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FIRST CYCLE
As I adjusted the lessons to the interests of the group the Centre dropped out
of focus and at the end of the series the participants of the last focus group
linked the story to the following phenomena in the world:
P1: It’s was like when they take all the poor people to work in factories.
P2: You’re just sitting in the Jacuzzi while they make the aboriginals work.
P3: In India they have a caste system and the lowest caste does most of the work.
P1: You work and the income you make is taken by others who have not worked
at all.‘'*
All these reflections connect much more to exploitation and colonisation
rather than the use of stories. I had started out to test how the switch in
perspectives on a narrative can help dislodge it, but eventually the focus
moved away. It is useful to contrast this example with that of another series.
In Children I shared the chosen Centre in the form of a very short scene
using an action and a line from the original Bond play. Joe says a sensitive
goodbye to his teddy and then whacks it with a brick. The participants
explained that “he wants to get rid of his teddy, because his mates make
fun of him”, or another description: “he is trying to break his own heart”.°'°
Children having to face demands that are impossible to accomplish in some
way appeared repeatedly in the drama lesson, and the objects from this scene
were used again and again. The participants of the last focus group talked
about the objects and related them to the whole story, but when I ask explicitly
if they see any connection between the ‘centre’ scene and any rest of the story
I did not get an answer.
I had clearly not found the right way of making the Centre usable for
the participants in this cycle. This was an issue I approached differently in
the second cycle. I was able to use the Centre in planning some of the lessons,
but it is noticeable from the notes in my reflective diary®'® that in cases
when the Centre was clearer often the internal coherence of the sequencing,
the clarity behind the logic of the tasks from the participants’ point of view,
was missing, or the other way round. The two concepts from the two fields
need to be located beside each other, and this connection demands further
investigation.
PARTICIPANTS’ RELATIONSHIP TO THE NARRATIVE: An important
difference between a Bondian play and a LTD lesson is that while the story is
complete in the play, the drama lesson needs to offer space for the participants
o4 F D3.
65 V2 Gl.
616 RD_G2; RD_D3; RD_F3.
+ 183 +