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THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT AND A CRITIQUE OF LIVING THROUGH DRAMA
Both forms discussed here have developed the distancing aspect present
in LTD in Heathcote’s self-spectator also used in her Man in a Mess period.
The direction taken by Bolton, O’Neill and Davis places emphasis on the
experiencing and dealing or coping with situations from within instead of
distancing.
Criticisms of Living Through Drama
This section looks at those aspects of LTD that have been criticised. I refer to
a wide spectrum of points of view starting from those who seem to oppose
drama in education as such to those who are representatives of the LT
approach themselves. The critique has been broken down to six territories.
The questions raised here are revisited in the concluding chapter, as I examine
my research lessons and findings in relation to these critiques.
LTD: Investment and Success
One of the recurring questions raised about LTD is that the process to reach
living through moments demands too much investment. David Hornbrook
raises this issue among others in his book Education and Dramatic Art,
a full-fledged attack against drama in education as such, primarily criticising
the work of Heathcote and Bolton and the forms used by them. He says:
Apart from anything else, these apparent ‘moments of awe’ are extremely difficult
to achieve — as every school drama teacher knows. Even in the controlled conditions
of their demonstration workshops, Heathcote and Bolton would often take several
sessions to build up sufficient tension and commitment; in the pandemonium of
the ordinary school day these ‘awesome’ dramatic occasions must be very rare
indeed. It might reasonably be argued that the time and energy expended on such
limited objectives could be more profitably spent."
Neelands seems to be of a similar opinion when he writes about “spending
four hours or more in the classroom ‘building investment’ and ‘belief’”'* in
an essay discussing process drama. Fleming raises a similar question, though
from the perspective of someone doing LTD. He says that “when I was teaching
drama in school we taught from week to week a kind of living through and it
was a big success one week and then a disaster the next week”.!°° Perhaps they
are referring to dramas starting from the question ‘what do you want to make
a play about?’ — where it might take quite a lot of time to reach a moment
188 David Hornbrook: Education and Dramatic Art, 2°‘ edn., London, Routledge, 1998, 80.
189 Neelands: Mirror, Dynamo or Lens, 146.
10 Fleming: Interview.