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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA Socio-cultural constraints are extremely important in Daviss living through situations. It is the clash between what we normally consider the right thing to do and what social constraints force us into within the individual that is visible in his work. The crisis within a person becomes explicit in the problems explored by him through LTD, this is something I need to carry into my research and explore further practically. I will look at examples of how Davis structures the drama towards LT improvisations. ‘Being’ in Culture Davis does not step into role in the three examples above, but structures tasks so that participants can operate living through improvisations on their own. The function of the tasks is to give an understanding of the situation and the context and how people relate to these in the specific environment. In the structure on Mental Asylum for Women he starts with the situation of the father handing over his daughter to the doctors of the clinic at the station, asking groups to turn the narrative form into drama. Davis invites the groups to use the five layers of meanings,’ making them think of the motivation, investment, model and stance behind the specific action of the roles.’ The scenes are presented and the other groups are asked to point out what they saw as central action and talk about what it meant for them. Davis offers further possibilities of bringing attention to potential dramatic action through questions related to the site of the handover. The groups rework the situation starting from the specific site. “Once the idea of imagery in the context has taken hold and the realization that theatre is not predominantly words but made up of actions, images and words (in that order of priority) then things can begin to happen”! says Davis. The participants create things that they can use to develop the meaning of the situation and understand more of the dramatic form too. In the next stage of the drama participants work in pairs on the stable improvisation described above. Here again there is detailed work on the specific site of the situation, a number of constraints that raise the tension of the scene are introduced — the guests in the house can hear them if they are loud, the girl is afraid of the dark, etc. - and some objects, a harness, a lamp are placed in the scene. The pairs make a still image and they hear the question relating to the layers of meaning thinking through the answers to themselves before the improvisation starts. The reworking of the scene to makes the participants aware of theatre as an art form, where the form supports meaning making. This mode of thinking is 165 Tbid., 67. 166 | will discuss the five layers of meaning, also known as AMIMS, originating from Heathcote but developed by many others in the third chapter. 167 Davis: Imagining the Real, 71. + 50 +
