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 - A Trip to the Theatre Remembered

The Maj, Hay Street Perth

When I was sitting in The Maj for the WAAPA production of Crazy for You, I was reminded of the first time that I went to that theatre. I was maybe 12 or 13 visiting Perth for the summer holidays with my family. As a thanks for putting us up in Perth, my Mum bought tickets to the hot show of the year My Fair Lady on the tail end of its Australian tour for JCW. I somehow  managed to wheedle my way into going with them. 

The Maj in those days was not the plush ruby velvet smoothness of the refurbished theatre today.

The Maj, Hay Street Perth

It was late January. Summer heat beating on the asphalt drum of Hay Street. No air conditioning.  And worn saddle haired seats in the stalls, with a squint around the infamous pillars. The theatre was sweaty full, heaving. The audience laughed and loved the show. Stuart Wagstaff played Henry Higgins but I can’t tell you anyone else in the cast.

I was fascinated by the experience. In particular, I remember taking note of the senses where a scrim curtain was drawn across to a scenery piece on a trick from the wings while a scene change was happening behind. I think it was for On the Street where you live and maybe Get me to the Church on time. Even at that age I was interested in how the stage magic all happened. Even now, I continue to be looking through the performances to  how they happen.

The performances were raw, natural and energetic. This is by contrast to the WAAPA production where all the actors on stage were miked; where the lights automated, plotted to follow the dancers. Theatre is vastly different nowadays. And the training of actors sits in the lap of universities; by contrast those actors I saw in the JCW production would have come through the apprenticeship of hard knocks and handed-down advice: always turn on your downstage foot. 

There is a coda to this story. On the journey home from Perth on the Transcontinental there  was a group of young actor types gathered around the piano in the club car exuding cheery bonhomie. It was a different time when actors didn’t fly but took the leisurely cross continent journey home.  

As a brash teenager I nervously accosted one of them in the waves corridors and asked  if they were in My Fair Lady? I saw he production! A little taken aback he said he was and I had my moment of fandom. But the after effects of seeing that production lingered long after that fleeting moment. I   look at  productions to see how the performance is made. Behind the magic of being in the moment is the ticking of process.

Drama Tuesday - Making Drama Spaces your own

Images by Robin Pascoe

Taken at Woodvale SHS

Schools, particularly secondary schools are anonymous spaces. I envy the capacity of the primary teacher to take a classroom and personalise it for the teaching and also for this year’s students. That’s not always possible in secondary schools where purposes are multipurpose.

I am interested then when I can find examples where teachers have added value to their spaces. These images show how one teacher commissioned her visual arts students to create large posters of playwrights. They are displayed on the walls of the Performing Arts Centre. 

How can you personalise your drama teaching space?

P.S. Who are other “overlooked” and “out of fashion” playwrights who deserve to be given another look in the 21st Century?

We think of Lawrence as novelist and poet before playwright so it’s useful to remember him in this role (and to keep alive the spirit of GBS). 

IN 1913 D. H. LAWRENCE spoke of his plays as relaxation from the more arduous work of novel writing: "I enjoy so much writing my plays-they come so quick and exciting from the pen-that you musn't growl at me if you think them a waste of time."l Although he wrote seven plays and a fragment,2 Lawrence didn't take his dramatic work very seriously. (From Waterman, A.E. (1959). The Plays of D. H. Lawrence. Modern Drama 2(4), 349-357. doi:10.1353/mdr.1959.0053.)

Drama Tuesday - Circling back to the beginning

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

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

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

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

Three Looms Waiting is available on Youtube

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

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

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

The DNA of drama is the contrasting impulses of tension. 

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

Bibliography

Heathcote, D., Smedley, R., & Eyre, R. (1972). Three Looms Waiting. London: BBC TV.