Oldal 266 [266]
APPENDICES
AB: The other part that is interesting for me is the relationship between
the real world and the created world of the drama? Does the drama have
an effect on the real lives?
CON: I think it is impossible to say. This is why when Bond for example says,
you then take radical action in the real world. You go home and kill your
stepfather or something (laugh) would be radical action. I don’t think we can
possibly know. But I think that even if for an hour in the drama studio you
give somebody a sense of power, of possibilities, or even the reverse, of another
perspective on that. Maybe that brings something up, but no one can say. [...]
It is one of my objections to the term applied drama, because it is to (?) do
something to use. I will apply this little band aid to the wound in your heart.
It is usually about some social difficult or something. It is very instrumental
to my mind. It seems to me TIE by another name, but without the openness
TIE at its best would promote. And maybe applied theatre is a term that will
fall out of fashion. [...] It is a bit to purposeful. Nobody would ever employ me
again if they heard me saying that... [...]
AB: Both Bolton and Davis point to process drama as development of
Heathcote’s Man in a Mess. What do you think about that?
CON: I absolutely think that it is. And it is interesting that Dorothy has moved
away from that. When I first encountered Dorothy what astonished me was in
a way the theatricality of the work, the immediacy, you were suddenly there
in the world. This is what teacher in role does for me, there you are, the world
has just begun.
I think the steps are that hers was the immediacy, that here we are in
the moment, it has begun. That was ok, but I had no notion of how to go
on from there. And then working with Gavin I realised that everything you
did could feed that initial world that was created. So whatever you did could
fill, could enlarge and build. That was the other eureka moment. And then
realising that you didn’t have to come out of nowhere, you had the whole
world of theatre to support you. Gavin writes about the difference between
my work and Dorothy’s, about the Disaster lesson. And he said Dorothy might
have begun like that, creating a memorial to the disaster, but she wouldn’t
have then come in saying hang on, I am sorry you can’t do that. It suddenly
occurred to me that that’s a very good example of she would have dumbed
down the drama whereas I am trying to light the fire, I suppose. But I have
enormous respect for her work. I am just too impatient and too spontaneous.
And maybe it is a reason why it is so difficult to emulate her work is that she
invests so much, she prepares the world in such deep detail, or the starting
point for the world, or the objects, or the research. The world is very thick
before the participants enter it. And then if they don’t get it, or it is more than
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