Drama Tuesday - Drama Australia Creating Community

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 It’s always exciting when Drama Australia publishes ADEM, the Australian Drama Education Magazine. ADEM sits alongside the fully referred NJ - Drama Australia Journal. It is designed to create community and share news.

This themed edition celebrates 10 years since the publication of Drama Australia’s Acting Green Guidelines (2011) – https://dramaaustralia.org.au/assets/files/Acting%20Green%20The%20case%20studies(1).pdf. ADEM calls for a timely revision and invites responses to a survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YQVK8G2) on ways of moving forward. 

Drama Australia’s Acting Green guidelines were built on the understanding that sustainable drama and theatre practice and teaching about sustainability through drama are ways to directly involve students in understanding their connections with the natural environment, and the interdependence of systems that support life on Earth. They connect to the Australian Curriculum (ACARA)

The articles focused on Drama and Sustainability are a clear commitment to engaging with this key issue. 

• Eco-anxiety and Drama Education, Jo Raphael.

• Unity in troubled times, Darcie Kane-Priestley, Emma McDonald, and Julia Prestia.

• Two articles offer drama curriculum ideas based on children’s literature.

• Susan Chapman writes about Drama giving voice to sustainability through an Arts immersion approach, exploring the novel Chelonia Green, Champion of Turtles (Mattingly, 2008).

• Helen Sandercoe outlines a process drama based on ‘Circle’ by Jeannie Baker,

• Learning about ecoscenography Tanja Beer.

• Beyond the pandemic: Seeking sustainability in online drama education, Andrew Byrne, Susan Cooper, and Nick Waxman.

The final section provides 2021 Reflections from the State and Territory member Associations of Drama Australia. 

In these times where the COVID-119 Pandemic has increased our sense of isolation, the value and need for a shared community of practice – as provided by Drama Australia and member associations – is essential and necessary. 

Thank you Drama Australia for this latest initiative. 

Thanks Dr Jo Raphael (Editor) and Danielle Hradsky (Associate Editor).

Drama Tuesday - Impact

Drama Tuesday - Identification

The Experience of Humanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In a lifetime of reading, a new experience. 

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

My parents Nannup wedding 1949

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

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

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

I read on.

Drama Tuesday - 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.

Drama Tuesday - Challenges of space and changing times

 The Spiegeltent called The Edith sits as one of the on-campus performance venues at WAAPA @ ECU (the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University)

It rounds out the performance opportunities for students . The plush faux red velvet and glittering mirrored interior provide a circular space flanked by serried support posts and audience banquettes arrayed around. This spiegeltent, or “mirror tent” in Dutch, was designed and built by the Belgian Klessens family, who have been making them since the 1920s. 

As a performer and for a director, the space presents particular challenges. It is a form of performing “in the round”. The mirrored pillars interrupt sight lines. The sound is quickly swallowed in the soft fabric “chimney” over the performance space. Lighting opportunities can be limiting. The seating can be unforgiving on spines. Yet, there is a charm in watching the reflections of both performers and audience multiplying and shimmering. 

Certain productions work best in this space. (others haven’t!)

The production of Summer Rain, the iconic Enright/Clarke collaboration, finds a relatively comfortable fit in the Edith, performed by the second year Acting students. The tale of the rakish “show people” sits in the space with ease.

Beginning with the forced closure of Slocum’s travelling tent show in immediate Post-War 1945,  the remnants of the family on their threadbare arses, travel back to Turnaround Creek in search of something lost. This is a nostalgic paean to a lost Australia (a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph). Broke ringmaster Harold Slocum is searching for something he lost in Turnaround Creek years before. He is accompanied in their clapped out truck by his brassy wife and partner Ruby, returned soldier son, Johnny, and teenage daughter, Joy. Their tent has burnt, their truck given up the ghost. They arrive in a Turnaround Creek that is in the midst of a long drought, economic depression (a familiar and current meme in parts of inland Australia beyond the Blue Mountains). Their arrival disrupts the lives of Turnaround Creek. Their arrival also coincides with the breaking of the drought – everyone singing Send Her Down Hughie (similar emblematic slang runs through this piece with a kind of loving familiarity). Sometimes wearing a “fair dinkum-ness” on its sleeve, a world past is evoked for a different generation. I wonder how the young-looking cast relate to this world that has passed.

This is a music theatre fable. The characters are familiar, even predictably stereotypical. In these times, the diverse cast carry characters of a more mono cultural Australia with names like Clarrie, Cecil, Bryce, and Peg. The production raises interesting questions for drama educators. In the West Australian on the day I write this, there are reports of the decision by PLC and Scotch College to abandon their planned production of Grease because of objections by some PLC students about the negative portrayal of women. How do we view plays that portray different sensibilities, particularly on issues of representation? This production quite clearly chose colour blind casting. Would cancel culture even close down this production and those like it?

What this production did for me, however, was to resolve the dilemma of performing in the spiegeltent. The action worked best, particularly for singing, when the chorus sang out through the mirror pillars. The valiant cast worked hard to overcome the limits of the scenes that were played more conventionally into the circular space. I am also reminded of the first principle of working in the round: continually redraw the stage pictures so that there is a shifting perspective – and do so in a way that appears integral to the outflowing action (that appears motivated, as the classics say!). Easier said than done.

Just as The Roundhouse thrust stage at WAAPA needs a very specific spatially-aware direction, so too does The Edith Spiegeltent. The companion production by Second Year Music Theatre students of Brightstar (the Steve Martin piece) in the Roundhouse is also noteworthy and successful.

The performances of both were charming and the singing mostly confident and in character. The overall charm of Summer Rain lingers. It is also remarkably accessible for secondary age performers. I wonder, just quietly, whether it too might be cancelled by activist voices in school.

Drama Tuesday - The Tempest in contemporary times

A circular strand of white sand fills the stage when you enter the Octagon Theatre for the Black Swan State Theatre Company production of The Tempest (directed by Matt Edgerton). The familiar thrust stage has been expanded and reshaped. A crescent moon pit is slashed into the sand.

Cast members meet and greet the audience as they enter. They are skilfully collecting items from the audience to provide the props for the play – a jacket is borrowed to be Prospero’s magic cloak; a book for Prospero’s library; jewellery to be Miranda’s treasure (carefully buried in the sand; from the start the mood of audience participation is built.

The action starts with the audience invited to join the sea shanties being sung. An invitation taken up with gusto.

The strength of this production is in the ensemble.

The welcome to country is shared on the voices of the cast. A cohesive ensemble of actors and audience is reinforced as the audience are invited to join the cast in breathing deeply - a ritual three times – signalling the start of the play.  

From Teacher support notes

The action pitches immediately into the storm on board the ship cast into the storm by Prospero’s magic incantation. Immediately the strength of the ensemble work is evident with a skilfully evoked creation of the ship and the bodies in turmoil. Fluid, disciplined and powerful images created. Beautiful and strong. Set the action at a cracking pace. The whole production runs at just over 100 minutes without interval.

Into the exposition scenes – so much back story – handled with efficiency. Always a challenge but again the ensemble successfully created images using bodies to support. The level of ensemble was sustained throughout.

The other design element introduced from this point was the continual drizzling of sand from above the action, a fine thin drifting caught in the light beam – a metaphoric hour glass reminding us of the play’s themes.

The lighting of the production deserves special mention. It added significantly yet subtly to the unfolding action and shifting moods including the threatening and fantastical. It complemented the  neutral and sand coloured costuming adding to the sense of “found” objects. 

The music is created live (mostly) throughout the production incorporating the skills of the ensemble – the composer (Pavan Kumar Hari) playing a range of instruments - as well as a lithe Ariel – joined by Didge, tapping stick and haunting clarinet played by cast members. The vocal work was mostly strong and clear but there were some concerns. The strong vocal training shown by most of the cast needed to be evenly evident for all. Perhaps the super chilled theatre air conditioning was also playing havoc on some.

In tune with contemporary times, there was diversity in the casting. There are also gender/name changes. 

Seeing The Tempest again (it is such a familiar and memorable text for me) reminded me of some key points. Successful productions of The Tempest t hinge not so much on the plot – which is cartoon-esque. It relies on recognising the emotions at play. What drives Prospero must be a sense of anger and bitterness that shifts to forgiveness. The play must begin with his sense of outrage and pain driving him to fury the storm on his political opponents, to hold Ariel as captive, to imprison Miranda in ignorance, to punish and humiliate Callan so cruelly. His journey must show the recognition that anger is an insufficient emotional response. Forgiveness is necessary.

The handling of the always difficult opening of the fourth act – the Masque – is interesting and innovative. The cast sit and watch projected a series of vignettes from audience members in the foyer before the show (presumably they will be fresh each performance). There were loud guffaws from audience members as some are recognised, perhaps to the point that we lost what was being said. This inclusion of audience is not surprising – it is a hallmark of Black Swan under Artistic Director Clare Watson. It will be interesting to see how this innovation works for the rest of the season. There is an issue for me about this: the purpose of the Masque in the text is to signal the significant shift in Prospero’s attitude. He shows that he can find compassion for Miranda and Frederick and the cruelty of his punishing them. That, in turn, leads to his later forgiveness of those who plotted against him and landed him on this island. It extends to his freeing of Ariel.

For me The Tempest must hinge on the character journeys of each and we must sense the shifts in Prospero most of all. The triangular relationships between Miranda, Frederick and Caliban also need to be evident. Caliban is more than a threat to Miranda, he is a rival to Frederick. The insecurities of political life and intrigue – echoed in the comic characters – also need to be more than plot devices. The bed of vipers or politics need to be evil under the cloaks of civility. There needs to be productive tension and sense of threat underpinning the comedy of the drunkards plotting with Caliban. They could unhinge Prospero’s magic.

This is a production that drama teachers – and their students – should see. It is a wonderful example of ensemble. It presents interesting design, music and movement opportunities that should inspire. It is successful and enjoyable. It can bring our students into the under used Octagon theatre and remind them of the challenges of space and design. 

The other point of note, is that this production was staged by Black Swan following an invitation to audiences to nominate which Shakespearean play would conclude the season. It is a fitting and interesting choice in these times when there is so much clamour about “rigged elections”. 

The Teacher Support Notes for the production are again wonderful and useful.

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https://www.uwa.edu.au/theatres/-/media/University-Theatres/Docs/Octagon-Theatre/Octagon-Theatre-information-pack.pdf 

Postscript

With a little flutter of the heart I recognise that it is 50 years since The Octagon was opened and around that amount of time since I was a student sitting in first year lectures in this space. The passing parade of lecturers –two sessions early and late – are somehow etched into the walls (though the seats have been renovated from the utilitarian hard padded benches. 

We watched in fascination as the floor of the stage creaked as Dorothy Hewett paced her lectures (while her partner Merv Lilly sat in the back row as a grim reminder to any would-be interjections). Dorothy always put on a good show – opening her Ibsen lecture with the actress Pat Skevington emerging from the wings with pistol.

The history of how a University on this side of the world in what is still sometimes called the most isolated capital city int he world, came to have a theatre designed by the famous Tyrone Guthrie is often told. There was a time when the University of Western Australia was ground breaking for drama and theatre education. It should not be forgotten that The New Fortune Theatre which sits inside the courtyard of the Arts Building is a full-scale replica of the Fortune Theatre from London. 

In all there are five full theatre venues on this campus: The Octagon, The New Fortune, The Dolphin, the Sunken Garden, Winthrop Hall (not forgetting The Somerville now used for Festival Films but originally for performances). What drama courses are taught at UWA in 2021? What has been lost in the world of the contemporary academy? Too much. 

The Octagon is still a warm and inviting performance space, vastly under-utilised for purpose.

Drama Tuesday - World Teacher Day 2021

What makes a memorable Drama Teacher?

On World Teacher Day I pose a simple challenge: who are the inspirational, unforgettable, indelible, significant, impressive, illustrious, brilliant, timeless drama teachers in your lives?

And why are they so memorable?

The drama teachers who I remember –

• Know drama and theatre

• Know how to teach drama and theatre

• Always learning and reflecting

• Care about the learning of their students

• Know curriculum, progression in learning drama and assessment that matches drama to students’ ages and stages of development

• Model effective drama teaching and learning

• Advocate for drama

• Confidently understand their role and purpose

Or to share this graphically:

Of course there are academic words for all this.

Teach drama focuses on embodied learning in the arts (Bresler, 2004). Through practical, hands-on experiences in drama, we model the ways that students learn the arts and ways they are taught. This  engenders embodied teaching.

This approach is based on sound research about providing:

• Analogue experiences – these are experiences like the ones students in drama experience, providing teachers with similar learning experiences that they need to facilitate for their students (Borko & Putnam, 1995; Morocco & Solomon, 1999).

• Content focus – unambiguous content description (Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; S.Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & SukYoon, 2001; Shulman, 1986).

• Active learning – where teachers are engaged in the analysis of teaching and learning; learning from other teachers and from their own teaching; reviewing examples of effective teaching practice (Desimone et al., 2002; Franke, Fennema, & Carpenter, 1997; Morocco & Solomon, 1999; S.Garet et al., 2001).

• Dialogue amongst teachers – belonging to a community of drama teachers participating in discussion with practising teachers (T. R. Guskey, 1986, 2003; Virginia Richardson, October 1990).

• Long-term support and feedback – support beyond the immediate experiences in the workshop through enrolling in a community of drama teachers (Borko & Putnam, 1995; T.R. Guskey, 2002).

This is an articulated theoretical framework for drama teacher education course design that steps beyond pragmatic functionalism. It is a framework informed by Dewey, Vygotsky, Bruner, Eisner, Greene and others. Learning to teach drama involves acts of purposeful meaning-making that draw together personal experiences and those of others (Dewey, 1938; Eisner, 2002). No one learns alone (Grumet, 2004; Vygotsky, 1978). Drama teachers learn cognitively, somatically and affectively – mind, body and spirit (Peters, 2004). They work with enactive, iconic and symbolic modes (Bruner, 1990). Learning to teach drama engages aesthetic imagination (Greene, 1995). Learning to teach drama involves proactive participation in communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Learning to teach drama organises drama knowledge, categorises it and uses strategies of paradigmatic thinking and narrative building (Bruner, 1991).

Extract from chapter about drama teacher education in a forthcoming book 

But you can sum up all these ideas:

Memorable Drama Teachers know their stuff… They get their act together and take it on the road everyday…

Bibliography

Borko, H., & Putnam, R. T. (1995). Expanding a teacher’s knowledge base: A cognitive psychological perspective on professional development. In T. R. Guskey & M. Huberman (Eds.), Professional Development in Education. New York: New York: Teachers College Press.

Bresler, L. (2004). Knowing Bodies, Knowing Minds - Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bruner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343711

Desimone, L. M., Porter, A. C., Garet, M. S., Yoon, K. S., & Birman, B. F. (2002). Effects of Professional Development on Teachers' Instruction: Results from a Three-Year Longitudinal Study. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(2 (Summer 2002)), 81-112. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594138

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & Education. New York, NY: Kappa Delta Pi.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). What can eduction learn from the arts about the practice of education? John Dewey Lecture for 2002, Stanford University. Retrieved from www.infed.org/biblio/eisner_arts_and_the_practice_or_education.htm . Last updated: April 17, 2005.

Franke, M., Fennema, E., & Carpenter, T. (1997). Teachers creating change: Examining evolving beliefs and classroom practice. In E. Fennema & B. Scott-Nelson (Eds.), Mathematics teachers in transition (pp. 255-282). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, The Arts and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Grumet, M. (2004). No one learns alone. In N. Rabkin & R. Redmond (Eds.), Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century, (pp. 49–80). Chicago, IL: Columbia College Chicago.

Guskey, T. R. (1986). Staff development and the process of teacher change. Educational Researcher, 15, 5-12. 

Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8, 381-391. 

Guskey, T. R. (2003). Scooping up meaningful evidence. Journal of Staff Development, 24(4), 27-30. 

Morocco, C. C., & Solomon, M. Z. (1999). Revitalising professional development. In M. Z. Solomon (Ed.), The diagnostic teacher: Constructing new approaches to professional development (pp. 247-267). New York: Teachers College Press.

Peters, M. (2004). Education and the Philosophy of the Body: Bodies of Knowledge and Knowledges of the Body. In L. Bresler (Ed.), Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds - Towards Embodied Teaching and Learning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

S.Garet, M., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & SukYoon, K. (2001). What Makes Professional Development Effective? Results From a National Sample of Teachers. American Educational Research Journal. doi:https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312038004915

Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14. 

Virginia Richardson. (October 1990). Significant and Worthwhile Change in Teaching Practice. Educational Researcher, 19(7), 10-18. doi:10.2307/1176411

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drama Tuesday - Perth Festival

 Connecting our students with the Arts in their society

https://www.perthfestival.com.au/media/uqgd5kdp/creative-learning-brochure-2022.pdf?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PF_ConnectCL_Launch&utm_content=version_A 

The Perth Festival which runs in late Summer in Perth, has announced the program for teachers and students ahead of a Festival launch in November.

It’s always exciting to have an insight into the Festival delights. 

Also wonderful is the  commitment to engaging young people and their teachers. The arts in schools are not separate from the wider reach of the arts in society. It is important that young people see from an earlier age the opportunities for connection. 

As the Australian Curriculum The Arts (ACARA, 2014) reminds us: 

In making and responding to  artworks, students consider a range of viewpoints or perspectives through which artworks can be explored and interpreted. Responding in each arts subject involves students, as artists and audiences, exploring, responding to, analysing, interpreting and critically evaluating  artworks they experience. Students learn to understand, appreciate and critique the arts through the critical and contextual study of artworks and by making their own artworks.

A vibrant arts culture in the wider society is essential for effective  arts education in schools. There needs to be a symbiotic relationship between arts learning and arts making and enjoyment in our community. 

There are also  TEACHER PROFESSIONAL LEARNING opportunities.

Drama Tuesday - If We Were Villains

 The Never Ending Quest – Stories of Drama Education

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

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

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

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

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

Their unfolding school year is effectively sketched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?

I blame him for all of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this a fair portrayal? 

I open our discussion to stimulate the debate.

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

What could be the way forward for these troubled spaces?   

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

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Bibliography

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

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

Drama Tuesday - A Muse of Fire … 1991

 How our schools are being transformed by "the brightest heaven of invention"

Not so long ago,. there was little room in the school curriculum for drama and theatre studies apart from the occasional enthusiastic rendering of the "school play". In rosy hazy memory, the "school play” was a major occasion on the school calendar - triumphs of chaos and art wrought from the temperament of the teacher/ director. the nervous energy of young performers, the long suffering patience of school administrators and the fond forbearance of parents. Whatever the critical response to these occasions might have been, it is worth noting that often for those involved, the experience was remembered long after other subject content has been forgotten.

As the educational framework of our schools has expanded, drama and theatre studies have found a place as a subject discipline in their own right. Students in our schools have on offer a range of drama and theatre experiences.

In the early years of schooling, when students take part in creative play, they are using part of the language of drama. Through their experiences of make believe and pretending they are exploring different roles. A group of pre-school students at the dress up box or pretending to be a dragon with roaring noise and faces contorted are acting out roles beyond their own lives. Sometimes such games and creative play is formalised into a performance for someone else, an audience, but mostly the focus of this play is on the enjoyment of the moment for the particular students involved. The importance of these early experiences in creative play is now widely recognised; capacity for risk taking, for lateral thinking, for imaginative exploration are just some of the important life skills that are developed in these early games.

As students in our schools progress, there are increasing opportunities for them to develop a broader understanding of drama. Other areas of the curriculum such as understanding society can be explored through role playing and simulation games. Language can be developed through a love of words, exploring their textures and character. An understanding of changing physical development can be explored through movement, mime and characterisation work. The are few bounds for imaginative teachers using drama as a tool for learning content material, and as a means of developing student awareness of themselves and their own development. Increasingly, students in primary school have the opportunity of performing for an audience: sometimes a small performance to another group of students in the class, or an assembly item or an end of year concert or a performance for the people at the local Senior Citizens Centre are all ways of developing in students a sense of self confidence, of working in a group, and enjoying acting in roles.

In the secondary school, courses in drama and theatre are offered at a more formal level. In the Unit Curriculum students can explore improvised drama (plays without pre-written scripts). mime and movement. developing self-devised performance pieces. Gradually the focus of their studies takes them beyond drama as a tool for self development and exploration of the aspects of theatre and performance. The technical aspects of theatre, developing the voice, understanding something of the history of theatre and its place in society. In the post compulsory years of schooling students can take a more specialised course in theatre which broadens their understanding of the place of theatre and drama in the cultural life of our society. Further opportunities for performance develop self-confidence, commitment. self-image and group interaction skills. In the Senior Secondary we have both ATAR and General courses in Drama for the WACE the Western Australian Certificate of Education. (ATAR. An Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) represents your rank amongst all the other year 12s in Western Australia.)

Naturally, there are links to life beyond school. Some students take further studies at a tertiary level or enter the professional theatre; some develop a love for theatre as a form of entertainment and argument; some others use the techniques of rehearsal and visualisation developed in drama and theatre studies in a wide variety of other careers. It is safe to claim that ( although they mightn’t always realise it ) all students who have been involved in drama and theatre are enriched in ways that they barely dream of.

In all recorded societies there have been forms of drama and theatre. Some people argue that the health of a society is reflected in its capacity for reflecting and exploring the values and concerns through this imaginative world. As Hamlet in the play by Shakespeare reminds us

" ... the purpose of playing ... is to hold ... 

the mirror up to nature ..."

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Scenes from around the state

South Hedland

In one end of a teaching block, cocooned from the searing heat outside, a class of Year 5 students are telling their version of the story of the dragon and the damsel in distress. An aboriginal boy with an infectious smile has dressed as the dragon's mother and is berating the dragon for being " ... so mean to the poor girl. .. " and for" … getting dragons a bad name ... " He concludes" ... is it any wonder that we are almost:-extinct ... ". Toe rest of the students in the class are laughing and teacher Rhonda Brentnall is enjoying his performance. These students are one step beyond playing "dress ups" and "pretending" ¢ they are learning to shape a performance for the enjoyment of others listening.

Belmay Primary School

A circus is in progress - not a traditional circus under tent with lions and high flying aerialists under the Sole Brothers' banner, but a group of students from a primary school are making their own circus. Working for five weeks with Reg Bolton from Suitcase Circus this group of students have discovered in themselves a wealth of talent that they barely suspected existed. Stilt walkers, acrobats, clowns, unicyclists and performers of all kinds have shaped a circus where before there was nothing but the idea. Under the guidance of teacher, Graham Baxter and with the help of tutors such as Reg, these students have worked as a team to make a satisfying and enjoyable performance.

Geraldton

At the local shopping centre students from Standing Room Only the performing group from John Willcock Senior High, have drawn a crowd of shoppers to them with their short impact drama with a road safety message. Later that same group of students will take their play oto a receptive audience at the Senior Citizen's village. Here drama is being used to communicate a health message and is part of a joint project undertaken with the local office of the Department of Health.

Fremantle

For many years now, John Curtin Senior High School has had a reputation as centre for students specially gifted in theatre. Students from this program have distinguished themselves through making memorable theatre. 1991 is an important year - a breakthrough

What would we report from around the state in 2021?