Oldal 31 [31]
CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
Drama for Learning" where the group asks for a plane crash drama and are
framed as experts testing electronic eguipment in a remote part of Canada.
1hey hear the distress signals of the crashing plane and then work around
the site of the plane crash. Allen names this as one of the prototypes of
crises in MoE, the “crisis affecting the ‘Other”.*° While the distance from
the crisis helps in dealing with it professionally and makes it possible to feel
sympathy for those involved, it does not open space for questioning values
as LTD does. Allen categorises the other crisis in MoE as the one affecting
the company, he refers to an example where the workers in a shoe factory
are being replaced by machines. Allen says “the ‘crisis’ was a direct threat to
the values of the enterprise”.*° Again, the crisis doesn’t specifically open space
for self-questioning, or testing of personal values, even though it creates great
tension and an obviously emotional situation.
On the other hand Bolton warns teachers of the dangers of falling into
the crisis trap, of flitting “from one catastrophe to another”.”” Wagner lists
some questions that Heathcote’s living through crises might raise. “How would
you act under pressure? Do you change in an extremity? [...] In what way
are you like all people who have faced this situation?”.** One of the points
that makes the situation in the drama a crisis is that the problem is born
out of the participants’ choices within the fiction, and the other important
dimension is that the real life problems/situations are reflected in some form
within the fiction. I will now look at how Heathcote enables the participants
to step into and be in the situations of the drama.
Stepping into Fiction — Building Belief — Being in the Drama
To be able to engage in a crisis it is important for the participants to be drawn
into it, to accept and take part in creating the fictional world of the drama.
In this section I look at how Heathcote does this in some examples of her
LTD. I continue with the analysis of The Dreamer.”
Starting with the question what would you like to do a play about?, offering
the participants the responsibility of defining the subject of the drama is
a powerful motivator and the beginning of a phase of clarification through
questions. After participants decided on an old ship fiction building is
supported by drawing it and developing a list of occupations, possible
roles for the participants. When they board the ship Heathcote pushes
°4 Dorothy Heathcote — Gavin Bolton: Drama for Learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of
the Expert Approach to Education, Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995.
95 Allen: Citizens, 44.
96 Tbid., 46.
9 Gavin Bolton: Drama as Education, Harlow, Longman House, 1984, 167.
98 Wagner: Dorothy Heathcote, 76.
°° Wagner: Dorothy Heathcote.
* 30°