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?

Drama Tuesday - The Drama Teaching Space

Spaces of learning/Spaces of Performance

 We take for granted that students understand how the elements of Space and Time are crucial building blocks for making drama. But we usually think of this in terms of the performance spaces we use – our theatres and performance venues. In this post I shift our thinking to consider that every drama room – whether it’s a purpose built space or a classroom rearranged - in the same terms as we do in making drama: the physical space,, the social space and the imagined emotional space. 

The space of performance is essentially an interaction between participants who are performers and participants who are audience. We can think of the drama teaching space as the interaction between participants – students and teacher – and the physical, social and imagined emotional space. 

I am thinking about this having read an interesting post from TheatreFolk in Canada and a new publication they have put out called Return, restore, rebound: Post-Pandemic Resource.. In that post they discuss the challenges of being a teacher who has been teaching online and remotely as they return to their physical classrooms. (https://www.theatrefolk.com/products/return-restore-rebound-post-pandemic-resource) . In particular, they set out to support the beginning teacher who is moving into the physical space of teaching for the first time after their graduation – a delayed taking up of a teaching position because of the Pandemic. 

In that resource, they pose useful questions for teachers – fresh to the space or returning to the space – reflecting on the potential of the teaching space. The physical strengths and limits as well emotional reactions to being in the space. The potential for doing things differently. 

In my work with drama teacher education students I include a module on thinking about setting our “perfect” drama teaching space (as part of a workshop on Managing Drama Teaching). At one level there is no “perfect” drama teaching space – and at another level the “perfect teaching space” is the one you are in the process of making. It is always in a state of becoming.

There are some important principles though: be organised. I have lost track of where this image comes from – the antiquated dimmer board takes it back somewhere into the dim dark past. But the notion of managing the space is important. 

The second image was something I drew after visiting a successful teacher’s space. Christina is thoroughly organised. For example, students know that if they missed a class, the can always go into the shelf where notes from each workshop are kept and find what they missed. 

The other thing about this teacher’s work, is that each student had their own portfolio which they added to systematically with each lesson. This provided both organisation of accumulating learning, it also made explicit metacognitive processes of articulating learning through writing and journal entries. (Of course, nowadays, we might not have a physical portfolio but keep a digital one). There is more to teaching drama than being able to lead a process drama. 

If you work in most secondary schools in Western Australia there is likely to be a purpose built Performing Arts Centre. They vary but are basically a workshop space of about 14 metres by 114  metres with associated dressing room/green room (that is also another teaching space). They are equipped with lighting bars and lights, sound systems. Most are carpeted. They are in. effect black box theatres. But if you are the drama teacher, most likely the only drama teacher in the school, you will wind up being responsible for a facility that costs over a million dollars to build and a school community that don’t quite understand the complexity of being responsible for it. There is the technical side – sound and lighting that requires specialised knowledge. There is the security side where there is equipment that is highly desirable that can be easily stolen or misappropriated. There is the maintenance and air conditioning and all the Occupational Health and Safety requirements when it comes to audiences and not having students push each other around on the scaffolding for the lighting. 

That’s a huge amount of financial and professional responsibility for a beginning teacher. And, sadly, so little time in a teacher education course to provide the necessary background for managing. Part of the work of drama teachers is to manage their teaching and learning space.

What are the necessary knowledge and skills to step into the drama teaching and learning space? What do you need to know to teach drama – apart from a knowledge about the art form itself?

Drama Tuesday - Batavia Children: a Process Drama Exploration

Drama Tuesday - Generosity of Spirit

Don't come to my production if you there to point score, to redirect it or to criticise it unreasoningly.

Come to enjoy, to share, to discover along with us the joy and rough magic of theatre, to understand why we are performing, to share what we are saying ( or trying to say!)

Come to share our sense of achievement, to understand what it is we can now do as a result of the process of discovery we have explored.

I am not going to apologise or pretend that it maybe couldn't ( and shouldn't ) be better. I can be critical as the next person (honest!) I try to have a real sense of what should be on the stage - but I also know that in schools we are working with theatre in an educational context - the learning is as important ( perhaps even more important ) than the production.

Having said that I don't advocate using that thinking as an easy excuse or escape clause. (My old mother, ever a realist, taught me to never apologise for what might have been or to blame someone else, but to cop it sweet whatever happens.)

There can be a lack of generosity of spirit in the barely suppressed commentary of carping criticism I sometimes overhear. This is more than just sad (or hurtful), It damages and diminishes the rest of us.

They sometimes say that the theatre is the natural resort of bitches but I question whether that ought to be the case in theatre in educational settings. If we saw or heard our students rubbishing other performers, we would do something about it, wouldn’t we! Surely we wouldn't join in. ( Which isn't to say that the application of critical frameworks as part of understanding the role of the critic isn’t part of the theatre going experience - but that is something different from the mood of picky and personalised knifery that sometimes seems to pervade the audience of our peers. )

I know that it is easier to laugh at something than to think about it; it is easier to wreck rather than to feel; it is easier to snigger than to understand. If theatre is truly to move us - and move us in more than a simple cathartic burst of emotion - to make us think and feel and, therefore, to change, then we cannot afford to rely on the easy response, to use a quick laugh at someone else’s expense as a substitute for a genuine reaction. Are we so insecure about our own work and abilities that we have to prove our worth at the expense of someone else’s work?

When I go to see someone else’s production, I try to see the production in its context. I try to see its successes and strengths. I try to find something positive to say. I try to base any comments that I make on the production - particularly in discussion with my students - focus on the specific, avoiding the personal or the cheap Jibe. I aim to make my comments balanced, clear and thoughtful. And the amazing thing I have discovered, is that it isn't so difficult to take this world view because often what I see when young people perform is wonderful, amazing and awe inspiring. so it is not effort to focus on the positive.

I am not claiming to be some plaster saint - or to say that sometimes I am not tempted to think a few cheap and nasty thoughts. But I am saying that I have learnt to bite my tongue when the carping starts. And I think we all should do that.

So, when you come to my production, come knowing what to expect. It will be the best that I can do with the talent and the resources that I have at the moment. We have set out to make a production which is the best that we can achieve at this moment in time. We are what we are. Whatever our deficiencies, we don't excuse them but then we don’t let them diminish our sense of achievement.

Drama Tuesday - Drama Teaching and the School Production

High School production of Les Miserables, 

Evora, Portugal 2017

 Scratch a little below the surface of why young people study drama in schools and almost always they’ll say they do it because they love and want to perform – to be in productions*. The allure of costumes, lights, sets, learning lines, rehearsals, stepping onto the stage in front of an audience, applause. 

I share with students an affinity for the “smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowd” (as the song goes). Going to a school that did not offer drama as a curriculum subject when the annual production was the only drama opportunity, I grew into a love of drama from that model. But the curriculum (eventually) caught up. Drama became a part of the offerings of schools – though sometimes that is being held onto by our toenails in some schools. For some students (and for some teachers maybe) the focus of drama in the school is less the formal curriculum and more the chance to put on the play or musical. Many schools value the performance for its PR value, for presenting the school in a positive light. According the the gossip, some schools spend huge budgets on these annual extravaganzas. 

What is the role of the school production?

What is the relationship between the drama in the curriculum and the school production?

Don’t get me wrong. There can be many curriculum and co-curricular benefits from a school production. Students learn the discipline of rehearsal, the deferred rewards of working towards a shared goal. They learn about working and learning collaboratively as a member of a team. They work on the nuts and bolts of voice and movement role and characterisation. They learn lines and work on memorisation. The learnt the values of setting personal goals and achieving them. They understand the sense of personal satisfaction of achieving something challenging.

In co-curricular terms, Students from across the years and cliques can be brought together. School identity and cohesion can be fostered (in many of our productions in schools we had students and teachers working alongside each other on stage, sharing dressing rooms and the anguish and pain of learning lines).

But behind the glamour and the sweat, the focus is less on the curriculum content and more on the show. This is not just a problem for the drama teacher. I am reminded of the music students who want only the “glory” of the performance and not the hard slog of so called “classroom music”. 

We cannot overlook the issues that accompany an approach that focuses on a performance-only drama education. Competitive auditioning and casting of favourites; using professionals or outsiders to “bolster” local talent (there is a story going around of the school that spends the equivalent of one year’s teacher salary on hiring professional musicians to “sweeten” the orchestra!); choosing from a limited known repertoire – the crowd pleasers! Censorship. Relentless drilling for perfection. The production as a vehicle for the teacher’s starring role (vanity project 101). The list goes on.

Let’s put the performance schedule of drama in schools in perspective. 

Performance is important in drama education. Gone are the days when the concept of performance in the drama classroom was anathema. Unless we want to return to the days of what I sometimes call Kleenex Tissue Drama – we make drama and then throw it away barely realised, like we do with too many paper hankies!. 

At its heart, drama education is about providing students with opportunities to express ideas and share them – communicate them with and for an audience. To that end, what we do in our drama classes – our class drama – provides the foundations of knowledge and skill for effective performance. 

What is your balance of performance in drama education in schools?

Drama Tuesday - Once More unto the Breach …

…into WAAPA for production of Human Cannon by Edward Bond.

 We are in the Enright Studio at WAAPA for the production of Edward Bond’s Human Cannon by Second Year actors. 

The twelve scenes provide a sweeping portrait of social oppression, struggle during the years of the Spanish Civil War. Our focus is Agustina, mother, wife, revolutionary, symbol. At the play’s opening she is burying her dead new born unbaptised child in the face of the implacable power of Church. At the play’s closing, as she is about to face a firing squad, as she is shown the face of her daughter’s new born, she finds comfort and can smile. In between, bloody events of revolutionary savagery, acts of war, terrorism and betrayal on a foundation of love and loyalty. She becomes the human cannon aimed at the heart of inhuman cruelty.

The audience flank the acting space on two sides. We entered through a scatter of hard backed chairs, a door frame, a wooden table and minimal props; suspended from the ceiling are broken chairs. Light haze filters the lighting. Atmospheric music underscores the action.

The cast plays more than sixty roles. Sometimes generic revolutionaries or soldiers or cardboard cutout caricatures of power – Priest, Franco look alike, Vendors – sometimes named roles. The use of minimal props is noteworthy for students of drama – sticks and lumps of wood pressed  into action as rifles and guns; a piece of fabric is pummelled as kneaded bread; wagon wheels and wood are shaped into a cannon. The use of sound effects was interesting – the loading and re-loading of the cannon – over the mimed actions using improvised props. The manipulation of minimal props and the easy transitions of locations was deftly handled (though I did feel that the weaving of chairs overhead was now a tired and overused theatrical commonplace – institutionalised to the point of overuse in Billy Elliot for example).

Edward Bond continues to have a throat-hold on theatrical power. The many inheritances of Brecht are evident. Announcing the titles of each section in handwritten chalk scrawled by the actors (but spell the title of the play correctly, please); the explicit telling of the fable of the play in the opening scene; the use of shadow puppetry; each scene presenting polemic dialectical discussion of themes embodied in human interactions. The push-pull of distancing us from the horror while also engaging us with gut-level action, worked. The broader socio-political purpose is foremost: the events from the Spanish Civil War serve as a template for wider struggles. This is a primer in recognising the broad purpose of theatre. 

The production moves rapidly from scene to scene even though the sweep of words and dialogue is ever present. Not a short production (we have become so used to bite size theatre that maybe we have lost the stamina required!). There is richly evoked poetry. Agustina’s lament for her country – the long lyrical heart of the play – is powerfully evoked. It finishes with the ironical question: who could not be happy in such a land?

According to a 1987 source (Debusscher), Human Cannon is unproduced. It makes me wonder if this production is a first. It presents an interesting challenge if it is. As a vehicle for acting students, there is plenty of challenge and scope. I was uncomfortable with the accent work, which sometimes verged on cartoon or parody. But, overall, the production proved to be a a successfully managed challenge. And, sometimes, the well-intentioned movement work and Spanish clapping, was under-developed. 

The fable of the piece is powerfully captured in the story of the stone and the tree. Again, Bond’s  nimble and practised handling of his craft shows the strength of his writing as it was realised in this production.

Overall, a strong production with an interesting (and diverse) group of actors. 

There is an excellent discussion of the play’s themes and contexts in Debusscher, G. (1987).

Bibliography

Debusscher, G. (1987). Human Cannon ·: Edward Bond's Vision of the Spanish Civil War. Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, 65(3), 604-618. Retrieved from https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1987_num_65_3_3598

Drama Tuesday - A Challenge for Drama Teachers

 In conversation before the show with Mitch, the Principal, an interesting question came up. What are the equivalent performance challenges for the drama students? 

This is a really important question. 

While we may want all our students to experience the “high” repertoire – the most challenging and thought provoking repertoire, are those scripted drama choices age appropriate? What valuable learning would year 8 and 9 students find in the set texts lists of Year 11 and 12. Consider the example of set texts for Year 12 below; even with that repertoire there are legitimate interrogations (see discussion in Lambert, Wright, Currie, & Pascoe, 2016) ). 

What will we have our Years 8 and 9 drama students perform?

That’s my challenge. 

• Where are the plays that are age appropriate have sufficiently large casts with solid acting challenges?

• Where are the plays with brand recognition for parents?

• How do we find plays that will also be accessible to younger audiences that will be the next generation of students for John Curtin.

• What would or could be workable repertoire for Years 8 and 9? And not be twee or unchallenging.

There’s a danger of trying to find the watered down classics. That’s not a solution. There’s a whole publishing industry based on inconsequential and trivialised scripts for so-called younger people.

But what will our students perform? And not every production needs to be from the high repertoire. There’s a place for popular plays to be included in the list.

Some suggestions to start the conversation

One (perhaps outrageous) idea could be the adaptations of Dickens such as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. 

Before you think I am off my rocker because it’s a monumental work running for 8.5 hours, played usually over two nights. Think about it though. 

The scope of and style of this version presents a challenge. Played on open stage, with the ensemble cast playing multiple roles and moving rapidly from scene to scene, in the right director’s hands, this could be suitably challenging. 

There are multiple roles. You could even have one cast (and director) do Part 1. Another Part 2. 

There is a recognition factor. 

There is scope and ambition. 

Or you could do others last in a similar mould. Edgar has also a version of Christmas Carol.

The actor who played Nicholas Nickleby had an illustrious career as a director and he collaborated on another favourite of mine: Peter and the Starcatcher. 

Like the RSC production this adaptation of a 2004 novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, adapted for the stage by Rick Elice is open-ended and age appropriate. 

An ensemble of actors enters a bare stage. After some bickering, they welcome the audience to the world of the play and describe what's in store: flying, dreaming, adventure and growing up. It is wildly exciting and open ended with scope for imagination. 

What other ensemble shows could work?

I hesitate to suggest The Grapes of Wrath because of some of the materials but the version by Frank Galati could work. Originated at Steppenwolf in Chicago and using innovative open staging, the production has scope and vision. There are scenes that may be a bridge too far for schools, though. 

Then there’s plays like The Children’s Crusade and The mask of Agamemnon or Gunslinger shows of that ilk that were popular in the 1980s (and produced by the WA Youth Theatre Company. 

More contemporary, ATYP. –Australian Theatre for Young People – Also offer some good scripts for younger actors. (https://atypondemand.com.au) But they don’t have the cachet if established scripts and productions. 

But what are your suggestions for plays that will work for Year 8 and 9 students?

Example of set texts from the Western Australian ATAR Drama course (2021). Which of these would be suitable for performance by Years 8 and 9?

Scripts 

Edgar, D. (1992) The life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Dramatists Play Service, New York, N.Y.

Elice, R. , 2012, Peter and the Starcatcher: The Annotated Script of the Broadway Play, Disney Editions ISBN13: 9781423174059

Galati, F (1995) John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Eichosha. 9784268002266

Bibliography

Lambert, K., Wright, P. R., Currie, J., & Pascoe, R. (2016). Performativity and creativity in senior secondary drama classrooms. NJ Drama Australia Journal, 40(1), 15-26. 

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 - Stating the obvious

What is the starting point of any drama teacher education course?

A drama teacher begins with a love and knowledge of drama as a way of making meaning, expressing ideas and stories and communicating with an audience. They begin with drama in their own lives. On that basis we begin to build an understanding of drama as learning, drama as curriculum. 

Each year I begin by making drama – a collaborative process drama experience loosely called Play in an Hour – and spring boarding from that to ask drama teacher education students to reflect on their own drama learning in schools and the drama curriculum. 

In a Week 2 reflection in 2018, Leigh wrote the following.

What would be your reflection if you reflected on 1) your own experiences of drama in schools; and, 2) your drama curriculum?

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