Notes for Intending Contributors toThe Journal for Drama in Education

The Journal for Drama in Education is published twice a year and contains a refereed section. All articles that have been refereed will be indicated underneath the title on the contents page and within the Journal where the article appears.

The Editorial Committee welcomes contributions on any aspect of drama and education, contributions which reflect on NATD policy, and more general contributions on education.

The following guidelines are offered to contributors but the Editorial Committee recognises that not all potential contributors will have access to the necessary technology. Contributors should not therefore be discouraged if they can only submit articles in another form.

It is preferred that contributions are submitted by email to the address on the inside front cover. The author's details should be submitted on a separate page and should include the personal details which the author would like to appear at the beginning of the article, as well as a short digest of the article. Authors should also include full address, telephone, fax and email numbers.

If the articles are for the refereed section they should be presented using the Harvard system of referencing. Footnotes should appear as endnotes at the end of each article.

REFEREESLina Attel Director of the Performing Arts Centre, Noor Al Hussein Foundation, JordanGavin Bolton Reader Emeritus, University of DurhamProf. David Davis Professor of Drama in Education, Birmingham City UniversityDr Brian Edmiston Associate Professor, Ohio State University, USADorothy Heathcote Senior Lecturer in School of Education, Universities of Durham and Newcastle

1950-1986 Wasim Kurdi Researcher, Qattan Centre for Educational Research Development, Rammallah,

Palestine Carmel O'Sullivan Lecturer in Education, Trinity College DublinAllan Owens Professor of Drama Education, University of Chester.Jaroslav Provaznik Principle Lecturer in Drama in Education, Charles University, Prague, Czech

Republic Bill Roper Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Birmingham City UniversityDr. Urvashi Sahni President of the Studyhall Educational Foundation, IndiaDr Paddy Walsh Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Queen's University, Belfast.

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CONTENTSPage

Editorial 3

Chair’s Report 13Paul Gibbins

Mantle of the Expert: Palestine August 2010 14Luke Abbott

Letter to NATD Conference 2010 25Ian Yeoman

The Arts in the Age of Austerity. What Should Arts Educators Do? 32Phil Christopher

‘A Moment in and out of time’ – The space for change in Applied Drama 36Sharon Aviva-Jones

Reviews:Creating Democratic Citizenship Through Drama Education: The Writings 46of Jonothan Neelands by Peter O’ConnorAdrian Bailey

What Young People Need. 50A review of Drama Schemes by Mark WheelerGuy Williams

Teaching Primary Drama by Brian Woolland 54Ruth Saxton

Forthcoming 58The next issue of The Journal

NATD Publications 59

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Editorial

This issue of The Journal concentrates on the significance of drama as a space in which to create meaning in a world rendered if not meaningless then at least very hard to understand. Fundamentalist marketeers bring the Western economy to near bankruptcy, and then a new UK government takes office and sets about implementing the totally discredited philosophy of the very same marketeers with a fervour that borders on madness. And we, our children, our schools, our health service, all our public services and our arts are already paying heavily for their folly. Welcome to the madhouse. But perhaps it is not madness; perhaps it is not so hard to understand. In her seminal book, The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein describes what happened to her country, Canada, in the 1990s.

“…A major campaign was afoot to push the government to lower taxesby cutting spending on social programs such as health and education.Since these programs are supported by an overwhelming majority ofCanadians, the only way the cuts could be justified was if the alternative was national economic collapse – a full-blown crisis….By the time Canadians learned that the “deficit crisis” had been grosslymanipulated by the corporate-funded think tanks, it hardly mattered – the budget cuts had already been made and locked in. As a direct result, social programs for the country’s unemployed were radicallyeroded and have never recovered…. The crisis strategy was used again and again. In September 1995, a video was leaked to the Canadian press of John Snobelen, Ontario’s minister of education,telling a closed-door meeting of civil servants that before cuts to education and other unpopular reforms could be announced, a climate of panic needed to be created.” (pp. 258-9) 1

So, there is method in their madness.

In another really useful analysis of the “crisis”, Whose Crisis, Whose Future? Towards a Greener, Fairer, Richer World, Susan George employs a provocative metaphor:

“Most people haven’t noticed yet but, except for a small minority, we’re all in prison. The guards aren’t stupid, they let us walk about freely inthe sunshine and attend the movies of our choice, but, for many of themost important aspects of our lives, we are not free.” (p. 1) 2

It brings to mind Edward Bond’s

“Prisoners who do not know they are in prison lie in the strongest cell.” (p.227) 3

But teachers are not blind to what is happening. They are the most unionised group in the public sector and the response to the schemes of Gove (the Gimmickfinder General, as the cartoonist Steve Bell calls him) seems to indicate that they have been distinctly

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unimpressed by the Secretary of State’s proposals. The Journal would welcome brief reports from schools on the effects of the Education White Paper and how they are responding to them.

There is also optimism to be found in the fact that inmates are breaking out, taking to the streets and occupying senate houses. Was that fully anticipated? Politicizing a generation of students, of all ages, may not have been the coalition’s intention. Perhaps the guards are more stupid than they would like us to think.

The search for meaning however must go beyond slogans and chants, significant as these are. For us, the space to create meaning must be in the sort of inquiring classroom Luke Abbot investigates. He describes his experience of working on Mantle of the Expert with early year teachers and their pupils in Palestine. He reflects on what it means to create an inquiring classroom where discourse is focussed on meaning making as opposed to fact finding. We are introduced to the world of an ancient olive tree, a central icon of Palestinian life, and invited to explore the teacher’s thinking about possible orientations in the use of drama for learning and Mantle of the Expert art forms.

Ian Yeoman’s letter reminds us of precisely why Theatr Powys makes such an invaluable contribution not only to the lives of the children of Powys but to our understanding of what theatre in education should be about. Interesting that the Arts Council of Wales can see that up until the point that it is told it has to save money. Theatr Powys is not giving in and we must do all we can to support them and sustain a TIE that engages children’s thinking, feeling and action.

Phil Christopher shows how the ideological attack on anything that does not appear to “drive the economy” extends into Higher Education and the dire effects that is having, particularly on the arts. He argues for a response that accepts that arts graduates must create a market for themselves, though not by simply providing what is expected of them, and considers ways in which this can be achieved.

One kind of market open to drama graduates is in the applied theatre arena, usually funded by, for example, health, social welfare, criminal justice providers. Sharon Aviva-Jones in a timely and perceptive article shows how applied drama can and must be more than a “tool” for the social and individual change required by the funding bodies. She argues convincingly for a far richer outcome than, in her case, learning English as a second language through drama. She sees her participants and facilitator as “critical co-investigators”, jointly responsible for evolving understanding in order to create meaning. She also reflects on the somewhat unexpected place of performance in this work and includes an example of employing a story to create a new meaning, a new significance, from an old event. She sums up drama as creating “a space to reflect imaginatively and critically and socially on the conditions of our external and internal lives and to enact new webs of meaning between people”.

The three reviews take a critical look at new books by or about three well-established 4

drama teachers who write for those starting out teaching drama and for those of us who are still learning many years in.

What follows is an edited version of a dialogue between members of The Journal Committee in response to the NATD Conference 2010. It focuses on the role of ‘story’ in the teaching of Drama, and explores the ways that Drama can be used to tease out meanings within stories.. Those taking part: Brian Woolland, John Airs, Maggie Hulson and Guy Williams.

Reflections on Drama and Story arising from the October 2010 NATD Conference

Brian Woolland:I was intrigued and challenged by Joe Winstone’s keynote address to conference in which (to over-simplify) he seemed to suggest that when working with young children we owe it to them not to interfere or to intervene with classic stories, that we should dramatise them more or less as they are. The argument was engaging and provocative; and, as with any good keynote address, forced me to reflect on my own practice – which in many ways stands in opposition to that proposed in Joe’s keynote.

I may, of course, be misinterpreting Joe; but if so, my misinterpretation was widely shared by others at conference. I therefore thought it worthwhile setting down on paper my own rationale for using story as a starting point for dramatic work, but not a constraint for it.

Using the example of Jack and the Beanstalk: If we are going to dramatise the story with children we need to choose key focal points for our dramatic exploration. If we are working inside the existing story, as it were, we might, for example, choose to focus on and dramatise Jack’s mother asking Jack to take the cow to sell at market. Many of the most significant learning opportunities provided by any participatory drama come when participants are able to follow through the consequences of their decisions. If Jack’s mum is unable to persuade Jack to take the cow to market, of if he decides to ask a friend to look after it, or if he subsequently manages to resist the sweet-talking bean seller on the way to market, we will rapidly find ourselves in an other story than Jack and the Beanstalk. Our job as teachers of drama is at least partly to explore meaning. In this instance, if we are going to honour the contributions of the people we are working with (whether they are 6 years old, or 16 or 60), we owe it to them to explore the possible consequences and implications of what they do; in short, to tease out the meaning of their decisions. What will it mean for Jack and his Mum if they do not get the money (or the beans) for the cow? As Dorothy Heathcote made very explicit in her keynote, NOT knowing the answer to questions such as this not only creates dramatic tension, but also provides the most wonderful learning opportunities. ‘Messing’ around with Jack and the Beanstalk does not in any way deny children access to the ‘original’. But the notion of an

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‘original’ in a tale such as Jack and the Beanstalk is highly problematic when there are so many different versions of it, from different sources.

John Airs:I have always been unsure about the nature of the acting in “acting out a story”. This is the story, these are the characters, this is what they do. Act it out. We might not put it so crudely but in effect it is what we are asking of the class. But, and here is the problem, there is another way of using that phrase, acting out. It can be used as the opposite of acting in. Acting in, meaning engaging in the drama with some integrity, some conviction, not embarrassed, not self-conscious, not over-acting. ‘In’ the story and the role, not ‘out’.

So how do I work with my class in such a way as to protect them into a role, so they are acting in, not out? One way might be to simply talk about the story and the characters. What precisely are they doing, (not necessarily at the start of the story but at a key moment)? Why are they doing it? Why does it matter to them? Does it matter to anyone else? Then, eventually, what might their action look like? (It is helpful to build physically as well as mentally.) Right, are we ready now to start the drama? Take your time. This approach might work with some students.

Let me offer an example. When the escaped slave, Harriet Tubman, reached her first safe house, instead of a welcome, she had a broom thrust into her hands and she was ordered to get on with sweeping the stoop. Act this out? She sweeps. Not very interesting. But let’s think about how she must have felt. Here, a class thought-tracking, as she stands broom in hand, could be a useful strategy. It might go something like this: “It’s a betrayal.” “I’m not free.” “I’m her slave now!” “I feel exposed. Anyone could see me.” Eventually the penny will drop and someone will say something along the lines of: “Ah. Of course! A black woman ushered into a white woman’s house would raise suspicions. A black woman sweeping the stoop is invisible.”

In acting out this brief moment now, Harriet will move from perhaps motionless disbelief to a realisation and an active sweeping, perhaps subtly infused with a gleam of awareness that she has learnt her first lesson in cunning deception. Satisfying to play out/play in and more interesting to watch. Maybe.

A useful principle is always to try and help the students not to think about themselves, to try to find ways of directing attention away from ‘me acting’ to ‘me with something to attend to’. It may be a problem to solve (what might the character do if simply ordered to sweep?) an object to focus on (the broom. All that it stands for) or it may be something to be written, drafted, built – something specific to do. Attention out there, not on myself. Paradoxically perhaps, that should lead to acting ‘in’ not ‘out’.

Brian Woolland:In dramatising a story – whether it is one that the children already know well (Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, The Pied Piper, for example) or one that they have never

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encountered before – we need to ask ourselves what it is that we are dramatising; and that begs a crucial secondary question: What makes something dramatic? That may seem obvious but it is sometimes worth stating the obvious. And I would argue that the following elements are crucial:

• Narrative tension. This can be created by the participants wanting to know one or more of the following:–

• What is going to happen?• How is this going to be resolved? • How and why have these people got into this situation?

• There needs to be a sense of struggle. In the instance of Jack and the Beanstalk, if Jack and his Mum are both keen to sell the cow, there is no struggle, and therefore that moment is not worth dramatising. If, when Jack returns from the giant’s castle, he has great difficulty persuading anybody that there really is a dangerous giant at the top of the beanstalk, then that is potentially dramatic.

• The potential for change. The playwright David Hare once said, ‘never allow a character to leave a scene the same way as they entered it.’ Change does not always take place (witness Chekhov’s plays), but the possibility that things can be different is what makes a situation dramatic.

The notion that when children get to a certain age (say, 10 years old), they are mature enough to intervene in stories (implying that before that age they will learn more from working within the tight, given frame) is patronising and seems to ignore one of the most crucial elements of learning – curiosity. In my own experience, when working with stories, and allowing children to make their own decisions (and follow up the consequences of those decisions), the children’s curiosity about – and understanding of – the ‘original’ story is greatly enhanced. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead neither trivialised Hamlet, nor denied anybody access to it.

There is much written at present about the ‘Creative Curriculum’. It has become a fashionable phrase. Too often, however, the only person being truly creative in many of these activities is the teacher. A creative teacher may inspire creativity in the children with whom s/he is working – but only if s/he is able to listen to them, and is willing to work WITH and explore the possibilities and meanings in ideas and suggestions that they come up with.

Maggie Hulson:I think that as soon as a teacher begins to work with a class on a story, intervention is taking place. There is a continuum however between just telling it as ‘written’, and opening up the whole thing for alteration. When I choose a story to work on I want to stick with certain givens: what I think has been called the ‘flexible rigidity’:

1. that will help the children become artists able to work within the constraints of the form,

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2. that will foster collaborative forming of meaning within the constraints of the context.

I like working away at the context and the circumstances that lead to the given – working in the social network of choices rather than an individual’s choice. I see the creative process as one bound around by an inextricably linked movement between the material world and the human network. Like the considerations that structure the work of visual artists (light, paint, brushes, canvas, subject, intention, flexibility of fingers, strength of arm etc). The dramatiser (?) must work with the narrative structure of the story chosen, whichever version, and the essential actions of the character. In the taking of their actions, the ‘not’ is implied (See Brecht’s notion of ‘fixing the not... but...’). Jack does take the cow to market (Jack is not refusing, the mum is not taking the cow, neither are sacrificing themselves instead of the cow, not giving in to starvation, not selling the house and so on). It strikes me that sending a child to sell the cow is such a hard thing, not so much because he may have grown fond of it (unlikely in rural folk) but because cow = milk and a child needs milk – that’s how bad things are. So, in those circumstances there is no choice.

The creative choices for those who are trying to get inside the story and dramatise it are, I think, more to do with eliciting contextual richness (almost Brecht’s gest) and unfolding the choice of action made by the character. The teacher chooses a story that the teacher thinks will suit the needs of the children - that the givens will be exciting and challenging – with both room for change/influence, and the squeeze of context.

I also think there are certain things that just shouldn’t be ‘mucked about with’. For example, if I remember correctly, Joe Winstone referred to the wolf in Red Riding Hood, and how some have used this story as a framework for seeing things from the perspective of the downtrodden and misunderstood wolf. This, I think, is indicative of a misunderstanding of the role of the characters. It humanises the wolf in an unnecessary and irrelevant way. The woods are the woods, and all they stand for in fairy tales, and the wolf is a wolf (not a stand in for a naughty man) - they are the context of the wild, natural, powerful, world that goes about its business with little thought for humans. (I’m definitely with The Company of Wolves on this one).

Guy Williams: Over the last seven days, during and since conference, I have become exercised by two issues: Dorothy's 'not knowing the answer' (and Brian's comments about the creativity of the teacher overwhelming the student's) and the 'drawing on/drawing in' tension as I have come to understand it.

I have just started working in a new school (at the time of writing, I am five weeks in) and am fascinated and alarmed by the lack of story in the lives of the young people and the staff in the school. I am finding that the stories I have come to know and love in exploration with young people over the past decade or so are functioning in different ways

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and at times have little or no resonance. Of course, I am the new storyteller and there is an element of young people not wanting to hear my voice. But I am finding at the moment that there is a real resistance to entering the story. I wonder whether there is a far greater need for this community of young people to be given far more of a sense that I don't know the answer or more of a sense of the constraint about which Maggie writes so clearly. Having said that, the Y12s I have been working with are an exception to this rule.

At Conference I was very conscious of this as I was running my workshop and when I returned to school, on the Tuesday I worked with Y12s on the same material. The story is 'Antigone' and in its creation a couple of years ago, I was consciously drawing on the story for a Y9 Citizenship day exploring the events in Thebes and asking the year group, in the aftermath of the blood-letting, how we should rebuild our society. With the Y12s I am drawing them in to the story as they are studying it for their examination and will be performing it later this term. At Conference, I was asking the participants to reflect upon the material and consider where the balance lay. In the scheme, the participants are placed in the frame of those who are of Thebes but who function at its margins - the water bearers. They have a crucial function in the biology of people's lives but little status in their society. They stand by and watch at a distance as the royal family tear themselves apart. The scheme (rigidly) moves towards the moment when Creon has ordered that the body of the 'traitor' Polyneices not be buried but be left in the desert to the birds and the dogs. Antigone defies the law. The water-bearers are at the river bank and bodies from the civil war have been washed downstream and caught in the eddy where they draw water. What do they do? At Conference some of the participants chose to purify the water by boiling it. The Y12s chose to leave and try to find another source. When provoked by Teacher In Role as a Guard asking for their help because he has witnessed Antigone burying Polyneices and he is too scared to face Creon alone but also feels compassion for the young girl, the participants at Conference were torn and divided. The Y12s abandoned him and told him that he must do as the king wished.

Participants at Conference spoke of feeling exposed and vulnerable (as participants) that they wanted more clarity and definition of what they were being asked to do. The Y12s spoke of their high level of enjoyment and understanding the play much better.  

In both instances the structure of the work has taken the participants to a moment of narrative tension (in terms of what is going to happen next, how it is going to be resolved and how and why they are in this position.) There is a struggle (do I respond to the laws of the state or the laws of the gods?). And the possibility for change is placed in a choice that for many (especially the Y12s) is Hobson's Choice. But it is a choice nevertheless and in scrutinising the role of the Chorus in Antigone (also beyond the central action but much closer to it than the water bearers) who are privy to all of the action and the decision-making but only exert influence when it is too late, as Maggie points out, we are living through Brecht's notion of ‘fixing the not... but...’: ‘Man is alterable and able to alter’. In Antigone (a story that Brecht himself dramatised), the events are fixed but must be seen as

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socially created. For the Y12 students, Antigone must be arrested and buried alive as the emphasis is on drawing in. 

Having had the privilege of taking part in Brian's workshop on the day after I ran my own, I was struck by what Brian had been talking about the night before. The power of enabling the creativity of the participant in the Drama. I am not sure that I have this right yet. I am also in some tension with Maggie's reworking of Joe's keynote, as I have some considerable commitment to the notion of the constraint of the story and the power of the metaphor to provide constructive narratives for young people to explore and make their own.

Maggie Hulson:What you say Guy, about the young people in your school having a lack of story reminds me of two quotes:

“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” Salman Rushdie

“Reality is. It exists. Humanness is not. It is created. It does not generate itself. Humanness cannot be created unless inhumanness may be created. If there is truth a lie must be possible.” Edward Bond

When we dramatise ‘the socially created events of a story’, with the givens of that world in place, we are trying to give young people permission and the skill to deconstruct, joke, retell, rethink and think new thoughts. I depart slightly from Salman Rushdie, perhaps, as I think it more useful to have the skill to change the times rather than change with them.

Might it be of use to discuss what we think can be changed in a story and what can’t?

Guy Williams:I think it might be useful to discuss the givens and the negotiables of a story. I’m still taken by the ‘drawing on’ and ‘drawing into’ polarity. If we take ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ again, the first question has to be: what is it that attracts us to this story? Is it the poverty of Jack and his mother – the desperation that drives them to sell the cow? Is it the relationship between mother and son – without a father figure in their lives? Is it the magical access to another world, escaping the poverty? Is it the overthrow of the tyrant? The acquisition of wealth? The magical bird? The magical harp? Is it the familiarity of the story as a whole? In choosing the story are we enabling young people to explore a familiar element of their culture from the point of view of experts?

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I agree with Brian that stories are not sacrosanct. They never have been. They have always been transformed to meet the needs of the tellers. Is that right? And is that the difference in our consideration of how and why we use story. Are we placing the needs of the listeners, the receivers of the story, at the heart of our decisions? But that doesn’t take us away from the lure of the original story. So perhaps we have to consider what it is that the young people need and take from the story what matches those needs. If Jack considers not trading the cow for the beans then we still have the poverty and his relationship with his mother and we lose the magic and the giant but the young people control the story in a different way. Have we lost too much?

(Maggie Hulson, Interjection:Jack can of course consider not selling the cow - he has to make a choice, and whenever a character makes a choice the ‘not’s, as I said above, are implied - one can use Brechtian techniques to dramatise such choices, as one might with off text work on a script, for example, but what is interesting to me is that the character of Jack does choose to sell the cow for beans and all that follows is a consequence of this. That is that story.)

If we take Maggie’s ‘Cooks in the Kitchen’ we still have the tyrant of the original story, we still have the account of the rape and mutilation of Philomel and the death of Itys but we come at the whole story through the forced cannibalism. Interestingly, the lure of the story is in being cooks. Young people love playing in the kitchens and are beguiled into the darkness with little initial reference to the story.

(Maggie Hulson, Interjection:Yes, working in role as the cooks is a way into the story, a way that I hoped would protect, yet enable; but the story as it has come down to us is relentless. I well remember telling the myth to a group of 6 th formers with whom I was exploring Wertenbaker’s script The Love of a Nightingale4. Wertenbaker’s re-telling of the myth of Philomel omits the serving of the queen, Procne’s son to his father, King Tereus, as a meal. The students disagreed with this omission, and thought that it weakened the impact of the myth.)

Similarly when the soldiers returning from war meet their loved ones and then are called to prepare a banquet for the King, there is little sense of Macbeth’s story. Indeed, part of the power of the Drama lies in not knowing that this is his story. The tyrant is present but only obliquely through the rules of the castle and his kitchens again.

So what am I saying? Perhaps I’m saying that if we are drawing on the story, then anything is possible. There are no rules except that we pick enough from the original to meet the needs of young people. If we are drawing into the story, then the constraints are different. The question then has to be how much of the original do young people need to be able to access its riches. The choice of story still has to be to meet their needs. I’m not sure this is of any use and I’m just stating the blindingly obvious.

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Maggie Hulson:Perhaps it would be useful to have a look at what it is that draws us in to a story in the first place – the essential elements that make us think it’s worth it. When I chose to work on the myth of Philomel I was drawn by the powerful themes behind the story – a story that had not only influenced Wertenbaker, but also e.g. Shakespeare. As the violence of the ancient story unfolds, it reveals a complex working of the abuse of authority and responsibility, and of revenge, where the child is little more than a medium of exchange between the parents, not a being in his own right. For some, Wertenbaker’s re-working was a feminist one, for Wertenbaker, it seems it had more to do with silence and oppression, for me it let the women in the story off the hook, and betrayed the crucial theme of ‘child as chattel’.

Stories that have come to us over time, or are widely known, contain and reflect a kind of collective and social consciousness – these stories are almost touchstones for the times and this fascinates me. For example, about 12 years ago I was planning a scheme of work that was to be, in part, about vampires. A colleague became interested, and was taken by the then emergent re-working of the vampire theme, now so prevalent on our TVs and in films. She wanted to explore vampires as misunderstood and disposed, denied of their rights. I was bemused. To re-work vampires this way is to deny the bloodsucking, ‘not-human’, purveyor of nothingness that the vampire represents. And I can’t help but wonder what kind of a touchstone for our times is being forged.

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1 Klein, N. (2007), The Shock Doctrine, Allen Lane, London

2 George, S. (2010), Whose Crisis, Whose Future? Polity Press, Cambridge

3 Bond, E. (1987), Poems 1978 – 1985, Methuen, London

4 Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of a Nightingale was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and first performed in 1989. The published text is available in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Plays 1, (1996), Faber and Faber, London

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Chair’s Report to Journal November 2010By Paul Gibbins

“Education must be about developing the skills and disposition to question the official story.” Alfie Kohn: What does it mean to be well educated?

This year’s annual conference story: at the heart of educational drama was a great success. Seventy-five delegates occupied Oriel College, Oxford for the weekend in the true spirit of camaraderie and fellowship to look deeply at the nature of story and its importance as a core element in education. The importance of story was illustrated and explored in superb workshops and by expert keynote speakers.

Despite a recent injury, Dorothy Heathcote, our President, travelled from Derby to deliver her marvellous keynote, returning the same day. A story of true heroism, she is an example and an inspiration to us all.

Following the AGM we now have a full National Executive Committee of keen and, largely, very young members whose enthusiasm augers well for the future of our Association. How good it was to see so many new faces at Oriel discussing practice and ideas with specialists who are so willing to share their amazing range of expertise in creative education. Each had a story to tell; each had the opportunity to do so.

It was a shock for us all to hear of the Arts Council Wales’ decision to cut its funding to 32 arts groups in Wales. Two companies, Theatre Powys and Gwent Theatre, have long been associated with NATD and we feel appalled at the thought of any threat to the future of their work with young people. The Association firmly supports all attempts to re-instate this funding and will continue to lobby for the continuance of the work.

These are hard times and it is our duty as educational drama practitioners that we continue to fight for what we believe is best for young people – a creative, humanising experience that takes in the full needs of the child and puts him and her at the heart of the learning process.

I know that you will find much interesting material in this Journal and once again I thank the Journal Committee for their sterling work in producing this invaluable resource.

Paul GibbinsChairNATD

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Mantle of the Expert: Palestine August 2010By Luke Abbott

(Luke Abbott is currently National Director of Mantle of the Expert which has 25 experienced tutors and coaches. He is also the director and lead for the Redbridge Networked Learning Community (RNLC) which has 8 vibrant and innovative individual networks for the London Borough of Redbridge. The RNLC is the sole surviving network left from the original NCSL initiative.  He is linked with the Qattan Foundation in Palestine for the future development of the Early Years Curriculum. He has also been working in China for the past 4 years on a long term set of projects using Mantle of the Expert as an innovatory curriculum tool in Jiangsu Province.)

This is short account of a series of workshops held in Ramallah with teachers from Palestine funded entirely by the Qattan Foundation. The main thrust of the week was to explore how Mantle of the Expert methodology could be applied to Palestinian schooling in the Early Years. The article outlines the context of the week and an attempt to define the differences in ORIENTATIONS a practitioner can use in enabling learners to make meaning beyond knowledge acquisition. Luke Abbot and Tim Taylor were the tutors invited to work with the Palestinian teachers and the following is an edited section of the whole ten days that may be helpful for colleagues in the UK to read.

BackgroundIt was as much a surprise to me as to anyone else. Word had reached colleagues in Palestine that the drama method invented by Dorothy Heathcote known as ‘Mantle of the Expert’ (MoE) could be of significant use to Early Years teachers. Would I be able to arrange some training and come over to Ramallah some time in the summer of 2010 to work with 38 Early Years teachers also committed to working through drama for learning methods? David Davies, who has a long history with Palestine of deep and fundamental growth of the Newcastle and Durham school of dramatic based learning, had discussed the matter with Wasim Kurdi (Director) and Nader Wahbeh (Research) from the Qattan Arts Foundation suggesting that the time might be right.

So it was that Tim Taylor and I embarked on a ten day training programme with the 38 teachers who had been ‘hand-picked’ to initiate the same quiet revolution in schooling methods that has been developing in secondary sectors under David’s direction with the Palestinian secondary advanced drama for learning team. Tim and I were to join a very auspicious programme of educational development and the stakes for us were very high. I hoped we were up to the job when I said ‘Yes.’

One of our biggest concerns was that of language and translation. In the event, we realised our worry was pointless. Kefah, a quite brilliant member of the Qattan team, was able to simultaneously translate English to Arabic in situ at any stage of the work, which for both Tim and I was a revelation but quite a challenge to get used to. Kefah had also translated all of the tools on the MoE website into Arabic as well over the previous year. This was a

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truly heroic task, so essential to the understanding of both drama and MoE for Palestinian and Arabic speakers throughout the world. In the event it took very little time to accustom ourselves to it and of course this made the week work so easily.

Our plan was simpleWe had been given the brief to induct Palestinian colleagues into the key concepts of MoE as well as do our best to distinguish the orientations between MoE and ‘Drama for Learning’ (DFL). Since the team we were to work with was made up of 38 Early Years practitioners we needed some guidance from them as to what contexts would be useful for basing the training on.

In one memorable email from Nader, we discovered that the same learning contexts were dominant amongst the whole group. The challenges of growing crops, saving and finding water, getting on with people, the importance of the olive tree and its products to the Palestinian people, as well as enabling children in social and emotional challenge becoming independent thinkers able to problem solve with others. The main drive however was in the area of imagining, play and understanding the world through the expressive means of the arts. In a way, without a central Early Years strategy, the Palestinian teachers were in the same arena of thinking about the fundamentals of children’s learning as we are in the UK. The centrality of the child in their learning seemed to be the fundamental philosophy.

Dorothy HeathcoteSince the work was to be based on Dr Heathcote’s methods I rang her to ask if we could chat through a plan I had in mind. This would enable me to test out a context around the centrality of the Olive tree in Palestinian folk lore and history as the main context strand for the week. During the week in Palestine, I had asked if it would be possible to have a group of young people to work with for reasons of credibility, and more importantly, we needed young people to help us all in our learning of the method of MoE works. A summer school group of children was arranged who, although not all Early Years, were able to help us in our quest to find ways to experiment with the method together.

On my arrival home, I set about writing a thinking guide for the teachers. I had an idea that it would help them to see into the context and act as a structure for discussion with them if they thought we could make it work. I had also planned with Tim that this context would enable teachers to see the power of ‘representing’ in any drama for learning context but particularly in MoE. We were to investigate in any the case the 3 fundamental concepts that make MoE work:

1. DRAMA and its ingredients. Namely FICTION, PEOPLE investigation, NOW TIME of theatre, TENSIONS that drive the actions of people, FICTIONAL POINTS OF VIEW and the difference these make to the creators so that REFLECTION is possible.

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2. INQUIRY based learning and its pedagogic strictures associated with opening dialogues with people as well as the Harste Sequence (see diagram). I have found this way of thinking very helpful since in our drama work and other learning journeys in classrooms, we can take each sequence as a possible guide to our pedagogy. For example in an Inquiry classroom where discourse is focussed on meaning-making as opposed to fact finding, readers will see the relevance of each box. In the ‘transmediation’ box, Dr Harste’s model encourages educators to find as many ways as they know to create opportunities for learners to REPRESENT their learning in multi-media ways. In other words using ICONIC representations through drawings and other pictorial methods to EXPRESSIVE modes such as Drama and Dance. The SYMBOLIC modes of music, language and writing of course are yet another form of representation of meaning and if readers take a quick look through the sequence and relate it to aspects of this article I am sure his sentiments will make perfect sense.

3. MANTLE OF THE EXPERT orientations. IMAGINED RESPONSIBLE team, FICTIONAL CLIENT who is invented to drive the curriculum domains planned, and the tasks needed to be initiated by the teacher to fulfil the client’s brief. (Also the invention of the pedagogic steps and sequences associated with tasks that represent aspects of the fictional enterprise under construction.)

We asked the teachers to read a document (below) on the Sunday evening and to come back to the course with their views on it Monday morning. (Kefah had translated it in seconds into an Arabic version as well as checking that our translations matched.)

The impact of the first discussion was memorable as all the teachers had found rich meanings behind the context and it touched many of their emotions very deeply. For Kefah it resonated with his direct experience as a family member of a farm co-operative of olive growers. He knew the cycles of growth, the age of productive olive years, the length of time it takes for maturity, the species of Roman olive from the time of the Invasions as well as the fact that an olive can grow with virtually NO WATER!

It seems that the context had the possibility of touching upon subterranean concerns and all instantly recognised the metaphors and analogies embedded in the context. We also investigated the structure in relation to the children and the age range it was appropriate to use it with. The result was very heartening since we began to recognise that access to the context depended on the structuring ability of teachers. Furthermore, it led to the initiation of hot debates around politically sensitive contexts in classrooms and settings, including the Israeli laws governing the curriculum in various sectors of Palestinian territories. Emerging views and practices around approaches to learning and teaching were also interrogated.

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(The following is the script sent in advance to the Qattan Foundation before the course and translated in full by Kefah into Arabic.)

Dear Colleagues,Having read the contexts supplied by Wasim and Nader for early year’s contexts, we will need to find the human dimension in the cultural contexts facing the Palestinian people, by representing them through the art forms of drama and in our case through MoE.

The Olive tree is such an iconic species of tree going back in the Mediterranean and Eastern regions many thousands of years. Indeed some olives live for very long periods of time and some have been recorded as being over 1000 years old. This agro context leads to the possibility of taking responsibility for one very ancient olive tree - perhaps in danger of being neglected, threatened in some way or other that challenges its existence. In the imaginary world we will imagine this olive as ‘the last’ remaining oldest of trees – which is STILL producing a viable crop. Its value then is its ‘ancientness’ and ‘productiveness’ needing protection and nurture for its survival.

Our work in drama sees the notions of metaphor and analogy built deeply into the praxis. All substantial theatre and dramatic inquiry has ‘meaning-making’ at its heart - so our reflective mind churns away at the ‘implications’ and meanings generated. Edward Bond calls this ‘The Site’. It is also where Lorca’s ‘Duende’ can exist. During the week we will investigate how this works of course.

Context: The Ancient Olive Tree in DetailAn ancient olive tree, which has stood for over a thousand years giving local people their olives, oil and animal shelter, is facing the prospect of having heavy vehicles diverted much closer to its growing area. The roadway in question has been gradually widened to carry heavy vehicles that are used by voluntary medical organisations to and from the local village areas which are on the direct routes abutting the edge of the larger grove of olives and where the ancient tree currently resides. Those who care about the tree - the local farming people, the market people (who sell produce under its shade), the specialist olive growers and the local school children (who often hear stories of how it came to be under its ancient branches) are starting to notice changes in the tree’s locality.Metaphors and AnalogiesThe old olive tree has a ‘human’ quality:

It puts out branches close to the ground so crops are easier to harvest. It has ancient branches all gnarled and wrinkly (as in old people!) Its joints ‘creak’ in high winds when under physical stress. It is patient and frugal regarding its demands - water, fertiliser and soil quality. It isn’t a ‘pretty’ tree so people don’t take pictures of it.

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Its leaves are ‘dusty looking’ not large and ‘dramatic’ as in Tulipodendron for example.

Animals and people have sheltered under it as long as people can remember.

The question is of course in Mantle of the Expert planning:

So who can care when it is threatened? [In the first instance we are avoiding any reference to military matters such as borders, war, etc as these contexts carry too much power to control and are ‘non-negotiable forces’. For me anyway, our young learners will need to take ownership through ‘tensions’ established by the power TO INFLUENCE rather than ‘conflicts’ associated with the power to resist subjugation, or to physically fight and so on - though I repeat - this is in the FIRST INSTANCE!]

In the education of the human curriculum we hear in any case how the tensions of war can be alleviated through humane actions that are healing. Medical teams allowed through checkpoints for example.

Other Considerations When Planning MoE Frames in LearningWe will need to know the classes we are to work with, their age, their social contexts, their religious beliefs, their expectations of ‘learning’ to name a few!

The olive season and the rhythm of the harvesting will be an essential ingredient as will the pollination of the local trees and flowers as well as the production of honey and the bees that produce it.

(I well remember a group of 5 year olds in South End (UK sea town) where a class learnt all about the keeping of bees and bee diseases by taking the responsible position as The Bee Team!)

The farmers crops will need to be named and the season defined as well as the exporting of such produce or local use. Recipes will be demanded. As for the production of the oil: we must have a way of doing it as well as a way to market the excess if the ancient tree is a communal one. These details can be discussed at the planning stage especially if we can invent an Olive Oil Festival/Show.

The creation of the map we will use for our workA ‘map’ will be made by us. It will contain:

The area of the olives and the location of the ancient olive. A source of water - a small ‘spring’ perhaps for irrigation. Here we can get to the

detail the group of teachers know of as well as the possibilities for the context. The roadways The route that is extended for the passage of large vehicles.

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The ancient olive will be marked at the edge of the land. Around the area of this olive tree is marked the herd of goats used by an elderly person. The area is fenced so that the animals do not wander to damage the crops in the other cultivated fields.

MUCH CAN BE MADE OF THIS POINT OF VIEW IN DRAMA ACTIVITIES AND TENSIONS CAN BE CREATED THROUGH THE HISTORY OF THE PERSONS USING THIS AREA FOR THEIR ANIMALS.

On water, plant nurture, rituals, behaviours and practices. These are the ‘givens’ built into the context for educational purposes

We are very, very careful about the use of water. We never spill a drop. We never waste water. We are very careful to use it wisely - every drop. Taps are kept in good

condition. Hose pipes are checked for holes and leaks. We water crops in strict rotation and have the details of which area for which day of the week.

Water cans are strictly controlled and are all the SAME size. This means we have to use language such as FULL, NEARLY FULL, HALF FULL, QUARTER FULL,

There are rules we have agreed about who uses them and where they are kept as well as their security.

Our hoes, spades, forks (large and small), pruning knives, are used by everyone and are therefore communally owned. They are cleaned and counted at the end of each day and returned to the store. Our wheelbarrows are treated in a similar way.

We never walk or run our wheels over crops as short-cuts; we always stick to the paths!

We gather around the map on the first day of each week to define the work needing to be completed and who will do it. Harvesting, packing, new plantings, clipping and thinning out will mean collecting trays, replanting and composting. Ground will need to be dug and weeding continually seen to.

We are the ONLY people allowed to work this land. We prove this by having identity badges issued each day. We sign in/make our mark or have our hands stamped to prove our identity.

Making a start

The stories of the ancient tree as heard from the memories of the old shepherd/goatherd who remembers the tree AND the wonderful olives the tree produces.

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How the crops began to be planted when the younger trees died from neglect in the past. Yet the ancient tree kept living through the great roots it has.

The specific plots will be identified through a colour system and tools needed to complete each plot of land’s specific work will be taken as needed from the store. There is a signing in system for each plot.

Watering requirements have to be specified in each case-for example-the planting of a new row of olives. Water will be controlled by a responsible person/people who will MEASURE THE WATER AND ALLOCATE WATERING CANS (from drawings made beforehand on the walls).

Once the caring for the land, water, land, trees are establishedWe will express the work through dramatic action - NOT PRETENCE. The ancient olive will act as a place for shelter from the sun for eating under and meeting the elderly shepherd/goatherd. Communal food will be shared.

Development 1 (Role 1)An olive grower (expert) from another region will be created to check the crop, as well as evaluate and assess whether this olive tree can be replicated by taking cuttings perhaps. Stories abound about the olive and its crop, its age, strength and fortitude. Such olive trees are rare and MUST be replicated since the world seems to be getting hotter.ACTION-MOTIVATION-INVESTMENT-MODEL-STANCE (This tool will be explained during the course of the week.)

Development 2 (Role 2)A contractor needing to bring in timber, cement and other building materials to build a store to keep medical supplies safe. The person in question can be seen studying the map and clearly ‘signing’ concern to avoid any damage to the crops if at all possible during the month it will take to build the compound. Just a little levelling, moving the animal fence, cut off the bumpy roots near the new driveway and so on!

Development 3 Working with children (Role 3-truck drivers)Our work will be to stop the truck drivers AND WARN THEM ABOUT THE TREE:

“Please slow down!” “Go steady!” “No bumps!” Prepare notices for them, tell them about the market day, and watch out for goats

and sheep. Tensions will be introduced - olive crop collection. For example:

Special permission will need to be applied for to halt the vehicles; Special ‘orders’ made out by appropriate authorities;

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Guards placed on the roads to stop the Lorries passing through during the crop collection.

Questions for the work1. How we will induct the class of children into the work as ‘our helpers’.2. Materials needed must be at hand for the class - pictures of large vehicles and

signs of working equipment.3. Our map will need to be created with opportunities for the class to make their

marks as much as possible.

Luke Abbott and Dorothy Heathcote July 2010 © mantleoftheexpert.com

Discoveries and LearningWell we all learnt lots from this set up. It was of course a unique event - but the principles of preparation of materials, laying in tensions for long term explorations, using the dramatic imagination and the conventions of dramatic action where all harnessed and seen in action during the explorations with the children. Huge discoveries were made concerning ‘behaviour management’ as well as the styles of talk required to enable MoE to flourish but above all the notion of sharing the power to influence was one that created the most interest amongst the teachers.

Currently the 38 teachers are experimenting in their classes with not only MoE but with DFL. I will be returning to Ramallah in December to reflect and work on more ways to increase the knowledge skills and understanding of the teaching teams. As a by-product we have arranged an exchange with 6 schools and with the direct intervention and support of the Qattan Foundation we are nearly there in organising it for Easter and June 2011.

Our week in Palestine was recorded minute by minute by the Qattan ICT team so that teachers in Gaza would be able to be appraised of the work happening in other parts of the territory. We were unable to travel to Gaza to work with their teachers as at the time in question, political and military tensions were high. In addition, the British Consulate could not assure our safety. Therefore an ‘emissary’ strategy was to be used later in the year when tensions had eased a little. This would mean teachers sharing their findings through the video archive of the week in Ramallah with teachers from Gaza. The Qattan Foundation would enable this to happen with David Davis’s advanced Palestinian Masters students.

We were able to visit areas where Settlements were being established as well as seeing a village where olives were being tended. At the end of the training time, Tim and I visited a refugee community just outside Bethlehem within 30 metres of the Separation Wall. These experiences provided deep learning for both of us that we are still sifting through in our minds.

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Discoveries in Matters of TheoryAnother significant discovery for us was finding a rationale to answer what has been difficult for many drama practitioners - that of attempting to define the DIFFERENCES and ORIENTATIONS between DFL and MoE.

To answer this very question posed early in the week by the Palestinian teachers I had to be as clear as possible. In addition, the teachers had already investigated drama for learning with David Davies, Tag McEntaggart and other highly expert British practitioners. Although both Tim and I have discussed this question many times it may be useful to put down here how I currently understand the conundrum without splitting hairs too much on the way as I found it necessary to be far clearer in my use of language when it was being translated second by second!

My hunch is that the matter regarding the seminal differences between DFL and MoE rests somewhere between the teacher’s desired educational end points and desired orientations in either DFL or MoE or Inquiry based learning.

A teacher’s planning for the learning landscapes she needs for learners as well as their knowledge skills and understanding in the field of drama and learning theory will depend entirely on the defined learning mandated.

For example a teacher has at her disposal many methods into desired learning arenas. However there is also the individualised factor inside each of us as well and this factor is one often based on personal taste, preference or indeed a specific liking for a particular way of doing things.

My contention is that if a teacher has been able to gain multiple insights into using drama based investigative methods it is likely that the 3 strands below are involved:

1. Inquiry and investigation methods (more about finding questions rather than answers.)

2. Drama for learning (as defined by the North East School of Drama in Education where we consciously use the fictive expressive imagination to explore moments of living life that are designed for exploration and indeed have unanswered questions in the chosen contexts as well as exploring and reflecting on how people behave, think and do.)

AND EITHER

3. Mantle of the Expert (which uses whole group viewpoints, by creating a responsible team and an imagined ‘client’ through tasks. Learners then decide to take a series of thought through actions to move forwards to tackling their

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client’s commission. As in other dramatic methods, the class represents their active engagements by using symbolic, expressive and iconic behaviours.)

OR

3. Drama for Learning (exploring tensions and dilemmas in a fiction-for example in the Giant’s Nursing Team context......... if we go in the letter box how will make sure we are safe, perhaps its better to stay and wait? )

And

Mantle of the Expert (building the responsible team acting on behalf of a client, currently the Giant’s mother.)

An Early Year’s ExampleDr Heathcote continually reminds us that having the knowledge skills and understanding in all three gives us more choices as teachers. In the use of MoE my orientation (if I am trying to establish one) will be towards the creation of MoE by whatever means I wish to use as a teacher and via investigation or specific ‘drama for learning’ activity, if I see the need (and more importantly, if I have learned the skills and techniques needed!)

However I may wish to use ONLY DFL methods so that classes can explore the implications, say, of a giant that has fallen down the stairs in a large giant’s castle and can be seen through the letter box lying very still. Here, the giant’s mother (teacher behaving and presenting a fictional point of view) of course cannot get through the letter box as she keeps emphasising she is far too large - however there are some smaller people here it seems (Children aged 4 and 5) who might assist her, as it looks as though they can fit through the letter box.

In this context I may decide that a responsible team of ‘giant-nurses’ can be created. The ingredients of investigative methods (See Harste’s diagram and the box with ‘raising further questions’), such as, how to get through the letter box? If we do what might this mean? Suppose the giant is dead? Suppose the giant is in need of treatment? Suppose the giant thinks it’s our fault?

These are all in the context if I want to harness any of them. (And again more importantly - IF I CAN SEE WHAT THEY ARE!) As a teacher looking at the choices, I can exploit any of them as the class and I wish. Furthermore, if I am aware of all the distancing devices that the 34 Newcastle Conventions can offer I am even more able to work with a wider range of learning possibilities – IF I SO CHOOSE.

Creativity art and culture in the curriculum - a sequencing model for learning. Professor Jerome Harste 2000 [Transmediation=using a range of media/arts

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processes to transform learning into a range of meaning making ‘holding-forms’.]

INQUIRY BASED LEARNING MODEL created by Professor Jerome Harste, Indiana State University 2000

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Building from the known:- Voice- Connection

Taking the time to find and construct questions:- Observation- Conversation

Gaining new perspectives:- Collaboration- Investigation - THROUGH TRANS- MEDIATION

Paying attention to difference:- Tension- Revision- Unity

Demonstrating learning:- Transformation- Presentation

Planning new enquiries:- reflection- reflexivity

Taking thoughtful new actions:- Initiating- Repositioning

Letter to NATD Conference 2010From Ian Yeoman

Ian Yeoman is the artistic director of Theatr Powys, a Theatre in Education (TIE) and Community Touring Company based in mid Wales. In June 2010 it was announced that 32 arts organisations in Wales (including Theatr Powys) were to have their Arts Council of

Wales revenue funding cut.

A version of this letter was delivered to the NATD Conference, enabling members of NATD to discuss the issues and propose action in support of those affected by the cuts.

This version has been updated by Ian for publication in The Journal.

Dear Colleagues

As you know there was no representation from Theatr Powys at this year’s annual conference. In June this year, following a major investment review, the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) announced its decision to withdraw revenue funding from 32 arts organisations in Wales. Theatr Powys is one of those organisations.

At Conference discussion took place in respect of the ACW Review and particularly its implications for the future of theatre in education and theatre for young people in Wales. I am writing, on behalf of the Company, to clarify the position Theatr Powys finds itself in and to inform you of our thinking at this stage. I know that Gary Meredith and members of Gwent Theatr were in attendance at Conference so this letter will largely confine itself to Theatr Powys. Please forgive the length of the letter; it just feels useful to give a pretty full picture. The letter is also extremely assertive as to the value of the Company’s provision. Again in the current context that feels very important.

Up until now Theatr Powys has been unique in Wales.

It has sustained a core company of actors and production staff alongside an endeavour led, administrative department and a body of remarkable and committed freelance artists. The Company has fought to maintain a provision of theoretically informed, participatory Theatre in Education in Welsh and English and free of cost to schools. The Company manages a year round youth theatre provision and an annual new writing commission and community touring production for community centres, village halls, theatres and arts centres all over Powys and in wider Wales. No less crucial to its community and to sister arts organisations, is the Company’s vast and rich technical, costume and personnel resource. This combined resource is consistently called upon by schools, colleges, universities, community groups, and fellow theatre companies, both professional and amateur.

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In our view, the defining qualities of the theatre and drama practice of Theatr Powys have been:

- A steadfast commitment to a theory of knowledge and to art as a mode of knowing the world and exploring the human relationship to the world.- An insistence that those in the community who engage with the work are co-creators and co-signers in the moment (shared practice) of meaning-making.- A deeply felt and theoretical insistence that in meeting the fictive context engineered through theatre and drama, the capacities of young people to engage intellectually, emotionally and actively can be united in a way rarely achieved in the course of their educational and broader cultural experiences. An understanding that this unity of engagement can produce the most authentic and committed struggle to image and action our material relationship to the real world; a struggle through the art form, mediated openly and honestly. This process requires a courageous and skilled collective of individual artists. - A commitment to new writing and a low cost community theatre for cross-generational audiences. A theatre that invokes the struggle for meaning-making through engagement with stories of significance. - A commitment to Theatre in Education provision for all young people in Powys, studying through the medium of Welsh.

The Arts Council of Wales, up until 2010 consistently stated its belief in the value of the Company’s provision. In their own words:

“Theatr Powys is a Company that operates with a high degree of artistic and intellectual integrity. It eschews the easy options in favour of work that it believes will be inspiring, insightful and challenging. Such a policy places creative burdens on the artistic team, but they rise to the challenge. Their interactions with young people in particular create an environment in which the young people can explore their own creativity...

“The Company and its work is held in high regard as an important contributor to the continuing development of Theatre in Education and theatre with and for young people in Wales…

“The value of Theatr Powys to the community at large and young people in particular is very evident and is testimony to the vision, hard work and commitment of all involved in the company.”ACW July 2009 Annual Review Report

Or:“An intellectually challenging day, one which they (young people) obviously relished. The facilitating work undertaken by the actors was of the highest order and their improvisation skills stood them in good stead as the story developed. The team reflected their experience in this work.”Quality Monitoring 2009

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Or:“Once again I found the concept of participatory Theatre in Education quite extraordinary. This is very challenging theatre on many different levels and it was executed very well. The children suspended disbelief with ease… at one time a child, a peer, the next a scientis... Their interactions with the actor-teachers offered opportunity for the young people to share and explore ideas with each other and to play their own part in the story… The pupils were engaged with the story from the beginning and remained so throughout the day…”Quality Monitoring 2009

Or:“This programme could have travelled far beyond the boundaries and the catchment area of Theatr Powys. It is a presentation that would benefit Welsh medium schools the length and breadth of Wales. The Company could consider this work as something perpetual that could be adapted for generation after generation.”Quality Monitoring 2009

All above statements by ACW were made in the 12 month period prior to the cutting of the Company.

However, how quickly views can change. In the Assessment Report accompanying the decision to withdraw it’s funding, ACW stated in July of this year:“… We have also been concerned sometimes that there might be a tendency to veer towards a pre-occupation with the delivery of a message rather than the ‘theatricality’ of the work...

“Theatr Powys is a Company driven by such a strong set of social values and beliefs that its conviction can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. This will not always be conducive to engaging people who have a less well-grounded point of view...

“This reflects a wider theoretical question, especially where Theatre in Education is concerned. Is it the role of the Company to lead and shape the debate, or is it their role to enable young people themselves to arrive at their own conclusions? The sometimes didactic style of the company’s work suggests that it favours the former.”

The Assessment Report also states:“The Company seems firmly rooted in its area, and to this end there is limited evidence of international activity in the business plan. Theatr Powys is a member of the British

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wing of ASSITEJ (NATD), and mention is made of an ongoing international exchange with a teacher/actor from Kosovo. Whilst this is clearly evidence of international networking, it would be difficult to describe this as a strong international dimension to the Company’s work.”

Theatr Powys is the only Company of the Welsh network that is not a member of the British wing of ASSITEJ. We do not seek to showcase our work in “international” festivals of young people’s Theatre. (Though we do attend and have supported and contributed to The Agor Drysau festival in Wales).

Theatr Powys is a member Company of the National Association for the Teaching of Drama (NATD) and over the past decade has shared its work with artists and educators visiting from Palestine, Japan, Korea, The United States of America, Canada, Australia, Germany, Nigeria, South Africa the Republic of Ireland and of course from Kosovo.

Shkelzen Berisha (known to NATD over a number of years) has established a close relationship with this Company. We have worked, with the support of Wales Arts International and NATD, with the young people in his war torn community in Kosovo. We have worked with his fellow Kosovan actors, both in Kosovo and in the UK. He has contributed enormously to this Company and has become a dear personal friend to many of us and to many people in Wales. To reduce this relationship to “evidence of networking” is risible.

Essentially a strategic decision has been taken to cease funding work in schools. The loss of ACW investment reduces the Theatr Powys income by approximately 50%. Partnership funding through the local authority is now seriously threatened. Theatr Powys is the only company in Wales still consistently seeking the development of participatory Theatre in Education and drama programmes over full day periods in schools with small groups of participants. ACW has arranged the liquidation of that practice. Theatr Powys lodged a formal appeal against the ACW decision. That appeal was not upheld. There is no possibility at all of a reversal of the situation.

The Arts Council can be under no illusions whatsoever, that in the current climate (and particularly as an integral part of a local authority arts provision), there is no possibility whatsoever of Theatr Powys achieving through other or “transitional” sources, the required levels of income to sustain its current contribution to the community. ACW is keen to underline the still relatively high per capita investment in Powys. Powys is the second largest County in the UK with a scattered population and an underdeveloped public transport infrastructure. In our view no amount of one off, “night out” programming in dispirited communities, or occasional prohibitively priced live theatre in presenting houses spaced fifty four miles apart, will fill the material and spiritual void left by Theatr Powys’ provision.

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It is distressing to remember that less than four years ago, ACW lottery funds enabled an almost one million pound investment in the Company’s base in Llandrindod, allowing a whole new development in the range of the provision of Theatr Powys.

The company has no desire to bandy statistics. ACW has taken its strategic decision to no longer include Theatr Powys in its portfolio of revenue funded clients. It has decided to withdraw support for Theatre in Education and to no longer fund direct provision into schools. This shift in strategy was not made known until the outcomes of the Investment Review were published.

ACW is making a formal separation between child/human development, art and education. Between feeling and thinking. Between feeling, thinking and action. The imminent liquidation of TIE in Wales destroys the unity of engagement that young people in our community so desperately need and deserve. It appears that future funded theatre provision will consist of stories told to passive recipients in presenting houses.

Immediate Plans

Theatr Powys has put a proposal to the County Council. The uniqueness and strength of this proposal lies in its having been developed collectively by all those currently working at Theatr Powys and contributing to the arts and cultural provision in Powys. We have argued that despite losing such an enormous percentage of the Company’s funding it is possible to maintain (and preserve for future development) the distinct, integrated, theoretical and practical approach to arts work with young people and the broader community developed to a high degree over thirty eight years in Powys. In developing our proposal we have been particularly keen to maintain a provision of participatory Theatre in Education; free to schools. We are clear that once allowed to go, such a provision will never be re-established. The proposal retains Theatr Powys as a full time Company and in our view, as a cultural identity and practice. It refuses to countenance the ad-hoc “commissioning” of alternative work with young people in schools.

We have proposed that 2011-2012 be viewed as a transitional year involving the retention of:

Powys County Council (PCC) funding at current levels; Theatr Powys as a substantial aspect of the arts and cultural service provided by

PCC; The Drama Centre as a production base and cultural hub for the community; Maintenance of current governance arrangements.

The proposal requires a continuity of core staff, particularly the retention of a core of actor-teachers (though at the much reduced level of 3.5 out of 8 current staff and with a

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much reduced freelance employment capacity). We will ensure a maintenance of policy and methodology as well as sound, safe management of the provision and facilities.

Programme of work Theatre in Education provision in English to the primary sector. Theatre in Education provision in Welsh to the primary and secondary sectors. Year round youth theatre and drama workshop provision for 9-24 year olds. Programme of live theatre presentation and other cultural events for young

people and the community.

This is a much reduced provision.

If Powys County Council chooses to commit to such a model over a transitional year or eighteen months, then it may allow considered negotiation with the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) in respect of future flexible funding and the development of this provision into 2013 and beyond. It allows further exploration of other sources of income and allows time for the creation of a new Business Plan for the Company. Crucially, however, it offers a medium to long term approach to changed conditions, preserving a well established and powerful aspect of the cultural infrastructure of Powys. If and when, this society re-invigorates the notion of public provision, then what we have preserved may grow again in changed conditions.

The Company is not optimistic. The material impacts of the coalition spending revue are yet to be known but it is clear that damaging cuts will be required in all aspects of public provision. There is an easy saving to be made here. However, our option has already impacted at many levels and requires that the Council and elected members in particular, take a real position on the question of the Company’s future.

The collective thinking of the Company will inform a report to be submitted by the arts and culture officer and the leisure and recreation department of the Council to the Board of the Council in January. On receipt of that report the Council Board will consider a number of options. They will range from the proposal we have offered, to the complete closure of Theatr Powys or to the commissioning and contracting in of other work that has no historical or theoretical relationship to the work of the current Company.

Theatre Powys is deeply aware that it is not alone.

The wanton destruction of Theatr Gwent is an outrage. Gwent has been cut given the same strategic decision that says work in schools is the sole responsibility of those who pay for “education”. A hugely well established and cherished provision is to be destroyed. The ACW has dealt with the many individuals who have given their lives to that provision, with disdain and with deceitfulness.

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Recent announcements by the Arts Council of England may well impact on the unique provision of Big Brum Theatre in Education Company and of Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah.

I know that these Companies will continue to stay in touch and that we will keep NATD informed as to developments.

On behalf of Theatr Powys I send best wishes to everyone.

Ian Yeoman

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The Arts in the Age of Austerity. What Should Arts Educators Do?By Phil Christopher

(Phil Christopher is Head of Performing Arts at Edge Hill University.)

It is a maxim that when a country is looking to spend less or rearrange its spending priorities, the first port of call for the accountants are the arts. The arts are, in this view of the world, a luxury we can no longer afford and, as in a domestic household when the foreign holiday is struck from the register, so it is with the nation’s housekeeping that the arts must accept redundancy stoically. On this occasion, the dawning of the new age of austerity, the cut is deeper. As the coalition government seeks spending reductions arts organisations face, as in previous periods, reduced operations and funding for projects and activities will inevitably decline. However, this austerity is of sterner stuff, the arts will also see its nurseries of talent and thinking, the universities, faced with an unprecedented revolution in funding. It is possible we face a toxic mix of declining public arts and the death of public higher arts education. The situation is simple, the nation1 has chosen to cease support for Higher Education in all but a narrow band of subjects and the arts and humanities are excluded. From here onwards the cost of providing arts courses will be derived exclusively from each individual (and their respective families) on those courses. Certainly the nation will provide banking services for the individuals (at a cost) through student loans but bar this quantitative easing2, there is little in the message which suggests sympathy or recognition of value. The nation has washed its hands of supporting in any way the advanced investigation and study of the arts. There will be continued support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics but the arts are clearly not an issue for government or nation but for the individual alone. We face a situation where institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music and the Courtauld Institute will lose all public funding3. The achievements of artists and institutions which support artists have been, in a single strategic swipe, sidelined or in the word of the age, reprioritised.

It is inevitable then that we should ask what this swipe represents or reveals. Is it, as the wider debate on public spending cuts and reduction of the deficit has sought to understand, an economic imperative or an ideological act? It appears fairly straightforward to read into the decision an underlying set of values and assumptions. One way in which this can be done is by evaluating what will continue to be funded and attempting to understand what differentiates that which is chosen and that which is rejected. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics provide the nation with doctors, technical solutions, cures, and inventions and these in turn drive the economy and maintain collective well-being. They are essential and worthy of our investment. By implication then, is it the case that the arts provide nothing which drives the economy or offer anything which maintains collective well being? If we are not to fund certain activities from the collective purse then we must almost by definition not value them. It is unthinkable that health care would not be collectively provided but clearly it is thinkable that the arts as serious study should be privatised and handed to the market and the

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individual.

So it seems that we do not value the arts. Is this position founded on an assumption that there is no economic contribution being made by the arts and no benefit to collective well-being? Surely the answer to the question is self-evident and obvious. The department of Culture, Media and Sport on its own website heralds that the creative industries contributed 6.2% of the UK’s gross value added in 2007 and exported services worth £16.6 billion in the same year. Surely by maintaining investment in the arts we are continuing to fuel this important economic activity. In terms of well-being whilst the artist doesn’t lay on hands, prescribe or operate, she does enrich, teach, prevent and relieve. By maintaining investment in the arts we are providing light in the gloom of recovery at the very least but also providing insight and reassurance through the sharing and common ground that art illuminates. This is not peripheral and dispensable but fundamental and necessary. What we have, it would seem, is a basic misunderstanding at the heart of the policy making. The arts must have been wrongly conceived as inessential and in so doing a risk of significant proportion has been taken.

The risk is the risk of the toxic mix. As fees rise to significant levels, university education will find itself subject to an unforgiving consumer culture. The purchaser (previously known as the student) will seek both value and quality of a particular sort. In raw cash terms of course demonstrable value and quality are desirable; however in education value is complex to describe and not instantly measureable or apparent. The kinds of quality and value central to good education may be marginalised and to the fore will come performance indicators of a simple and cash-related kind; the primary one of which will almost certainly be employability. Students and especially the parents of students will want to know what life chances in terms of earning power an investment of perhaps £50,000 or more will offer by return. In time with such an emphasis in currency, courses will evolve around themes of vocationality, work placements, contacts and CV enhancement. In the arts this may be problematic. We would need to remember that as courses are driven towards job generation, jobs in the arts will be under siege from funding reductions. Universities may be struggling to convince potential students to part with their money as the potential to earn directly from the arts declines. Courses may as a consequence go under at the same time as organisations downsize and general arts activity slows. British arts, which ironically remain a global brand, will experience shrinkage and may lose its leading edge.

So what should have been the response of policy makers and if their thinking cannot in the final analysis be changed, what should the educators, left with the problem, do? Firstly policy makers should have spoken to arts educators and artists and understood the world of 21st century art. It would have been immediately apparent that art is not a polite combination of opera, good paintings and plays (as I fear some members of the government might perceive it to be) but an intensely dynamic mix of technology, debate, entrepreneurship, invention and celebration. The arts are the site of a culture’s self-determination and identity. The music, films, dance and drama that are created reveal ourselves to ourselves. It is a place where ideas are explored and experimented with. At

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the start of the twenty-first century is it really necessary to have to remind politicians that economies need creativity, lateral thinkers and innovators? With such a perspective properly considered the policy makers would have seen the need to invest in the nurturing of talent and ways in which individuals could be supported in becoming wealth creators and partners in wealth creation. Instead a crude binary divide has been established with little sophisticated thought apparent. Indeed, dare it be said, that in fact a deeply unenterprising and unimaginative view of how the nation invests has been proposed.

Secondly, assuming that plans become reality what will arts educators do with the inheritance? At the outset one thing should be clear, this is not a time to bemoan the present in the terms of the past. We should not indulge in romanticising times when terms such as performance indicators and health and safety were unheard of and believing such a less intrusive world was by definition more liberal and creative. Instead we should seek to own the future. One of the great misconceptions of wider liberal and arts thinking is the idea that commerce and business are alien to originality and creativity. The likelihood is that this perspective emerges out of the modern period where the artist as the individual unfettered by the constraints of an establishment found true inspiration and creative freedom. Whilst the tension between the conservatism of the established and the radicalism of the new is an essential creative dialogue, it should not be misunderstood. At the centre of all societies is business and therefore all establishments have their identity inextricably bound up with money and the politics of wealth but that doesn’t mean that only certain constituencies have ownership of business matters. In fact the very essence of being human is trade. Performers trade with audiences, collaboration is the trade of skills, the box office is a symbol of an agreement and patronage is the oldest of social arrangements. What artists and the teachers who nurture artists and creativity should be doing is looking for ways in which the dynamic forces of the arts become as insistent in the nation’s psyche in respect of the economy as engineering and science. This does not mean slavishly feeding the demands of commercial art but emphasising with young people the possibility of becoming the next innovator and the next originator. This can only be done by forging new arrangements, partnerships and combinations in the arts. The arts need to recognise the demand for the live and the quirky alternative perspectives that come from new syntheses of technology, new relationships with our environment and cultural diversity. Given the present climate and the possibility of a new conservatism which only measures by employment rates or cash return and drives course provision towards the apprenticeship model it would suggest the moment has arrived for arts educators to work together to take the initiative and shape the future rather than be shaped by it. It may be the moment for partnerships between universities and schools as never before, such that a view can be taken of the way in which artists and creativity are nurtured over the long term. Young people should reach university appreciating the possibilities of the new and if universities fulfil their first remit which is the creation of new knowledge and new approaches, then finding a virtuous partnership (or ‘knowledge transfer partnership’4 in the terminology of the now) with other chapters in the journey of education would be significant. As with all moments of challenge, necessity can become the mother of invention and now, perhaps more than ever in recent times, it is a time that the arts were less stoical and ready to assert the essential value of creativity to the well-

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being of the collective by the optimistic promotion of possibilities. At Edge Hill University we have sought a forward thinking agenda for this reason and developed provision for what we perceive as the new possibilities such as performance and health, aerial performance, digital imagery and immersive performance, sound art and physical theatre allied to the certainties of mainstream curricula of dance, drama and music. Bold though it may seem we would suggest that we don’t want graduates who aim to please by providing what is expected but encourage graduates who challenge and become innovators and create a market for themselves. Time will tell if the move was the right one but in the meantime, anyone for a knowledge transfer partnership? Stand together, that’s what arts educators should do.

_________________________________________________________

1 Not in Scotland and to a lesser extent in Wales of course.

2 Economists should forgive my poetic license.

3 The Daily Telegraph 10th Nov 2010

4 It is most likely that a ‘knowledge transfer partnership’ would be aconsortium of schools of some sort coming forward and teachers engaging with the university in staff development as well as looking at opportunities forstudents from related spin offs.

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‘A moment in and out of time’1 - The space for change in Applied Drama

by Sharon Aviva-Jones

(Sharon Aviva-Jones is a freelance drama and theatre practitioner.  She facilitates and directs arts projects, and also works as an actor, workshop leader and director.)

“In her native language she is free to speak her mindBut in this place - to her disgrace – the words she cannot findShe struggles to express herself, her anger trapped insideHer mother tongue is worthless now, she’s helpless as a child.”2

A woman and child queue for the cinema in London. The woman tries to explain to the cashier that she wants tickets for Spiderman. “Tickets” she says - and points. The cashier becomes impatient, and eventually cuts off the exchange with “Oh, I can’t be bothered with this. Next.” But the woman won’t move on. She tries again to make herself understood, pointing repeatedly. “Tickets.” She is asked to move. The people behind her in the queue are getting impatient. “Go and see a foreign film”. They try to move her out of the way, but she tries again. Finally she loses her temper and starts shouting in her own language. The ticket booth is slammed shut in front of her. She is still shouting. The people in the queue surround her and physically move her out of the way, gesturing as they do so that perhaps she’s ‘mad’. She stops, throws off their hold, turns to them and repeats what she has just said, calmly, in English: “Look at me, am I not human, can you not see yourself in me?”

There is an uncomfortable silence. Another woman who was at the back of the queue pushes through the crowd and comes to offer physical support to the Kurdish woman. The crowd tries to prevent this woman from getting involved. The kiosk reopens for business.

A Kurdish woman is playing the cinema customer, the cashier is from Somalia, and people play the customers in the queue from eight different countries. Together they are performing at the Hampstead Theatre, in a scene written by themselves; adults learning English as a second language (ESOL).

The promise of changeApplied drama is often seen as a ‘tool’ for social or individual change. This apparent promise has made drama processes attractive to a wide range of social institutions concerned with behavioural or attitudinal change: education, health, social welfare and criminal justice. Today, most ‘applied’ drama is funded primarily in this context and takes place in a culture which audits its success by attempting to evaluate outcomes that indicate changes, thereby proving effectiveness. Promises of future change, rather than what is contained within the life of a project, are often cited as the raison d’être for the work. There is often a tension between the discourses of change implied by this kind of

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assessment and those aspects of a project which drama participants and facilitators feel is most significant. The experience of a drama project – and its value to participants – uses and requires a very different language, one which sees aspects of the work that are invisible to an audit of outcomes.

In this article I want to explore some of these ideas about change by reflecting on some pivotal moments from one term of my work as part of a longer Adult Literacy ESOL project, based at The Hampstead Theatre.3 What ‘spaces for change’ might be created for participants? How might we understand experiences of learning in drama projects? Where does the potential to nurture change through drama lie? To what extent should the participants drive this – and what is the role of the practitioner in realising this potential?

Any promise of social or individual change raises questions of who decides what needs to be changed, for whom, and for what reason? Practitioners often walk a tightrope between a specific agenda for change imposed from ‘outside’ the practice, and the expressed needs and interests of the group ‘inside’ the practice. This is further complicated by the extent to which the practitioner’s own values feed into the mix. What are we taking into the room?

In negotiating this tightrope of agendas I am drawn back to Freire, and his awareness that the first step to any change is the ability to see and understand your own reality. Any systemic change starts with an awareness and understanding that all of us are situated in a social structure which objectifies us in some way. Education in this context is a process of creating awareness of how these power structures operate and the processes by which oppression becomes internalised and normalised. The imposition of a predetermined change on people is another form of oppression and objectification. The actions that lead to liberation need to originate from oppressed people’s ‘reflective participation’. In this context, education cannot adopt a ‘banking system’ paradigm of ‘depositing information’ or values, regulated by the educator. Learning becomes about developing a critical consciousness of ourselves in the world. This is a ‘problem posing education’ involving ‘a constant unveiling of reality’ 4

As a drama practitioner, my drive is to set up a paradigm of theatre practice, informed by Freire’s thinking: a dialogic process in which practitioner and student work together, teaching and learning with and from each other. At play is a meeting of different knowledges, mediated by our world experiences. Both participant and facilitator become ‘critical co-investigators’, jointly responsible for evolving understanding. Recognising the significance of the personal knowledge, experience, and imagination of both participants and practitioners becomes central to the work, in order to co-create meaning. So what does this mean for this particular work with adults learning English as another, or second language?

In funding documents, (the external agenda), the Hampstead Theatre ESOL adult learners group are described as ‘refugees, asylum seekers, predominantly new arrivals to the UK, or people who have been here for some time but never learnt English and have been reliant on families for translation’. This is not a chosen or self-defined identity; neither is it their only one. Like any individuals they also see themselves as daughters, fathers,

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footballers, Christians, Muslims, plumbers, musicians and so on. But displacement is something they all have in common. All have at some time experienced that break in the web of networks and loss of role that comes from leaving their country of origin; a break with the past requires a renegotiation of what is known. Perhaps being in different stages of the messy process of creating their place in a new environment is itself a kind of identity.

For most participants, the impetus for joining the ESOL drama class is the promise that it will improve and extend their English. In this context, the value of the 12-week theatre project is seen as a rehearsal for skills ability in English. (This is a key aspect of evaluation of the class’s success, and English speaking, writing and understanding are found to be significantly improved by the course.) But what participants (and ESOL teachers) feed back at the end of the course as being most important, are issues relating to identity, to a sense of belonging, to creativity, social learning and self esteem. By the end of the course, the primary ‘promise’ – of learning language skills – seems to be experienced as a by-product of the things they value about the project. So what have participants experienced in these 12 weeks?

The journey: Beginning a process - Unveiling realitiesThere is a selection of words on the floor (‘happiness’, ‘children’, ‘language’, ‘responsibility’, ‘arrival’, ‘wedding’, ‘home’, ‘family’, ‘education’, ’argument’, ‘health’,’ freedom’, ‘work’, ‘love’, ’birthday’, ‘ first day’, ‘power,’ ‘laughter’). I ask each person to select a word. In groups each person sculpts others into an image capturing what the word means for them. We view the images together: What do we see? What could this be? What’s the story? We play with multiple narratives and ‘unfix’ meanings. There is no right or wrong, no single story to the images.

What people describe brings their personal knowledge to the image. Possible moments, scenarios jostle and build on one another. We look again to discover whether we can see what others have seen. Experiences relating to all of our realities are mentioned, and all are accepted, given equal weight.

Before we move on from each image the sculptor shares their word. There are gasps of surprise, shock, confusion, agreement and realisation. Spontaneously, different images, depicting the same word are created in reply, by others. There is laughter and there are many questions. We are left with connections and disparities between what we saw, what others saw and the sculptor’s vision. The task of capturing meaning in a still image has encouraged us, as creators, away from naturalism; the constraint has pushed us quickly to the realm of the symbolic. As viewers and interpreters we are working in the realm of associative thinking. In a short amount of time, in this investigative frame, we have switched between many roles.

We are using the images to give thought structure, to find out and show what concerns us in the world and discovering a language to share this. Language is a source of power, so

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we need one which gives us a level playing field to start from.

The journey the participants have taken is invisible to evaluation focused solely on language skills. The work develops in response to the space, time, life situations, values and histories of this particular group of participants, facilitators and host organisation. It is reflexive, changing in reaction to what happens within each session. As a consequence every project develops its own internal set of rules, ways of thinking and codes of behaviour, and becomes a liminal space for participants.

Reflections on ESOL workshops as a liminal spaceI find the concept of ‘liminality’ useful when reflecting on the journey of participants in this context, with its focus on process rather than outcomes. ‘Liminality’ describes the state of being of initiates journeying through rites of passage in tribal societies. In Victor Turner’s ‘Liminality and Communitas’ he describes these states as ‘a moment in and out of time’, both ‘in and out of the secular social structure.’ The initiate is on the threshold, ‘betwixt and between’ two different worlds. Initiates experience being forced out or leaving their normal life, status and role, they are separated into a stateless liminal space where there are ‘few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’. Once reincorporated into the community, they occupy a new, more stable, defined role.

The drama project echoes and uses the potential of a liminal phase. It takes place away from everyday life. It’s a temporary stage of transition, involving a heightened awareness of self and others. The activities allow social norms to be inoperative, transgressed, confronted, broken and altered. Past roles are loosened and participants all have the same social status in the group. In feedback interviews on the ESOL project, participants described the sessions as ‘a free space’, ‘a place to let go’, ‘to open your mind’, ‘to imagine yourself as a different person’, ‘a chance to play’, ‘thinking with a purpose’, ‘intensity’. The imaginative space of the workshop itself created safe possibilities for ‘unsticking’ what was hard and fast, whether in the mind or the body. The role of drama participant can be a break with existing fixed perceptions – of self, of ways of interacting with others. The play, improvisations, physical routines, metaphors, roles and tasks of a devising project can disrupt embedded patterns and create new ones. Participants may experience being ‘not me, but not not me’ (Schechner 1985, 112). What then do participants bring to and reveal in these activities?

Playing with fragments of significanceDrama practice deliberately sets out to create commonly held experiences and construct a temporary community be it for two hours or twelve weeks. We intentionally create matters of significance, using, playing with, reworking, what James Thompson i calls our ‘action fragments’; actions, markings, from previous social interactions, words, reactions, ‘bits of behaving’ that we have absorbed and copied from significant others and incorporated into our selves. We carry with us a ‘culture’ of actions, developed in our peer groups and families, which both signify, and are significant to those groups.

In using drama, we consciously explore these ‘bits of behaving’, shifting contexts, 39

characters, circumstances. In doing this we ‘reveal the hidden texture of our bodies… as well as leaving traces on those bodies’. (Thompson 2003, 67). These are changes that happen socially, in the present time of the drama process where new connections delicately overlay old patterns. This differs from a cognitive behavioural model of change, in which there is an assumption that individuals can mechanistically learn new full roles, attitudes and behaviour (prescribed and sanctioned by an outside body), in the workshop space that can be rehearsed, in order to be reproduced later in real life situations. Rather than centring on the promise of applied drama to deliver ‘collections of replicable skills,’ there is the capacity of the process itself to create flexibility, extend and alter ‘the channels of experience that lie within and between people’. (Thompson 2003, 67).

The journey: Building a fictional world -‘A voyage to the “other”’I ask the group to wander through and look closely at a large selection of photos spread on the floor. They are different in their texture, age and origin; some originals, some recently printed, some torn or carefully cut from newspapers or magazines, some photocopied multiple times. They span at least seventy years. They are of people and events from all over the world and all ages; some hint of a domestic setting, some public events. I have been careful with this choice of photos, not wanting to predetermine content for us, but to provide a panorama of life, keeping the subjects as open and ambiguous as possible. I have tried to choose photos in which events are not tied to one context or meaning. Some show eccentric sides to life. Some depict the ordinary. Some show extraordinary events. In surveying these photos each person knows they are looking for a photo which intrigues or holds a puzzle for them. Everyone selects a picture they are drawn to. My intention is to engage us to find a bridge to an other.

Each person invents the story of someone from the photo they have chosen. Focussing on these characters, groups create scenes revealing events behind the photograph; how the captured moment came into being and any consequences.

The events we have created from these photos become fixed points in our emerging fictional world. We imagine the photographers. What is their relationship to these stories they have snapped? Why have they been taken? Are these the pictures of many photographers or one? Are they still alive or dead? In making their decisions the group enjoys choosing the territory they want to explore. They decide: One person has either taken or now owns these pictures. A woman. Alive now. Photography is not her job.

How has this one person come to directly experience or witness these seemingly disparate, separate events? A useful intrigue, needing us to make connections. Have these pictures been seen publically? We meet her, at different moments in her life, question her values, her priorities. We can be critical of her, scrutinise her actions, play with her difference from us. We all, at different moments take the role of the photographer.

Later in this process we place this photographer amongst the photos, creating moments of 40

her viewing, what are now symbols of the events we have created. ‘What is she about to do now?’

We started with the hook of what Jon Somers has called ‘intriguing incompleteness’ of these photos, their content, and why they were taken, and this led us to create the fictional life of this woman; the dilemmas private, public, past and present surrounding her.

We can put as much or as little of ourselves into this fiction as we wish, it is us, and not us.

Stories to cross bordersWe order and structure experience, through the creation of narrative. Making stories enables us to form a bridge from our inner world to the external world along which our knowledge, thoughts and feelings can travel - an act of reflection. Our identity is not fixed, but constantly evolving and created in relation to others; and stories are used as part of the ongoing process of negotiating our identity. They help us constantly evolve our own personal story, the meaning we make of our experiences, who we conceive ourselves to be. Creating and using the imaginary space of a story - the other - we explore different ways of thinking and being; the gap between the fictional narrative and our life experience, or between what we identify with and what we feel different from. It is because a dramatic situation or encounter is both imagined and temporary, that we can allow ourselves to commit to and affiliate to another’s experience and perspective. We can place different moral stances side by side; allowing us to entertain that there may be more than one meaning to stories and events. We can cross the borders of our comfort zone to inhabit another’s experience, meeting the ‘other’ eye to eye in a temporary no-penalty zone.

Therefore it would seem that the potential for nurturing change in applied drama lies in offering these fictional experiences that invite participants to cross borders, shift positions and not rest within their own experience. It is the frequent, recurrent experience of imagining a range of contrasting, shifting moral positions in a workshop context that improves our ability to be comfortable imagining alternative positions in real situations. This imagining is necessary before we can take an alternative moral stance or course of action. ‘Transformation’ and ‘Transportation’: The ‘work’ of performanceCentral to the ESOL project, was balancing what is to be gained from the process and that which can be learnt from working towards a ‘product’ or public presentation. What is the meaning of performance in this context? Returning to ideas borrowed from rites of passage, the concepts of ‘transformation and transportation’ developed by Richard Schechner offer us some parallels for what change is experienced by participants and facilitators in applied drama practice. Schechner sees ‘transformation’ as a permanent change wrought by the community to a specific group, like the change of status from boys to men in a rite of passage. During the rite, the participants, accompanied by guides, are

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changed by the ‘work’ of a performance ritual, which he likens to a machine. This is not a mark or symbol of change but ‘in its whole duration the machine works the changes that transforms boys to men’ (Schechner1985, 129). On re-entering society they are treated as and given the responsibilities of men. They are made men by others. The rituals start and end in public. The presence of the audience is necessary to co-create the meaning of the rite. The return into the wider community completes the ritual.

‘Transportation’ applies to ritual and performance and offers us an open dialogic way of looking at change in dramatic activity, situating the practitioner as prepared guide travelling with a group into new territory. The initiates are taken, by a guide, via a liminal space to a temporary performative, fictional world where different rules, values and expectations apply - where you can do things you can’t normally do. Participants may encounter extreme and challenging events but they stay within that world. Participants are returned via a threshold to normal everyday life, close to where they left it.

The Journey: From participant to performer - Reflections on the meaning of performance Looking at practice through these concepts makes me reflect on the process of working towards performance in a different light. What in this context is the ‘work’ of performance for participants? At the beginning of the ESOL course, the performance of drama outside the temporary community of the workshop was not the group’s main desire or goal - I would say it was unimaginable to most. Their focus was the improvement of their English, and drama a technique to do this. During the process of working with theatre, broader aims emerged for them. When they had developed their own dramatic material, that articulated what mattered to them, they conceived of themselves as ‘tellers of tales’ and recognised themselves as having a public voice and function.

The project was not one of autobiographical theatre, but the fiction and metaphor drew on dilemmas resonant in our own lives. The performance was a guided tour around a living exhibition, ‘unseen moments in a life lived long.5 It interwove songs about characters, and stories behind photos as pivotal moments in the life of the fictional photographer, against a backdrop of projections of new photos taken to echo the stories we’d created. The photographer remained a collective role, taken by several performers. The moment in the cinema queue, which I described at the start of this article, was part of this performance and illuminates the relevance of Schechner’s ideas to the work wrought by performance in this context

One participant chose a photo that prompted her to describe an event that had happened to her. The story struck a chord with the group as a whole; resonant of their common feeling when they first came to the UK, ‘as if you have become stupid overnight.’6 The actual event ended with the Kurdish woman shouting angrily in Turkish, in public, humiliated and promising herself she would never be in that situation again – which prompted her to join an English class. Their dramatisation transformed the event to include what couldn’t

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have happened then, but potentially could happen now, a performance of new knowledge and understanding. As with all the scenes, the dramatic exploration created new insights, revealing the tapestry of social forces and ideology at work in the event. The participant translated her original words from Turkish into English, which became the basis of a speech on which the scene turns: “Look at me! Am I not human? Can you not see yourself in me?” 7 She decided she wanted to play herself. The group framed the scene as a pivotal moment for the photographer, who was in the queue and didn’t intervene.

The transformation of the event through drama enabled a reflection on it which changed its meaning for the individual, and its significance as a representative experience for the group as a whole. The story changed to a narrative challenging ‘oppressors’ and asserting humanity, rather than one of objectification. This wouldn’t eradicate the original experience but it overlaid another meaning to that moment, in memory.

The performance of this new narrative perhaps functioned to undo and counteract, in that moment, the shared experience of ‘becoming stupid overnight’. As the audiences were predominantly family, friends and fellow students, it can be seen as a re-entry from the liminal space of the workshop into their community in a different role – the role of commentator, author, and performer, a powerful voice that asserts their subjectivity. The audience was necessary to witness and validate the experience of the previous 12 weeks.

Schechner describes performance as being ‘in between identities’. For this group, performance represented a publication of shifted and shifting identities. Through public presentation of another layer of self in the host country’s language, participants commented on and reclaimed how they were represented with an authority which was carried over to the Question and Answer (Q&A) discussions afterwards. Both performances and Q&A acknowledged multiple identities and framed the participants as ‘experts’. In doing so, questions were asked of them as playwrights and artists, rather than as ‘foreigners’.

Can such performances be seen as the final ‘transformative’ act in a cumulative set of ‘transportations’? Unlike the initiation rite, the intention in an applied drama project is not one of eradicating a previous identity in order to become another. But the act of performance can serve as a transition from one way of defining self to another.

Working in a dramatic context may enable shifts in identity; change our public status, thought processes, physicality, relationship to our communities, and our knowledge of our world. It may – at least temporarily - heal pain or despair, enhance self-esteem and confidence. However, phenomena such as ‘enhanced confidence’ are contextual, and not absolute to all situations. Perhaps the act of performance itself acts as a bridge to carry what has been found in one situation to others, an act of transfer for participants to take new knowledge and identities from the workshop space back into their communities.

The liminality of the drama workshop creates a space to reflect imaginatively and critically and socially on the conditions of our external and internal lives and to enact new

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webs of meaning between people. These – rather than any one specific skill set involved - are the aspects of the drama experience that participants describe as providing pivotal experiences which act as catalysts for longer term processes of change.

The language of reflecting on change I have used here has been prompted by the context of the ESOL project. As applied drama practitioners, negotiating differing agendas, our reflection and evaluation needs to relate to the artistic and educational processes we are engaging with and not just promised outcomes, if we are to develop our understanding of the nature of change.

ENDNOTES

1 Turner, Victor, (2004, 80)

2 A verse from a song ‘Memories and Secrets’ July 2009. Words and Music by ESOL Literacy Project, Hampstead Theatre.

3 The ESOL Adult Literacy project at Hampstead Theatre works with learners in Adult Education Colleges in London. Most of the participants are seeking indefinite leave to remain in the UK or naturalisation as a British Citizen. They require ESOL Entry Level 3 as part of this requirement. The project’s aim is to develop literacy through theatre. It does not seek to explicitly teach the ESOL curriculum or stay within its boundaries. Its stated aim is to develop language through developing drama and theatre, and support ‘integration into British society and culture’ and beneficially influence family life. The project culminates at the Hampstead Theatre. The project works with one class for a whole term. It is funded by the National Lottery. For further information see: http://www.hampsteadtheatre.co.uk/uploads/documents/doc_477.

4 Freire, 1978, 54

5 Said, Barenboim, 2002, 7

6 Quote from ESOL performance script: Memories and Secrets, July 2009

7 Quote by participant in workshop session ref: Hampstead Theatre ESOL Evaluations 2009.

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REFERENCES Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, (Penguin, London, 1978)

Said, Edward, Barenboim, Daniel, Parallels And Paradoxes: Explorations in music and Society, (Bloomsbury, London, 2002,)

Schechner, Richard, Between Theatre And Anthropology, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)

Somers, John, Intertextuality And Drama In Education, (The Journal for Drama In Education, NATD, Volume 18, issue1 ISSN 1476-9395)

Smith, Anne, External Evaluation of ESOL Literacy Project Hampstead Theatre http://www.hampsteadtheatre.co.uk/uploads/documents/doc_477 (Rainbow Arts, 2009)

Thompson, James, Applied Theatre: Bewilderment And Beyond, (Peter Lang, Oxford, 2003)

Turner, Victor, Liminality and Communitas, The Performance Studies Reader, Ed: Henry Bial, (Routledge, London, 2004)

FURTHER READING Berry, Kathleen, The Dramatic Arts and Cultural Studies: Acting against the Grain, (Falmer Press, New York and London, 2000)

Edmiston, Brian, Drama as Ethical Education, Research In Drama Education, (2005, vol:1)

McKenzie, Jon, The Liminal Norm, The Performance Studies Reader, Ed: Henry Bial, (Routledge, 2004)

45

Review of Creating Democratic Citizenship Through Drama Education: The Writings of Jonothan Neelands by Peter O’Connor

Reviewed byAdrian Bailey

(Adrian Bailey is a Newly Qualified Teacher from Crawley, West Sussex, UK. He is a current member of the Association’s National Executive Committee, serving as the

International Officer)

This is my first opportunity to contribute to the Journal; when presented with it, I jumped at the chance. As a teacher just entering the profession, I appreciate that Jonothan Neelands is one of the most respected teachers in the UK and is also recognised internationally as such.

That said, prior to reading this book, I still felt like I did not know all that much about him. I hoped that would be something to change from reading this. I note with interest that in Neelands’ own words, he was ‘encouraged to keep a journal and to research my own practice as a beginning teacher; to make sense of practice through reflective writing’.

This is perhaps another frame for this review; that of a new Drama teacher, reflecting on his own practice and experience. I was interested to see which of Neelands’ writings would be chosen for this book. Immediately, I could see a great value in this book being published as many of these articles and chapters are from texts that are no longer in print or are now incredibly difficult to find.

The book itself is divided thematically into three principal sections, starting with Making Sense of Drama, which focuses on demystifying key principles in Drama and Theatre Education. It opens with a transcript of a lesson which I found to be immediately engaging as it was a demonstration of trust in me, the reader, to take his work seriously and, as mirrored in successful teaching and learning, I felt encouraged to invest and commit to the text.

This first section then goes on to explore theoretical issues in planning and structuring Drama, as well as examining Theatre as a learning process. Neelands’ work references and acknowledges the work of Heathcote and Bolton, and expresses viewpoints that converge with theirs. As a new teacher, I can see that there are things of great value here.

His distillation of the elements of Drama and the ideas he raises are useful; this comes with the caveat that using them must be soundly thought-through, as he bemoans the ‘subversion’ of the conventions approach, which has come to dominate so much of what Drama lessons consist of today and, against Neelands and others’ original intentions, it has become a decontextualised and objective-led subject.

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Nothing of what he says in this opening section claims to be definitive, nor does he offer a ‘teaching-by-numbers’ guide. Instead, and far more preferably for me, he gives starting points, backed with explanations, and illuminates possibilities.

The second section, The Argument for Drama, is much more impassioned. He identifies and challenges core dialectics in Drama Education; the counter-productive disputes between Drama and Theatre, between what he terms the ‘Economic Needs Curriculum’ and a ‘Child-Centred Curriculum’ (the latter seemingly inspired by Gillham’s ‘Curriculum for Living’) and between process and curriculum.

I think that, in the first and third cases above, he seeks to dispel myths that have been allowed to fester, and in so doing, he seeks to reconcile differences within the Drama teaching world by encouraging approaches that are more all-encompassing.

He refutes ideas that have been propagated by the ‘new saviours’ of Drama by saying that educational Drama can and does develop appreciation and understanding of Euro-American and wider theatrical traditions, but that to limit ourselves to Drama where ‘ours’ is the ‘best’ is anathema to what Drama Education should be looking to achieve.

His passion for his work and his beliefs are clearly demonstrated in the middle of this section, where he outlines in very strong terms his belief that a curriculum for children should be child-centred.

I read this particular section with the mind not only of someone who has just become a teacher, but of someone with vivid memories of what life was like at school as a pupil. I remember being taught in lists, tick boxes, charts, far more often than I was ever allowed to enquire, formulate my own ideas or construct my own narrative.

For this, I could not help but have an emotional response, and it is what allows me to forgive Neelands’ at times strongly emotional tone; it seems that when we enter into this realm of debate, it is impossible to be devoid of a stance. Neelands’ stance to this is quite clear, and I think particularly now in 2010, it makes for common-sense reading.

The section ends with an attempt to synthesise the ‘process versus curriculum’ by saying that, while there is value in process Drama, it is essential for there to be a wider, structured curriculum framework for children to work through so that they have opportunities to develop their understanding of Drama. I found this particular chapter to be the least convincing on its own, though as with so much of this book and this section in particular, it certainly opens opportunities for discussion. It also foregrounds what is raised later, in section 3.

It seems to be the case that sections 1 and 2 seek to resolve old quarrels; to dispel myths; and to advocate pluralist as opposed to what Neelands terms ‘binary’ methodologies. To make that last point more clearly – the way that Neelands uses binary is in reference to an approach to Drama Education being for example either process or curriculum driven, but

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neither both, nor something else. He clearly advocates that such plurality is possible and can be beneficial. It seems fair to say that he identifies that the crises that we as a country, society, civilisation and planet now face are bigger and more pressing than the arguments of the past.

The third section, Pro-Social Pedagogy, brings us right up-to-date, in the world we live in, during the early part of the 21st Century. The writings of this section pull through the work of the preceding sections, and he gives his strongest endorsement of Heathcote’s ideas and concepts.

Here we see a re-evaluation of what is truly important in learning; perhaps an apologia for what has consumed so much of the debates in education at the expense of what Neelands posits is just as important, the pedagogy.

In a world that is locked into a hegemony created by the few to control the many, where imagination and creativity are stifled and politics has become the haven of demagogues and ‘news’ media personalities, Neelands really comes into his own in making the case for all that Drama can do for society.

It is in this section where the title of this book is most significant. He uses metaphors of Drama as a mirror, Drama as a dynamo and Drama as a lens to highlight the positive functions that it can have, ultimately suggesting that Drama in Education, or Drama Education, should not stop once the lessons end; rather it should feed an ongoing dialectic with the world and with people themselves.

I could not ignore the reference to Kingstone School, Barnsley as reflecting where Neelands stands – I too was highly impressed with what I found from visiting that school, with its innovative approach to curriculum development. The Headteacher of Kingstone is a member of NATD who has been able to put into practice, on a whole-school level, the values and principles that our Association so strongly believes in.

The book ends with a scheme of work – centring us once again on practice, as it does in the beginning.

This clearly is a book that brings together a wide range of big ideas. I believe that it is a collection of writings by one of this country’s most accomplished practitioners that at once charts a history of Drama Education in this country and seeks to explain and dispel a range of arguments that have taken place. Most crucially, it is a statement of imperatives for the status of Drama and a call to action for teachers to provide their learners with what is essential for them to live in this world, and to enable them to change it.

I feel that I still have some way to go to really understand Jonothan Neelands’ ideas, and I feel that I will definitely have to come back to this book time and again as experience informs my practice further. I think Peter O’Connor is to be congratulated for his selection of articles, which are all highly useful; certainly bringing them together in this way

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allowed me to develop a picture of Neelands’ work which would have been considerably harder had I needed to seek out the articles themselves!

I can certainly recommend this book as a highly engaging, thought-provoking read, whether you ultimately agree or disagree with the conclusions that Neelands comes to. The nature of the book is about the dialectic, rather than about absolutes, so I am sure discussion of its concepts are welcome.

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O’Connor, P. (2010), Creating Democratic Citizenship Through Drama Education: The Writings of Jonothan Neelands, Trentham Books: Stoke on Trent.

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What Young People Need

A review of Drama Schemes by Mark Wheeller

(Full Title: Drama Schemes: KS3-4 Lesson Plans From the Internationally-Renowned Playwright) 1

Reviewed by Guy Williams

(Guy Williams is The Director of Performing Arts at The Sir Robert Woodard Academy, Lancing, UK and a member of the editorial committee for this Journal. )

In conversation with Brian Woolland at the NATD conference this year, I was struck by an observation that he made. To paraphrase: we need to construct work with young people that enables them to be creative. In the current climate, creativity is too often the preserve of the teacher.

In the shadow of ‘creative teaching’, the pressures from various Government initiatives and the implicit understanding that we are providing workers for the entertainment industry in all its manifestations, the notion of creative learning has become passive. The understanding is that if the teaching itself is creative, then it follows that creative learning will inevitably come. In responding to questioning in her keynote (in conversation with Matthew Milburn) at the 2010 NATD Conference, when pressed as to what the outcome of a particular decision made by a group of children should be, Dorothy Heathcote replied that she didn’t know. And it was essential that she didn’t know. In translating this into what we need now, it seems to me that this should be at the core of our practice. Teacher’s ‘I don’t know’ is an empowering position for children. In the crucible paradigm ‘stirring things around together’, if the young people are marking time until the teacher reveals what is in her head or what will happen next, then there is next to no learning taking place, and no deep learning at all. Creative teaching can only lead to creative learning when the teacher’s concern is with what the learners are revealing for themselves. If the teacher’s concern is with ‘sharing my knowledge and expertise’ then no matter how creative the approach is, learning will be, at best incidental and at worst a sophisticated and glamorous exercise in puppetry. To not know is to enable young people to take control, to enquire, to be independent and collaborative, in short, to develop as individuals and as a group.

Of all the initiatives of the past decade or so, PLTS (Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills) are potentially the most progressive. Of course they can be hijacked in the same way as ‘creativity’, they can be bolted on to a curriculum and become an exercise in box-ticking but if they are embedded in practice across the curriculum they can become a powerful tool for deep learning. Of course, since the 1970s, Dorothy Heathcote’s work has been pioneering this approach in a variety of highly sophisticated forms. From Teacher in Role, through Mantle of the Expert and Rolling Role to the Commissions

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model, Heathcote has been developing a genuinely child-centred pedagogy that is humanising and empowering. It places the needs of the child at its heart. The child defines her or himself through her or his actions and in relation to the world. Ultimately, it demands that the young person takes a stance towards the world and lives through the implications and consequences of that stance. It is an approach to a pedagogy that Lev Vygotsky defined as working in the child’s ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) and leaves the child ‘a head taller’ as a result of the experience. The process is both an induction into our culture but should also be one in which the participants are able, in turn to shape that culture. The PLTS and the recent shift in emphasis in Ofsted inspections towards the learning process (as opposed to the teaching process) can be seen as opportunities to enable such an approach to become a core value in Education in this country. Of course it is driven largely by economic and political aims to ensure that we have a useful workforce that meet the needs of a twenty-first century, multi-national, globalised economy and both are used as sticks with which to beat teachers. As such, they must be handled with care and some suspicion but they offer a glimmer of hope. Exactly where these initiatives will be in few months time once the implications of the Coalition’s Spending Review are worked through and Michael Gove’s vision is articulated is largely predictable. But change in Education takes time and lags some way behind the moment of its induction. It can only be hoped that some of the residue of these changes rests within the system long enough for it to become normalised.

As we are at a moment of regressive, radical change, as the forces of conservatism drive us back to an increasingly privatised, elitist and exclusive model of Education in the market place, so it becomes increasingly urgent that we clearly articulate what young people need and how we can provide it.

Mark Wheeller’s Drama Schemes KS3 – 4 Lesson Plans from the Internationally-Renowned Playwright has recently been published. Those who know and love Wheeller’s work will welcome this opportunity. This is a celebration of his work, “...a drama schemes greatest hits... the early years!” From Andy Kempe’s Forward (“Underlying both of these professional personas [as a drama teacher and as a playwright] is, quite simply, a great sense of drama and the dramatic.”), through the autobiographical ‘Preface’ (“When I was six or seven years old, I wrote... ‘I want to be an astronaut.’”) to the ‘Epilogue’ (“...’save the best ‘til last’”), a record of his successes in creating plays with young people that have won a variety of awards, we are given every opportunity to delight in his creativity.

The book is made up largely, as the title suggests, of five schemes of work, one each for years 7 to 11 (ages 11 to 16). Each scheme has an introduction which outlines its genesis. ‘Wacky Soap’ (year 7) “...approaches the difficult subject of substance abuse in an oblique way, thereby removing much of the controversy associated with it.” It is based on one of Wheeller’s plays and for those who wish to explore this in greater depth there are useful references to the script, the colour illustrated story book and the CD soundtrack and how to obtain them. The central premise of the scheme is that in the land of the Bower of Bliss the people are sensible and happy but the king wants his people to be wacky and therefore happier. So he invents ‘Wacky Soap’ which has unforeseen side-effects in that it

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washes bits of people away. In one of the many side notes with which Wheeller embellishes the main text he says that he would “...normally encourage students to figure out what the deeper meanings are for themselves”. He calls this an allegory and attributes this approach to the work as what Luke Abbott used to call ‘protecting into the material’. It would be interesting to know what Abbott would say about this as an exemplar of his methodology. The chapter identifies ‘learning objectives’, descriptions of tasks, provides extracts from the script and offers extension activities. All of which are useful for the teacher who would like to ‘deliver’ such a lesson.

The second chapter is dedicated to ‘Playwriting’ with year 8. In his introduction, Wheeller describes how this is based on his own work as a playwright and is rooted in a competition he ran in his school to raise the profile of this skill. What follows is a description of a number of devices and exercises that will enable a class to understand the conventions of a script, to explore the creation of different voices and to work collaboratively and quickly to make scripts. He uses examples from his own scripts to demonstrate how effective this can be.

In ‘Warden X’, Wheeller references observing Dorothy Heathcote working at the Cockpit, London in the 1980s. He describes seeing her as like watching George Best or David Bowie, one of his idols. He warns that working through Teacher-in-role has gained a reputation as little more than discussion but assures us that this is an action based, whodunit scheme that has proved very popular with year 9s. Set in a young offenders institution, the central action is the disappearance of one of the offenders and the efforts of the brutal warden to investigate the crime.

‘The Dome’ is the fourth scheme that deals with living with the consequences of nuclear war. Wheeller makes it clear that this had its genesis in his early days at Stantonbury when a sense of the inevitability of a nuclear war seemed to haunt every waking moment. It opens with the moment that the door of the shelter closes and ends with another in the future when the descendents of those who were chosen to survive inside meet the descendents of those who survived outside.

In ‘Missing Dan Nolan’, we are taken through a number of exercises that can be used to bring a text to life: from a useful approach to reading-through, characterisation and forum theatre. This is clearly a text that is close to Wheeller’s heart. It is a piece of documentary theatre that he wrote in response to the disappearance of a local boy in Southampton, UK.

There are two further sections that describe other work. In ‘Cultures’ (KS3 Cross-curricular) Wheeller outlines a project exploring an approach to working that requires three different classes to collaborate. Each class creates a different community on each of three different islands. There is a moment of exchange but it reaches a climax when a natural disaster forces all three communities to live as one. In ‘Horror House’, he describes his first attempts at working with Mantle of the Expert.

And in conclusion, Wheeller outlines his highly successful career as director, writer, 52

producer and performer in multiple school productions and argues that they should have a central role in the life of a Drama department and a school.

Does this add to the canon? Does this help us to address the needs of young people, now? Does this even help us to understand the processes that have led Mark Wheeller to be an ‘internationally-renowned playwright’? Unfortunately, I think not. What I encountered in reading through the (very short) book was a glimpse into an approach that is very familiar. It is an approach that enables young people to have fun in either dealing with superficial issues or dealing superficially with much more complex issues. Wheeller refers to Luke Abbott’s use of the phrase: ‘protecting into the work’. My understanding of this is that we find ways into the material using a distance that allows young people to explore sensitive and often very difficult material in safety. That distance can be created in a variety of ways: for example by the choice of frame, time or place. My understanding of what Wheeller means by the phrase is a protecting away from it. That is to say that the sensitive and the difficult elements are removed from young people’s experience in order to keep them ‘safe’. He is undoubtedly highly creative and by all accounts an outstanding teacher but what is described here is his own creativity in manipulating young people to do what he wants them to do. This is diametrically opposed to what they need. If we are going to equip young people to thrive in this world, to be able to collaborate and contribute towards the creation of a fairer society, if we are to enable them to create a sense of themselves in relation to the world in which they live, then we need a pedagogy that is more sophisticated and schemes that shift the initiative away from the teacher and towards the child. What we still need is a child-centred, humanising curriculum with an Internationalist perspective. For all his best intentions, this is not it.

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1 This remarkable title is exactly as published; and begs the fascinating and unanswerable question, ‘What exactly is being claimed for these lesson plans?’

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Wheeller, M., (2010), Drama Schemes: KS3-4 Lesson Plans From the Internationally-Renowned Playwright, Rhinegold: London.

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Review of Teaching Primary Drama by Brian Woolland

By Ruth Saxton

Ruth Saxton is a Primary Teacher and AST for Creativity in Wakefield. She is a newly appointed member of the NATD Executive Committee, working on publicity.

The book is split into five manageable parts that are user-friendly for both those new to teaching drama as well as experienced practitioners.

A brief and succinct introduction explores the drama basics and rationale behind the book. Although the importance of drama in its own right is pressed, the challenges of the Primary Curriculum are acknowledged and therefore drama as a “learning medium” is explored. As this is not just a revised edition, the author has reflected on current educational thinking to ensure the book is relevant and mindful of the latest constraints on the Primary teacher.

Even after reading the introduction, the apprehensive reader should already feel more confident about taking those first bite-sized steps into teaching drama within the classroom and not feel like the only beneficial drama lessons are those lengthy periods in the hall, which can be daunting for both teacher and pupil.

Drama in PracticePart one (split into four chapters) addresses the processes of teaching drama and is the main content of the book and forms the building blocks for what follows.

The opening chapter looks at dramatic starting points and is particularly useful for those beginning to teach drama because it is laden with great ideas but, importantly, steers the teacher away from feeling they need to ‘lead’ effective drama, thereby ensuring a non-passive role for the children. Again, Woolland reassures the practitioner that they don’t need all the answers and that it’s not about their own great ideas but helping children to ‘examine the consequences of the ideas they have’. However, for all readers, the starting examples and questions given are excellent hooks for potentially great lessons and advice is given about just how much direction and intervention should be given to pupils to slow the drama down and create dramatic tension. And, of course, these can be developed to suit.

In the next chapter Woolland describes specific dramatic techniques in detail, using helpful examples and almost scripted questions or comments based on his own experiences. Also, top tips for introducing these techniques are included and the pros and cons for each. As well as an introduction for some teachers, this chapter could be useful for the more experienced, as they can extend or change how they use their current techniques and experiment with them based on Woolland’s practice and observations of others. Again, he includes practical advice regarding monitoring, organisation and

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behaviour strategies for a successful and productive lesson. Particularly interesting are the parts about the teacher-in-role and whole-group work, as these are the parts which scare most people. As with the other areas, there is reassurance and there are specific examples to guide the teacher away from performing in role and instead to use teaching in role as a tool for initiating or steering drama. Whole class drama not as mere technique but as an organisational strategy. All of this is explained alongside some generic but more original and interesting stimuli.

Next Woolland looks at the organisation and development of a lesson in more depth. He begins with basic control and communication issues, which may appear obvious to some but if these are not established then the rest of the lesson will not function effectively. He also shows a deeper understanding and empathy for the children, as some of these considerations involve why they may be acting in a certain manner and how to tackle them sympathetically. Reflection time (like the sometimes tricky plenary – although not exclusively for the end of a lesson) is elevated to a level of importance and there are some excellent ideas for making this more meaningful and not just a time for judging performance skills.

Woolland then examines different types of questioning, structure and dramatic tension and gives specific examples to guide the reader in improving their own practice and ideas to build on. He again reinforces his earlier point about the learning coming from the consequences and how shutting down the pupils’ ‘wrong/bad’ choices does not allow for this learning and so to explore whatever they decide. Finally, sequencing is discussed through the concept of storyboarding, familiar to some through film-making and to children through comic books. Again, helpful examples are given and the idea of slowing down the drama is addressed, so children can feel more secure exploring themes through the eyes of others or differently as themselves.

This part closes with a chapter specifically addressing the needs of children in the early years – those most used to play but sometimes established in a less focussed manner. However, early years here includes Key Stage One and not just the Foundation Stage. Once again, there are some wonderful ideas to stimulate the children and be involved in their play, as a starting point for both inexperienced teachers and pupils. As with the earlier chapters, the same techniques and situations are covered but the difficulties arising are tackled with fantastic examples and experiences linked to this age group.

Drama in an integrated curriculumA single chapter explores drama as a tool for linking learning across curricular areas; something which has been very much on trend in recent years. Woolland explains how drama is perfect for this and a drama lesson does this naturally, even when the intention isn’t there because, ‘it is always about something’. He also discusses the merit of children being in role when completing work, as it relieves some of the regular classroom pressures and motivates children with a higher purpose. There is an extensive list of examples of how this can be done, mostly for reading and writing, but with cross-curricular links. The author then goes on to look at how drama could be used within other areas with some

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activities and starting points for each of the foundation subjects. This then becomes more detailed with a couple of specific ideas, using an historical platform. The important conclusion is that, when planning in this manner, teachers have to organise the structure in a slightly different way and ensure the dramatic tension is sustained over time.

Planning and assessmentAgain, a single chapter is devoted to this process and works from your very first considerations when starting to plan any piece, including the teacher’s own limitations. Some practitioners may struggle with the idea of starting with the drama and then using your curriculum links, rather than the reverse, so it works around the dramatic situations, not objectives. The extended examples should help, although this may take some people a little more time or confidence, as they are used to starting with the National Curriculum. Woolland then looks at the process of planning by organising the thinking behind a lesson or project and the dramatic and curricular links. Interestingly, he also touches on the superficial aims that are so often put onto drama planning about children having ‘fun’, which would not be seen on other subject areas and belittle the process. He finishes with an example of a personal evaluation, so the teacher is using self assessment as well as looking at the children’s progression. The exploration of the assessment of the children is quite brief, but there is no reason why the teacher wouldn’t use the procedures already in place for their other subject areas; except for the less literal skills, which may just be recorded through comment, which can be found in the extended examples.

Extended examples and ResourcesThe final part builds on from the planning and gives some fantastic pieces of extended work to either try or use as models to adapt. Each has a specific age group and stimulus in mind, and includes National Curriculum links, particularly Literacy. Every plan is detailed and, once again, Woolland generously gives specific questions and activities to be followed as closely as needed. The techniques explained earlier in the book are used and the scope is there to change these depending on your children’s age or ability. The resources at the end build on this and allow the reader to extend their knowledge further, depending on experience, through theoretical study. There are also little known sources for finding stimuli and content.

As stated earlier, this book is an extremely useful tool for those new to teaching drama and the already confident practitioner. The techniques are not simply explained but explored in depth, extended and developed with the reality of working with children firmly in mind. Woolland’s breadth of experience and understanding of what motivates and excites children of all ages is evident and you continually feel like you’re in safe, knowledgeable hands, whilst he never condescends. The examples are tried and tested and full of helpful hints for all teachers. The extended plans offer simulating starting points, particularly those new to planning in this rigorous but creative way. It would be interesting to have read some comments or experiences by people who had used his methods and plans, to show others how accessible it is and encourage them to have a go.

This is not only a great read for a strong foundation in teaching drama in the Primary 56

setting but also a brilliant tool to have to hand when planning, and one which can be used repeatedly.

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Woolland, B. (2009), Teaching Primary Drama, Longman Pearson: Harlow

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The JournalForthcoming

The Journal editors always welcome submissions and letters for publication. In the first instance, contact Maggie Hulson for further details: mpa10@btinternet.com

For the next issue of The Journal, the editors are interested in generating discussion about the Schools White Paper (published November 24th 2010 by the Department for Education). The Journal editorial committee would like to invite readers to send in reports on how this White Paper is affecting your schools.

Has the Schools White Paper begun to make an impact on your school yet?

How has your school responded to the white paper?

Have curriculum changes, such as reduced arts offers for KS4, been mooted by your SMT?

Submissions may take any form. Please e-mail in the first instance to Maggie Hulson: mpa10@btinternet.com

The next issue of The Journal will include:

An article by Dorothy Heathcote entitled Scaffolding for Realisation, following up the talk she gave at the 2010 NATD Conference.

An article by Brian Woolland provisionally entitled Science, Technology and the Arts.

A review of Drama to Inspire: a London Drama Guide to excellent practice in drama for young people, edited by: John Coventon (Trentham, 2011)

A review of Gavin Bolton: essential writings, edited by: David Davis (Trentham, 2010)

The next issue of The Journal is scheduled for publication in July 2011.

The views expressed in contributions to The Journal do not necessarily reflect editorial or NATD policy.

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NATD PUBLICATIONS

‘A HEAD TALLER’ Developing a Humanising Curriculum Through Drama.(invited papers from the 1997 NATD Conference) ISBN 0 946573 04 2

The contributions offer a rich insight into drama in education as practised today by people working (for the most part) in the United Kingdom. They also represent the range of work being done, both in terms of the different age groups represented and the different geographical areas being worked in. More than that, though, they provide evidence of the integrity with which many teachers are still working: an integrity which shows in their concern to find ways of helping young people understand challenging subject matter. It is clear from the contributions printed here that it is a powerful method of learning in many curriculum areas.

List of contributors: Dorothy Heathcote, Iona Towler-Evans, Kate Katiafiasz, LukeAbbott, Brian Edmiston, Paul Kaiserman, Carmel O'Sullivan, Jonothan Neelands, Louise Townend, John Somers, Bogusia Matusiak-Varley, Guy Williams, Pauline Marson, Fiona Lesley, Brian Woolland, and Geoff Gillham.

‘BUILDING BRIDGES’ Laying the Foundations for a Child-Centred Curriculumin Drama and Education

(invited papers from the 1998 NATD Conference) ISBN 0 946573 05 0

This collection of papers and articles is published following the 1998 Annual Conference of NATD. ‘BUILDING BRIDGES’ reflects a wealth of valuable experience and in the current climate where the arts and in particular drama are under attack, it is imperative that good practice is recorded and shared amongst practitioners. The publication reflects the work of a wide range of UK and International contributors who have all responded to the driving force of the conference laying the foundations for a child centered curriculum in drama and education.

List of contributors: Edward Bond, Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton, Luke Abbott, Brian Woolland, John Airs, Chris Ball, Judith Ackroyd, Janet Vaughan, Margaret Higgins, Danie Croft, Tony Grady, Erik Szauder, Tag McEntegart, Bernadette Mosala, Geraldine Ling, Katherine Zeserson, Guy Hutchins, Sead Djulic, Ljubica Ostojic and Carmel O'Sullivan.

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‘DRAMA WITHIN THE CONTRADICTION’Towards a humanising curriculum.

This collection of papers and articles is published following the 2000 Annual Conference of NATD. The theoretical and practical work which formed the substance of the conference sought to enable drama practitioners working with young people to explore and understand themselves and the changing conditions in which we live, learn and teach. The appendix contains source material which was the common foundation of all the work. The source material was based on the history of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (1879-1918). The material, though distant from our times, was chosen mainly because of the contradictions that lie at its heart. Education was intended to be a humanising process but only dehumanising means were employed.

List of contributors: Geoff Gillham, David Davis, Bill Roper, Tag McEntegart, Margaret Griffin, John Airs, Chris Ball, Matthew Milburn.

'A HEAD TALLER' (pp. 150), ‘BUILDING BRIDGES’ (pp. 178) and 'DRAMA WITHIN THE CONTRADICTION' (pp116) available from:Maggie Hulson, 10 Olinda Road, London N 16 6TLPrice £12.50 [£10 for Drama Within the Contradiction] (including postage and packing). Please make cheques payable to NATD.

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