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APPENDICES
AB: I think it could have built into a more powerful encounter.
CON: There is an urge to make it easy and to make it come out right. Actually
the occasions I have managed people to have a happy ending are very few.
Young people are braver. We adults — it’s that relationship to ourselves —
we want it to come out nice. It didn’t quite get there, but I could see that that
could be going somewhere, where there is a huge sacrifice. Or a sense of loss.
[...] It’s that sense of something wrong has been done that can’t be put right.
You can’t bring back Cordelia to life.
AB: Talking of King Lear, it is obvious that you use a lot of classic dramas,
but you also leave a lot to the participants. So what defines your choice of
the subject of the drama? And is the subject more important or is it the form?
CON: You can always find a new form for something if it isn’t right, find
a stronger way. Actually if the content is good the problem is finding the form
that will honour it. If you know what I mean. It is the content that I am
after, which is why fairy tales and folk tales and so are good. You know there
are not so many questions in the world, and drama is good at looking at
the relationship between people, and what people do to each other. I always
feel that the question King Lear asks ‘What cause in nature makes thee heart
hard?’ that for me is the biggest question. Whether the subject is war or
something more domestic, how can we understand evil in the world, how can
we understand damage people do to each other? It is not often that you can
get there in a one off session, but I would always want to be making a journey
towards the big questions. I am not too interested in the ideological ones
though and I have been criticised for it. Partly because it is not my style, but
I think those are there if you want to look at. [...]
AB: Liminality seems to be an important word for you, in relation to
the teacher, but also the state or the situation the participants are in.
CON: Yes, but they are safe, and it is a play space. It always surprises me that
children, immediately know when you are pretending, adults don’t always.
[...] It is a powerful thing knowing that you can slip out of reality but you can
have the control.
AB: Is it a problem if the participants slip too much into the world they have
created? Is that a possibility at all?
CON: Teachers always worry about that. But it doesn’t worry me. I told you
about the time the kids got into very heavy stuff. I think it was the Frank
Miller one, and the kids were showing domestic violence and they were doing
enactments of that. [...] Just to play at something that is terrifying there is
a sense of power in that, you know you are controlling it. Maybe not in your
own life, but in the play.
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