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BEING IN THE SITUATION — THREE RE-INTERPRETATIONS OF LTD above that the “pivotal scene represents the beginning of my planning, but, typically of this kind of programme, it cannot necessarily be the beginning of the lesson itself”.'”” In the lesson, after a short explanation about the puritans, Bolton asks the participants to collect superstitions in groups, and then asks them to put their initials by the ones that they are individually affected by. He plays a game in which those who say that superstitions do not affect their lives are playfully harassed, and then mimes cursing a doll and passes it around, highlighting a social practice of the time together with the ‘as if’ they are all stepping into with the miming. The students work on a complex depiction task, showing the families living in the village as they would like themselves to be seen by the village, but are asked to leave a hint of something in the image that is not quite like how the family would like others to see them. The depictions are presented by the heads of the families, while Bolton questions them in role as the Priest. The Priest finally states that some families are lying, because some of their children have been out naked, dancing in the woods. He sends people in role as parents out of the room while giving those in role as children a chance to decide for themselves if they were ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’. The families enter the space marked as the church together and the pivotal scene begins. The whole group improvisation is later broken into sub-groups without stepping out of role, so that the parents can question their children, but then it joins up into a full group event again. Finally, when the scene finishes the participants in role as kids can show their parents if they were actually innocent or guilty, and Bolton says “there is much laughter for many of the ‘parents’ were genuinely deceived”.'?® The first part of the lesson works towards bringing the world of the teenagers and the world of the drama closer to each other. Concepts and gestures present in both worlds are used in the tasks to enhance this, and again there is a build-up of using sign, entering the ‘as if’ of the drama. First the mimed doll and then the depiction made by the groups bring an awareness of signing and reading signs in drama and also a consciousness of pretence within the fiction. The families pretending ‘as if’ everything was fine within the fiction can be seen as a parallel to contemporary teenagers behaving ‘as if’ they were puritans. Bolton makes the connection between the different ‘as ifs’ quite explicit, when he says that “the participants in ‘living through’ drama behave as we all behave when we make an effort to present a social event to each other in ‘real life””.° The difference is that when participants engage in the drama they are aware of playing a ‘role’, this might not be so in a social event. Bolton doesn’t place any emphasis on building the individual roles of the participants. He stresses connecting the social context of the fictional 27 Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama, 223. 228 Ihid., 227. 129 Ibid., 181. + 39 +
