Oldal 21 [21]
CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
I am describing this context because it strongly connects with
the professional dissatisfaction that led me to pursue this PhD research
and the choice of territories to explore in it. As someone working mostly in
theatre in education I really missed the creative excitement of making theatre
in the lessons I did with children, but because the forms, the conventions
were at the centre of attention I felt I did not have appropriate tools at hand.
The logic of the conventions also dictated some rational learning coming out of
the drama lessons through the reflective conventions that aid the articulation
of the understanding created through engaging with the story.
I recognised some of my problems as a drama teacher in David Davis’s
analysis when he states that the conventions are not used “as part of
the overall complex structure of the drama work. Instead they lend themselves
to becoming the total method of work employed in a drama lesson. They
are relatively easy to teach and can bring some ‘success’ relatively quickly.
What is missing is the deep theoretical embedding which a teacher would
need to have to make use of them”.** I also recognised Davis’s® claim about
the misrepresentations of Living Through Drama (referred to as LTD from
here on) in a minor, but extremely significant mistranslation. Heathcote’s
emblematic starting questions connected to her LTD phase of “what should we
make a play about?”, is known in Hungary as “what should we play about?”.*4
The translation refers to ‘playing’, as in children’s dramatic play, while the
original ‘making a play’ refers much more strongly to creating a piece of
theatre together. The contradiction that the form of drama labelled ‘Living
Through’ suggesting a naturalist, experiential form starts with the offer to
make theatre was intriguing.
Davis® proposed a possible avenue for developing the field of drama in
education by combining LTD with Edward Bond’s drama theory and practice.
I took up his call to research the possibilities of connecting the two in practice
because of the reasons above. Bond’s theory and practice offers possibilities of
novel ways of engaging with dominant social narratives from within the story
that work against a Brechtian distancing. These are discussed in detail in
chapter two.
In this chapter I examine the concept of LTD with a novice’s eye, trying to
understand what aiming for a living through engagement means practically.
After a short survey of how the term appears in literature on drama education
32 Davis: Edward Bond and Drama in Education, 163.
38 Ibid.
The published translation of the text of seminal BBC documentary about Heathcote, Three
Looms Waiting offers several examples of this. Heathcote, D. (1994) Három szövőszék vár
räm..., Drämapedagögiai Magazin, 4(k), 11-14.
The BBC documentary can be seen at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKiUO99qrw&t=25s, (accessed 25 May 2017).
Davis: Edward Bond and Drama in Education; Davis: Imagining the Real.
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