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BEING IN THE SITUATION — THREE RE-INTERPRETATIONS OF LTD
ideas. O’Neill’s structuring to create moments of spectatorship offers
participants the chance to be an audience to them making drama as well. This
possibility is present already at the beginning of the drama when the teacher
addresses the group in role and they are already observing each other and
how they relate to the fiction on offer: who joins in, who sits back, which
ideas are side-lined by others and which ones take off. Awareness of their role
in making the drama can also offer them the chance to bring in elements of
their reality or keep them out. Enhancing metaxis is structured into Bolton’s
Crucible drama by connecting elements of the two worlds. O’Neill does
not emphasise highlighting the parallel existence of the two worlds in this
example, but leaves it to the participants to decide if they want to bring in and
work with elements of their reality in the fictional world. O’Neill says that:
The successful creation of an imagined world depends to a considerable extent on
the degree to which participants can make links between the world of illusion and
their understanding of the real world. They will not be attempting a mere imitation
of real life. Rather, like children at play, they will be rearranging and transforming
the components of the world they know in actuality into, at the least, fresh patterns
and, at best, the kind of abstraction and generalisation which approaches art.
For them, the value of this abstraction may be to reduce reality to manageable
proportions."
The possibility of spectating themselves as creators of the drama world is
important for O’Neill to enhance an awareness of using the dramatic art
form to understand the real world. The awareness of their role as participants
and creators emphasises the fictional aspect of the encounter and offers
protection. This protection is often achieved in other drama work through
emphasis on the fictional role. As there isn’t any stress on building role in
O’Neill’s process drama the awareness of being creators of the fictional world
gains importance in this respect as well. Davis describes the participants’
point of view in O’Neill’s process drama as “I am watching it happen to
me now”.'© O’Neill argues that the “participants in process drama actively
inhabit both the real world and the imagined world”,!" she offers a number of
living through improvisations in her process drama and metaxis is created by
raising the awareness of being creators of fiction.
19 Cecily O’Neill: Imagined Worlds in Theatre and Drama, in Philip Taylor - Christine Warner
(eds.): Structure and Spontaneity, the Process Drama of Cecily O’Neill, Stoke on Trent,
Trentham Books, 2006, 84.
169 David Davis: Foreword, in Gavin Bolton: Acting in classroom drama, American edn.,
Portland, Calendar Island Publishers, 1999, xvi.
11 O’Neill: Drama Worlds, 119.