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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
represent a particular person to others. O’Neill states that though the first
three categories are predominant, all five can be present in her process drama.
She argues for the strong presence of connection between the participants’
life and the fiction, and also for the artistic dimension to be present.
Experience arises from the interaction of people and their environment,
and art celebrates that interaction with clarity and intensity. The participants
in the drama process bring to it their own experience of the world. The drama
teacher must build a bridge for the pupils between their experience and
the meaning that is embodied in the drama. If the teacher fails, the work
will be lacking in integrity and will be effective neither educationally nor
aesthetically. In structuring the process according to aesthetic principles, the
teacher is likely to achieve both educational and artistic objectives. The pupils
will be able to make sense of their experience in the world and organise their
experience in the drama process into the unity, coherence and significance
of art.
O’Neill claims that to achieve educational aims the work needs to be
structured according to aesthetic principles. The question is what are
the pedagogical aims achieved through this form of LTD. I look at this more
closely in the following section.
Spectators of Themselves Making Fiction
Among the different positions from which the participants can experience
situations in process drama we can find that of the spectator as well. O’Neill
considers the audience an integral part of theatre and consciously creates
possibilities of spectating the unfolding events." For example in Frank Miller
after an improvised pair work four people join up and one member of each
pair listens to his previous partner discussing his fears related to Miller. This
second improvised discussion will obviously be reflecting on the previous one,
those being talked about will be involved but some distance for observation
and reflection is also created. O’Neill argues that “the pervasive elements
of watching seemed to allow for a greater degree of feeling in the group”.’*
This mode of observation of the drama being made creates a different type
of involvement and offers yet another angle of engaging with the problem.
It also offers a reflection from within the fiction on previous events or tasks,
creating a form of self-spectatorship as well. In Frank Miller the participants
see a fictional world built up with their participation, with the use of their
156 Cecily O’Neill: Drama and the Web of Form, in Philip Taylor — Christina D. Warner, (eds.):
Structure and Spontaneity, the Process Drama of Cecily O’Neill, Stoke on Trent, Trentham
Books, 2006, 72.
157 O’Neill: Drama Worlds, 112.
158 Ibid., 124.
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