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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA the drama that has now begun. It is precise and real for the students, and they know it is their work, their implicit ideas made explicit in a shape they can sense”.'°* The phases Heathcote breaks down the fiction building into, helps the participants to take responsibility step by step for the drama and begin to own what they had imagined. They are not taking on pre-written characters, but stepping into the roles and situations and reacting to them. The ‘making’ element of LTD is clearly in work here, in decision about the fictional world and through participating in it, building it through actions within situations. However, Bolton notes that Heathcote distrusted abandonmentto spontaneous acting behaviour, “there are very few moments in her videoed lessons when her pupils sustain their improvisational play-making beyond five minutes. More typically, hardly a minute goes by without Heathcote intervening with new input, checking, challenging, suggesting, protecting or high-lighting”.’” True to her offer she is making a play with the group. Living through situations is important in this play, but so is reflecting on the experience. I will now explore self-spectatorship, an important element of Heathcote’s drama. The Self-Spectator Dorothy Heathcote coined the term self-spectator which Bolton defines as “a conception that enactment leads to seeing oneself reflected in the fiction one is making”.’°° He describes its benefits for the participants of drama as “a double valence of being an audience to one’s own creation and being an audience to oneself”.’” An example of how Heathcote enhances this double valence can be found in Wagner’s description of The Dreamer. After focusing on building belief in the fiction, when the ‘crew’ is already on board the ship Heathcote asks the participants to “note what you are thinking; out of what you’re thinking might come a glimpse of what you’re feeling. Now l’m going to be quiet”.!® She then invites the participants to go up to one of the adult teacher trainees watching the lesson who will act as scribe and write down what the participant tells them about their thoughts and feelings. She then says “board the ship, and we'll hear all these things that people were thinking and feeling, right?”.!% The students hear the adults read out their feelings and thoughts while they 104 Wagner: Dorothy Heathcote, 29. 105 Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama, 180. 106 Tbid., 278. 107 Tbid., 266. 108 Wagner: Dorothy Heathcote, 17. 19 Ibid. 32 e
