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CHAPTER FIVE: DATA ANALYSIS
educational system were gaining popularity. Ihe Centre of the lesson
coincided partly with my research guestion: how can narratives be dislodged?
In this case I attempted to include the justification for dislodging each others
narrative of the situation as an element of the story. Ihe process led to
a pair improvisation of a situation in which an arrested leader of the student
movement was interrogated by a representative of the PR company. Ihe two
participants of the improvisation both prepared their narrative and strategy
to come out of this situation in the best way for them, and then were offered
tools to use to offset each other in the improvisation.
Wild Child, the third drama lesson (referred to as W in the data), was
based on a feral child narrative. It started by me inviting the participants
to become co-researchers investigating this form of drama and the problem
of how dominant social narratives, ways of thinking can be questioned.
In the first version participants were also asked to create scenes or depictions
of moments of realisations in their lives, when things they had not questioned
previously were seen in a completely new light. In the second version of Wild
Child we created the statue of the ideal student that the Education Ministry
would make and looked at how to change it to express the reality of being
a student and show the ideology in the first statue. While the first version
focused more on their personal experience, the second version was more
connected to the logic of creating DEs.
Then participants were offered a story about the question: how can you
find/be yourself in contemporary society? They were offered the role of
the staff of an NGO that helps people with issues integrate into communities.
The roles and the organisation were built through tasks of mapping their
previous successes and approaches to social problems. The organisation
received a request to deal with an extremely difficult case of a nine-year-old
child who had been raised by a pack of dogs. Participants were asked to create
scenes about the education of the child, after a series of tasks prepared them
for this; these included making lists of the most important things the child
needs to learn, exploring in space how growing up with dogs impacted on
her movement, and so on. The scenes created were then re-worked using
the Centre of the story with the help of the dramaturgical structures.
The NGO received a huge donation because of the good press they received
for their successful nurturing of the child, but one of the criteria was that
the child (whose gender depended on the group’s gender ratio) should be
there at the ceremony. A small group improvisation was played out as the
reluctant child is persuaded to leave for the ceremony and the event itself was
played out as a whole group improvisation. In different versions I tried setting
the objects for them to use in the group improvisation or leaving the choice
up to them, or using a mix of offering some and also giving participants some
choice. I discuss the use of objects further on.
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