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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
It is the emphasis on aesthetic form within the realm of LTD that offers
useful questions for my research. While O’Neill reaches out to a wide field
of theatre arts, I concentrate on bringing in one specific theatre practice
into the drama lessons. I continue my analysis of developments of LTD with
the examination of some examples of the work of Davis.
David Davis
Davis is not only an important representative of LTD but also a pioneer in
connecting Bond’s theory and practice with drama in education. His seminal
book Imagining the Real offers a critique of the current situation of the drama
in education, and presents the most important concepts and tools used by
Davis in his work and an exploration of combining Bondian devices with
process drama. He has also supervised the PhD research that is the basis of
this book. As his writing is formative in my research I will be analysing his
drama work in two phases. I examine some of the examples he offers of LTD
in this section, and after an analysis of Bond’s works in the second chapter
I return to analysing the LTD lesson in which he explores Bondian concepts in
the third chapter. As I aim to bring together the two practices there I will also
rely strongly on the concepts he offers from the field of LTD to compare with
Bondian concepts, besides offering a critique of his Bondian drama lesson.
Davis explored creating the living through involvement of the participants
without depending on teacher-in-role and this placed a greater emphasis on
the structuring of situations that contain all elements that make it possible for
participants to engage in improvisations.” Some of the examples discussed
are not full lessons, but drama structures used in teacher training, but offer
an insight into his application of the living through approach.
Culture, Context and Crisis
In Imagining the Real Davis present a number of structures built around
different situations that he uses in various contexts. First, I will only discuss
the narratives used and look at structures later. One of the situations explored
by Davis is based on Jeffrey Masson’s research of women locked away at a Swiss
clinic in the nineteenth century because their families deemed them ‘morally
insane”.!% The participants work on the situation of the father handing over
his daughter to the doctor at the train station, then step back in time in
the story to create an improvisation from the moment that could have been
the last straw for the father dealing with his daughter. In this improvisation
162 Davis: Imagining the Real, 55.
163 Tbid., 69-75.
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