Theatre for Change

Education, Social Action and Therapy

Robert Landy, David T. Montgomery

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780230243668
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350316348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Building on Robert J. Landy's seminal text, Handbook of Educational Drama and Theatre, Landy and Montgomery revisit this richly diverse and ever-changing field, identifying some of the best international practices in Applied Drama and Theatre. Through interviews with leading practitioners and educators such as Dorothy Heathcote, Jan Cohen Cruz, James Thompson, and Johnny Saldaña, the authors lucidly present the key concepts, theories and reflective praxis of Applied Drama and Theatre.

As they discuss the changes brought about by practitioners in venues such as schools, community centres, village squares and prisons, Landy and Montgomery explore the field's ability to make meaning of a vast range of personal and social issues through the application of drama and theatre.

PART I DRAMA AND THEATRE IN EDUCATION

In this section we examine various forms of Educational Drama and Theatre in schools and performance spaces. Special attention is paid to our model of praxis as action–observation–reflection–re-action. We explore praxis through case vignettes and interviews, through observations and reflections, to offer a broad view of theory and practice, past and present.

Educational drama and theatre in school settings

In so many ways, theatre aims for change. The spectrum of change runs from a shift in mood that a good comedy engenders in audience members, to a shift in thinking inspired by a provocative drama. In applied theatre settings, a primary goal is to develop participants’ critical thinking skills which inevitably leads to change in understanding. This focus is aligned with the school’s goal to create change through education. Consequently, the opportunity exists for Educational Theatre to make a key contribution to the school curricula. How this relationship between schools and theatre has fared over the years is one area we explore.

One of Aristotle’s most significant contributions to theatre was a theory based on exploration and contemplation of theatre practice. If theory is a form of knowledge, and practice is the application of that knowledge, then artist educators engaging with acts that shape knowledge can be seen as theorists. Do drama teachers think of themselves as theorists as they practice their art? Are they even aware of the theories driving their teaching? We argue that often drama teachers are unacquainted with the theory informing their practice.

This section illustrates that despite the unfamiliarity some have with terminology and theory, their work is Educational Theatre praxis and should be recognized as such. By placing noteworthy drama practice alongside an investigation of Educational Theatre history and theory, readers can situate their practice within the field and build their own philosophies of the practice.

Consider these first three vignettes of drama praxis in school settings:

Case vignette one: Drama in the elementary school setting

At primary grade three levels in an all-boys school in Hong Kong, students were shown how to engage with drama and role work for the first time. In a lesson called ‘The Disappearance of Rice’, boys were put into role as researchers in the future who traveled back in time to investigate why farmers no longer grow rice, considering the hardships that farmers faced under a variety of circumstances.¹ The impact of the drama helped promote a multi-dimensional perception of events for students, particularly regarding the real-life demonstrations held against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Hong Kong in 2005.² One student reported, ‘If I had not taken part in this drama, I would never have understood why Korean farmers have to go on protest.’³ Another boy added, ‘If I had not taken part in this unit, I would have thought that the police were absolutely right [in dispersing the demonstrators]. Now I still think the police were right, but I think the WTO had some wrong-doings.’⁴

Case vignette two: Playwriting in the middle school

Raul has enjoyed working on a playwriting unit for almost three years at his middle school in Nebraska. As part of a recurring unit that began in sixth grade and continued through seventh and eighth grade, he enjoyed taking part in improvisations that helped with character development. He also liked creative reading and writing exercises. Now, during his eighth grade year, he is putting the final touches on writing a script that is rooted in his own experience. He cannot wait to hear his play read aloud in a staged reading by semi-professional adult actors, many of whom are parents of students that attend Raul’s school.

Case vignette three: Devising theatre in the high school

Drama students at the Wilton High School in Connecticut worked on devising a piece of theatre as a class project. After getting approval from the school administration and with the guidance of their drama teacher, Bonnie Dickinson, students worked on creating Voices in Conflict, a play based on interviews, letters and essays written by Iraqi civilians and American soldiers serving in Iraq. When individual members of the Wilton community heard about this project and complained to the school’s principal, he decided it was too controversial and cancelled all performances, much to the dismay of the students. These students, however, learned that sometimes confronting controversy has its rewards.⁵ After their story appeared in The New York Times, the students received thousands of letters of support and were subsequently provided numerous opportunities to perform the play in professional theatre settings. Voices in Conflict is now a published play and an organization with an impressive website. The students were awarded a ‘Courage in Theater’ award for their ‘non-performance’ from Music Theatre International, a New York agency that licenses many high school productions.⁶ ‘I’ll probably look back on this in 20, 30 years and say, “I can’t believe I did this,”’ expressed sixteen-year-old cast member Dagan Rossini after a performance at the Vineyard Theatre.⁷ ‘It was a huge, overwhelming experience,’ said Rossini adding, ‘It’s changed me.’⁸

In surveying the field, we find an enormous variety of drama praxis that extends far beyond the three examples presented here. To illustrate the myriad of questions that arise from such drama work, Cecily O’Neill writes: ‘Drama offers almost too rich an array of topics and potential lines of inquiry, … with a maze of pathways and blind alleys leading off in all directions.’⁹ Indeed, it was challenging to decide what to include in this text. In the end, we chose examples of best practices from four sources: published literature, interviews with experts, direct observation and personal experience.

While a tremendous amount of research went into completing this book, our core findings emerged from our personal experiences in and reflections on the field. Likewise, as a narrative device, the interviews and vignettes highlight the personal experiences of others, helping the reader build bridges to ideas. We have seen how many learners understand theory more clearly when they are able to explore cases and hear the voices of practitioners in the context of interviews. In sifting through our interviews and collected data, we sought to discover and reveal several core principles and questions within each section of the book. Sometimes this necessitated more in-depth contextualization and, at other times, a more limited focus upon the work itself.

All the narrative devices, whether long or short, are intended to convey themes and questions dynamically and to allow for the authors’ reflections to emerge. Likewise, much of what is presented intentionally leaves an open space for readers to render their own reflections and interpretations. Driving our choices of vignettes, interviews and descriptions was clear evidence of praxis that raised compelling issues and spoke to the theme of theatre for change.

Given that educational objectives determine how various theatre projects are designed, it is necessary to identify those objectives. Returning to the opening vignettes, we find the objective of case vignette one was to encourage the boys from Hong Kong to develop a multi-dimensional perception of historical events through drama. Undoubtedly, drama and theatre help develop multiple perspectives when students caught up in a particular moment can build well-informed interpretations. As Cecily O’Neill writes, ‘If students are unable to imagine things differently and consider the world from unfamiliar perspectives, they will be unable to bring about any change in their circumstances. The arts and drama in particular have always provoked these shifts of perspective.’¹⁰

Case vignette two is about a student playwright’s quest to develop a dramatically engaging play through a sequential playwriting program. Working within a theatre-making paradigm, Raul is provided the opportunity to convey personal experiences through playwriting, a significant objective in Educational Theatre. In addition to drama-based pedagogical practice to create change, in the following pages we also find more traditional theatre-making examples maintaining the objective of change.

In many school theatre programs the objective is purely to stage a musical or a play. The reasons for this can vary. In addition to providing opportunities for students to hone their acting and technical theatre skills, play productions give family and friends the chance to see students in a different light. For many theatre teachers, the discipline learned through rehearsing and performing is likely to induce feelings of pride and accomplishment. However, a question to consider when engaging in such an undertaking is: What constitutes a developmentally, conceptually, culturally and politically appropriate play or musical to produce with young people?

Case vignette three is also about theatre production, but with students as creators of the performance piece. The objective was for students to become researchers, authors, producers and actors of a piece written in a documentary style similar to Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project.¹¹ As creators, students needed to maintain a critical stance. The principal of the school, fearing potential backlash from the community, cancelled the performance. From this setback, however, students gained insight into what it means to be silenced. The students’ critical stance and curiosity, perceived as dangerous by some, led to suppression. In response students became eager advocates for themselves and the play. They learned how committing to dialogue and art, despite obstacles, can create change.

Thus we see that the learning objectives provide different ways to approach and implement drama and theatre work. In all three vignettes participants express themselves through the aesthetic of theatre. In educational institutions it can be difficult to cultivate artistic expression when governmental policies dictate teaching and learning objectives. Likewise, it becomes stressful for teachers when emphasis is placed on teaching to the state standardized tests. Adding to the teachers’ pressure is the sobering reality that too many young people drop out of school, and marginalized communities are not getting the education they need to compete with their more privileged counterparts.

Another compelling reality is that some students who excel in school get accustomed to daily non-critical learning routines and are startlingly resistant to exploration. Too many teachers note how their high-achieving students just want to know what is needed to get an ‘A’ grade. Students are frustrated by open-ended questions and, at first, balk at the complex puzzlements that arise from exploring multiple perspectives. In this, drama work can meet the needs of all levels of learners. Drama can help underachieving students internalize and understand affective skills, for example empathy, which are related to cognitive skills such as making inferences, and are required on standardized tests. For students who test well, drama provides opportunities to learn other valuable skills, including appreciation of nuance and dramatic irony, qualities which are critical to many life and learning situations.

Three decades ago Landy described an issue that still holds true today. He wrote: ‘One of the key issues in the field of educational drama and theatre involves the relationship between the nonperformance, informal process of drama and the more performance-oriented product of formal theatre.’¹² In educational settings we find that some schools and teachers privilege performance, others focus on the process of theatre and many more are in the middle, making decisions based on desired educational outcomes. Regardless of where a teacher is positioned on this spectrum, a constant of best practice is in facilitating students to engage in critical analysis of their work. Likewise, the posing of questions in various educational settings establishes dramatic contexts and deepens the students’ capacity to reflect on the experience.¹³ Further, in using open and compelling questioning teachers can lead students toward an understanding of the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of drama.

In his biography of renowned drama teacher Dorothy Heathcote, Gavin Bolton described how some of Heathcote’s pupils in Newcastle took away a shallow understanding of her pedagogy and consequently applied her techniques in superficial ways. Bolton wrote: ‘Teachers on her short courses who picked up the surface features of her metho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustration and Photographs
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Interviewees
• Introduction: The Praxis of Theatre for Change
• Part I: Drama and Theatre in Education
• Part II:  Drama and Theatre in Social Action
• Part III: Drama and Theatre in Therapy
• Part IV: Reflections
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index