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CHAPTER THREE: BRINGING TOGETHER THE ÁRTISTIC AND THE EDUCATIONAL PRAXIS that he should take revenge (while not losing the complexity of the moment discussed earlier), then that might show his vulnerability to the culture of revenge that permeates our culture. It is important that the Invisible Object is not something that is prescribed by Bond in his plays, but it is an element that the actor has to explore in the situation, it is a search for the ‘human’, and in this sense the ‘real’ situation, opposed to the culturally inclined interpretation of the situation. The search itself for the hidden human meaning is the creative action that is crucial to drama as an art form. This Bondian concept can be used in classroom drama as well. Being and exploring the situation from within is at its centre and this is a clear connection with the LTD. The framework provided by the layers of meaning can also be adapted so that it can be then used to help the artistic exploration of the Invisible Object. From the perspective of Bond’s theory the four layers of meaning behind the action can be seen as different interpretive narratives that are present in our culture. So, for example, to the model level question of where was an action learned from people could give a response that is based on their usual cultural understanding of such situation, this would simply reinforce their viewpoint rather than question it. To bring an example from my own praxis, in a drama lesson engaging with a situation of bullying I asked participants to make a depiction of the model level for the bully’s action, to show where he learnt what he was doing, and in most cases they brought back situations of bullying at home, in which the bully was a victim. I believe that this a narrative ingrained in our culture that is widely used to explain why someone becomes a bully. In this case this narrative was reinforced rather than questioned. It is possible that I did not structure or facilitate the task well enough, nevertheless it still shows the problem with the structure. The case would be very similar on a psychological level of motivation or the philosophical level of life-view. Adapting this structure to a Bondian approach would mean that these interpretive narratives that are part of our usual cultural understanding need to be identified so that they can be shown as artificial interpretations of the situation. The linearity of these narratives of interpretation needs to be ruptured in the DE. Showing them would enhance that a gap is opened to create another, a ‘real’, a human interpretation of the situation. The wide scope of my research has not allowed me to develop this specific idea further practically, it remains an exciting territory to explore in the future. + 146 +
