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FOREWORD where drama courses were springing up all over the place, and the ‘chance’ part was that they were within commuting distance from each other. In fact they both lived in the same city. In time Bolton forged his own separate path and developed a key part of his approach which was to build into the Living Ihrough experience a dual experiencing of the fictional and the actual which he called the metaxis effect. Ádám Bethlenfalvy gives a sharp analysis of all this interweaving in the history of drama in education (DiE). He also investigates and explores the separate but related development of that other great drama teacher, Cecily O’Neill. Other teachers took aspect of the work of Heathcote and Bolton and offered their own approach to classroom drama. A key practitioner here is Jonathan Neelands. He took the word convention from Heathcote and developed it in his own way into a whole method of drama teaching (see for example Structuring Drama Work by Neelands and Goode’). Adam Bethlenfalvy explains this was his own starting point in drama teaching in Hungary and he soon began to realise its limitations and again he usefully explores this as part of his own journey in drama teaching. The work of Heathcote and Bolton, focusing as it does on the personal experiences of the pupils in the drama, opening a window onto their lives and the values they held, was not universally applauded. Voices were raised in criticism. Hornbrook’ was particularly forceful in condemning the approaches of Heathcote and Bolton. He saw them as devaluing the role of theatre as an art form in children’s education. Heathcote had invented teacher in role and joined in the drama and some saw this as a danger of too much teacher influence over the child’s creativity. There was a danger that the teacher would get all the best parts in the drama. Ädäm Bethlenfalvy does not shy away from these criticisms but usefully examines six of them in detail. LIVING THROUGH DRAMA AND THE PLAYWRIGHT EDWARD BOND There has always been discussion about the relationship of drama in education to theatre. In its early post-World War II phase it was more closely related to child play particularly under Slade’s influence. Bolton’ finds connections between Stanislavski and Peter Slade and Brian Way. Heathcote® 5 Jonothan Neelands and Tony Goode: Structuring Drama Work (2! edn), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000. 6 David Hornbrook: Education and Dramatic Art, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989. 7 Gavin Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama, Stoke on Trent, Trentham, 1998, 126--150. 8 Alistair Muir: New Beginnings: Knowledge and form in the drama of Bertolt Brecht and Dorothy Heathcote, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 1996. + ]1 +
