I witnessed a couple in the Albany Light Opera Company: Mikado – Koko’s ‘little list’. The actor in the role never learnt it, always read it. On the last night, the name of a local celebrity was added. The actor read it flawlessly, the chorus broke up. 

In Puss in Boots, one character was to present the queen with a small bush. He’d been working on his farm that afternoon and brought in a twenty-foot sapling. (How did he get it upstairs and backstage?) The ‘bush’ stretched from one side of the stage to the other. 

There was a few that happened in school productions once I started teaching Drama. 

In Dust in the Air, one character sat on a throne for the entire second act. Just before lights up, someone slipped a packet of frozen peas onto the seat.

In our Cyrano, the character of ‘Chris’ had to read a letter on stage. Sitting in the balcony I noticed cast members in the wings watching intently. I looked at Chris as he opened the letter. “Don’t read it!” I thought. He knew the lines. 

He read it. And cracked up. Thankfully he didn’t read it aloud.

After The Mysteries, where a disgruntled crew member took the Third Shepherd’s gift of a tennis ball for the baby Jesus, and the cast member tearfully substituted an apple, I was adamant that there would be no more pranks in my productions. 

From then on I always advised cast members to check any hand props, especially folded paper before going on stage. I was guilty of a sort of prank in one show where two girls had to take a paper bag with two cream buns onstage and eat them. 

The final night I replaced one bun with a matchstick – layers of puff pastry, jam, and cream. They checked their prop before entering. Onstage, the inevitable happened. The matchstick exploded. The second girl ad-libbed, “You’re such a pig, Monica.” 

I cracked up backstage. 

But I don’t believe it is fair to young performers to put them in the situation where they may be embarrassed by someone else.

Yes, audiences love those obvious stuff-ups on stage. But in the end, I want my students, my young performers to be able to do their very best, and to do justice to the script…