Oldal 24 [24]
LIVING THROUGH OR LIVING THROUGH
“has the blessing of the school”. He also defines dramatic playing, Type B
drama in his categorisation of orientations of drama teaching, as “a ‘living¬
through’ experience”.** Later he differentiates between two phases of dramatic
playing activity, the descriptive phase, that aims at “establishing the fictitious
social context””” and the existential phase, that can be used “synonymously
with ‘living-through’ emphasising the passive, ‘it is happening to me here
and now’ function of dramatic playing”.** Bolton*® defines his own practice of
drama in education in 1979 as Type D, a combination of exercises, dramatic
playing and theatre, so what O’Toole describes as “fictional role-taking and
improvisation”” is but a part of the drama lesson — though a central one.
Bolton later developed his practice and defined his approach to LTD in his
publication in at least three different phases, I will return to his work later.
Eriksson claims that “living through drama has often been misconstrued
in Heathcote criticism to mean something synonymous with Bolton’s
‘existential’ dramatic playing mode”.’! An example of this can be seen in
Neelands’ description of living through as a genre of drama. He seems to refer
solely to the role-taking and action-orientated aspects of the LTD that are
akin to dramatic playing.
Pupils, working with the teacher-in-role (a player in the drama), place themselves in
an imagined situation and then, through making and taking characters, they behave
as if they are living through the imagined experience as it unfolds. [...] This is a very
action-orientated genre. Quite literally, nothing will happen unless the participants
take action themselves. In this way pupils are very conscious of forging their own
histories through their actions, just as Shakespeare’s characters were.”
It is interesting that Neelands links the participants’ consciousness of
forming the actions here with Shakespeare, as in other writings he describes
LTD asa naturalistic theatre form® and connects it to Stanislavskian acting.*4
Gavin Bolton: Towards a theory of drama in education, London, Longman Group, 1979, 6.
46 Ibid., 157.
Gavin Bolton: New perspectives on classroom drama, Herts, Simon and Schuster, 1992, 17.
Bolton: Towards a theory, 158.
4 Ibid., 157.
50 O’Toole: Process of Drama, 4.
Stig A. Eriksson: Distancing at Close Range: Investigating the Significance of Distancing in
Drama Education, Vasa, Oy Arkmedia Ab, 2009, 151.
52 Jonothan Neelands: Beginning Drama 11-14, 2™4 edn., London, David Fulton Publishers,
2004, 63.
Jonothan Neelands: Mirror, Dynamo or Lens?, in Peter O’Connor (ed.): Creating Democratic
Citizenship Through Drama Education, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 2010, 146.
Jonothan Neelands: In the hands of living people, in Peter O’Connor (ed.): Creating
Democratic Citizenship Through Drama Education, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 2010,
99-113.
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