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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
important realisation was linked to Bolton, whose structuring made her
recognise that feverything you did could feed that initial world that was
created.”'* Also, linking her work to the art form, she says she found it
reassuring that “you didn’t have to come out of nowhere; you had the whole
world of theatre to support you”.
Pretexts to a Changing World
O’Neill clearly trusts the problems that classic dramas engage in and she is
also clear about how these need to work. “Drama is good at taking a situation
to the extreme. [...] In process drama, often you don’t just have a fairly bad
day — you have a dreadful day! King Lear doesn’t just fall out slightly with his
daughters — he loses everything. And even when you think it might just turn
out good, it doesn’t.”!**
O’Neill begins her drama from what she calls pre-texts, these often carry
some features of a possible world and foreshadow some kind of change
that will alter the fictional world forever. “Ihe kinds of events that signal
change and have proved dramatically effective in all eras include arrivals,
encounters, returns, questions, proclamations, announcements of new laws,
prophecies, and messages”'* explains O’Neill. The forms listed here signal
a change in the fictional world and the participants of the drama begin by
taking a relationship to this changing world. O’Neill starts out from a pre¬
text that has dramatic potential and then develops the drama based on
the participants’ contributions, so the specific problem engaged in would
depend greatly on these inputs. One example described by O’Neill starts out
from the return of a long-lost member of the community, Frank Miller, who
turns out to be searching for his son. The drama develops into a tense family
reunion, which ends in domestic violence." The teacher (in role) explicitly
states at the beginning of the drama that everyone is directly affected by
the problem of the returning Frank Miller, and participants are offered roles
of those involved in the family problems as well. Besides having to confront
the deeds of the past, the situation and the lives of the fictional roles are
changed by the re-emergence of a family member.
142 Ibid.
143 Tbid.
44 Philip Taylor — Christine D. Warner (eds.): Structure and Spontaneity, the Process Drama of
Cecily O’Neill, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 2006, 24—25.
Cecily O’Neill: Drama Worlds: a framework for process drama, Portsmouth, Heinemann,
1995, 138.
146 Tbid., xi.
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