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AN EXAMPLE AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISES
Further Questions Raised by the Drama Lesson
Chris Cooper’s insights offer relevant questions for further thinking. In this
section I raise some more questions that could be useful in my research later
where I aim to connect the two territories in practice.
Questions about the final improvisation have been raised above; I shall
continue investigating this concluding part of the drama lesson. The situation
becomes extreme because the CSOs find something that is different from
what they had expected, their expectations built on the biases and atmosphere
create by the meticulously structured series of tasks that pull them into
the institutionalised thinking. The officers find themselves in a new situation
in which the state of the family calls for a human response, however, they are
here in a professional capacity and this will define how they need to behave
in this situation. The clash between the professional and personal creates
useful dilemmas. The question is how equipped the participants are in role
to explore the dilemma dramatically. They might experience it themselves,
but are they able to make the clash felt for those watching? Those watching
perhaps compared their own plans to deal with the situation with the one
being implemented, giving them some stake in the situation. But those in it
were working to resolve it rather than opening questions through it. Bond is
known for the numerous stage directions written into his plays. He offers these
as pointers for the actors and directors to be able to explore the deeper content
of the play. The stage directions also offer a very practical aid to the actors,
they can concentrate on HOW to do something rather than on WHAT to
do. Some actors find this annoying, while others find it liberating that the
text provides constraints that help in searching for content through exploring
the form of doing the action. A comparison of the role of the participants and
the actors and the audience is the subject of the next section of this chapter;
I will return to this dilemma further on.
Cooper comments on the role of the extreme in the stories dramatized in
Bond plays," this has also been discussed through examples of DEs created
through extreme incidents in the previous chapter. The extreme moment in
the final situation of the drama lesson is created by the contrast between
the expectation of those prosecuting and the actual situation of the family.
The expectations of the participants were created by getting caught up in
the ideologically narrowed vision created by the “crusade against child
violence”* and in their fervour to find a case as Child Support Officers. Davis
consciously uses language in his role as unit in-service trainer to model how
political/ideological manipulation happens. The lesson is structured perfectly
464 Ibid., 161.
465 Davis: Imagining the Real, 113.