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SECOND CYCLE
Short Summary of the Drama Lessons
The three drama lessons used in this cycle offered different types of
opportunities for the participants to create DEs. All three lessons included
the structures and devices described above. I will give a short summary of
the three lessons because in the data analysis that follows I will be referring
to them in comparison to each other. Two of the lessons were implemented
more than once and these produced variations of the original lesson, as I was
trying to adjust them to the need of the specific group I was researching them
with. I shall point to the variations where they were important.
I conducted two versions of the lesson set in a refugee camp in Austria
following the 1956 revolution in Hungary. Both versions offered the Centre:
how can one take ownership of one’s life? Following a collection of reasons
of why young people leave Hungary today, we went back in time to the story
of a 15-year-old girl who runs away from home, across the border to Austria,
in 1956 to escape getting trapped in the life her father’s political position
predestines for her. The first version (referred to as 56A_ in the data) of this
lesson focused on the site of the refugee camp transformed from a holiday
camp to accommodate refugees arriving to Austria after Soviet troops
crushed the Hungarian revolution. Participants were offered the choice of
numerous objects, from apples to a Bible, to use in creating scenes about
the teenage girl in the space that they had designed. They were then asked to
rework the scenes with the use of the dramaturgical structures, reflecting on
the centre and with the aim of opening gaps. One of the narratives offered by
participants was then developed into a whole group improvisation.
The second version of the 1956 (referred to as 56B_ in the data) drama
lesson focussed much more on the narrative of the girl. The situation of her
leaving her home was improvised and reworked as a scene; and the final
moment of the drama lesson was a pair improvisation between the girl and
her father in the refugee camp. This situation was based on the historical
facts of the Hungarian communist government putting pressure on Austria
to send back all under-age refugees who do not have their parent’s consent.
The meeting happening in the refugee camp between the father and
the daughter was overseen by a Hungarian government official, me in role.
While in the first version the possibility of creating gaps was linked more to
the space and objects and the narratives participants built from these two,
the second version offered potential in the contradictory narratives of the
daughter and the father. I will be analysing how these possibilities worked
further on.
In the drama titled Student Revolt (referred to as Rev_ in the data)
participants were in role as staff of the media company commissioned by
the state to discredit the students whose demonstrations against the bad
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