Page 131 [131]
CHAPTER THREE: BRINGING TOGETHER THE ÁRTISTIC AND THE EDUCATIONAL PRAXIS
events, but at the same time be aware of themselves as creators of those
imagined situations. Ihe concept of metaxis, being in the fictional context
of the drama and the actual social context at the same time,"" is central in
testing values.“*° The concept has been discussed in detail in chapter one
where the difference with Heathcote’s self-spectatorship and the convention
approach’s Brechtian distancing techniques were also pointed out. Metaxis
aims to keep participants “up to their necks in the stream”™*! for contradictions
“to be fought out internally”,**’ with the now-time of the ‘making’ element of
LTD playing a central role in producing metaxis.**
Staying in the stream is an important point of connection between the
living through approach and Bond anzd it is this “visceral, affective immersion
in the event leading to imaginative/reasoned reflection"! that connects Bond
and Bolton according to Davis. But he also points at the difference between
the two:
This is sufficient for Bolton but not for Bond; here they separate and new
elements come in. Bolton is content for the present ideological understanding
of the participants to be enough for them to reflect on the events and their
involvement in them. [...] For Bond the challenge is how the engagement of the
audience with the drama event can enable them to see what is really happening,
to think with the eyes, as he says somewhere, without the event being cloaked
in the immediate understanding of ideology. With regard to Bolton, my proposal
is that although his drama form stays with the importance of story, does not
pursue distancing devices and works for metaxis, yet the participants’ being is still
enmeshed in their dominant ideology, whatever that is."
Bondian DEs could bring the possibility to reflect on the impact of
the dominant cultural narratives on the actions within the fictional situation
and the metaxis element of the LTD could enhance that the participants raise
questions about the presence of these ideological narratives in their actual
social context as well. This demands on the one hand that the drama lessons
are structured so that they rely highly on the ‘making’ element of the living
through approach and also enhance the immediacy of the experience present
both in LTD and in Bond’s drama, but should develop into moments in
479
Bolton: New perspectives, 11.
Davis: Imagining the Real, 52.
481 Ibid., 31.
482 Thid., 52.
483 Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama, 271.
“84 Davis: Imagining the Real, 132.
#5 Ibid.
480
+ 130 +