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FACILITATING ‘BEING’ IN THE SITUATION — STRUCTURES USED IN LTD AND BONDIAN DRAMA
drama as well. Many of the examples of process drama events he provides
are connected to powerful social problems, but these all appear in domestic
situations. Often the ‘givens’ built into the situation that carry most of
the elements highlighted in the quote also appear spatially in the form of
objects or structures of the fictional site. Davis often uses improvisation
without the teacher participating in it in role, so the elements that provide
enough support for participants to suspend disbelief and to be in the situation
need to be included in it. In other LTDs often the teacher in role can bring in
the missing elements from within the situation. Davis clarifies that “meaning
making is at the centre of the activity’ and offers Heathcote’s five layers of
meaning as a tool to explore different levels of meaning making in drama.
I discuss this device in detail further on.
Bond claims that “drama elucidates and enacts a situation. It is an event in
the mind”. In the light of the theory of the Site this statement can be read
as making the interpretations of a situation that are in the audience’s mind
also an important part of drama. These interpretations need to be taken into
consideration as well when developing situations.
On a practical level Bond often refers to exploring the logic of the situation
in rehearsals. This logic builds upon many different elements. On the one hand
the material surrounding in the space, its geography, defines some elements
of its logic. In many cases Bond describes the space in which the situations of
his plays happen in great detail. This is because they work on two levels, they
provide the actual space of the situations that determine part of the situation,
but they also contain those elements that can be used to open up the situation
for meaning making.
Besides the material elements of the situation Bond also refers to the social
situation which also defines its logic. Cooper discusses another example!
from a Bond play, The Broken Bowl, which begins with a familiar social
situation of a family meal. But the insecurity created by no one knowing what
is happening outside the home changes the usual dynamic of this situation.
The father is distressed with his daughter because she has an imaginary
friend and wants to take the bowl away from her that she places on the table
for her friend. There is a moment in the play when she grasps the bowl and
holds it to herself. Cooper argues that it is an immensely important moment,
but “in the playing of it, the actor has to remain in the logic of the situation.
The cradling of the bowl is practical, not symbolically abstract. To play it
this way (symbolically) would be to close down the meaning. The Girl has to
protect it from her Father. The Father has to destroy the table and a bowl is
#9 Ibid.
500 Bond: Modern Drama, 17.
501 Cooper: The performer in TIE.