Drama Tuesday - Telling the story of Drama in schools – a challenge to us all

I am always looking for examples of teachers using drama and theatre with young people. Hjørdis from Denmark is the latest find. Hjørdis is a teacher given the task of creating a play for Anti-Bullying fortnight.  with a cast of socially awkward students. The pressure is on because the play is to be performed for a school visit by Princess Mary. As to be expected, things don’t go well. 

The story is told economically in four short episodes. The casting of the young people is effective and credible (unlike so many so-called teen comedies where the actors are so clearly post puberty, hirsute and sculpted by fashion). Lise Baastrup who plays Hjørdis is delightfully gangly (think Miranda). Her story of wanting to play the Princess in a school play and being forced to play the donkey is told with humour and bittersweetness. The other story threads are handled deftly. 

The “let’s put on a play” trope has been with us from Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland days (if not before -  See Babes in Arms the 1939 American film version of the 1937 Broadway musical of the same title. Directed by Busby Berkeley). The spin offs on television of the original version of Fame or shows such as Glee present one version of the transformation stories of learning and teaching drama. Often we are so used to seeing glossed versions of this experience that we can overlook the others. 

Challenge to drama teachers: tell the story – the real story – of working in drama with young people. 

 Check out Hjørdis. It’s funny and touching. Enjoy it.

Drama Tuesday - Principles of story in drama

Drama uses the Elements of Drama to tell stories. Story drives how we dynamically combine the Elements of Drama

Story in Drama is a way of making sense and meaning of experiences so that they can be shared and understood by others.

The Principles of Story include: Plot and sequencing of events; characters and people; setting; conflict and Language. 

Within each these major categories there are specific aspects that can be linked to both story and drama.

• Plot and sequence link to action and reaction; cause and effect; time and how it is manipulated; and, to the narrative arc of exposition, complication, rising tension, climax and resolution or denouement.

• In stories, characters and people link to protagonist and antagonist; rounded and flat characters; dialogue revealing roles, relationships and motivations.

• Setting links to a sense of place and time and to to mood and atmosphere.

• Conflict relates to the use of tensions and suspense; the various ways of thinking about the conflicts person to person; character to Nature, Society and Circumstances; and also the inner conflict within a character.

• Language is indispensable for story and drama; in story there is a focus on description, inner dialogue, symbol and the use of the author’s voice.

There are clear links between the Elements of Drama and the Principles of Story.

• Role characters and relationships are linked to aspects of Characters and people found in stories.

• Situation links to Plot and sequencing of stories as well as the setting.

• There is the use of tension in both drama and story.

• Drama uses aspects of language, ideas, meaning making and symbol.

The other Elements of Drama – Voice and Movement, Space and Time, Focus and Audience – are indirectly found in narrative stories.

In Drama we embody stories that narrative fiction tells through print or words alone.

Drama Tuesday - Back in the saddle again

Being in the theatre after a break caused by the pandemic.

I am sitting in a theatre again – for a stunning production of Chicago at John Curtin College of the Arts. The last time I was in a theatre was with Hannah and Peter in the studio Theatre in Washington DC on March 16. It’s a long theatre drought. As much as I can sit at home and watch Chicago as a filmed event on  Netflix or similar, there is nothing like the visceral presence of being in an audience of other people. As annoying as it can be when there are whoops from some audience members when a high note is struck or a dance move is nailed, there is the living shared presence of belong to an audience at an event. The warm, shared dark beyond the metaphoric footlights is a mysterious space. How is it that individual thoughts, personalities, life experiences coalesce into shared laughter or applause. 

What is an audience and why is it so important?

Can you have drama without an audience?

Why does it matter?

There is a sense of grief in many that the experience of being in a “live” audience is lost in times of pandemic. Our theatre history tells us that there have been other times when the theatres were closed. Plague, pestilence, war and politics have closed theatres in the past, just as the current Pandemic is closing them. (see discussion in https://www.thestage.co.uk/long-reads/from-pandemics-to-puritans-when-theatre-shut-down-through-history-and-how-it-recovered) There will be a time when theatres are reopened and we will flock back to seeing performances as live audiences. 

It is also important to talk about why this is important for us as individuals and as a community.

Consider the reasons why from the  perspective of those who collectively make theatre.

What Idid sense from the production of Chicago at John Curtin College of the Arts was how important it was for the students (and their teachers) to perform for a live audience. The one thing that all the discussion of performance via ZOOM and digital means – as necessary as it was – couldn’t deny was the desirability of returning to live performance. 

This was a stunning production of Chicago from the opening visual impact of the well rehearsed voices and bodies on the bare stage to the final bows. The sense of style and form was effectively realised with the Fosse choreography sitting comfortably on the young bodies. The Cell Block Tango and Razzle Dazzle was driven and pulsating There was attention to the detail in the singing performances. It is exhilarating when young performers are able to reach beyond the surface gloss of style and move an audience (as they did with the sense of pathos in the portrayal of Amos). There was a faithful evocation of the original Fosse style and pizzazz.

This production is as strong as many from WAAPA. And it is a pity that more people didn’t get to be in the audience because of the pandemic restrictions. It is wonderful for those that have been able to be in the audience.

I was briefly taken back to a production in memory – at the old Playhouse in Pier Street. I think Jill Perryman was playing Mama Morton and Maurie Ogden was Amos (with the old vaudeville trick of the boots that hooked into the screws on the stage so that he swayed deeply beyond human limits. 

I have lost sight of the times when I have seen other Chicago productions, but this JCCA production is one that will stick in memory.

 Bibliography

Dewey, J. (1938:2005). Art As Experience, Perigee Trade.

Drama Tuesday - Sometimes a picture tells the story

Some of the recent posts have been text heavy. Sometimes, what is needed is a diagram to tell the story.  

There are many different ways of teaching drama – and we need a guide through the maze. Rather than just listing all the different possibilities, can we categorise and organise them to see patterns?

When we teach drama we help our students become artists and audiences. We help them make drama and respond to drama. There are three main pathways that help us organise the many possibilities.

In drama learning and teaching, students

All three pathways depend on  students learning some fundamental knowledge and understanding. of the Elements of Drama; skills and processes of making and responding to Drama; Drama Conventions; Drama Forms and Genres; Contemporary Drama in the context of Drama of other times and places; and, Drama Values, the principles and standards of Drama Practice. 

Putting that all in one diagram, there is an unfolding picture to guide us. 

For example, if we come to Drama teaching and Learning through the lens of Improvising, students are both Making their own drama and Responding to their own drama making. To do so they need to draw from their knowledge and understanding of Drama Elements such as Role, Situation and Tension; they use  skills and processes of Listening and reacting, movement and facial expression; the apply the Conventions of Improv. such as offer/accept/progress; they build from a knowledge of improvisationally-based forms such as Commedia Dell’Arte; they also draw on their knowledge of improvising in contemporary theatre practice such as Whose Line Is It; and they practice the values of respecting partners, give and take and “not blocking”.

As a second example, if the entry point is responding and the aim is to help students become informed  audiences, responding as critics, then they drama on knowledge of all the Elements of Drama and skills and processes such as listening and watching, categorising information and responses and making connections between experiences; the Drama Conventions of willing suspension of disbelief and the specific conventions used; they bring to the process what they know about the specific forms and genres used in the context of history, society & culture and perspectives of time, continuity and change;. they acknowledge and act on their values of respecting contexts of the drama observed and audience expectations.

Try using this diagram to explore the teaching and learning of different aspects drama.

A diagram is always a shorthand way of saying something. Some people like and read diagrams but others need fuller explanations. What do you prefer to make meaning of the drama teacher experience?

What would you add or take away from this diagram?

Drama Tuesday - We learn drama by making drama – a Process Drama example

We learn Drama by making Drama. By using the Elements of Drama such as role, situation, voice, movement and tension, we learn how drama tells stories in our bodies.

In this short video I share with you some drama making from a workshop I ran in Baoding, China, in November 2019. 

We used drama to bring to life the story of the Magic Lotus Lantern, a traditional story. We used drama strategies to build a series of dramatic action episodes exploring key moments in the story. This is a Process Drama.

In the traditional story of the Magic Lotus Lantern, on  the  Huashan Mountain there lived a guardian, the beautiful goddess Sanshenmu who had a brother Erlang who wanted to control his sister. 

We visualised the scene on the mountain. We created the mountain in the drama space using lengths of coloured fabric and sounds using our voices and recordings.

Our Process Drama explored the relationship between brother and sister in role and out of role. We edged into the drama using physical activities of gatekeepers. We improvised scenes between siblings in everyday life.

We moved back into the story narrating how Sanshenmu had a magical treasure – a lotus lantern whose light could scare away all evil. We embodied using symbol as a fundamental building block of drama.

In the story, one winter, a scholar Liu Yanchang, a human, visited the temple and saw the image of Shenmu and was struck by her beauty. He thought that she was so beautiful he would ask her to be my wife. Shenmu was also struck by the authentic love of the young scholar. But she knew that it a deity like her could never fall in love with a mortal. Liu Yanchang left Shenmu not knowing she was pregnant.

Skipping ahead in this account, Erlang angered by this love story, stole the Magic Lotus Lantern and banished Shenmu to live inside a dark cave buried under a mountain. There she gave birth to a child.

We created the dark cave and the birth of the child. 

Liu Yanchang returned after his success in the examinations but when he came to the Shenmudian temple he found it deserted. Just as he turned to leave, he heard a baby crying.

He was puzzled at finding a baby in the temple. Bu t then he found Shenmu’s letter written on the silk and knew that the baby was Chenxiang. He took the child and raised it, teaching him to read and write as any mortal would. But he kept the secret of Shenmu from Chenxiang. 

However, one day, the boy discovered the silk letter. He went searching for his mother.

The child grew and fought his uncle Erlang and won the Magic Lotus Lantern an d used it to break open the mountain and rescue his mother. 

I will let the drama speak for itself.

We learn drama by making drama.

Acknowledgment: The workshop was run for Cambridge Education, Baoding with Early Childhood educators and organised by IDEC, Berijing. 

Bibliography

The following resources unpack Process Drama

Bowell, P., & Heap, B. S. (2013). Planning Process Drama: Enriching teaching and learning (2nd Edition). Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge.

Bowell, P., & Heap, B. S. (2017). Putting Process Drama into Action: The Dynamics of Practice. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge.

O'Neill, C. (1995). Drama Worlds A Framework for Process Drama. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

O'Toole, J. (1992). The Process of Drama: Negotiating Art and Meaning. London: Routledge.

Taylor, P. (Ed.) (1995). Pre-Text and StoryDrama: The Artistry of Cecily O'Neill and David Booth. Brisbane: NADIE The National Association for Drama in Education.

Zoom Performance

To ZOOM or Not to ZOOM? That is the question.

As the pandemic burst on us, as drama teachers we went on-line. We made compromises, adaptations, learnt how to use ZOOM or TEAMS or similar. We sorted on-line content. We created on-line content. We were often in survival mode. There were so many unanswered questions. Now we are at the point of considering or drama students performing in the new world. ZOOM is a necessity but provides a changed aesthetic for performing. Just as each form or style of drama and theatre has a set of conventions to learn and understand, so too does on-line performance. It is timely to consider some of those conventions and the possibilities of this form of performing drama. 

A ZOOM performance has a unique sense of occasion. When we go to a traditional proscenium arch theatre we have the experience of the space, the seats, the lighting and atmosphere of an audience. When we are sitting on our home sofa with the laptop perched on our knees and the dog snuggled against our thighs, the experience is different. We are an audience of one without the familiar wrap of others nearby. The actors are in a different space - and separated from each other. Their use of space and time is limited to the frame offered by their camera. In short, what we see and hear and even feel are different. Going to the ZOOM theatre is a different experience.

Looking at some examples of school and university based ZOOM performances, prompted some thoughts and interesting questions.

Frame: The frame offered by ZOOM shapes the way actors perform. In examples I have seen, the actors are shown in Two Shot – we see their head and shoulders facing the camera. They can move in that frame closer or further from the camera but generally stay in neutral  space. In some examples, though, there is a more dynamic sense of placement of the actors within the frame – the actors moving closer or further away. This can, however, affect the sound captured.

Framing within the frame: Basically in a ZOOM performance there is a choice of Speaker view where we see the speaker’s image large on screen; or,  Galley view  where speakers are shown side by side. The choices presented are limited. 

Physicalising Facial Expression: This sort of framing focuses on facial expression. It relies on the animation of eyes, cheeks, brows, lips. While there is the old adage about screen acting – less is more – subtle facial expression in this sort of ZOOM performance presented challenges to an audience. The unforgiving eye of the camera is up close and personal. 

Sitting energy: it is interesting that in the examples I have seen, the actors are seated to perform to their camera. This gave a different sense of spine and body. While on stage we might be sometimes seated, actors are more often moving and on their feet. Sitting provides a different body orientation. I am not saying that the actors’ bodies were slumped but there was a seated energy rather than a balls-of-the-feet energy. I wondered what would have happened if the actors had been standing (adjusting their cameras to be at eye line)? Would the energy have been different? I suspect it would be more and differently energised.

More visual interest happened when one of the actor got up for a seated position and moved away from the camera. 

Lighting: it’s obvious when you see it on screen, but better lighting shows more detail. Flatter lighting drains the performance.

Accent: as with all mediated performances, the quality of voice and the use of accent are impacted by the technology. Overlapping voices which we expect and need in drama can sometimes be lost by the latency effect (time delays in the technology) or simply the broadband capacity of the connection. 

Relationships: Drama lives on relationships. How does a ZOOM performance change the implied relationships and accompanying tensions?

Space: Actors in different houses are by definition not in a shared space. What is the implied shared space of the ZOOM performance?

Length of performance: performed plays have been getting shorter and shorter (remember when Five Act plays were de rigeur, the current fashion). How long can a ZOOM Performance sustain our interest, particularly when the format of static shots are used?

Making drama is a succession of choices. How will I vary voice, body, use of space in response to the shifts in intention or roles, relationships and tension? How will production choices of costume, lighting, design, sound interact with audience?

Another point to note is about the emotional impact of a ZOOM performance. We are distanced by technology in ways that we aren’t in the warm dark space of a theatre. Does the technology distance us even further? Do we share the emotional experience in the same ways as seeing it live? I know that I can cry and laugh in watching a movie, can I do that in watching a ZOOM performance?

There are other questions too. Is it different when we watch a “live” ZOOM performance from when we watch one that has been recorded and we watch in our own time. In other words does synchronous and asynchronous performance matter?

A final observation. When we teach students about Brechtian verfremdungseffekt (see, for example, "Brecht for beginners," ; Unwin, 2014) – one of the techniques we use is to place actors in a dialogue side by side facing directly to the audience, rather than creating a naturalistic relationship. In a funny way, the side by side Gallery view of ZOOM gives us that sense of distancing. The two characters speaking to each other are addressing us as audience directly implying that they are talking to each other. ZOOM might be a great way of teaching Brecht techniques. 

Where will the use of ZOOM technology take us in drama and theatre?

Of course, we all can’t wait to get back into our theatre spaces – whenever that is permitted. But there will be continuing interest in using ZOOM technologies for Drama. 

Interesting to see how the industry is adapting to changed circumstances. MTI have just announced a “new online, licensing, ticketing and content creation platform designed to help schools and community theatres celebrate  live theatre”. https://www.mtishows.com/streaming-an-mti-show. Not yet available in Australia, 

How will this play out in drama education?

Bibliography

. Brecht for beginners. In M. Thoss (Ed.), Brecht for beginners. (pp. 74-84).

Unwin, S. (2014). The Complete Brecht Toolkit. London: Nick Hern Books.

Teaching Drama For Redundancy

One of the sometimes overlooked roles of the teacher is to teach so that we are redundant. We are successful as teachers when our students no longer need us. There is often glib recognition of terms such as learning for life and independent learners. What that means in practice is often more difficult. 

I remember an inspirational teacher telling me that he teaches his drama students to run their own warm ups. He even has a roster for them to be the leader of the warm ups for each lesson. This has two advantages. Firstly, if the teacher is late to class or delayed, then students don’t sit around waiting but can get started. Secondly, in their lives beyond school, if they are working in the profession or taking part in a community event, they have the skills and processes to manage their own warm-ups (particularly, when there may not be someone to lead them). This left an impression on me and I have encouraged my drama education students to include this simple strategy in their own teaching.

Teaching for redundancy is also a timely reminder that we need to watch the temptation to take on the drama teacher as hero/heroine role. We all love a little affirmation as teachers. But, sometimes, the drama teacher as cult leader kicks in. As much as we as individual teachers have needs to be recognised, we need to keep in mind that it is not about me/us but about students. The glib phrase used is student centred learning. That isn’t about pandering to students wants and preferences; there is still a curriculum and learning to focus on. The measure of our success as teachers is that students are learning and that we make the difference in their learning. But what matters is the student learning nor our personal agenda. 

Each student does learn in her or his own way and we need to be mindful of overgeneralising about how students learn but some clear markers of teaching for redundancy do exist. Part of that process is recognising when students incorporate the learning without the teacher prompting. If our class has been working to understand fundamentals of improvisation – offer/accept/progress – when we see them using that process independently and without us side coaching, then we can see them taking the principles of improv into their own practice. Of course, there is a useful role for side coaching. But teaching for less side coaching is teaching for redundancy. Side coaching is not about us the teacher but about shifting the focus to the student in action.

What other ways can you teach drama for redundancy?

(For more on sidecoaching see https://spolin.com/?p=872)

Misconceptions about Drama Teaching

Misconceptions about Drama Teaching are interesting.

The misconceptions that many people have about drama and arts education are revealing.

A misconception is a view or opinion that is incorrect because it is based on faulty thinking or understanding

For example, there are misconceptions about drama itself. Drama is just entertainment. Drama is showing off.  Drama is faking emotions. 

Drama can be entertaining but it can often serve a wider purpose through telling stories that are enacted and embodied. 

There are misconceptions about drama in schools. Drama is just putting on scripted plays/musicals/Shakespeare. Drama is not a serious school subject/just something as a break from real learning. Drama is time filling/wasting/just games/pretending to be trees. Drama is touchy feeling/too emotional/too revealing. Drama is OK for the show off kids but not for all kids/drama is only for talented kids not average kids/. Drama is messy/noisy/disruptive/kids get too excited and they are high when they go to their next class. You also hear people say there’s nothing to learn in drama/there’s no writing/there’s no content. Drama is just pretending/a form of lying or dishonesty/unleashes undesirable thoughts and feelings/encourages rebellion/challenges authority/is subversive.

Drama teaching and learning is a legitimate field of study; what students learn in drama is specific knowledge and skills about using embodied forms of expression and communication to share stories. They also learn through drama about their  personal, social and cultural identities.

What are the misconceptions about drama in schools that you have come across?

How do we deal with these misconceptions?

I doubt that any one wilfully sets out to hold and pass on misconceptions. They often reflect gaps in a person’s experience or education or are the residue of a bad experience of school drama. Sometimes they reflect a lack of understanding of the purposes and scope of drama in schools. Sometimes, they reflect unspoken prejudices or cultural norms. Sometimes they are the fear of the unknown. Whatever the reason, misconceptions are learnt and as teachers our

role is to respond to that mis-learning and address it. 

Eggen and Kauchak (2013) observe, “misconceptions are constructed; they’re constructed because they make sense to the people who construct them; and they are often consistent with people’s prior knowledge or experiences” (p. 195). In that light it is important to understand the factors that impact on how we learn to teach the Arts and Drama.

All of us, including teachers, bring to our lives and work, our own learning experiences in the Arts. Teachers learn about their job and craft from other teachers:

• as students themselves, they see what teachers do and how they teach; the school culture can both enable teaching in the Arts or it can powerfully de-motivate and limit it

• if a teacher’s own Arts education or the Arts teaching they observe is telling them one thing, they are likely to believe and do what they see and are familiar with. If they are told often that Drama is time wasting/time filling/just games/etc. then this  message is reinforced. Many teachers continue to teach the way they themselves were taught even when they didn’t particularly enjoy that schooling.

Tied closely to what teachers do are their underlying attitudes, values and dispositions and these have an impact on how the Arts are taught and learned. Attitudes and values are most often socially formed. It takes powerful and embodied personal experience to change entrenched points of view.

Pointing out a misconception, simply labelling it as “wrong” or “flawed thinking”, is of limited use. People who change their thinking and practice need: 

• viable, alternative experiences that disrupt their mis-conceptualised understandings

• to see how that changed understanding is useful in the real world

• to see how applying their revised thinking to new situation actually produces desired results

• to have their revised world view valued and endorsed by peers and the school community

• to see that students are learning differently, with higher levels of approval and satisfaction and with better outcomes or results

• to see that parents and the community support what is different.

Teaching the Arts often needs to be transformational learning for a teacher personally and professionally. It needs also be transformational for parents, educational leaders and policy makers and the wider community.

The antidote to misconceptions is being clear in the messages we communicate. The ways that we state purpose and scope needs to be well articulated. We need to check for understanding.  Or to put it another way, as  Stephen Covey (2004) reminds us: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD.

Stephen R. Covey  (2004) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, New York, NY. Free Press.

Eggen, P., & Kauchak, D. (2013). Educational Psychology: Windows on Classrooms, Ninth Edition. Boston: Pearson.

Purposes of Arts and Drama Education

There is a moment in the film Boychoir (Dir. François Girard, 2014), playing on SBS Movie Chanel, when the character played by Dustin Hoffman in a discussion about the notoriously short singing life of a treble voice over sees, “we give them a life, not a vocation”.

While, some students who study drama in schools continue to have lives and careers in their art form, arts education in schools is not just pre-vocational, just as a successful comprehensive education is not just pre-vocational.

Drama draws from stories of all human experience. Through the lives of other presented in drama we can better understand our own lives and stories. Drama is a rich and powerful form of expression and communication found in some form in all societies and times.

Drama shows how people interact with each other. It is about people living together in society.

Drama passes the stories of our culture from one generation to another. Drama is part of the cultural DNA, the stories that shape our wider identities.

Another way of saying that is that through drama we learn about our personal, social and cultural identities. Drama in schools is much more than a “try out” for some future job. Yes, it does develop what are sometimes called life skills such as confidence and communication. It is more importantly about how we shape the ways we express ideas and communicate and share them with others. The particular skills of using our voices and bodies, stepping into the shows of others with empathy and understanding, and having a sense of place and time are valuable in their own right. They help us tell and share the stories of our lives.

This challenges the views held by many about the purpose of drama and arts education. It questions some of the prevalent misconceptions. Misconceptions are interesting because they tell us so much. This idea of misconceptions about Drama is developed in the next post. (And there is a need to also consider drama for students who are identified as gifted and talented and pre-vocational.

Drama Tuesday - The words that we use to teach drama are important.

The drama teacher says to her students, lets play a drama game!

The simple term drama game carries with it meaning.

On the one hand, a word like game implies a sense of fun and possibility. Games are playful and entertaining. Games also have rules and structures that help us extend learning beyond this particular minute into the future, because once you’ve played the game you can play it again and extend and explore possibilities.

But you can also, depending on your context and culture, see games as frivolous, time filling and time wasting. Some see games as the opposite of learning - we go out from the classroom to play time while in class we study and focus on what’s important. Also, games can be seen as competitive, pitting player against player in order to win, to come out on top.

The people who advocate for the term drama games often do so because it encourages a sense of engagement, focus and commitment. 

Are there useful alternatives? 

I prefer to use terms like drama activities or drama exercise.  Or if needing to use the term drama game to explain and qualify how I use it. 

What this short thought reminds us is that the language we use matters. Language defines thinking and concepts. Rather than simply adopting accepted usage, we need to think purposefully about what we say and do as drama teachers.