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CHAPTER ONE: LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
the socio-political context influences people’s thinking and actions and create
contradictions for them. If the connection between the problems in the fiction
and the reality are appropriate, then due to the metaxis effect participants
will also be forming their own values as they clash within their fictional role.
Davis states that “drama needs to be able to involve us in such a way that
we meet ourselves giving us the possibility of reworking the ideology that
has entered us: the possibility of glimpsing how society has corrupted us”.’®
The structures presented here are examples of work towards these aims.
Summary: Aspects of Different LTD Practices
to Consider in the Research
I have analysed some examples from great bodies of work of Heathcote’s Man
in Mess period, and Bolton’s, O’Neill’s and Davis’ re-interpretation of LTD.
The most important point of connection in these practices are that all of them
aim to create moments where participants can experience the immediacy
of facing unfolding problems within a fictional world. It is also clear from
the examples that the ‘living through’ experiences are only part of the whole
process. Elements of different approaches are present; tasks, exercises, games
and conventions in different examples help participants get to the experiential
role-play. There are elements of presenting besides ‘making’, and spectatorship
is also an important element in various ways. It is important that the crisis
or problems the drama engages in are experienced as theirs, rather than from
a distanced position in the living through moments of the drama. My research
lessons will also build on these defining characteristics of LTD.
The following qualities apparent in the examples of LTD examined can be
explored further in the drama lesson created in my research:
NARRATIVES: The narratives used in the examples differed in many
aspects, but what made them extreme on the one hand, was the proximity
of the participants in the fiction to them, it was happening to the roles they
were in. On the other hand, it was the connection between the reality of
the participants and the crisis in the narrative that made it extreme. Social
expectations or norms contributing to the crisis were present in the examples
from Bolton’s and Davis’s work, and the clash of these norms with basic
human reactions within the individual was the most visible in the dramas
of Davis. This aspect of the crisis connects strongly with narratives used by
Edward Bond and will be useful in designing my lessons.
STRUCTURING: There were different examples of structuring the lessons
to enhance participants to be in the drama. While Heathcote and O’Neill
offered great freedom for participants to define the narrative and take
18 Ibid., 43.
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