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CHAPTER FIVE: DATA ANALYSIS
good. Because then the story would become boring"."" Here again, they are
not talking about the drama as a problem-solving practice, but as a narrative
they are creating to be exciting.
To summarise understanding about the effect of extreme incidents we
can say that on one level they can be considered a dramaturgical device that
triggers imagination, questioning and motivation, but on another level it is
through the participants’ angle of connection to the crisis, their responsibility
in the incident that makes it possible to question values. Thirdly the extreme
can mark the world of the drama as fictional and offer safety of exploration
for participants.
CENTRE: The concept of Centre is a dramaturgical reference point for
artists working on Edward Bond plays, used for deconstructing the text
and creating a coherence when putting the play on stage. Bond says that
“the centre is the site of the drama’s paradox”.°” The concept becomes useful
when structuring drama lessons; it can produce coherence if the Centre is
present in each activity.
My experience is that in rehearsals it is important for actors to be aware of
the Centre of the play so they can use it as reference points and find the purpose
of their actions. I shared the Centre of Children as a scene and the Centre of
The Tribe as a starting question for a discussion at the beginning of the series,
to explore how they can be used later in the drama work.
The Centre I specified for The Tribe series was: stories can both guide
and misguide you. I talked about stories with the group at the beginning
of the session. The participants were very thoughtful about the stories
surrounding them, as can be seen from this excerpt from the discussion:
P1: This is also a story, that we are sitting here, this will be a story tomorrow.
P2: The objects that surround us all have stories.
P3: All of us have our own stories of how we got here.
P4: Places also have stories. A building can have a story too.
P5: A leaf can also have a story. It might not be very interesting that a leaf comes
out, it sits around for a long time and then dies. It is not very interesting, but it is
a story.
P2: I think that map also shows a story. A country also has a story."
At the end of this discussion I offered the Centre, saying that it would be
useful to think about how stories can guide or misguide us, before setting up
the first task of recreating the images on the wall of the Kalaf tribe’s temple.
6 Ibid.
62 Bond: Modern Drama, 14.
65 V1 D1.
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