Page 238 [238]
MY RESEARCH LESSONS IN THE CONTEXT OF LTD PRACTICES
of bringing different components of theatre and combining them with
the experiential parts of drama lessons, thus offering a new way of thinking
that can be incorporated into a wide range of drama practices.
The research has also contributed a number of new questions to be
investigated further. These are described in detail together with further
personal learning outcomes of the action research process in section 5.3,
at the end of the data analysis. A new direction towards creating DEs in LTD
have been highlighted by this research, and a number of valuable connections
between the two fields investigated have been shared. To grasp the full
implications of the findings of my research they need to be understood within
the context of contemporary reinterpretations of the living through approach,
and the contemporary drama in education scene.
My RESEARCH LESSONS IN THE CONTEXT OF LTD PRACTICES
The inclusion of specific theatre concepts and structures for participants to
use within an LTD framework connects with some elements of living through
practices examined in the first chapter of my thesis, but also provides new
directions of development of this approach.
The lessons I implemented in my research focused on enhancing
the possibility of participants ‘being’ in moments of crisis within the narrative,
and not only experiencing but becoming makers of the drama by reacting
to the unfolding events. This element of my lessons connects to Dorothy
Heathcote’s early LTD approach, which is based on the understanding that
“drama is human beings confronted by situations which change them because
of what they must face in dealing with those challenges”.”° This element
of her work was carried further by Bolton, O’Neill and Davis in their
reinterpretations of LTD, while Heathcote’s reinterpretation, the Mantle of
the Expert approach (MoE), offered a more distanced frame for ‘dealing with
those challenges’.
From the perspective of the problems explored my lessons connect with
the aims Bolton defines as one of the fundamentals of his work: helping
the participant know “how and when (and when not) to adapt to the world
he lives in’.“’ The connection is even stronger with the aims Davis outlines
for his work as seeing “through the ideological distortions that disrupt our
vision.” The aim is specified by him as: “to provoke the opportunity to find
one’s relationship to those social forces, thus providing an opening for us each
740 Heathcote: Improvisation, 48.
71 Davis: Imagining the Real.
™ Bolton: Towards a theory, 22.