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CHAPTER THREE: BRINGING TOGETHER THE ÁRTISTIC AND THE EDUCATIONAL PRAXIS
replicates how we can be socialised into institutionalised ways of thinking,
how the pressure to be "professional! can become the main perspective
pushing aside a possible human connection with others.
Cooper’s Analysis of the Child Abuse Drama
Chris Cooper focussed on how central components of Bonds dramatic theory
are present in Daviss Child Abuse lesson. Cooper claims that there are strong
connections between the lesson and Bond’s drama in that both aim to have
the participants/audience deeply immersed in the present of the fictional
events and both aim to “dislodge ideology’s spectacles”.“°* What Bond calls
the ‘Centre’ is present in many of the different tasks in the drama lesson
according to Cooper and Bond’s Site A — the time and era we live in — and
Site B — the specific situation — are also clearly tangible. He raises questions
however, about the way the final situation is opened and conveyed to
the audience, this is referred to as Site C in Bond’s theory. Drama needs to
happen in the audience’s imagination according to Bond’s theory and Cooper
argues that perhaps those playing the final improvisation and those watching
it might not have had “enough access to site C”.“? They were not equipped
with dramatic tools or were not working towards the aim of creating gaps for
the audience.
Cooper identifies significant difference in how story is used by the process
drama and in Bonds plays." In Davis’s drama lesson story is primarily used
to build role, with the aim of making it possible for participants to fully
immerse themselves in the final situation. Bond on the other hand builds
more powerful stories with the “human paradoxes of the situations and
the characters"! made available much earlier for the audience. Cooper
suggests that it could be useful to build more extreme elements into earlier
stages of the drama lesson, not just the final scene and also argues that
the possibilities offered by the cathexis and de-cathexis of objects is not used
in the drama lesson.*” Cooper states that the quotes from participants of
the drama lesson suggest that Davis’s Child Abuse drama had a big effect
on them, and the nature of this impact “has similarities to the impact of
a Bondian Drama Event”.*
#58 Chris Cooper: Revisiting the process drama on child abuse, in David Davis: Imagining the
Real: towards a new theory drama in education, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 2014, 163.
459 Ibid.
460 Ibid., 155.
461 Ibid.
#2 Ibid., 161.
463 Ibid., 164.
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