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APPENDICES
APPENDIX D
EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL FLEMING
Budapest, 29" January 2014
by Ádám Bethlenfalvy
ME: Drama as subject must be about something significant. Is it helping us
understand the world and us and our place in the world? In can be challenging
in the sense that is stimulates us to think critically (in an emotionally
committed way), this is where David’s contribution is really important.
AB: How can I decide if a situation has significant content?
MF: It can be about anything in the sense that any subject matter can be
the focus. One of the challenges of the Gavin Bolton, Dorothy Heathcote
approach to drama, is that it put a lot of responsibility on the teacher, to take
any subject matter that the pupils offered and make it significant. This is how
I started teaching drama (asking the pupils to come up with a topic) and it
was very-very challenging. But it taught me a lot. It meant the children were
immediately engaged. Starting with a blank piece of paper the challenge is to
translate it into something significant. Not many teacher approach drama in
that way now — understandably
AB: So you are saying significant content covers the content and the way it is
opened up?
MF: Yes, which takes you into the form.
AB: Is it actually the connection of the two? It can be about a simple dinner
a family is having, the question is how we work on it.
MF: Yes. What helped me was to see it in terms of levels. Not necessarily just
Dorothy’s levels of meaning, just any level that is goes deeper than what is on
the surface.
(...Discussion about conventions approach, primarily focuses on the form.
Listing conventions.)
MF: Thought tracking can be overused. There is too much thought tracking.
It can easily become anti-theatre. Because theatre works through external
actions, and that is the beauty of theatre. I know there is soliloquy that is
one form that can be said to employ a form of thought-tracking. But thought
tracking became universal in drama lessons — in my experience — everyone
was expressing their thoughts. But one of the points of drama is that the reason
the actions get depth is that we don’t hear the inner thoughts.