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FIRST CYCLE
The Tribe
The last series of this cycle centred on moving between fiction and reality,
a strategy employed by Bond in his plays at times: “introducing fiction into
reality is almost a definition of drama. A better definition would be: introducing
reality into fiction”.°®* Besides exploring the use of objects that operate on
different levels of representation I wanted to find out how a dramaturgical
shift, showing things accepted as true in the story as fictional, would impact
on participants. The lessons followed this narrative:
The Tribe started out as a story
about an isolated tribe living an
agricultural life. The mythology
and the way of life of the Kalaf
tribe were created together with
participants based on descriptions
of their temple. The participants
created rituals of the groups
who had different tasks within
the tribe, using their ritual objects. Drawing by a participant of
During one of their tribe meetings the drama lesson
a plane that looked very much like
the Silverbird in the mythology of the tribe landed and the ‘man in sunglasses’
(teacher in role) told the villagers that their island had been bought by a company
and will become a holiday resort. He offered the tribe a deal and left a copy of
the contract. The second lessons continued with the tribe trying to decide what
to do. Meanwhile one of the youth found a mobile phone where the plane had
landed. A number of tasks were centred around the phone including pair and
individual improvisations, the latter in the space of the temple where the young
Kalaf took the mobile. The third lesson brought a twist in the story, with a jump
in time and place; the participants were offered the role of American students
who won a trip to the luxurious Kalaf island, where they were presented with
a narrative of how the primitive tribe welcomed the arrival of modern life to their
land. The American students used their different gadgets (iconic representations
created by participants as part of role building) to document their trip, and even
a secret meeting they were invited to by a Kalaf youth (teacher in role), who asked
them to smuggle the book of the Kalaf’s history to America. Some members of
the student group were interrogated by their adult escort to the island, because
they had noticed that the group had vanished for some time. The participants
were offered the possibility to create their ending to the story in groups.
584 Bond: The Cap, xl.
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