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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.
