Drama Thinking - Part 6
/Finding the stories for drama
The town of Littlight and its people live in a grey and lifeless community, dictated to by the Mayor, an autocratic man who fears change and difference. Mysteriously, the brick walls surrounding the town start to disappear and as they do so, light, colour, sound and eventually people start to appear through the every enlarging holes.
This is a story about one person setting of a change reaction - about celebrating difference, tolerance and not just being open-minded to those who live different lives, but being open enough to embrace and enjoy their differences.
The illustrations are simple and stylistic - quite childlike. Stark shades of grey depict the township except for one bright, colourful girl and a ladder. As the bricks disappear psychedelic colours leech through along with small differences to start with - as brightly coloured birds start to emerge. As the holes in the wall grow larger we get glimpses of different people doing different things - cooking, dancing etc with different senses being awoken but the Littlelight townsfolk. The Mayor is angry, and at first the people are frightened of something new and different but as the colours take over their community they become happy and cheerful. The vivid endpapers are filled with bright and colourful houses side by side and provide a good talking point.
A frequent question I am asked is about the stories I use in drama workshops: where do you find the stories?
I find stories for drama literally everywhere.
I am always looking for stories for drama.
You might find me in the children’s picture book section of the book store. Or, I might see something in a newspaper clipping. Or, a friend might tell me a story from local history.
For example, in the children’s section of a bookshop and found a new book by a Western Australian author, Kelly Canby, called Littlelight (2020). Immediately, I could see the situation – a town that is walled in – and the roles – the pompous mayor and the fun-loving stealer of the bricks in the wall. I could use the Drama Thinking processes described in earlier posts to generate dramatic action that can help students understand important life issues.
Another time the same bookstore I saw The Wanderer by Peter Van den Ende (2020).
At once I could see a starting activity of making paper boats and talking about them – an activity outside the frame that enables us to edge into the drama where we take on roles.
A little boat sets out to sea and begins its voyage toward home. To get there it must travel across many strange, beautiful oceanscapes, full of fantastic creatures and deadly monsters, swept by terrifying storms and sailed by mysterious ships. Can the Wanderer pick a path through all these perils to a safe harbour?
The story itself is so open ended. We could springboard from images in the book itself. Each of the images could provide an episode for a drama activity.
Or, we could invent our own adventures and places for the little paper boats to be travelling.
These sorts of picture books are so great for generating drama thinking ideas.
Generative stories are rich with potential drama.
They enable us as drama teachers to work between the
narrative threads to find the drama.
They focus on human experience that can be shared in embodied ways.
Similarly, a friend told me the story of the shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia – quite infamous for the bloody insurrection and mutiny and the terrible justice imposed on the mutineers.
what her was fascinated about was that in the party of several ships in the convey making the journey from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies, there were many children.
I thought about the potential for drama in this story from our shared history.
Stories don’t have to be written down or published in books.
Just as Drama reflects life, so too, all of our lives can be the source for good drama lessons.
They open doors to Process Drama activities.
With my teacher education students we worked through the Process Drama of the Batavia Children, to learn about Process Drama.
An associated question I am sometimes asked: Why do I use stories for drama?
My job as a drama teacher is to help students learn about drama - using the Elements of Drama to express and communicate ideas and feelings as well as to understand and respond to drama.
Stories are ways of embedding these important elements into packages that. Help students learn.
Of course, there are times when I plan a drama based on a concept – such as using voice dynamically to create character. Or, teaching about the important ideas of Brecht as a playwright and director that have influenced contemporary drama. So there are drama lessons that don’t necessarily start with a story. I can start with a specific lesson concept in mind. But even then, I try to find a way of bringing it to life through including part of a story.
But there is nothing to match the power of a generative story to hook and engage students. Into that story, I can embed important conceptual and practical learning.
In overview, this series of posts have focused on the ways that we as drama teachers move from a starting point – often a story – through processes of drama thinking linked with my portfolio of Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies. Through these processes, I am in a position to create a specific drama lesson plan.
My planning often looks something like this:
Excerpt from Batavia Children Process Drama Planning
Bibliography
Canby, K. (2020). Littlelight. Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Press.
Peter Van den Ende. (2020). The Wanderer. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Drama Thinking - Part 5
/In Part 5 I share with you one further Drama Thinking process to help you move from a story to your planned drama lesson. This is a simple strategy. Think about your story in terms of Before, During and After the story.
Before During and After
Perhaps the simplest of all these drama Thinking Processes, Before, During and After looks carefully at the story.
What happened before the story starts – to the people in the story. Think about their situation, relationships and what they are thinking and feeling.
Look inside the story – what happens during the story. It is useful to look here at the narrative chain.
Finally, we can look at what happens or might happen after the story ends.
Alternative stories
Sometimes, within a story we can imagine alternatives.
We can asks ourselves what if questions.
If the original story of our travellers to a New World, their adventure begins in Europe and they venture to the Dutch East Indies.
But what if… instead of reaching their destination, their ship is wrecked on rocks on the coast of Western Australia and they must learn to live with the Aboriginal people.
Or, what if… in a huge storm, their ship is swept into outer space and they travel to the Moon.
Stories do not have to go in straight lines.
There are no limits to your imagination. You can make alternative stories.
Introduce new tensions.
Introduce new people and characters.
Change the location. Or, the time. Or the ending of the story.
Story drives drama. The Principles of Stories work along side the Elements of Drama. To plan our drama lessons, we need to understand how story can be unpacked and understood, so that we can make drama with our students
Drama Thinking - Part 4
/In Parts 1, 2 and 3 we unpacked different Drama Thinking approaches to help open the story to drama planning. This post will develop further drama thinking approaches.
Contrasts and Oppositions
Stories work because there are moments of contrast – something that is strikingly different placed side by side in juxtaposition. In our drama work, we look for these contrast and moments of opposition because they generate dramatic tension
Look within the story to find contrasts or oppositions.
For example, look in the story for when there are sounds or silences. Look for parts of the story where there is movement or stillness.
In the journey of the ship there are moments when there is much activity and excitement. The ship is leaving harbour for the first time; the sails are being unfurled; the wind is carrying them forward on an adventure. There are many sounds to go with this part of the story.
By contrast there are also times of great boredom; perhaps the ship is becalmed and there is no wind blowing. The only sounds that can be heard are the quiet breathing of people waiting for some wind to stir and carry them forward.
Find parts of the story that are known or unknown. Look for moments of lightness or darkness.
In the story of the travellers to the New World for example there will be moments where the travellers are happy and light-hearted; maybe they have successfully reached a safe harbour or they have plenty of food. By contrast there will be times in their story when they are feeling dark threat or danger; maybe there is a storm or they have very little food or water.
There are parts of the story when the travellers know what to expect. But there are times when they are confused and face the unknown. Where they don’t know what to expect.
Look within the story to find other contrasts or oppositions.
For example, look in the story for when the action is predictable or when it is unexpected.
Look for parts of the story where there is action moves faster or when it moves slower.
Look for when the drama is near to you or far away.
In this series of posts I have been sharing with examples of Drama Thinking – processes of unpacking stories to use in drama.
Not all stories work for Drama. Not all stories are appropriate for your students. We take great care in choosing the stories we use. We need what are called generative stories. By that I mean stories that have potential to create drama moments.
Remember, the Drama Thinking processes are a step in moving from the story to your final, planned drama lesson. The Drama Thinking Processes enable you to identify pivot points around which you can construct your drama lesson using Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies.
Like the pieces of a jigsaw, the story, the Drama Thinking and the Strategies all fit together to provide the basis for you planning of your lesson step by step.
Drama Thinking - Part 3
/In Part 1 we unpacked the story itself. In Part 2 we discussed using categories from everyday life and considering different perspectives – personal, social, cultural and historical. This post will develop further drama thinking approaches.
Framing the story Shifting frames
Linked with seeing the story from different perspectives is to deliberately think about the ways that we can frame the story for our drama exploration.
It is possible to frame the story Inside the story where we focus on taking role and acting out situation directly; or we can consider the perspective of being outside the story where we think about the story and its implications for us.
Both perspectives are important in planning our drama.
Consider what happens when you frame the story from these different frames or points of view.
Inside the story you can choose to focus
up close and personal
stepping back from the up close and personal to see it from mid distance – medium close.
stepping right back to see the story from far away.
In the example of the travellers on board a ship to the New World, up close and personal focuses on one person’s story or one relationship between two people in the story. Stepping to the mid distance, you might consider all the members of one group, say a family or a group of sailors who are being mistreated. Looking at the story from a distance would focus on all the travellers on the ship.
All of these examples, still have people stepping into specific roles and characters. They are inside the action of the situation and respond to the tension.
Outside the story you step out of role and consider the story from someone looking in on it.
For example, the personal reflection is a subjective opportunity for you to think about the people and action of the story as an observer. You examine your thoughts and feelings about the story and the dramatic action. You explore your empathy (or antipathy) to the people and situation. For example, would I feel the same emotion and commitment to making the journey as the people in the drama?
Stepping further back from the story to a neutral position enables you to look at both sides of what happens in the story. You are neither for or against but considering the implications of the story with one even hand. On the one hand, the travellers on the ship’s journey travel with hope; on the other hand they are going to a New World where they hope to exploit the natural wealth and make the indigenous people slaves.
The third possibility of a frame outside the story is to consider it from another person’a point of view. What would the people who stay behind when the travellers leave on the ship think and feel? What would the indigenous people of the New World think and feel and do when the ship arrives on their shores?
A reminder: You do not necessarily have a plan for teaching your drama lesson. The Drama Thinking outlined in this post is a process that hand in hand with an understanding of Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies, enables you to plan your lesson.
There are still more Drama Thinking approaches to explore.
Drama Thinking - Part 1
/
When you’ve done something for a long time, you overlook the processes that have become second nature or habit. I was reminded of this by a question from a student: how do you go from a story to a drama lesson based on that story?
Underpinning this question is about the whole drama planning process. What are the intermediate steps between the source material and the detailed planning that we take into our drama workshop?
In overview to get from story to plan we use some Drama Thinking (a term I gladly borrow from Norah Morgan and Juliana Saxton(1989) linked with specific Drama Teaching and Learning Strategies.
What do I mean by Drama Thinking?
Drama Thinking are the processes where you take apart a story or drama stimulus idea to see how it can work for a drama lesson. Which pieces of the story have drama potential? Which will be useful for generating the drama learning that you hope for?
It is about how you think as a drama teacher. I am reminded of Peter Duffy’s book A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (2015) – (my emphasis).
What are some of the processes that I use for this drama thinking?
Narrative Chain
First, understand the story. Look at the narrative chain in terms of who, when, where and what happens.
In particular, look for the moments in the story that have potential dramatic action – where something happens or where someone or something changes. Consider why these changes happen, the complications faced by the people in the story and the meaning or purpose of the story.
Narrative Structure
There is another consideration in looking at the story: see the story in terms of a dramatic frame. Gustav Freytag, a German novelist and critic of the nineteenth century, drawing on the ideas of Aristotle, identified an image to explain how drama worked.
Using Freytag’s pyramid, look at the story in terms of Introduction and Exposition; inciting incident to get the action started; rising action and tension; climax; falling action; resolution and denouement (where the threads of the story are drawn together).. This is not a one-size-firs-all way of looking at drama, but it is useful when considering a story as having potential for use in your drama class.
Now the work of planning can begin.
Brainstorming Thematic Networking
Brainstorm all the possibilities for drama in your story. sometimes called thematic networking, look for possibilities for drama from the story.
For example, in a story about a shipwreck of a group of immigrants, your first idea might be to show them on board the ship as it is about to sail away from their home.
This might link to dramatic action based on one of the travellers, saying goodbye to her mother knowing that they might never see each other again.
And it might also suggest a scene where there is a different kind of farewell – where someone is glad to be leaving their family and cannot wait until they can escape.
A different thread to this story might be why the journey is being made: to find new worlds or to find treasure or to conquer territory – the political reasons for the journey. The point of this brainstorming is to find as many different points of entering the drama.
In this way, we build a collection of possible moments of dramatic action.
We have started to consider Elements of Drama such as roles, characters and relationships. The action is put in terms of situation. We can start to see the possible development of dramatic tension.
This is a starting point.
There are other drama thinking approaches to explore.
This is the first of as series of posts on this topic.
Bibliography
Duffy, P. (2015). Introduction. In P. Duffy (Ed.), A Reflective Practitioner's Guide to (mis)Adventures in Drama Education – or – What Was I thinking? (pp. 3-10). Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Morgan, N., & Saxton, J. (1989). Drama: A Mind of Many Wonders: Nelson Thornes.
Drama Tuesday - What is drama education?
/I am responding to a question from drama educators in China: How to determine the appropriate form of teaching (for example, DIE or TIE, or the ordinary form of drama education?
It echoes a question I had once in a conference plenary session in Beijing where a confused drama educator asked what was the difference between creative dramatics and drama in education and theatre in education and Applied Theatre and … the list continued.
It seems that there are many different names for the broad field of drama education (See the list at the end). It must be confusing for many people particularly if they are trawling through the literature of the field in translation. Despite the efforts of many writers and researchers to clarify confusion, it is clear that the claims and counterclaims for defining the field of drama education still bedevil easy resolution.
Writing in 1984, O’Hara observed, “drama is marked by diversity of practice, with those involved in the area appearing "unable or unwilling to speak for themselves with authority and unity in both academic and practical terms" (Norman, 1971)”. In 2007 Gavin Bolton in the International Handbook of Research in Arts Education titled his contribution A History of Drama Education: A Search for Substance. In 2016 Mages wrote an overview of a number of prominent forms of educational drama and theatre designed to introduce educators, who are not drama or theatre specialists, to the paradigms and merits of educational drama and theatre.
Towards resolving this issue
There is a need for our field of drama education to acknowledge the issue and to find a useful yet clear definition and explanation that works for teachers. Putting the problem in context:
Drama education is the term for the broad field.
Within drama education there are different terms with histories, traditions and practitioner points of view.
These different terms can be confusing (particularly in translation)
To help address this confusion I begin by establishing some principles:
1. There is a continuum and relationships between Play / Drama / Theatre.
Play is the broad field term for activities that are pleasurable and intrinsically motivated. Neuroscience research shows the role of play in human development particularly in imagination, language, visual and symbolic expression. Drama is a specific form of play based on symbolic representation of people and situations. Drama occurs within the broad field of Play. Within Drama there is Theatre, the specific forms of Drama focused on presentation to audiences.
The relationships show how Theatre is nested within Drama and Drama is nested within Play. The boundaries between Play, Drama and Theatre are porous and often there is overlap and blending.
2. Within the many differently named approaches to drama education there is a commonality of purpose: engaging people with the embodied experience of taking on role and acting out dramatic action. In doing so they learn, understand and work with identified Elements of Drama, Principles of Story, Forms and Types of Drama and use the Skills and Processes of Drama
3. It is helpful to think about three overarching categories of drama education (which can be used to group the many different approaches.
Terms for creative drama and similar or related constructs (Mages, 2008)
Acting-out stories Paley, 1978 Child drama Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987
Creative drama Cooper and Collins, 1992; Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987; Kardash and Wright, 1987; McCaslin, 1996; Vitz, 1984; Wagner, 1998
Creative dramatics Cullinan, Jaggar, and Strickland, 1974; Strickland, 1973 Drama Brown, 1992; Conlan, 1995; Cooper and Collins, 1992
Drama in education Brown, 1992
Dramatic play Galda, 1984; Smilansky, 1968
Dramatics Niedermeyer and Oliver, 1972; Paley, 1978
Dramatization Fein, Ardila-Rey, and Groth, 2000; Kirk, 1998; McNamee, 1987; McNamee, McLane, Cooper, and Kerwin, 1985; Warash and Workman, 1993
Educational drama Wagner, 1998
Fantasy play Saltz, Dixon, and Johnson, 1977; Smith, Dalgleish, and Herzmark, 1981; Smith and Syddall, 1978
Fantasy reenactment Pellegrini, 1984
Group-dramatic play Christie, 1987
Guided drama Davis and Behm, 1978, 1987
Imaginative drama Paley, 1978
Imaginative play Marbach and Yawkey, 1980; Saltz and Johnson, 1974
Improvisation Brown, 1992; Conlan, 1995; Niedermeyer and Oliver, 1972
Informal classroom drama Wagner, 1998
Let’s pretend play Yawkey, 1979
Make-believe Christie, 1983; Singer, 1973; Smilansky, 1968; Yawkey, 1979
Play Fein, 1981; Galda, 1982; Silvern, 1980; Yawkey, 1979
Play enactment Saltz et al., 1977
Play tutoring Christie, 1983; Smith et al., 1981
Pretend play Fein, 1981; Harris, 2000; Nicolopoulou, 2002
Pretense Fein, 1981; Leslie, 1987
Process drama Montgomerie and Ferguson, 1999
Reenactment Nielsen, 1993
Role enactment Fein, 1981
Role play or role playing Brown, 1992; Cullinan et al., 1974; Fein, 1981; Strickland, 1973
Role-taking Levy, Wolfgang, and Koorland, 1992
Shared enactment Fein et al., 2000
Social role enactment Fein, 1981 Sociodramatic play Saltz et al., 1977; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Smilansky, 1968; Smilansky and Shefatya, 1990; Smith et al., 1981; Smith and Syddall, 1978; Warash and Workman, 1993; Wolf, 1985
Story dramatization Brown, 1992; Cooper and Collins, 1992; Levy et al., 1992; McNamee et al., 1985; Vitz, 1984
Story-acting Nicolopoulou, 1996; Richner and Nicolopoulou, 2001
Symbolic play Marbach and Yawkey, 1980; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Silvern, Taylor, Williamson, Surbeck, and Kelley, 1986
Thematic-fantasy play Pellegrini, 1984; Pellegrini and Galda, 1982; Saltz et al., 1977; Saltz and Johnson, 1974; Silvern et al., 1986; Williamson, 1993
To this list you might add role drama, applied theatre, theatre in education, story drama.
The list goes on.
Is it any wonder that teachers in classrooms are confused?
Bibliography
Bolton, G. (2007). A History of Drama Education: A Search for Substance. In L. Bresler (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (Vol. 1, pp. 45-62). Dordrecht: Springer.
Mages, W. K. (2008). Does Creative Drama Promote Language Development in Early Childhood? A Review of the Methods and Measures Employed in the Empirical Literature. Review of Educational Research, 78, 124–152. doi:10.3102/0034654307313401
Mages, W. K. (2016). Educational Drama and Theatre Paradigms for Understanding and Engagement. R&E-SOURCE http://journal.ph-noe.ac.at Open Online Journal for Research and Education(Special Issue #5, September 2016, ISSN: 2313-1640).
O'Hara, M. (1984). Drama in Education: A Curriculum Dilemma. Theory Into Practice, 22(4 Teaching the Arts), 314-320. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1476387
Drama Term Tuesday - A modest book proposal
/Drama Learning and Teaching Theories Untangled – and how to use them
With tongue in cheek I make a serious proposal for a new book about Drama Learning and Teaching. I am inspired to do so because I came across, a book by Bob Bates with an intriguing title Learning theories simplified : and how to apply them to teaching (2019). In a couple of pages, he sketches succinct summaries of key theories and theorists of education. It’s a roller coaster ride through over 100 theories organised around Classical Learning Theories and Contemporary Thinking About Teaching and Learning. The reader switchbacks through Socrates, Plato (Shadows of reality), Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dewey, Sartre, Freire and many more. Theories of Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Humanism, Neurolism and more rattle by. It’s not quite the comic book style, but it is a quick and useful reader with focused, point-by-point summaries for understanding and applying the array of approaches used in education. It explains and uses analogies to help understand concepts.It encourages critical engagement and further reading. It’s worth a look.
My book proposal is to identify the key learning and teaching approaches for drama education.
Who are the people who have shaped drama teaching and learning?
What are the theories of drama education?
What is a theory in this context?
A theory is a systematic explanation of an approach; a set or principles; sometimes a justification.
Why are theories important?
If drama teaching is to be something more than collection of activities, tricks of the trade, games or schemes of work, it needs to be underpinned by a coherent explanation. That is not to make the case for the “theory of everything” – a single all encompassing master framework. We have come to realise that there are many ways of conceptualising and applying drama education as a field (As Hamlet reminded us: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.). When you think about it, the cross currents of approaches have shaped our contemporary practice.
It is however, important that we work in our drama workshops with an informed sense of context and history. We need to be something more than teacher technicians, following patterns set by others without thinking or understanding why we do what we do. What are the Big Ideas? Whose practice shifted conventional ways of doing things, set trends, gave us seminal concepts and even specific strategies? What are the dominant practices and their counterpoints?
Each drama teacher needs to articulate their philosophy or approach of drama teaching and how they understand their students learn drama. They need to acknowledge the influencers and forces that shape their day-to-day practice. They need to name and explain their drama teaching.
Why would this be a good idea?
There’s nothing like it that I have come across that provides a panoramic view of drama education.
But, there are some important cautions to this proposal.
Naming theories and knowing them for their own sake doesn’t help make us great drama teachers. Nor is putting some particular theorists on a pedestal (or consigning some of them to Dante’s Inferno) isn’t helpful. What we need is reflective, critical engagement with theories.
A theory exists in the context of practice – knowing and doing are hand-in-hand in the sort of embodied learning that we value in contemporary drama education. It makes little sense to treat theory and practice as mutually exclusive.
Theories and theorists are not set in stone (or reducible to slogans). We need to remember that people and their drama practice change and develop over time. We need to ovoid ossifying ideas and practice. We need to let theories breathe, grow, change, adapt and emerge.
Who is on my initial list of theorists and theories?
That opens a can of worms, when you ask that question.
But to start the conversation I suggest the following knowing that there will be some important ones missed. In no particular order:
Dorothy Heathcote. Brian Way, Winifred Ward, Viola Spolin, Cecily O’Neill, Richard Courtney, David Booth, Comenius, Harriet Findlay Johnson, Henry Caldwell Cook, Brecht, Stanislavski, Gavin Bolton, Jonathon Neelands, Juliana Saxton, Carole Tarlington, John O’Toole, Keith Johnstone, Pam Bowell, Patrice Baldwin, Brian Heap? Madonna Stinson? Peter Duffy, Peter Wright?
And what of the types of practice we should include:
Improvisation, Process Drama, Story Drama, Script Interpretation. Verbatim Theatre, Chamber Theatre…? What about Children’s Dramatic Play? Teacher-in-role? Mantle of the Expert?
But, where are the European voices? The Scandinavian leaders? The voices from North and South America? USA? Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Where are the voices from history?
Is it even possible to assemble a starting list?
We won’t know until we start.
There’s a heap of work to go on developing this proposal. But it would be an interesting challenge.
Who would you nominate as seminal theorist/practitioners for drama education?
What theories, theorists and practices are important?
How much do we need to know about each?
Join me in this new adventure.
Bibliography
Bates, B. (2019). Learning theories simplified : ....and how to apply them to teaching (2nd Edition). London: Sage.
