The Journal of National Drama Volume 8 No 2 Summer 2001 DONE FORUMrama MANY VOICES

Intercultural drama

Ethnic minority children and the arts

Drama and digital technology

Desenterrando o futuro

Spirit Youth Theatre Festival

£7.50 Cover design: Dokumenta, The Coppice, Higher Coombe, Shaftesbury SP7 9LR SP7 Shaftesbury Coombe, Higher Coppice, The Dokumenta, Drama Magazine advertising Gabrielacontact Lerner Advertising [email protected] EMail: 020 4730. 7722 Telephone: Kingdom. United 3HY, NW3 London Eton Avenue, Drama, and Speech of Centralat School Drama, publications, ND Chris Lawrence, Editorial Macdonald. Jan and officio: Rainer. Ex John Milne, Ned McNaughton, Marie-Jeanne Chris Lawrence, Bayliss, Win Ackroyd, Judith Board Editorial Design and production Editor ISSN 0967-4454 Drama for writing dates, copy about information detailed for cover back inside See year. each Autumn and Spring in Published Drama credit Please purposes. training and education Drama in material © all policy. ND represent necessarily not Drama in expressed views The [email protected] EMail: 01747Telephone: 01747 858801, Fax: 858803 Summer 2001 Volume 8 No 2 D ONE FORUM MANY VOICES MANY FORUM ONE Chris Lawrence Neil Baird, from an original photograph by Mark Mortimer Mark by photograph original an from Baird, Neil rama

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CONTENTS You may have noticed that the last two issues of Drama have been blessed with twins – pairs of articles, independently written, on a similar theme. Not identical twins, however: the differences are as striking as the 2 similarities. In Drama 7.2 we enjoyed the fascinating stories of two very The Drama Profile different, but equally epic, journeys by Secondary School Drama groups Dale Rooks talks to to the Edinburgh Festival: one article by Gill McNeil and one by David Teresa Matkowski Morris. And in the last issue, Sight Unseen by Teresa Izzard twinned with Aine Murphy’s article Making Movies to explore the theme of visual 4 impairment in two very different ways. Texts, images In this issue we are ‘twice blessed’ – two pairs of twins! In his article, and digital Not Now, Technology? David Simpson explores the interaction of drama manipulation with digital technology and a Primary focused text, in the belief that, Miles Tandy uses his ‘by its very nature, drama can shape technology’; while Miles Tandy, digital experience in Texts, Images and Digital Manipulation, also with a Primary classroom to great effect in mind, but with Hamlet as his text, suggests ways of using Microsoft PowerPoint, PhotoEditor and other such programmes in a creative and 7 dramatic way. The Kicking Out Our other pair of twins is a welcome and timely contribution to the Project debate on the social inclusion of ethnic minorities in our schools. In Zeena Rasheed encouraging TIME 2001 Sita Brahmachari and Kristine Landon-Smith describe their ethnic minority children to ongoing project to develop ‘research-based plays in intercultural contexts participate in the arts using Balti Kings as a model’. Their practical work has had a very relevant – and topical – significance: 13 ‘Following the tragic killing of Damilola Taylor in November 2000, Time 2001 interviews with the Nigerian community and the family brought up Placing teachers voices at many of the issues touched on in student work between Mrs Bonsoo, her the centre of the son and the headmaster.’ intercultural debate Tamasha’s stated aim, borne out by the teachers’ voices in their article, is ‘to place teachers’ voices for the first time at the centre of the 22 intercultural debate.’ Spirit The other twin to this theme is just such a teacher, Zeena Rasheed, Polly Toynbee describes The who is herself a member of the Asian community. In her article, The International Youth Kicking Out Project – Encouraging ethnic minority children to tread the boards, Theatre Festival 2000 Zeena asks, ‘Why were so few of our black and Asian students opting for Drama?’ Her exploration of this question leads us into some very delicate 24 and disturbing areas of discussion, because some of the obstacles to the Not Now, Technology desired interculturalism which she encounters appear to be embedded in the Islamic religious tradition itself: David Simpson ‘Islam has certain limits... these include... the prohibition of free discusses digital mixing of the sexes...’ and ‘...these aspects of art which involve human technology in drama images... are specifically prohibited.’ 29 In her thoughtful and authentic journey of research Zeena evaluates Desenterrando such influences from her own experience of her students in her school o futuro and discovers many contradictions. with Dan Baron Cohen and These two fascinating articles are very important contributions: we Marcia Pompeo Nogueira must agree with Tamasha that it is indeed vitally important that teachers’ voices should be at the centre of the intercultural debate – work like 39 Zeena’s is not just important: it is urgent. Book Reviews Chris Lawrence

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 1 Interview

Dale Rooks talks to Teresa Matkowski The Drama Profile

Head of Drama, Teresa Matkowski, edge base we would expect to Your delivery of drama is notably leaves home each day at 6.30 am find in our KS4 pupils, and found successful. How do you measure this with a 35 minute drive to Noadswood that they were often lacking knowl- success in terms of your own teach- School, Dibden Purlieu, Southampton, edge of non-naturalistic forms. They ing and pupils’ achievement? and rarely returns until 7 in the often did not have the skills to evening. In between, lies her life in the put together a piece of theatre that I consider it a great compliment that school: marking registers, briefings, one moved beyond ‘soap’, so we decided the TES recently visited my school to one pupil profile interviews, adminis- to rethink our approach to the cur- and reported that, ‘in a drama ses- tration, supervision duties, assemblies, riculum. We were also aware of the sion pupils were transfixed, moved meetings with the NQT, after school research which had shown the dif- and moving in their responses.... rehearsals for school productions - and ferent learning and teaching styles they discussed, collaborated, negoti- teaching drama to 330 pupils in the available to us as teachers and to the ated and in the end came up with week! Her evening at home is then pupils. More often than not the boys some arresting vignettes in the short devoted to planning work, marking or were underachieving in many sub- time allotted to them, ably convey- maybe going to the theatre, with only jects, so we decided to employ differ- ing threat, despair and indomitable one night off in the week for total relaxa- ent teaching styles in our schemes human spirit, with nothing more tion! However, Teresa is still happy to of work to see if we could engage than their own bodies. There was no run freelance workshops in half terms all pupils equally. We devised new smirking, shirking or messing about; and holidays because she enjoys it so titles for working units; for example, and the boys were in there 100 per much! That’s what I call dedication – or in Year 7 we included Storytelling, cent, alongside the girls.’ (TES, Cur- madness! Mime and Physical Theatre, Greek riculum Special, Spring 2001) I was Theatre; in Year 8, amongst others, initially wary of introducing level Conventions of Theatre, Non-Natu- descriptors as I felt that it would In school, her most recent exciting ralistic and Medieval Theatre. We be difficult to put dramatic progress direction focuses upon non-natural- worked on non-naturalism with Year into words or for it to be measured, istic expression as a way of engaging 8 pupils as we were constantly get- but I have witnessed the progress year 7 & 8 pupils and, more specifi- ting dramas played out in the class- our pupils have made since they cally, as a way of raising the profile room about ‘the stolen diary’ or have been using levels in other sub- of boys’ low achievements. ‘mum, I’m pregnant’. We wanted jects. They came to my lesson want- to move away from this, so that ing to know what level they were at Why Non-Naturalism? pupils could find other ways of work- and to be able to go away and dis- ing with new stimuli and alternative cuss that level with another pupil At the end of last year, the depart- ways of presenting their ideas. So in the class, and for that level to ment and I felt that it was time to far it has proven successful with mean something. Now pupils ask me rejuvenate the content of the lessons. the result that boys and girls now what they need to do in order to We focused on the skills and knowl- achieve equally. achieve a particular level and how

2 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Interview News they can improve on that. It is no them. When I started my PGCE at longer enough to have a passive Didsbury, Jonothan Neelands and admiration for the ‘aesthetic’- pupils David Hornbrook did battle in National Drama News need to have something concrete, an my brain, and both argued their understanding in practical and theo- cases very impressively, but more Lesson Plans for the Website retical terms, of the way in which recently, I have been influenced by Colin Jackson, ND website link officer, drama is created and how they can Andy Kempe and Marigold Ash- wants to develop a resource on the ND be a part of that process. well’s book, Progression in Secondary Website (www.nationaldrama.co.uk) con- Drama. Becoming National Drama’s sisting of lesson plans and other support How often do you put your own Membership Officer has been a real material for practical use. Colin is appealing teaching values/attitudes under boost to my confidence and under- to members to contact him with plans scrutiny? standing of the broader drama pic- for lessons, starting points or ideas ture. Although it is an incredibly that they have found useful. Email: During a recent in-service drama demanding role, I enjoy every [email protected] training session, members of staff moment of it. There is nothing quite were challenged to scrutinise their like the buzz you get from going to Launch of new TiE Company own teaching styles and approaches. a conference and getting to discuss Open Stage Productions, a new TiE com- It is fair to say that teachers tend drama 24/7! pany based in the Midlands, is being to teach in a style that they are com- launched this Easter. The company will be fortable with. We learned about our What practical advice would you give offering a variety of programmes for preferred style of teaching and learn- to an NQT seeking success in drama KS1/4 as well as residencies, workshops ing then looked at how our teaching teaching? and staff INSET. The company opens style could be excluding a whole with a literacy focused programme for range of pupils. Some pupils need I think that drama NQTs now are KS2 until July 20th: Don’t blame it shorter-term goals, visual as well as far better prepared for the job than I on the Wolf, which puts a new twist aural and oral information. A range ever was when I started teaching! I on the story of The Three Little Pigs. of styles and pace throughout the have an NQT in my department this Details of this and the Autumn Season can lessons was also necessary, so we year, a graduate from Ken Taylor in be obtained from Artistic Director (and ND integrated these ideas into our new Middlesex, and she is brilliant. Brim- member) Gillian Twaite Tel: 0121 777 9086 lesson plans and schemes of work. ming with ideas and the latest think- Email: [email protected] ing in Drama Education and new Which practitioners have most influ- initiatives, she has aged me over- Drama Research, Number 2 enced your style of teaching? night! I don’t think I’d be telling Following on from the launch of our very them anything they didn’t already own research journal, Drama Research, at There is not one single practitioner know, but for the record, consider the 10th Anniversary Conference at York who has influenced my teaching: I’m what you want the pupils to be able last year, the second issue of Drama a bit of a magpie really. Like all to do at GCSE level and think about Research will be available in May. It features good magpies, I steal ideas from all the skills they need to have acquired research across a truly international spec- over the place. Early in my career, by the end of KS3. As soon as the trum: from (alphabetically) Canada, Kenya, I was lucky enough to be taught by pupils come to your school in year Northern Ireland, South Africa, UK, and Tony Jackson, at Manchester Univer- 7, give them a baseline test to Zimbabwe. The papers for Drama Research sity and I learned a great deal of my establish what they already know, Number 2 have been scrutinised by an inter- approach to didactic theatre through then begin to equip them with the national panel of distinguished referees, and Tony. We went to Finland with a TiE tools to create, perform and respond. also featured are reviews of recent books project aimed at delivering some of Always spend time examining your which may prove invaluable for researchers. the history syllabus and improving own teaching methods, and ask the You can place an order via the advert on the pupils’ use of English through a pupils what they think! Mine always page 28, the order form on page 37 or from two-part play. That really sealed my tell me that I talk far too much, and Chris Lawrence at: [email protected] fate and put me on the path of here I am, guilty as charged! teaching as I saw the incredibly STOP PRESS strong power which drama and the- We can now confirm that Edinburgh Univer- atre held and I knew that I wanted to sity will be the venue for the next National work with young people to empower Drama Conference, 3-6 April, 2002.

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 3 Features Primary Texts, images and digital manipulation

And each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon couple of years ago I was on Eve Bunting’s Night of the Gar- the fearful given a digital camera to goyles. He asked participants to A use as part of my work. I create a still image that might illus- porpentine already knew what cameras do: they trate an additional page for the take photographs. To begin with, I book. Almost in passing, Joe pointed could see little difference between out the potential for photographing the gadget I had been given through these images and combining them work and the compact camera I used with text which children could write. Miles Tandy at home. If there was a difference, it Out came the digital camera to cap- was that the digital camera seemed ture the teachers’ images there and to involve a lengthy performance then. When they are shuttled to the ‘shuttling’ pictures to my PC only to PC from the camera, the pictures give rather disappointing results. No can be saved as JPEG files. On wonder I felt like sticking with the many PCs, if you ‘double click’ on a Pentax. JPEG file, it will open in a program But digital cameras don’t take called Microsoft PhotoEditor. Once photographs. What they actually the file was open in this program, we capture is a file of digital informa- started to see completely different tion. This realisation came when potential for the camera. The ‘effects’ I was working with my colleague Joe menu includes an effect called ‘chalk Winston. Joe had just led a group of and charcoal’. At the click of a teachers through some work based mouse, this transformed the picture

4 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Primary Features

of the still image into something that on a cloth of a contrasting colour. bore a striking resemblance to the This image was achieved using only book’s original illustrations. the ‘negative’ effect. Further exploration of the Pho- PhotoEditor allows the combina- toEditor package revealed the ease tion of two or more effects; although with which images could be manip- it is worth noting that the ‘undo’ ulated to generate all sorts of effects. feature will only ever take you one There seemed to be particular poten- step back. When working with chil- tial for transforming simply con- dren it is important to stress the dis- structed images to create some quite cipline of saving their work as they eerie and frightening effects. When go along, making sure that they have I was asked to do some work on plenty to choose from when making Hamlet in a Primary School, possi- their final selections. bilities opened up for children to use There are a number of other PhotoEditor to create images of the photo-editing packages which you ghost of Hamlet’s father. may encounter. One of the com- The children took the speech monest is Adobe PhotoDeluxe. This from Act 1 Scene 5 which begins ‘I software often comes as part of a am thy father’s spirit’. They began to package with a digital camera or added. If you choose ‘custom anima- explore the kinds of images which scanner. You may also come across tion’ from the menu, you can select the text of the speech suggested. MGI Photosuite or Microsoft Photo- an ‘entry animation and sound’. These images were created using not draw, but a little playful experimen- There are a number of visual effects only themselves, but also a few quite tation will soon give you an idea of to choose from, all of which can simple props and improvised addi- the kinds of effects that are possible. be previewed before a final choice tions. This image, for instance, took Primary teachers and children is made. When you start exploring as its starting point ‘And for the days are becoming increasingly familiar the sounds on offer, you may be confined to fast in fires’. The flames with the software Microsoft Power- less impressed; they range from were created simply by cutting out Point. Most teachers will have been ‘breaking glass’, through ‘gunshot’ some cardboard shapes; the armour subjected to PowerPoint pre- to ‘applause’. At the bottom of the using a reversed hard hat. sentations on in-service training list however is the option ‘other – all too often they sound’. It is possible for children to can be something akin record their own sound files that can to a visual assault accompany their pictures using the course. In many Pri- sound recorders that are included mary Schools, children with most PCs. now make regular use The commonest programme is of PowerPoint to pres- Sound Recorder which most PCs ent their work. Rather have in their accessories. Essentially, than be constrained by what is displayed on the screen func- the intentions of the tions exactly like a cassette recorder. Microsoft Corporation, But because the sounds are stored it is better to think digitally, they can also be manipu- of PowerPoint as soft- lated in a number of ways. The edit ware that allows the menu allows material before or after user to combine text, a certain position to be deleted, so sound and graphics. letting children remove any uninten- Using the ‘insert tional noise. The effects menu also picture from file’ allows the addition of an echo, but option, the images that most of the children I have worked The image on page 4 started with children have made with have been very disappointed by ‘And each particular hair to stand using PhotoEditor can be imported the results. What we discovered by on end Like quills upon the fearful into a PowerPoint presentation. playing with the software though, porpentine’. The original picture was Once imported, the pictures can was that we could use the option ‘mix taken from above, the subject lying be resized and ‘animation’ effects with file’ to create quite extraordinary

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 5 News echoing effects. Once a basic sound particularly specialised software or file has been recorded it is saved hardware. Many Primary Schools (make sure you remember where now have digital cameras and some Japan 2001 – A Celebration of Japan you put it and what you called it!). are starting to invest in quite com- Japan 2001, a sensational festival celebrating It is then possible to move the sound plex equipment (such as the Sony the Arts, Education, Culture and Sport of Mavica range) which Japan, launches in May across the UK until make the whole business March 2002. One of the key opening events of taking and trans- is a spectacular Matsuri, a two-day festival ferring pictures much celebrating the sights, smells and sounds easier. Computers that of Japan, opening in Hyde Park (19 & 20 are less than about three May). It features not only arts events but years old are likely to also Yabusame (horseback archery), Aikido, have all or most of Kendo, Kyudo and Shorinji-Kempo, as the software I have well as Origami, Shodo (calligraphy), Shi- referred to. Cameras in atsu, Ikebana (flower arranging), and Sado the Mavica range also (traditional tea ceremony). Other Matsuri take short clips of digital take place in Norwich, Washington, Derby, video, opening up all Surrey and Portsmouth.. sorts of possibilities for Theatre events include the first time visit of taking this work further. Japan’s finest Kabuki theatre company, Chik- Joe Winston and I are matsu-za, performing at Sadlers Wells The- to give a paper on the atre and at The Lowry, Manchester; Kyogen work at the IDEA con- Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre; and Nina- ference in Bergen in July, gawa’s Mishima plays at the Barbican. Also recorder on as little as a tenth of a but if you can’t wait that long and scheduled are Taiko drumming, Kami Shibai second and, selecting ‘mix with file’, would like to discuss some of this (paper theatres), and Japanese Butoh Dance mix the two files so that the sound work further you can email me at performances and workshops and a rich is played over itself but with a slight milestandy@warwickshire. banquet of musical, artistic, architectural delay. The effects can be quite spec- gov.uk and cultural activities throughout the UK. tacular, particularly if the process is For full details contact: Sophie Branscombe repeated a couple of times. 020 7499 9634 Email: Back in PowerPoint, the sound [email protected] files the children have created can Or visit the website: www.japan2001.org.uk be added as part of the entry anima- tion effect so that they play as the International 2001 picture appears. Several slides can be The Big International Youth Theatre Festival combined to create an overall effect Miles Tandy is Teacher Adviser for Creative representing the appearance of the and Cultural Education with Warwickshire’s The National Association of Youth Theatres Educational Development Service. Before is holding International 2001, its eighth ghost and his subsequent speech to moving to Warwickshire, he taught in a Hamlet. Some Primary Schools are number of Nottinghamshire schools and also International Festival of Youth Theatre 12-15 beginning to invest in data projec- worked for the Nottinghamshire Dance and July at Gilwell Park in Epping Forest. There tors which enable the PowerPoint Drama Support Service. He is co-author (with will be ‘performances, discussions, interna- Joe Winston) of Beginning Drama 4-11. presentations to be projected as huge tional groups, workshops, games, chances images. In one school, we projected to create theatre’ and – of course – socials. the images so that they filled one This is a golden opportunity for young wall and spilled over onto the ceil- people to develop international links and to ing. The effect was extraordinary, work with ‘some of the foremost and most particularly once it became part of a distinct theatre practitioners in the UK’. short performance of the play. The More information at: NAYT, BYTF, Arts child playing Hamlet in the scene Centre, Vane Terrace, Darlington DL3 7AX stood in the darkness and gazed Tel: 01325 363330 up as the huge ghost of his father Website: www.nayt.org.uk unfolded his tale. None of this work required

6 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 The Kicking Out project

Encouraging ethnic minority children to tread the boards

Zeena Rasheed

he Kicking Out project arose students opting for Drama? The lack and sometimes angry that these tal- out of several concerns, which of equal representation is partly due ented girls had to overcome such Tare all specific to our school, a to an inadequate and inequitable arts hurdles to participate – including busy multicultural Technology Col- curriculum at key stage 3, and partly a 13 year old missing her dress lege in Peterborough, but are also, due to an erratic drama education rehearsal as she had to cook for I suspect, common across similar history in the school. But what else? her 22 year old brother. It was also schools. The biggest minority group noticeable that the children who in the school are Pakistani Muslim. School Situation struggled to get to rehearsal, who Even if the children were born in needed most encouragement, and the UK they value their culture, their In the productions/dance pieces that who lacked confidence – did not language (most are easily bilingual, we put on in my first year, I worked have family members in the audi- some speak English as a second lan- hard to involve talented and enthusi- ence to support their achievement. guage), food, dress, and religious astic students from all communities. Watching them achieve and visibly and social customs. They are keen It was an uphill struggle. The chil- enjoy the experience of performance to visit Pakistan regularly. Deacon’s dren who did succeed easily in these made all the work worthwhile – but School does have a culturally diverse performances were largely ‘middle this absence was regrettable, and I student body, with links to India, class’ children, broadly speaking, did not know whether this was due Kenya, South Africa, Poland, Italy – their parents were supportive, and to parental indifference to the arts but for the purposes of this article, as they were able. In all performances or to more practical obstacles. Inevi- with the project, I will focus on the ethnic minorities were successfully tably, the more high-achieving chil- most significant minority group, the represented – but often had to be dren, and the more ‘middle class’ Asian Muslims. targeted to get involved, and needed children – White and Asian – were Our Asian students – particularly extra support and time (in encourag- more likely to be supported by par- boys – are not taking opportunities ing, reminding, chasing etc) to keep ents and relatives. to participate in the arts. The break- to rehearsals. After school rehearsals A recent working party on extra- down of successive GCSE groups were problematic, particularly for curricular affairs and equal opps in shows that on average over the past Muslim girls, even if we avoided school also noted the lack of rep- five years 88% were E1L (non-Asian, Fridays, when they have significant resentation in regular events, house white, speaking English as a first domestic duties. Those I had cajoled plays, theatre trips, musical groups or only language) students. Why into performing initially lacked con- and sports teams. In choirs, bands, were so few of our black and Asian fidence and security. It made me sad dance, drama and string groups, the

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 7 Features Secondary

ethnic minority students are under Cultural Issues and Context avoid, or even to prohibit, artistic represented. The story is repeated in activities: football, netball and hockey teams. It was these issues that I intended In the cricket team, however, 6/7 out to address: the poor skills in a cer- ‘Dance has no academic sig- of the 11 students are Asian. tain group of ethnic minority boys, nificance, nor does it contribute Having sat in city-wide Dance and the reluctance of even talented positively to meaningful human Agency meetings on the lack of girls to participate in public perfor- experience’ equal representation in Dance and mances. I felt strongly that the edu- the Performing Arts I was aware that cational value of Drama in school ‘Islam has certain limits... these these issues were widespread. As was misunderstood, particularly by include... the prohibition of free community leaders, liason officers the Islamic community. There is mixing of the sexes..’ and teachers agreed, whilst being a cultural issue here; a traditional (Muslim Education Trust, 1994) aware of the generalisation, more antipathy and suspicion of per- ‘educated’ or ‘liberal’ Muslim parents formance arts that exists in the ‘In Islam, the only music which seemed happy to Muslim community (which the posi- transcends culture and ethnicity and let their children tion of Drama and Dance in the is universally accepted by all Mus- benefit from National Curriculum does nothing lims is the recitation of the Holy every oppor- to combat). This is difficult to qual- Qur’an’ tunity, without ify, but is evident in the lack of (Iqura Trust, 1991) feeling that they Asian parents who come to see the were trangress- drama teacher at parents evenings, ‘...these aspects of art which involve ing their faith. the negligible numbers of Muslim human images...are specifically pro- These children Asian faces in the audience at local hibited.’ were on the theatres, the very fact that these (Sarwar in Parker-Jenkins, p76) Our Asian whole balanced, students do not get to ‘auditions’ students – confident, artic- without real targeting. I have only However, Muslims in Britain are particularly ulate in more observational and anecdotal evi- not homogenous; there is no con- boys – are than one dence, eg. the girl who came to every sensus. Some parents allow partic- not taking language, and dance rehearsal, to watch, and who ipation in arts activities under the opportuni- enjoyed friend- said. ‘I really wish I could join, I love umbrella of education, and whilst ties to ships across com- to dance, but I’m not supposed to some Muslim students have dem- participate munities. – my parents don’t like dancing – onstrated their disdain for Drama, in the arts The children We’re Muslim.’ many others have enjoyed the les- who bothered My family is Muslim on my sons. The former, who obviously me were the father’s side, and whilst my un- see no value in drama and make painfully shy typical father encouraged my artistic no effort to participate, are usually girls, who seemed to feel it was endeavours, Muslim relatives in Sri those who do not engage fully in any wrong to speak at all, and the more Lanka and in the UK have made dis- subject area. naughty boys, who stayed in big approving and belittling comments I was intrigued by inconsis- Asian-only gangs, imitating gang- about Drama. Partly, it is clear that tencies; Muslim children, particu- sters, rap stars or wrestlers, hostile to they judge Drama on limited evi- larly boys, who never ‘took part’ other racial groups, underachieving, dence – they know and have access were allowed unbroken, late-night, and displaying precious few commu- to soap-operas and even very violent uncensored access to many tele- nication skills. We all know that, and sexually graphic films – but few vision channels, were given free have been exposed to any number reign to dress in the latest fashion, ‘Underachievement can have a of excellent young performers and and were fully into popular culture. devastating effect... underachieve- playwrights from different commu- Surely MTV is more suggestive and ment affects individual choice, qual- nities. There is a whole history of less educational than enactments of ity of life, economic and social high-quality multi-cultural theatre ‘Myths From Around the World,’ or inclusion or exclusion, and perhaps practice which is not immediately dramatising poetry? In discussion most critically, self-esteem.’ (Green, evident unless you go looking for it with a Muslim teacher, I was assured 2000, p9) – Brook, Churchill, Syall, Ali, Kurei- that all activities were permitted if shi, the list is endless. And partly, they were educational, and that per- there is a religious prerogative to formance was acceptable as long

8 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Secondary Features

as the performers were part in enactments.’ written in 21 short, punchy and not expecting to be (Somers. 1998) engaging scenes, full of wit and worshipped. Is hostility and framed by football style ‘commen- towards the arts more ‘Drama can offer ... tators’. The play is not idealistic or traditional than standpoints from simplistic; Asian and White charac- religious? . . . partly, which to question, ters have prejudices and problems Although Asia boasts there is a reflect on, criticize, to overcome. Reviews were excellent, many dance/drama/music religious accepted concepts and it was praised for its quality, and styles, and Britain too prerogative and attitudes.’ relevance. (ref: www.arctheatre.com) is proud of Indian per- to avoid, or (Best, 2000) I hoped students would enjoy the formance companies and even to drama, explore its themes of prej- artists (Shobana Jayas- prohibit, I would agree udice, friendship, and dealing with ingh, Goodness Gracious artistic that these enact- difficulties, and enhance their liter- Me, Akram Khan, to activities ments should be acy and collaboration skills. Ruth name a few) compara- intellectually rigor- MacKenzie remembers how: tively few of the Black ous and imaginative, and Asian dancers, actors, informed and chal- ‘The Greeks turned to play- writers, musicians and directors lenging – not titillating and appeal- wrights to help them solve difficult seem to be Muslim. I’m sure this ing to the most populist instincts. problems, ‘ (MacKenzie, 1997) is changing and will continue to do However, drama activities taking so, given the success of Ayub Khan- place in the context of education and in his essay on social devel- Din’s East is East and Kureishi’s My tend to avoid styles which encourage opment and empowerment Nigerian Son the Fanatic. salacious copying with limited under- director and educator Chuck Mike There is a need to inform, reas- standing, explains, sure and educate, clearly. In fact, maybe we should pay more heed to ‘Drama can open fresh horizons ‘Because it has (or should have) the potential of drama to educate of personal understanding, develop- the power to arrest eyes and ears, and challenge – as even our over- ing critical awareness of the power drama possesses the ability to influ- subscribed Beacon School has its of the mass media. Too often ‘reality’ ence or at the very least, to share of racist students (White is a television screen life of media - enable viewers to think about the and Asian), disruptive gangs, and induced clichés. Drama can help stu- issues it places before them...(drama) racially motivated bullying: dents develop an individual under- functions as a mode of communi- standing of life.’ (Best, 1998) cation and as a thought-provoking ‘Throughout its history drama in medium.’ school has played an important role The Project (Mike, 1997) in confronting issues of racism, prej- udice and social injustice...Carefully Via a letter home, I targeted thirty I wanted to enhance student structured role play encourages stu- year 8’s to take part in Kicking self-confidence, and hoped that the dents to speak out against bigotry Out, marketed as a literacy, learning less able would learn from their and to challenge their own pre-con- skills, and enrichment project. They more able peers, who in turn might ceptions...’ would work on a powerful TIE develop leadership skills. Big plans. (Sita Brahmachari, 1998) script, in a variety of drama activi- As this would be a solely extra-cur- ties. This was funded by a scheme ricular project, taking place in lunch- Raza suggests that, in which our Advanced Skills Teach- time and after school sessions for ‘Islamic education must create a ers accepted bids from staff and seven weeks, I knew I could not force strong identity...(and) must be polit- awarded money to schemes to raise attendance! From a group of fifteen ical ...(and) should be investigative achievement. The play, Kicking Out, with parental permission, we ended and critical...’ (Raza, 1995) by Clifford Oliver of Arc Theatre with a stable group of thirteen. (1996), was commissioned by Leyton We did not rehearse the play con- Drama, I argue would achieve all Orient’s Football in the Community ventionally, as I felt this would be these goals, as, scheme, in response to the ‘Kick too demanding and unrealistic, but ‘...humans seem to be able to illu- Racism Out Of Football’ campaign. explored issues, and told and under- minate significant truths about their It examines and challenges attitudes stood the story. I wanted to facilitate condition by watching and taking to race, in sport and society. It is several activities, engaging different

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 9 Features Secondary

Kelvin unthinkingly makes sexist assump- acters, Showab and Mark, might address THE SCHEME tions about Tanya and nearly misses out on the prejudice facing them in scene 10. tickets to a big match). Group reading. Long term Aims WEEK 5 WEEK 3 Focus on the movement skills of actors. • Encourage more ethnic minority involve- Read and rehearse scene 5. Discuss moti- Mime exercises. Mime of a ball game. Read ment in Drama vation – is Simone racist or thoughtless? scene 11. Identify how language gives us • Increase literacy and communication Or both? Role-on-the-wall on Simone and clues to the action. Read and perform scene skills Tanya. Rehearse and perform bits of scene 12. Read scene 13 in pairs. Discuss Eddie – Short Term Aims 6 in threes. Perform in sequence. Highlight is he happy? Are his attitudes improving his • Enable more ethnic minority participa- lines which confirm prejudice. Play scene life? Read scene 15 together. Rehearse and tion in performance adding ‘thought out loud’ at important sec- perform closing extract in fours. • Provide an opportunity for Asian boys in tions. Read scene 8, identifying all Eddie’s WEEK 6 particular to engage in a drama which offensive, ignorant or prejudiced remarks. What skills are needed to rehearse a script represented their concerns and interests WEEK 4 – identify. In sixes, rehearse scene 16. • Improve cross-curricular skills such as Improvisation of 2 scenarios in which unjus- Perform. Solo activity – focus on a bad collaboration, peer learning, empathy, tified accusations of prejudice are made. time and how it felt. Share words on paper. listening, negotiation, etc Eddie complains to his friend that foreigners Play first half of scene 17 with teacher in • Build self-confidence and self-esteem have got all the best jobs (although the role as Showab. Share reactions. Stage and WEEK 1 woman chosen had better qualifications rehearse second half of scene 17. Perform. Welcome, brainstorm racism (at work, and experience) and Tanya tells her Nan Devise monologue as Mark or Showab’s school, society) create tableaux, develop into that she didn’t get prefect as she’s Asian Dad in the present. Perform and evaluate. a sequence of frames, discuss, read and – although the successful girl involved How can drama comment on aspects of rehearse an extract from scene one in pairs, had volunteered for far more events/chores society/issues? perform and evaluate, discuss characters. than her (the character who is turned down blames race rather than examining WEEK 7 WEEK 2 merit). Perform and evaluate. Brainstorm Read scene 18 together. In pairs – some Solo and pair reading aloud, identifying why people are prejudiced (racist or sexist). rehearse 19, some 20, some 21. Perform the unthinking racism evident in dialogue, Discuss how we can try to avoid prejudice in sequence. Discuss – can these characters rehearse and block, perform and evaluate, in our own actions and words. In groups change? Evaluation time – evaluate the proj- discussion on prejudice, improvisation of a – How can prejudice be addressed construc- ect and determine what if anything they’ve scene as preparation for reading it (in which tively? Share ideas. Brainstorm how 2 char- gained.

learning styles. helped when they become physically mathematical, spatial, musical, In her 1998 National Drama involved with the work, through bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, Conference keynote, Walking With movement and touch. What strikes and intrapersonal. He values each: Shadows, Helen Nicholson observed me as interesting about this list is how closely the three learning styles, how closely it mirrors the different ‘I am convinced that all seven broadly identified by social psychol- ‘languages’ of drama – aural, visual, of the intelligences have equal claim ogist Michael Fielding, as auditory, verbal and kinaesthetic/tactile. to priority. In our society, however, visual/verbal and kinaesthetic, links we have put linguistic and logi- to the very form and languages of ‘...the dramatic form itself inevi- cal-mathematical intelligences, fig- drama: tably includes a wider range of learn- uratively speaking, on a pedestal.’ ing styles than most other subjects (Gardner, 1993) ‘Auditory students prefer to learn in the curriculum, and this suits the mainly through talk and discussion, abilities of a greater diversity of chil- The activities we undertook whereas visual/verbal learners are dren.’ (Nicholson, 1998) engaged all intelligencies, except the supported by reading and writing, mathematical – they talked, did role- and by the use of visual images and Howard Gardner defines seven play, problem-solved, discussed, lis- pictures...kinaesthetic learners are intelligences – linguistic, logical- tened, acted, reacted, worked in

10 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Secondary Features

groups, and individually, wrote, of jumping to conclusions, prejudicial ally rehearse for a performance, and read, rehearsed, moved, improvised, comments, unhelpful actions, stir- felt that public speaking, self-confi- drew, watched, mimed, anticipated, ring, and other less thoughtful dence, literacy, groupwork, and lis- evaluated, criticized, and performed. behaviours as the next person. They tening skills had improved as well were quite forthright and honest as as acting, rehearsing, Conclusion we debated why there was and improvising skills. animosity between Asian I was particularly keen I was always fascinated by their dis- nationalities, why gangs they all started to see cross-curricular cussions. Race is a sensitive issue, were so popular and seduc- to display a learning skills improve. and sometimes their own lack of tive, and other prickly, certain pride in They all performed a understanding was as problematic as important issues. I had to being part of short scripted presenta- the issues explored in the play. A steer the discussion strongly something which tion about the project to notable incident was one boy enthu- at first, and encourage basic focused on the whole year group of siastically offering to ‘blow up the listening and turn-taking, improving their 180-odd children, and police station’ to combat incidents of but at around week 5 some skills, their I was heartened to see racism from the police. Another mis- progress was clear. The achievements that a cluster of parents understood the PE teacher’s reluc- more able did support the attended the assembly, tance to ‘pick him’ as racism (as less able, and another great one clutching a video opposed to an understandable deci- achievement was giving the girls camera. They were further encour- sion – his teamwork skills are not a space to be heard. The boys aged by the presence of the Head excellent). I did not want to give found interrupting girls quite accept- – one lad had written invitations to them a platform to be offensive able at first! Basically, persistent and all SMT. This went very well, and themselves. To construct them as repeated reminders had some effect. although it was not a demanding victims only and White children as A DT teacher observed a specific inti- presentation they enjoyed it, and aggressors only would have been macy in some Asian boys’ very close actually experienced the anticipation, quite wrong and wholly unrealistic. friendship groups. They didn’t take teamwork and ‘buzz’ of performance. Our bulletins on students are full turns to speak, but happily inter- of incidents in which no one racial rupted each other and continuously group has a monopoly on under- invaded each others physical/verbal achievement, prejudice, or disruptive space, to the extent that some groups behaviour. Also, I wanted to enable quite unconsciously sat, stood and them to truthfully evaluate their travelled about the classroom simul- Lesson plan for a typical session own behaviour. Asian taneously. When one Objectives boys in my form have went to ask the teacher a 1. Perform in front of each other in a safe harassed an Indian Sikh no one racial question, the others went environment girl with offensive taunts, group has a with him, even if they they have been particu- monopoly on had no reason to. This 2. Begin to explore the themes of the play larly rude to female mem- underachieve- tendency goes some way 3. Feel more comfortable with reading short bers of staff, a couple ment, prejudice, to explain the unthinking sections did throw stones at the or disruptive interruptions. Also, the Lunch Catholic school bus. and behaviour maturity and sense of the they have instigated play- girls did rub off on the • Read end of scene one privately ground aggression. These boys, and they all started • Read in pairs aloud, finding the moment students do lack self-disci- to display a certain pride that suggests that Mark and Eddie are pline. They are not angels, in being part of some- unthinkingly racist, whilst Kelvin is uncom- but hopefully the project thing which focused on fortable with their views improving their skills, their achieve- enabled them to explore their own • Rehearse. Suggest moves, looks, gestures, ments. Giving students a safe place identity, to understand how they and actions. are perceived, and to do what to air contentious views was also • Try to put books down, keeping the gist of they can do extremely valuable. the words to improve their progress and All students filled in a question- achievement through school. naire at the beginning and end of • Perform and evaluate One of their greatest successes the project, and all were positive. was realising that they were as guilty Gratifyingly, all were keen to actu-

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 11 Features Secondary

Of course, the benefit of this Bibliography short project will probably be short- term, and temporary. What is impor- Best, David (1998) ‘Drama Power: tant is that each child achieved to Personal Learning and Reflective some extent. The way to really tackle Practice’, in: Lawrence, Chris (ed), under-representation and ensure The Canterbury Keynotes, National equal opportunities is to improve Drama provision in the statutory curric- ulum, not depend on the extra Best, David (2000) ‘Vision’, in: Law- efforts of individuals working out- rence, Chris (ed), Drama Research, Zeena Rasheed is a Drama and English side it. The greatest shame is that No 1, National Drama Teacher at Deacons School, Peterborough all students would benefit from the Brahmachari, Sita (1998) ‘Stages of scheme, given the time to deliver it. I the World’, in: Hornbrook, David am hampered by an unfair timetable (ed) On the Subject of Drama, London: which ensures that KS3 students get Routledge far less Drama than everything else. Gardner, Howard (1993) Multiple This marginalisation of a subject by Intelligences: The Theory In Practice, the institution perpetuates negative Basic Books attitudes towards Drama – it is only Green, Phil (1999) Raise The Stand- worth less time because it is seen as ard: A Practical Guide to Raising less important - and affects uptake Ethnic Minority and Bilingual Pupils’ ARC Theatre Ensemble in KS4 and 5. If, as Best suggests, Achievement, Stoke on Trent: Tren- Eastbury Manor House, Eastbury Square, Drama can optimise and assist cog- tham Books Barking IG11 9SN nitive development, we are doing our OBE, (1997) Email: [email protected] students a disservice. (see Meakin, MacKenzie, Ruth ‘Why Young People Must Have the Website: www.arctheatre.com 1998, p63) Arts’ in: The Arts Matter, Gower Still, this project did have posi- Publishing Ltd tive results for a few, some of whom have participated (quite brilliantly!) Meakin, Peter (1998) ‘Neo - in later performances. They are more Vygotskian Approaches to Learning: positive about Drama. One of the Lessons for the Drama Teacher’, in: most encouraging aspects of the Drama Now! And the Challenge of project was the fostering of positive Tomorrow, National Drama home-school links. Green recom- Mike, Chuck (1997) ‘What Goes mends that schools, ‘make effective Around Comes Around: Theatre as a initiatives and build the confidence Vehicle for Social Development and of parents.’ (1999, p32) One boy’s Empowerment’, in: The Arts Matter, mother was astonished to be called Gower Publishing Ltd not because X was misbehaving Nicholson, Helen (1998) ‘Walking again, but because we wanted to With Shadows’, in: Lawrence, Chris share his achievements with her. (ed), The Canterbury Keynotes, Cross-curricular skills such as lis- National Drama tening, social interaction, and so on Oliver, Clifford (1996) Kicking Out, were also improved. I’d be very inter- Arc Theatre Publication, Carlisle: ested to hear of any similar projects Carel Press to encourage equal representation and I’d like to finish by quoting Parker-Jenkins, Marie (1995) Chil- Eddie as he watches the mixed race, dren of Islam: A Teacher’s Guide to mixed gender footie team which he Meeting the Needs of Muslim Pupils, initially opposed, ‘It’s up to you now. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books You can do it.’ Somers, John (1994) Drama in the Curriculum, Cassell Educational Ltd.

12 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 TIME 2001 placing teachers’ voices at the centre of intercultural debate

Sita Brahmachari and he term ‘Interculturalism’ is values cultural diversity’. Kristine Landon-Smith becoming common currency in The two recommendations of the Tthe arts and theatre. With the report with which Tamasha engages proliferation of conferences on the through TIME are that: ‘Awareness of the diversity of cultures subject in which artists, directors, 1. Teachers should be trained to use Photographs:Mark Mortimer represented in Britain today is well devel- semioticians and cultural theorists methods and materials which help oped through work with companies such participate, there is one group of develop young people’s creative abili- as Tamasha and in giving pupils valuable specialists whose work in intercul- ties and cultural understandings. opportunities to work on bilingual plays.’ turalism is yet to be documented – 2. Partnerships should be formed Swanshurst School (Birmingham) namely drama teachers. between schools, arts organisations OFSTED report 2000 The TIME 2001 Conference will showcase the results of Tamasha’s and the community to provide cre- two-year TIME (Tamasha Intercul- ative education that young people tural Millennium Education) pro- need and deserve. fessional development partnership In this article, drama teachers, with drama teachers. TIME responds students and Tamasha Theatre Com- to the government’s report of the pany share some of the findings of National Advisory Committee on teacher and company research from Creative and Cultural Education, the pilot project. Further findings 12 July 2001, London All Our Futures (2000). This report, from the pilot project and the second For further information on the TIME 2001 headed by Ken Robinson, called for year’s research will be explored at Conference, or for a conference leaflet: ‘the promotion of the creative devel- the TIME 2001 conference in July Telephone 01747 858 776 [email protected] opment of pupils and the encourage- 2001, jointly hosted by The Central Website: www.time2001.co.uk ment of an ethos which supports and School of Speech and Drama.

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 13 Features Secondary

Tamasha and TIME classroom and on the British stage. to assist in the development of The TIME pilot project focused teachers’ work Tamasha Theatre Company focuses on the Tamasha process of develop- 6. A platform performance for teach- on plays drawn from the South ing research-based plays in intercul- ers to showcase the resulting work Asian community, both in Britain tural contexts using Balti Kings and the Indian sub-continent. Inter- as a model (a play researched in Interculturalism culturalism is at the heart of Tama- Birmingham’s balti houses). This sha’s work, which has ranged from model of working allows teachers An exploration of Tamasha’s method adaptations of classic texts, for exam- and students to access characters of developing research-based plays ple A Yearning (adapted from Lorca’s and cultural worlds which, without in the drama classroom has revealed Yerma and set in the Punjabi com- research, would not be accessible to how much students (of a wide range munity in Britain) to newly commis- them. The central features of the of cultural backgrounds) relish the sioned plays such as East is East by pilot project were: depth of interplay between their Ayub Khan-Din (now an award win- own and each other’s cultures. TIME ning British film), A Tainted Dawn (a teachers have been surprised by the play set around the events of parti- fact that prior to the TIME project, tion) and Women of the Dust (about students had not chosen to represent the lives of women workers on a their own or others’ cultures in per- building site in Delhi). formance. The TIME project revealed Through the TIME pilot project the need for teachers to be direct in 1999, Tamasha Theatre Company inviting students to develop intercul- and TIME teachers have begun tural drama. The role of the teacher/ to explore the potential impact of director of intercultural drama is to a number of Tamasha processes be both a skilled actor and director for the development of intercultural and find ways to access, provoke drama. These models of working and coax each character presented include: developing research-based into a more in-depth exploration of plays; developing bilingual drama their lives and worlds. One London and capturing the distinctive teacher talks about his former tenta- nuances, phraseology and use of tiveness in this respect: English employed by diverse cul- tures; the politics of representation ‘TIME has shown me that I can and identity; the process of adapting be much more bold about asking and transporting one culture, genre students to represent aspects of their and medium to another; the logic of own cultures in performance. Before choreography and choral work and 1. A two-day INSET with Kristine the visit, I had worked on the Kristine Landon-Smith’s inspira- Landon-Smith (Artistic Director) premise that if students wanted to tional use of the ‘hot seat’. Whether and members of the Balti Kings reveal aspects of their cultures, they through devising new work, adapt- acting company should be left to offer these up them- ing stories from diverse cultures to 2. The resource of The Making of Balti selves. In my class, I have a girl of the stage, or transposing classics to Kings video: following the develop- Turkish origin, a bilingual speaker specific cultural contexts, Tamasha’s ment of Balti Kings from research in and others of Asian and African intercultural practice offers practical balti houses, to the development of origin who have never revealed any- models through which to explore characters through hotseating in the thing about their cultures before KS3 & 4 of the NC for English, rehearsal room this project. The only culture some- which requires teachers to explore times represented was Irish culture. 3. A resource pack outlining the ‘drama, fiction and poetry by major I assumed that students just wanted model of developing research-based writers of different cultural back- to fit in. In fact I now see that it plays explored through Balti Kings, grounds and traditions.’ Tamasha’s is up to me to create a culture in and offering teachers guidelines for TIME project reveals how the work the drama classroom where they are developing their own projects can help students of a wide range invited to make these contributions, of cultures to give voice to and rep- 4. A visit to Balti Kings and after- because the cultures they are from resent hitherto unrepresented char- show seminar with the actors and the languages they speak are acters and stories in the drama 5. A consultancy visit to each school key to what drama is about. In the

14 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Secondary Features

past, I would have worried about The stigma of a woman not having into how to take students on similar children’s over-sensitivity about a child, the man working and not journeys using processes that Tama- their cultural backgrounds, but this wanting the woman to work, had sha have honed over the last ten project has given me confidence real parallels to our chosen commu- years. Tentativeness on the part of to open all this up. I have really nity. If you make clear what those teachers and indeed directors in this looked at teaching interculturalism connections are, you get people in area has everything to do with con- in drama... TIME has helped me to the audience saying ‘that’s me, that’s fidence. People are not confident find my voice as a teacher-director my experience’. about cultural references. I think you and this, in turn has given students have to think creatively before a voice. Students are now relaxed Again with Women Of the Dust, there you speak racially – your creative about exploring and critiquing each was a very deep engagement in the role gives you the confidence to other’s representations of cultures world of those women working on pursue work from another culture. through their performances in the a building site in Delhi. We didn’t Why do people feel more comfort- classroom.’ able with Chek- Peter Maric, hov than, say, Graveney doing a Tagore School, London play?

Throughout the The Teacher TIME project, INSET drama teachers have begun to Prior to a two-day engage with INSET, teachers intercultural oversaw research theorists and trips by students practitioners, into places iden- cultural theo- tified as being of rists and semi- cultural interest… oticians such as characters from Patrice Pavis, cafes in Crickle- Paul Gilroy, wood, hairdress- Rustom Bharu- ers in Handsworth cha and Peter and nightclubs in Brook, in order Northampton to place their were interviewed. own and Tamasha’s practice in a know anything about the characters Teachers were asked to bring student broader critical field of inquiry. in that world before we set out transcripts of interviews to the Here, Kristine Landon-Smith on our research trip. Ruth Carter INSET. Kristine selected a number of describes the intercultural nature of (the writer) had to capture the wom- these transcripts through which to Tamasha’s work: en’s particular use of language, so illustrate Tamasha’s research-based ‘Interculturalism is about finding Sudha Bhuchar (joint Artistic Direc- process which moves from research a real engagement with other cul- tor) translated their words verbatim. (including transcripts), to imagina- tures. If you’re doing a play or an If Sudha asked ‘do you get hungry?’, tive hotseating, into developing sce- adaptation which is not part of your they would say, ‘does a camel carry narios for a play. The actors became own culture, you have to come to water?’. That idiom of speaking had the teachers’ students for the day. an emotional engagement with that to be captured and carried into the The skill of these professional actors world and not just superficially rep- play. You have to imaginatively get allowed teachers to be bold with resent it from the outside. If you’re inside a different world. Research is ideas and push the techniques doing an adaptation you need to important to a point and then imagi- explored in the INSET to a point be clear why it should transpose. nation takes off. That is how Ruth where they could develop the full With A Yearning (adapted from Lor- Carter wrote Women Of the Dust so potential of their own role as ca’s Yerma), we saw how the play successfully. teacher-directors of intercultural could be accurately transposed to We have developed the TIME work: Birmingham’s Punjabi community. project to give teachers an insight ‘Seeing actors bring to life scenes

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 15 Features Secondary

from students’ work has stretched together and inventing scenarios and Headteacher: Mrs Bonsoo… the possibilities and has been a fasci- histories for the character is one Mrs Bonsoo: School is teaching my nating process.’ which students relish, as seen in this son wrong things. Angela Raynor, Stratford School, transcription of students work: London In choosing to place Mrs Bonsoo and the headmaster (two separately Throughout the INSET and school researched characters) together, stu- visits, Kristine worked with teachers dents were facing the conflict to explore how developing the role of between the atmosphere of the teacher-director, particularly in rela- school institution, its norms and tion to the ‘hotseat,’ can assist in the Mrs Bonsoo’s interpretation of her creation of intercultural drama. religion and morality: the cultural The following examples of stu- differences, behaviour and status dents’ work taken from research dia- between Mrs Bonsoo and the head- ries highlight some of the different master. Underneath the humour of roles the teacher/director plays in this scene, students were exploring developing intercultural drama. The the kinds of intercultural debate diary is illustrated with examples which are taking place in society. of student work transcribed from Following the tragic killing of Dami- videos of workshops and student lola Taylor in November 2000, inter- performances. views with the Nigerian community and the family brought up many Diary of a hotseat of the issues touched on in student work between Mrs Bonsoo, her son In developing research-based plays, and the headmaster. the starting point of a successful hot- What teachers and students dis- seat is reference to a living person. The headmasters office covered through the project was that The student needs to draw from when students are portraying char- either someone close to them whom Mrs Bonsoo: What they teach them acters of a range of cultures, they have observed over a period of must be discussed. You have to teach sexes and indeed ages, the most suc- time, or someone new to them that them the religious side of what is cessful starting point was through they have carefully researched (in expected of them. research. In observing student work the form of an in-depth interview). in performance, it was apparent that Headteacher: Mrs Bonsoo, we have Examples of researched characters where students imagined (rather a religious education class and a per- included ‘Mrs Bonsoo’ a Nigerian than researched) characters from sonal development class – they are mother infuriated by the existence different cultural backgrounds than separate things of ‘personal development’ lessons their own, they could do no more They need to put the in school, who accuses the head- Mrs Bonsoo: than present a stereotype of a person two things together. We Christians master of being responsible for the from that culture, which did little cannot condone such activity. If we condom she has found in her son’s to promote intercultural understand- were back home in Ghana, we don’t pocket. The detail and confidence of ing. Where thorough research took have these difficulties… these performances and the degree place, the students displayed a real to which students captured the Headteacher: Forgive me, Mrs imaginative engagement, accuracy voices of each character, were testi- Bonsoo, but children here may be and enjoyment in playing characters mony to the value of the research exposed to more and we have a from a range of cultures. process. Unlike the ‘oral testimony’ responsibility to teach them about When the teacher-director is pre- approach, students’ research does what they are going to be exposed to. sented with a character from a cul- not aspire to an accurate portrayal of Mrs Bonsoo: This is where the ture other than the students – in one the characters’ life history. The pur- problem is. In this country they have instance, an Arabic carpet seller – pose of the research is for students to such high rates, of what you call the teacher-director will often play capture the characters’ culture, per- it? … teenage pregnancy. It is only someone from that culture, taking sonality, voice and gesture and to get because they don’t teach them reli- on an accent and gestures which can inside their world view. The imagi- gion. They shouldn’t be doing such a help the student-actor move even native process of placing characters thing at such a young age… further into that character. This gives

16 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Secondary Features

a marked confidence boost to the her grandmother. Student A began After much hard work and long student in the hotseat and also helps to meld these into her performance hours, he gained not only the skills other students enter a dialogue with by copying student B and it became and the money needed to start his a person from their own community. clear that student A had significantly own business, but the language too. One teacher reveals how successful helped her friend to fully charac- Employing fellow Turkish employ- this method was in giving her the terise the physical qualities of her ees, the shop was dominated with opportunity to play characters out- grandmother. Turkish influence. However, he has side her own culture of origin: Where students are representing one Irish girl employed who he pays ‘Students accept me, as a Black a character from their own culture bad wages and treats with little British teacher playing characters and they speak another language, respect. The relationship between from an Afro-Caribbean back- the teacher-director encourages the two is put across in a comical ground, but when one day I took them to use a combination of lan- way. With constant insults thrown on the character of an Asian woman guages. In some cases, the teacher- both ways and the total disgust of they were really surprised and director may ask the student to each other’s backgrounds, there is delighted. My students are predomi- speak, almost exclusively in the a very serious meaning to their nantly Asian girls and I think that ‘other language’ even when the attitudes.’ they were genuinely surprised and teacher-director does not speak that complimented by the fact that I had language. In this scenario, the In one scene between Mehmet accurately observed characters from and his disgruntled Irish employee, Asian culture. I would never have the teacher-director conducted the dared to do this if I hadn’t experi- whole interview in English and the enced Kristine using this process so Turkish character responded in Turk- successfully throughout the INSET.’ ish. There are no other Turkish Sophia Francis, Central Foundation students in the class and the stu- Girls’ School, London dent-observers were impressed by how much they could understand If a student has researched a charac- through facial gesture and physi- ter from a culture other than their cality alone. By the end of the hot- own and is having problems rep- seat, the students had taken over resenting the way in which the and the Irish employee was having character speaks and moves, the a full-scale argument with her Turk- teacher-director may ask a student- ish employee. The following hotseat actor who is familiar with that char- reveals how the teacher-director is acter to sit next to the person being able to glean what the student is hotseated. The confidence that stu- saying from gesture and tone of dents can gain in developing inter- voice alone. Where a complicated or cultural performance practice in the specific idea is being articulated by drama classroom, once that culture the student, he/she will very natu- of openness has been created by the rally slip in some English words. The drama teacher, was revealed in this teacher-director helps to drive the example. A student of Bengali origin teacher-director will watch the char- characters together into a scene of (A) was attempting to play her own acter carefully and encourage them dramatic tension. Here the teacher- grandmother. Her friend, a young to develop a strong gestural per- director acts as a ‘troubleshooter’ girl of Irish origin (B) informed her formance. She will continue the between the characters. This nor- that she was getting it wrong. B questioning and glean what the stu- mally comes in the form of a provo- had spent a great deal of time with dents’ answers are from a close cation whereby the teacher-director A’s grandmother. The teacher-direc- observation of their responses to will pick up on some potential ten- tor asked student B to sit next to questions. Here, Selma Ethem, a sion between certain characters, as student A and help her capture the student from Graveney School, in the following exchange. In acting grandmother’s gestures and way of describes her character: as the conductor of the scene, the moving. While student A conducted ‘Mehmet had left Turkey with his teacher-director draws on his/her the whole hotseat in Bengali, stu- wife back in 1980 to come to Eng- own experience of how to create dra- dent B jolted A’s memory about the land to find work. He began his matic tension, giving students the physicality and gestural qualities of career in the friend’s kebab shop. opportunity to relax into speaking

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 17 Features

confidently in character. As with all packet. Boss always swapping sugar great performance work, the will packet with people for money – lots to communicate is uppermost. All of money. I don’t know why. Boss responses by the kebab shop owner thinks I can’t understand and I don’t were spoken in Turkish and italicised understand. I just wash plates I make words were spoken in English. blue plates white, I clean hard. I from Bangladesh. When I think about my wife and my son, I feel like crying Mehmet’s Kebab shop but man don’t cry. I just pray to Allah. I need help, lot of help, to get (T/D: = teacher director) out of this jail. English not so good. T/D: You run this restaurant I only be here five months – how Mehmet: Yes, I’m the owner…the much English can I speak? It’s up to boss…she’s my employee…makes Allah when I will get out. Once I go the chips… from this place I’m not coming back. T/D: Oh! She makes the chips. (to Irish employee) Don’t you have other In Turkey, we have good Future TIME jobs? Mehmet: workers. This one tells lies Mehmet: This woman is so lazy Kristine Landon Smith’s flexible use Irish worker: I’m not a liar… T/D: What do you say to her when of the hotseat to develop intercul- she’s lazy? Mehmet: Talking, talking, talking tural research-based plays is just one Mehmet: You are so lazy. English all the time… model used by the company. TIME workers are not hardworking like our Irish worker: I’m no liar. He’s the 2001 (Feb – July) will offer teachers Turkish people. English are so lazy liar… I’m not standing for this! access to the whole range of Tama- Irish worker: Irish… I’m Irish... I (leaves) sha models of developing intercul- keep telling you Mehmet: Any excuse to get out of tural drama including: developing text-based plays, devised work, T/D: Is this right he’s always saying working! you’re lazy? transposing classics into a specific Once student actors begin to work cultural context and adapting novels Irish worker: I always do the work independently, the teacher-director and short stories to the stage. She tells lies. Always Mehmet: will gradually withdraw from a Tamasha Theatre Company making up stories and coming late… developing scene or hotseat, allow- believe that drama teachers are at always late ing the students to imaginatively the cutting edge of developing the T/D: Why do you keep her? explore the character. In the follow- creative and cultural education of Mehmet: I’m a kind man. Anyway ing example, the student is making students. Through TIME 2001, cul- it’s difficult to get staff to work the the transition from hotseat assisted minating in the TIME 2001 con- hours dialogue into monologue. ference, Tamasha wish to place teachers’ voices for the first time at T/D: So, it’s difficult to get people – she’s cheap is she? (Turning to Irish the centre of the intercultural debate. employee) How much does he pay From a prison cell you? character monologue: 1. Tamasha have taken the term intercultur- alism as an over-arching description which Irish worker: Three pounds an hour informs the company’s practice. However, Amar Bartnan Ali: I only work Bharucha’s theory of intraculturalism (the If you don’t mind me saying, T/D: in restaurant. Restaurant name E5. cultures within, in this case, Britain) is also you are paying very low wages here encompassed in Tamasha’s work. To make a Boss always telling me off. I say fine distinction between these theories, intra- Mehmet: I have to pay out for so I need job. Boss say ok you don’t cultural productions include those about and many things – ‘business tax’ – all understand English, I give you job. set in the Asian community in Britain and these things Police office comes with gun puts intercultural productions include plays set in the Indian sub-continent. While Tamasha is T/D: Yes, but your restaurant is hands behind my back. Police office aware of the distinction between these theo- doing very well. talk to me badly. Can’t say my name ries, we feel that it would be confusing to properly. They don’t know I illegal make this distinction in the title of the proj- Irish worker: You might have paid ect at this stage. Thus, we understand Tama- those wages in Turkey… immigrant. I thought that is why, but sha Intercultural Millennium Education to no they want to know about sugar encompass the term ‘intracultural’.

18 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Secondary Features

Bibliography Tamasha Theatre Company focuses on plays drawn from the South Asian Bharucha, R. (1993) Theatre and the Community in Britain and the Indian World, London: Routledge sub continent. In 1998 Kristine Landon-Smith and Sudha Buchar formed Brook, P. (1988) The Shifting Point, Tamasha to adapt Untouchable, a classic London: Methuen Drama Indian novel by Mulk Raj Anand. Gilroy, P. (1995) ‘To be real: the dis- sident forms of black expressive cul- After an extremely successful debut the Kristine Landon-Smith ture’, in: Let’s Get It On, London: ICA company has gone from strength to Kristine, who has been a producer for BBC strength, having produced 9 plays to Radio since 1996, is co-founder of Tamasha (1992) Theatre at the Cross- Pavis, P. critical acclaim, including the 1996 produc- Theatre Company and has directed all of roads of Culture, London: Routledge Tamasha’s nine productions. tion, East is East, which was nominated for an Olivier award, won a Writers’ Guild With thanks to teachers and students from Sita Brahmachari Award and was made into a hugely popu- Sita Brahmachari, now a freelance theatre the following schools for their contributions: lar film. The 1998 production, Fourteen education consultant, was Community Peter Maric of Graveney School, London Theatre Worker at The Royal Court Young Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral won People’s Theatre (1990-1992) and Education Sophia Francis of Central Foundations Girls’ both the BBC Asia Award for Achievement Officer for Talawa Theatre Company School, London in the Arts and the Barclays Theatre Award (1992-1995) where she also developed the Black and Asian Women Writers’ Project. Sally Yates of Swanshurst School, for Best Musical and is being remounted Birmingham for a national tour in 2001.

A Practical Showcase Conference 12 July 2001 Debate at the Central School of Performance Speech and Drama, London Masterclass tamasha The TIME 2001 conference explores Information and registration: intercultural theory and practice in Telephone 01747 858 776 drama teaching, disseminating Tamasha’s [email protected] Jointly hosted by Tamasha Theatre Company and two year teacher-research project The Central School of Speech and Drama www.time2001.co.uk

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 19 Spirit International Youth Theatre Festival 14th July–11th August 2000

n July and August last year, Greenwich international theatre practitioners and com- Theatre and the Deptford Albany were panies here in London. However the most I taken over by one hundred young people exciting of our international projects, with performing seven original productions from enormous impact on the participants, have five nations with many languages and cul- been our youth theatre exchanges. Since tures. This was the Spirit International Youth GYPT’s first visit to young people in Reinick- Theatre Festival – a four-week celebration endorf, Berlin (also the home of Spirit’s of the creativity, ideas and talents of young German participants, The Wild Bunch) in people from around the world. 1972, the company has participated in Spirit was hosted by GYPT (Greenwich exchanges with youth theatres in Norway, and Lewisham’s Young Peoples Theatre) Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland and based in Plumstead in South East London. Jamaica. The Spirit Festival was born out of GYPT has been a leading centre for youth this long history of international exchange. arts and theatre in education for thirty years. When young people from different countries The company has often shared its profes- and cultures, who speak different languages sional work abroad and has hosted many and who live in different political systems

20 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Youth Theatre Features

create theatre together, the outcomes are ground. The Artistic Director of New York’s profound and long lasting. So when the com- Creative Arts Team (CAT), Chris Vine, and pany was planning how to recognise and cel- CAT Youth Theatre Director Helen White, ebrate the Year 2000 we decided to organise are both part of GYPT’s long history. Chris a very special version of these very special joined GYPT in 1977 and was Artistic Direc- projects. tor from 1985-91. Helen was a workshop We were able to start thinking on such leader on several of our youth programmes a large scale because of the Millennium in the 1980s. Maintaining links like these and the money made available for Millen- can be an excellent way of stimulating and nium arts projects. Spirit was made possible realising projects like Spirit. through grants from the Millennium Festival There are connections also with our Fund (from the National Lottery) and from group from the Czech Republic, Mala Scena. the Greenwich 2000 Festival funds. The One of our oldest partnerships, our first ‘I hope that we funders were very supportive of the project, exchange with Mala Scena happened in get to do this both with advice on such things as mar- 1978. Who would have thought that the again so that keting and publicity, and in practical terms. young boy in the lighting box at Mala Scena Greenwich Council further supported the would, after the overthrow of the communist other people in festival through generously meeting all our regime, become the first secretary at the the Youth Theatre transport needs free of charge. Local people Czech Embassy in London! More recently get to experience and other friends of GYPT were also very one of the young people who went to Zlin what we did supportive in areas such as fundraising. As in 1991 had a truly life changing experience. because you don¹t a community-based organisation and in the Dave Mendez fell in love, moved to the come back the shadow of the Dome we wanted to make Czech Republic and has been there ever same.’ sure that our Millennium project was firmly since. Dave, a musician, has done a lot of Photographs: Marty Volk rooted in the local community. work with Mala Scena over the years includ- ‘The most impor- Spirit involved six youth theatre groups, ing their show for Spirit, and was Musical tant thing for me representing old and new friends from Director of the Spirit joint production. was that I was three continents. Mala Scena from Zlin For the first stage of the project, each of touched culturally. in the Czech Republic, The Wild Bunch the six groups was invited to devise a piece I went there with from Berlin, Tainan Jen Theatre Troupe from of theatre on the common theme of ‘Our Taiwan, CAT Youth Theatre from New York Ghosts of the Past Thousand Years’. These certain ste- and GYPT’s own Greenwich and Lewisham were first performed in each home country reotypes of these Youth Theatre Groups. The young people after many months of work. The cities and cultures, and I am were mainly aged between 15 and 24. Some countries involved in the project have fasci- sure they came had been involved in Youth Theatre for sev- nating and significant histories. Each country with stereotypes eral years while for others this was their approached the theme according to their own of Americans, and first project. It was also important to us that interests, concerns, creative style and cultural I think they were a project of this scale should have as wide heritage. We deliberately chose a very broad all broken.’ an impact as possible beyond the core par- theme to facilitate this. The quality and cre- ticipants, both within GYPT and the many ativity of the performances impressed and members of the CAT wider communities. We arranged for the vis- delighted audiences at Greenwich Theatre Youth Theatre iting groups to perform in local schools, and over three nights. For the young people, it many other young people were involved in was a unique opportunity to see these stories the project’s development, both in the UK told from the perspective of their peers. The and overseas. They contributed to the fes- young people were incredibly supportive of tival’s fundraising and to our social and each other’s work and each night brought cultural programme. This included 17 local cheers and standing ovations. There was a families who generously opened their homes genuine appreciation of the work the groups to host our international guests for the first had done and an awareness of what could two weeks of the project. More than twenty be learned from each other – both in terms overseas and ten UK based artists also con- of the content and of the different theatrical tributed to the success of Spirit. forms and styles the groups utilised. Some of our international visitors actu- There was also an appreciation of the ally found themselves on very familiar efforts the groups had made to get here.

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 21 Features Youth Theatre

The Tainan Jen Theatre Troupe almost didn’t guage through theatre that went far beyond make it at all. The massive earthquake that the spoken word. Besides, the groups them- shook Taiwan in 1999 threw grave doubts selves were evidence of our increasingly on their chances of being involved in the multi-cultural world. New York’s CAT Youth project. There were too many other priorities, Theatre alone represented at least eight dif- with all national funds diverted to rebuilding ferent countries, from Italy to India to the the island. But the group believed in what Dominican Republic, and several languages. they were doing and were determined to We did have to remain aware of language come to London. Their perseverance meant issues, though, as we moved into the second they were able to represent the young people phase of the project, ‘Spirit Connected’, of Taiwan with a beautiful show that brought which brought all the young people together together elements of traditional Chinese the- to create a joint production. This was the atre with Western drama in a powerfully most ambitious part of Spirit. We had less visual production. than two weeks to devise and present the show at the Deptford Albany Theatre and while much background work had been done, it wasn’t until we actually started working that we realised the task we had set ourselves. Sixty young people, five nations, many cultures and languages: the young people would be challenged artis- tically, emotionally and practically. They would need to negotiate many new relation- ships across cultures and languages, adapt to new ways of working and develop a self- awareness about what they were bringing to the process. Considering that six groups were to mix and interact to gradually become one group on the first day, the energy and enthusiasm for the task was enormous. For the ten directors and the team of designers, musicians and production staff, the challenge was to All the young people were able to experi- develop collaborative ence performance styles that were often very approaches to youth theatre ‘I gained a greater different from anything they had seen before. and create an environment in feeling of identity, This was certainly true for many of the young which the young people could culturally and people from GYPT’s Greenwich and Lew- openly explore and express personally.’ isham groups. GYPT’s policy has always been ideas and themes which were one of encouraging accessibility to and par- relevant and inspiring for ‘It was great ticipation in the arts by all, particularly by them and their audiences. getting to know those who may previously have felt excluded. To do this we took the group down to different cultures For many of our young people GYPT is their the Margaret McMillan Field Centre in Wro- and the gifts they first experience of theatre. This is also true tham, Kent for an intensive week of devising for many of the friends and family who came and rehearsing. There were many eyebrows brought gave us to see the plays. Over the three nights the raised as we squashed our teens and twenty- an even clearer diversity of the work broadened many peo- somethings with a month’s worth of luggage idea of their lives.’ ple’s horizons about what was possible for into dormitories that usually cater for nine them and for youth theatre in general. and ten year olds. It was certainly going to be GYPT members Although each group performed in their cosy. I don’t think the staff had seen anything own language, this did not prove a barrier quite like our group before, trading warm-up to the audience’s enjoyment. On the con- games on the grass outside and learning trary, it was evident from the performances tongue-twisting Taiwanese vocal exercises. that the young people shared a common lan- We had divided the young people up into six

22 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Examples of exercises/techniques

Non-Verbal Storytelling example, still images, sound and rhythm Music and Song In the early stages of devising, we used and pictures. Music is the ultimate non-verbal language, many techniques to move beyond spoken The pairs formed groups of eight and and song is an important cultural holding language to find a shared language of sto- shared these story images with each other. form – both were an important element of rytelling and theatre. In this exercise, the They then put them all together, linking the joint production. The different stages participants began in pairs with someone them with song or rhythm, and presented of the journey through life were woven of the same language group. Each person this to the whole group. The young people together with songs from each language then told their partner a story relating to were able to trace links and see common and culture, playing a dual role of being the theme of ‘journeys’ from their own or themes and feelings within their different relevant to the story we were telling in their family history. The pair then had to find experiences. It was a powerful way of shar- the production and, further, communicating a non-verbal way to represent the essence ing among a large group with minimal use something of the wider cultural heritage of of each story. The young people used, for of spoken language. the participants.

groups of about ten each working with one Sections such as old age and death gave or two directors, with at least four nationali- the young people the opportunity to explore ties in each group. Many of the young people and express their feelings, hopes and fears were keen to work with a director of a differ- about the world around them and their lives List of Participants to come. Again, the cast spoke mainly in ent nationality to get the most they could out CAT Youth Theatre, New their own language and I think audiences of this unique experience. York, USA Our initial idea for the joint production were surprised at how easily they could was to build it around the theme of ‘jour- understand a conversation spoken half in Mala Scena Youth The- neys’. But early in the devising process it Czech and half in English. At the end of the atre, Zlin, Czech Republic became clear that the journey that most show all sixty cast members came on stage Tainan Jen Theatre inspired the young people was the personal for a final song. Seeing them all there really Troupe, Tainan, Taiwan journey that we all take: the journey through brought home what an achievement it was The Wild Bunch, Berlin, life. So the production took shape around to put on this show in less than two weeks. Germany the seven stages of life, inspired by Shake- Bringing together so many different cultural GYPT, London, UK speare’s seven ages of man – birth, child- influences and managing to find room for all hood, the teenage years, the years of struggle of them, alongside the united voice that lay at and facing one’s fears, adulthood, old age the heart of the project was very exciting. As Website link and death. Each of the small groups took one audience member commented, ‘It’s great The GYPT website one stage to explore and develop which were to see some Millennium money going to a (under development but later woven together with music and song. really worthwhile project for once’. should be up and run- The last night party demonstrated for me ning soon) which will just how important the friendships that had include further info on been forged over the last month had become. the Spirit Festival: We laid on a barbeque and planned a big www.gypt.co.uk disco, but most of the young people spent the warm August evening sitting outside in our rather overgrown back yard, talking and just spending quiet time together. These The final production contained a wonder- were not relationships that would be ful collage of performance styles and media, forgotten as soon as the planes took off. We from puppetry to video, and theatre in five had watched this group learn and grow languages. The different sections presented together. They had created a piece of theatre different challenges to the participants. The that contained a little piece of each of them often hilarious ‘teenage years’ also held the and that would always belong to all of them. Polly Gifford is a free- poignancy of recent experience for the group The process was challenging and often lance drama worker and and many of the audience. We can all difficult but ultimately very rewarding. We project manager, currently based at GYPT. remember the awkwardness of a first date, believe that Spirit will leave a lasting Much of her work the pressure from parents to study and from impression on the young people involved – involves developing arts peers to smoke and have sex. A great groan at least until next time. As one of our projects with refugees and asylum seekers in of recognition went up when the actors faced Lewisham group said as Mala Scena got London and supporting the audience and squeezed a spot onto the onto their coach back to Zlin, ‘So, when are the work and develop- bathroom mirror! we going to the Czech Republic then?’ ment of refugee artists

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 23 Features Technical

Not Now, Technology?

Exploring David McKee’s ‘Not Now, Bernard’

David Simpson

rama ‘makes meanings through lan- ably more than government policy, driven as guages of movement, visual images, they are by economic motives and desires. D sound and music as well as through But for Drama in Education the increasing the spoken word’ (Nicholson 2000: 113). It is reliance on technology may lead to inaction, an ‘enactive, active, interactive, reflexive and as it makes for passive consumers rather practical process’ (Norman 1999: 9) which than producers of drama: the computer’s is principally exploratory, and identifiable ‘demand for exactness leads away from com- ‘not by the content of its curriculum but plexity and ambiguity… insulating us from by the nature and quality of the process’ multiple and intricate meanings’ (Gangi (Norman 1999: ibid.). It ‘challenges us to 1998: 156). Drawing on Boal (1992), Gangi explore, recognise and extend our physical, argues that viewers give over the power of Technologies are emotional and cognitive boundaries’ – the decision-making to the image. It means that likely to change ‘boundaries between what is me and what there is a need for the development of a criti- educational is not; what I feel confident to do and cal language based on reader response, with processes, prob- not confident to do; what I know about her preferred choice being Iser’s work on the ably more than myself and others and what I don’t’ process of ‘concretization’, ‘by which a reader government (Neelands 1997: 37). serves as co-producer of the meaning of a policy, driven as However reassuring the preceding para- text by creatively filling gaps’ (1974: 118). graph, drama in education is subject to To put it bluntly, a connected issue con- they are by wider, global forces of technological change. fronts Drama in Education. First is a sense economic motives ‘What is most important about the present that there is a known, perhaps even com- and desires is that it is characterised by a conjunction fortable, territory for a school subject called of several deeply significant trends: a con- Drama and, second, is the inevitable impact junction of social, political, economic and of technologies on educational processes on cultural as much as of representational/ this orthodoxy. Drama is not separate from communicational and technological devel- the social, political, economic or cultural opments’ (Kress 1998: 54). Technologies are environment, so to pretend these are dis- likely to change educational processes, prob- crete issues is a mistake. Conversely, to argue

24 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Technical Features

that they cannot be separated is equally mis- from their childhood when their parents use taken. the same words to them. At the same time What follows are descriptions of drama they have to find different inflexions for the sessions that explore connections between word ‘said’ and study their influence on the drama in education and technology. They improvisations. As this work unfolds, the draw on work with trainee teachers at the students move between the book and their University of Brighton who study David improvisations and the lack of eye contact in McKee’s multi-layered illustrated children’s the picture book between Bernard and his book, Not Now, Bernard, as part of a module parents becomes even more apparent. They on children’s literature. With a competence discover that the world depicted orientated teacher training now in place by the illustrations moves pre- along with a target-led National Curriculum dominantly sideways, with the in schools, it is important to continue to characters moving primarily develop future teachers’ enthusiasm for chil- across the page rather than dren’s literature and its ability to create towards the back or front. imaginary worlds. Throughout this time the Drama is central to the activities based digital camera is available for upon picture books because both have students to use as they wish. an affinity with the exploration of text, Several patterns emerge; there reader and self. There is a further connec- are groups who make images tion. Writing about her work with young of key moments and by doing children, Nicholson writes (1996:251), ‘What so echo Sonntag’s view that to the shared reading of picture books has in take a photograph is ‘to partici- common with decoding dramatic texts in pate in another person’s (or thing’s) mor- Their images performance is that the focus is on how tality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by stabilise and fix the texts are heard and seen, rather than slicing out this moment and freezing it, all what has been read privately and silently as a ‘writerly’ text.’ photographs testify to time’s relentless melt’ done, record their Reading is taken off the page to become the (1977: 15). The camera records something creation and shared participation in a speculative, critical that no longer exists: the moment has passed making of a visual and aural text. (Barthes 1977). The image, like a photo- participation in When the group read Not Now, Bernard graph, ‘replicates what we have lost, and another world, the recurrent questions of the narrator’s in one sense suggests a deep psychological turning what is identity and the extent of her/his omni- need to record, retain, and to classify the transient into science lead the discussion back to two world of our actions’ (Clarke 1997: 25). Their something more features of the book’s words. There are images stabilise and fix what has been done, permanent. no descriptions of Bernard’s thoughts, just record their creation and participation in simple sentences (Crystal 1996: 22 ) giving another world, turning what is actions (‘Bernard went into the garden.’), transient into something more and continual use of the word ‘said’ (‘Not permanent. now’, said Bernard’s father.’) to state how Other groups begin from a character speaks. There are gaps in the stabilisation. For them, images text from which drama can start; what are are a site where meanings are Bernard’s thoughts and feelings and why is created and contested. There the word ‘said’ repeated so often? What hap- is no single improvisation or pens in the time between illustrations? interpretation; they argue that With a digital camera, drama and tech- one image or improvisation cre- nology combine. They lift reading from the ates an authoritative interpre- page and into the co-operative making of a tation that denies the presence visual and aural drama text. Whilst earlier of alternative voices and reali- attempts concentrate on sections from novels ties. One group forms a chorus (Simpson 1999) the intention here is to make that flanks the television screen a whole. To start, the students devise impro- showing their images. Each image is accom- visations that contain just the words ‘Not panied by improvisation. Another has an now, ...... ’ They are based on a time image as a backdrop from which improvisa-

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tions emerge; a pair have an image which is the start and end of an improvisation – they then swap roles and improvise the same scene again. The integration of the camera and drama leads the students to devise either ‘live’ improvisations or images, or combinations of the two. The attention to the details of moment by moment living is both pow- erful and moving: there is a Part of the work’s ‘live’ first person singular eye success lies with contact drama about looking the camera. It is a down and looking at people technology with that came about after a group which people are works and reworks what they feel and see. ‘Not now’ is familiar and uttered intensely by the child probably comfort- to his parent. Another group able. extends and slows down time. ‘Not’ occupies three images and leads to a final close up image that has ‘Now’ as a quietly explosive statement runs parallel with McKee’s text, whilst another make a dense drama of a minute in With the camera, from both parent and child. In between the images are the three peoples’ lives during which time students can make, Bernard’s parents watch him rise then fall be part of and step other improvisations up to that point, something that brings before their eyes. Again there is a distinction back out of an out clearly the notion of mul- between work that stabilises and work that imaginary world of tiple realities. destabilises. A group start with the monster their own making; With the camera, students and work backwards and forwards through meanings are made can make, be part of and the book with alternate improvisation and which challenge step back out of an imaginary image. Another group uses images but asks boundaries through world of their own making; the audience to select the order; there is also movement, visual meanings are made which a sequence in which the monster ‘shadows’ images and the challenge boundaries through Bernard, offering him choices. In these ways technology is part of a destabilisation in spoken word. movement, visual images and the spoken word. To look at the which discontinuities challenge ideas about images and ‘live’ dramas is to step into an linear sequence, audience and drama. edgy uncertainty, aware that ‘the visual dis- The images are downloaded onto a com- rupts and challenges any attempt to define puter for the third part of the task – if culture in purely linguistic terms’ (Mirzoeff they are making a drama text they have to 1999: 7). The second stage of the work is to take these insights into their childhood, drama and technology to the world of Not Now, Ber- nard. The monster’s role is considered, espe- cially his eye contact with the reader, his backwards and forwards movement and how far the word ‘said’ can be applied to him. To get inside, rather than just analyse him, they observe as well as move and talk as the monster, using the camera to cross from themselves to monster. One group make a drama from Bernard’s point of view which

26 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Technical Features

decide what form it should take. The tran- ing downloading and decision making about sient moments of drama can be made perma- what form a text can take. Throughout, the nent in two ways: images can be printed sense of purpose and control rests with the onto paper or left on disk. Software like Pho- students and not technology. tosuite offers a chance to enlarge or reduce And that is the point. Drama is co- images, and edit as well as reformat them to operative human inquiry that challenges the allow for the inclusion of words. One group known through the nature of its processes. keeps the images as they are and enlarges It should now do the same with technology, them slightly; a second group uses a ‘car- which is both a known and an unknown. toonise’ format; a third works with a black Techno-utopianists like Negro- and white format that gives shadowy out- ponte (1996) and Kaku (1999) lines. Whether to have words along with the assume that technology creates images is another decision for the groups consumers who accept whatever – there are ones with dialogue that inter- is offered, a vision of the world nalise Bernard’s thoughts, repeat what is in that rests upon science leading the book and ones without dialogue. During society. But drama process cre- this stage the students work on what an elec- ates producers who learn about tronic text is compared with a paper text, technology’s potential through and how to preserve and present their text using technology. As such, becomes a significant element of their work. drama is essential to the ques- With programs like Mediator, it is becoming tioning of technology, some- possible to go even further. Like most multi thing recognised by Jonscher media packages, still or moving images and who argues that students should sound are options for a writer/designer; fur- not drop literature and history in favour of thermore, a viewer can choose the sequence computer science: ‘they will still need to in which the images are seen. understand human nature more than they The activities described reveal an impor- will the details of this or any other technol- Drama is co- tant, broader role for drama in the debate ogy’ (Jonscher 1999: 213). It is how we con- operative human about the influence of technology on educa- struct our relationship with technology that inquiry that tional processes: by its very nature, drama can is important. The central feature of the activ- challenges the shape technology. For example, the activities ities is the extent the students did not accept known through with the camera centre on making and not the technology as a given – they explored, the nature of its receiving drama and open up possibilities for challenged and extended the boundaries of processes. It creating the multiple and intricate meanings their knowledge of technology through the that Ganji fears will be lost. The improvisa- drama process. should now do tional processes put students in a position the same with to determine a role for technology in their technology, drama. It helps to realise the drama, not con- Bibliography which is both a trol it. known and an Part of the work’s success lies with the Barthes, R. (1977) Image-Music-Text, unknown. camera. It is a technology with which people London: Fontana are familiar and probably comfortable. The (1992) Games for actors and non- camera draws on what people feel they Boal, A. actors, London: Routledge know; they bring with them success as well as previous experience – and as a result there Brook, P. (1988) The Empty Stage, Harmond- are more avenues and opportunities for sub- sworth: Penguin version and taking students forward in ways Clarke, G. (1997) The Photograph, Oxford: previously thought of as impractical. Because Oxford University Press it is portable the camera requires no setting Crystal, D. (1996) Discover Grammar, up or reserved space, as is the case with a London: Longman computer. This, too, contributes to the work’s Gangi, J. (1998) ‘Making Sense of Drama in success. The work can start immediately: the an Electronic Age’ in Hornbrook D, On the sessions described in this article took two Subject of Drama, London: Routledge and a half hours from start to finish, includ-

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 27 Features Technical

Iser, W. (1974) The Art of Reading: a Neelands, J. (1997) Beginning Drama theory of aesthetic response, London: 11 – 14, London: David Fulton Routledge and Kegan Paul Negroponte, N. (1996) Being Digital, London: Coronet Jonscher, C. (1999) The Evolution of Wired Life: From the Alphabet to Nicholson, H. (1996) ‘Voices on the Soul-Catcher – How Information Stage’, in: Styles M and Watson V, Technologies Change Our World, New Texts, Contexts and Readers, London: York: Wiley Cassell (2000) ‘Drama, lit- Kaku, M. (1999) Visions, Oxford: Nicholson, H. Oxford Paperbacks eracies and difference’, in: Styles M David Alan Simpson teaches English and Watson V, Where Texts and Chil- and Drama at Brighton University. He has taught in Primary and Secondary Kress, G. (1998) ‘Visual and verbal dren Meet, London: Routledge modes of representation in electron- schools and further education. As part (1999) ‘Brain Right of his current post he works regularly ically mediated communication: the Norman, J. Dra ma’, Drama, Vol 6 No 2 pp. 8–13: in schools, specialising in teaching potentials for new forms of text’ in Shakespeare at key stage 2 and in National Drama Snyder I, Page to Screen: Taking Lit- developing drama based methodolo- Simpson, D. (1999) ‘The making gies for working with children’s litera- eracy into the Electronic Era, London: ture and narrative poetry. Routledge of drama? Working on a children’s novel with a digital camera’, Drama, McKee, D. (1990) Not Now, Bernard, Vol.7, No.1, pp.29-34: National Harlow: Oliver and Boyd Drama Mirzoeff, N. (1999) An Introduction Sonntag, S. (1977) On Photography, to Visual Culture, London: Routledge Harmondsworth: Penguin

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28 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Dan Baron Cohen and Marcia Pompeo Nogueira Desenterrando o futuro

In this, the third part of a four-part Marcia: After the opening uni- methods as the project developed. article by Dan Baron Cohen and Marcia versity workshop phase, our uni- We had to face concrete situations Pompeo Noguiera about their North/South versity group was very open and we hadn’t anticipated or discussed collaboration, Desenterrando o Futuro, sensitive. Our students were pro- theoretically. It was a practical learn- they describe the community-based second foundly touched by their revealed ing process, sometimes difficult, but phase of the project. Once their theories collective humanity. Shared emo- always stimulating. Shall we analyse were put into practice and their students tions released an energy that gen- this community-based second phase began to live and work with the com- erated a commitment rarely seen of our project through an evaluation munities of Ratones and the Sem Terra inside a university. It was at this very of these key moments of difference there emerged key moments of difference open moment that we started work- that came to represent the founda- between the two practitioners. In this arti- shops in the two other communities: tion of my understanding of theatre cle they focus on these significant moments Ratones and the landless movement for development? of tension which, although uncomfortable Sem Terra (MST). Our plan was to at the time, were vital to the development research our themes – the earth Dan: Good idea. You begin and I’ll of the dialogic nature of the project. and the future – through collabora- respond. tion with these two communities to devise a new community play. Marcia: Our collaboration with MST But it was also at this point began with the visit of Irma Bru- that our differences, as co-ordina- netto1 who came to talk to our stu- tors, started to appear. The profun- dent group. She is a very special dity of the project made us face woman who did not finish primary By simply playing with all these children and bearing options that revealed our different education but possesses profound witness to their courageous parents at night, dancing backgrounds but the intensity of the knowledges, learned through her in the firelight and the threatening shadows of project only allowed us to under- practice as a MST leader and courses the landlord’s mercenaries altered our humanity irreversibly stand our different practices and organised by the movement. Our

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students heard how, in 1985, Irma of their everyday culture which com- had participated in the first Santa pletely contradicted the media rep- Catarina occupation, together with resentation of MST as terrorists and 1500 families, to launch MST in the invaders – state. Working to organise the occu- pation, activists visited the landless Dan: And humanised our prep- communities, discussing their prob- aration for a four-day group-visit lems and telling them about the to the settlement. I also proposed agrarian reform movement. In a some forum theatre improvisations second meeting, they proposed the to reveal the prejudices and the fears occupation of unproductive land, Chico and his accordion: an intimate object which within our students, and to morally without saying where and when focused, personalised and animated his stories to and politically focus their expecta- the occupation would occur: ‘keep reveal the history, collective culture and pedagogy of tions. They revealed the considerable life of MST. things organised, take lona (poly- resistance many students experi- thene sheets to construct camps), be not be staying in a hotel, but in the enced within their families when prepared, save food for some days, settlement itself, in the homes of the they learned of the proposed visit, and one day an angel, as the bible community. and the courage some students had says, will inform you when the truck to find to assert their right to ques- will arrive.’ Through Irma’s history, Dan: Yes, it was a question of syn- tion and to find out for themselves, to we started to collect stories about the chronising the cultural politics of our penetrate the censorship of the State. movement. project with its workshop pedagogy. I believe this courage was deeply After this meeting I started to It’s an entirely different experience inspired by the integrity of the first organise our first visit to a MST both for the cultural activist and the workshop phase of the project. settlement, for us the coordinators, host community to ‘live together’3 2 in Fraiburgo , five hours from our (however briefly) and we needed Marcia: And this preparation university in Florianópolis. That to intimately know the lived reality revealed another interesting key was when our first key difference of the settlement. How else could moment! We knew that Sem Terra appeared. As you didn’t speak we hope to begin to understand was very strict in relation to drugs. Portuguese, I was responsible for their remarkable lives from within? They expel people from their camps Equally as important, how else could the moment they discover any use of we actively demonstrate our soli- drugs or alcohol. We also knew that darity with the daily struggle of they live under the constant pressure the movement? To arrive each day of police harassment and surveil- from and return to the comfort and lance and need to protect their moral privilege of a hotel, however cheap, image. It was crucial that we did not would have inhibited the devel- put them under more pressure. So opment of an intimate friendship, you proposed we raise the issue of fundamental in the building of soli- drugs as part of our preparation. darity. After a detailed frank discussion about the politics of drugs, we were Marcia: It became much more than unable to reach a consensus, so a weekend meeting. Not only did you agreed to a group vote about Preparatioon for collaborative, dialogic research: we discover that MST remains highly whether cannabis could be brought forum theatre improvisations to reveal the prejudices and the fears within the university students, to morally organised after the initial occupation on the visit. We were outvoted. and politically focus their expectaions to solve the new problems of build- The majority voted to bring a small ing roads, houses and schools, and quantity of drugs with them which all communication. I contacted a to finance and organise their agricul- they would use discreetly. I could not friend and lecturer in teacher-train- tural production; by drinking, eating accept this decision which I found ing who’d organised student resi- and sharing stories together, we irresponsible and individualistic. I dencies at the Fraiburgo settlement established the basis of a trusting started to question the attitude of and, following her advice, arranged relationship, consistent with the refusing any authoritarian attitude. for us to travel in the same bus and methods we applied in the building Can you be completely open if you stay in the same cheap hotel. You of our project community. We are working inside an authoritarian proposed, however, that we should returned to our group with photos society? Could this libertarian atti-

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tude generate in people the sense of transformed through a process of freedom to be authoritarian? active self-determination. This ten- sion (so visceral in the process Dan: Two critically important ques- of decision-making among those tions. I’ll deal with the ‘key moment’ unused to power) is extremely first. We were both profoundly con- important not only in the devel- cerned by the very real political risks opment of self-discipline5 but also this decision entailed. But I argued in the development of the dialogic that those who were ‘addicted’ or authorial voice. ‘resistant’ would smoke behind the back of any imposed decision and Marcia: After all this preparation we to go forward, we needed to respect arrived on the settlement. Remem- both the democratic decision and the ber the fears, the anxieties of enter- Our intimate workshop principle of collective decision-mak- ing a new world? We had to take pedagogy had inspired ing it was based upon, in practice, if a tractor to the settlement school a new sensitivity, a our liberation pedagogy (and its cul- because our bus could not climb the ture of openness and honesty) was rocky paths! And there waiting for gesture of opening and to have any credibility. us was Chico with his accordion! vulnerability which But I also argued that we needed their barricade culture to find another appropriate moment Dan: Yes, our students’ first contact of war could not to intervene, to inspire a more politi- with the MST was through an inti- normally risk. cally astute decision. The reality of mate object 6 which focused, person- our collaboration with MST provided alised and animated his stories to the necessary context for this inter- reveal the history, collective culture with colourful fabrics; then to ask vention. We breakfasted at dawn in and pedagogy of life of the Move- them to find partners (through eye- a small town close to the settlement ment. contact) and talk for a while, before and picked up a newspaper which changing pairs. As we had planned showed MST withdrawing from a Marcia: The third key difference to work together for three days, I camp to avoid a confrontation with revealed itself in the planning of proposed we focus each day through the police and probable press mis- our workshop in Fraiburgo. My pro- the content that would spring from representation. We called a meeting posal was – as part of the interaction individual drawings of ‘a moment in on our bus where I explained the between the university students and the past which you have never for- political sensitivity and real ideo- the Fraiburgo pupils – to start with gotten’; ‘a moment in the present logical effects of anything linked a Brazilian popular dance, in a circle, which you will never forget’; and to MST; within seconds, our group ‘a moment that will happen in unanimously agreed to bring no the future, which no one will ever drugs onto the settlement. Phase 1: Building the project community: constructing forget’. You were unhappy with this the project’s foundations through intimate dialogue But this ‘tension between author- and a celebration of the youth’s cultural identity. The proposal – 4 ity and freedom’ is a permanent figueira could be read to symbolise a place where a dialectical feature of liberation proj- collective gentle acoustic culture still exists, very differ- Dan: Yes. I’d seen you use a similar ects. Rather than an authoritarian ent to the global culture which dominates their lives. workshop with trainee teachers very intervention – the protection of successfully when I first arrived in a democratic process through the Brazil. But in the context of a col- intervening authority of the co- laboration, I had several profound ordinator – the key methodological concerns. The first was that your challenge is to discover a strategic proposal had been designed without intervention which is pedagogically any consultation with the commu- consistent and coherent – one which nity; the second was that the pro- continues to search for the author in posal to research the past, the every voice for as long as possible – present and the future through the and does not contradict the principle drawings of individuals appeared of a dialogic engagement with the incompatible with the Movement’s deeply subjective reality of the par- own pedagogy and culture of collec- ticipant which can only be actively tive consciousness.

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In my personal experience in Marcia: We concluded and pre- Ireland, Africa and Palestine, a sented our proposal to the com- key reflex of oppressed peoples is munity teachers that night and the to devalue their own culture, and following morning started our work- themselves, in spite of their resis- shop by listening to their songs of tance to cultural domination. The resistance and presenting music from Fraiburgo leaders said: ‘we have our community. We then broke into knowledges of agro-ecological pro- small groups to enable the MST duction, of political resistance and youth and the university students to collective organisation in the rural chat very informally. After a while, world of Brazil. But we do not have the groups built images of the pres- cultural knowledges. We do not have Phase 2: Collective storytelling (present): is this image- ent and of the future. Though the theatre of drug-use a charismatic collective barricade cultural skills. So we will listen to workshop was short, it established to avoid revealing the more painful, intimate and even you the experts, the professionals, shameful poverty-related experiences locked within good foundations of friendship and the artists, and accept your propos- their homes? revealed interesting images of revo- als.’ I argued that we needed to lutionary hope and the fear of geno- interrupt, not reinforce these reflexes cide. But it was tragically cut short by of devaluation, cultivated by state edges and curiosities of our own stu- the arrival of the school director with institutions which value the cultures dents, to create a dialogic7 workshop news of yet another death (a tractor of the powerful and subtly nurture culture. accident) of the father of one of our development models of dependency participants. and subordination. Marcia: Once again, the reality we So it was important that we were working within forced us to Dan: This extraordinary suffering begin our workshop with an affir- adapt our plans. Our first workshop prompted a spontaneous afternoon of mation of the cultural identity of had to be cancelled because of the reflection and – what we later came to MST. We needed to say: ‘we are death of a fifty year-old man from refer to as – ‘tears of self-knowledge’. your guests: introduce us to your the settlement. During his funeral The emotional intensity of this expe- culture and your knowledge’. But it we learned that he had grown toma- rience provoked exceptional lucidity was also important to create a work- toes, and that his cancer was prob- and honesty in our students’ evalua- shop structure which demonstrated ably caused by years of contact with tion of their relationship to injustice the anti-imperialist collaboration we pesticides. We also heard that a MST and poverty within Brazil. wanted to build. I therefore pro- leader had been shot dead while leav- posed that we should work slowly in ing church, not far from Fraiburgo. A Marcia: The quality of this reflection small groups to ensure their collec- moment which touched all of us – was expressed in the performance tive knowledges and collective iden- we designed and rehearsed to pres- tity could emerge (from behind a shy Dan: Humanising and focusing our ent to the community before we left. rural and often non-verbal culture) students’ understanding of the pain- As we were unable to organise more and be interwoven with the knowl- ful struggle of our hosts. workshops, we drew together ele- ments of our research from the uni- versity workshop phase, and linked these to the student improvisations of their families’ media-based criti- cal perception and fear of MST. One The accampamento is set up scene was particularly strong, dra- immediately after an occupa- tion. People live sometimes matising an argument between a for up to six years in mother and daughter. The daughter makeshift tents, squatting explains her desire to visit an MST unproductive but fertile land settlement in Fraiburgo; the mother to pressure the government emotionally responds that were she to accelerate and implement agrarian reform. to be caught in a confrontation between the police and MST, she would choose the side of the police. That revealed another key differ- ence between us. Though I agreed

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that MST needed to know that these which reveals what we know, what prejudices exist in order to build a we fear, what we desire. We are not cultural strategy to overcome them, telling MST what it should know or I disagreed with the decision to see. But it was only possible to end our presentation with this scene stage this ‘critique’ because we had because this prejudice against MST already demonstrated our respect for could be read as the coordinators’ their culture, through our workshop point of view too and it did not rep- and our desire to learn as equals. resent my perspective. During the And this was respected and impacted performance I suddenly intervened upon them. At the end of their clos- to transform this final scene into ing mystical, when they were saying a forum theatre, allowing MST to goodbye to us, Roque, the com- respond to show their point of view munity’s leader said: ‘let’s now all as well as listening to ‘ours’. embrace’. This turned out to be the Making history, But I have to admit that your pro- first time they’d physically embraced building a new future: posal was very courageous. You were one another or outsiders, in public. in the afternoon Sem not creating a politically correct per- Our intimate workshop pedagogy Terra youth implement formance to affirm your politics or had inspired a new sensitivity, a ges- the theory of agro- to celebrate theirs. You wanted to ture of opening and vulnerability ecological production 10 show a subjective truth – in this which their barricade culture of war which they have case urban prejudices – that must be could not normally risk. studied in the morning, objectively seen and understood – to within their own be changed. Marcia: This integrity and humanity collective plot beside made it very difficult to return to the school Dan: But I think your forum theatre our daily life in the university back solution was important, especially in Florianópolis. We were all too as it was a young person who deeply touched by the experience. exchanged roles with the student This was intensified by an expe- ling babies, staring, smiling, crying, playing the daughter to demonstrate rience shortly afterwards when we extending hands to city people, visit- 11 how someone from the city might visited an accampamento . ing in solidarity, and opening their respond to the fear and prejudices of homes to us in friendship. The poor- their parents to secure the support Dan: An absolutely unforgettable est of the poor, building a new world of her family to visit with MST. And experience which I suspect marked out of polythene, chalk, bamboo, I think that the forum format effec- us all for life: arriving at dusk, hun- and a utopian faith in themselves. tively demonstrated certain possibil- dreds of barefoot children and suck- We had to entirely abandon our ities of theatre which they haven’t principle of working in intimate yet incorporated into their mystical8 groups. But simply playing with all or political culture. Phase 2: Collective storytelling (future): the Ratones these children inside their forest and My own critical understanding of image-theatre of self-destruction and indifference bearing witness to their courageous the limits of ‘politically-correct’ the- towards death spring from a lack of vision and the parents at night, dancing in the fire- atre came from my work with Man- cheapness of life. light and the threatening shadows chester Frontline in 19849 when we of the landlord’s mercenaries altered had to confront the violent realities our humanity irreversibly. of racism within the city’s working class estates. From the that point for- Marcia: Such a contrast to the ward, I began to understand that we Ratones community we next visited, need to address the difficult ques- to open out the urban dimension of tions as they are lived in order for our collaboration. Let’s retrace the any real possibility of change to origins of the Ratones workshops. exist. First, I asked you to give a slideshow The most useful political theatre about the mural you created in Wales which we could present to MST to the student group of my arts-edu- – which respects the Movement as cation class in the university; they a thinking active subject – is that were so inspired, they asked to be

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 33 Features International

part of your mural project we had Dan: I remember sensing this the within a collective becomes possible. proposed for Ratones. very first time we visited Ratones. Within this form, the power of the 12 The parallels to the post-industrial aesthetic space is mobilized not to Dan: Yes. I think the profound power estates of Manchester and the amplify the need of any individual, of the slideshow is that it reveals Rhondda were striking. The identifi- but to restructure into empathetic a pedagogy of collective transfor- cation of the Ratones youth with the motivation and to fuse personal mation that respects the individual slideshow about the Porth mural – and collective development. Almost within the creation of a collective, with its focus upon the self-destruc- invariably, the most alienated youth and actively demonstrates that it is tive boredom of young people, the becomes the most dedicated and possible to democratise the arts and erosion of popular culture and the responsible participant. renew the mutilated creativity in us cheapness of life – was immediate. all as a living resource of motivation Marcia: You coordinated the follow- and community development. Marcia: And the hunger for cultural ing workshops and used this stimulation! The introductory work- principle to create a community shop which I co-ordinated was very mural through story telling and the- tense, reflecting a moment of crisis atre of the oppressed. Even pres- inside the community, and the ten- sured by time, you were very sion of having so many visitors. Our careful in terms of the preparation usual drumming became frantic – of these workshops.

Dan: And exploded at the end of Dan: Yes, for two reasons. First, that first night when Paulinho and because every workshop is dealing another youth started to punch and with a new situation (if not a wrestle with one-another in a dance new community), and needs to be of aggressive affection in the middle thought through the identity and of your ciranda. This tension – a needs of that community if it is to pent-up energy ready to erupt at be dialogic. But secondly, because Fraiburgo assentamento: a settlement of 55 families any moment – is very familiar to we decided to launch an inclusive where each family owns and farms a piece of land, and me, and was always present in the project, both for our students and aspires to cooperative production and distribution. Ratones workshops. In such con- the Ratones youth. But I stipulated texts, the frustration and anger of a two key conditions: that our students single alienated individual like Pau- made a commitment to guarantee a Marcia: Cleide, the head of the linho searches for any focus or pre- continuity of experience for the par- Ratones school immediately realised text to transform the workshop space ticipants; and that they participate this when she attended our slide- into a personal stage to amplify in the preparation and evaluation of show in the community. Her talk a neglected need for attention and every workshop. The distribution of to our group, illustrated by Nado affirmation. the coordination among sixteen uni- and Natanael – members of the the- For this reason in 1986, I began versity students required a rapid atre group I have worked with since to work in small groups where this but intensive training in the princi- 1991 – enabled our students to learn amplification is reduced and where ples and practice of a process of col- about the changes the community the affirmation of every individual lective democratic production, and is undergoing. At the beginning of was entirely new for me. But it was my work in Ratones, it was a calm a superb experiment, for it forced me fishing community. You could see to articulate a method and it enabled families were living in economical us to create some eight or ten small difficulty. They suffered from isola- tion, which is still a problem, but inside this isolation, they maintained Painting the lyrics of the project anthem (product a kind of dignity, valuing their cul- 1) to socialise the project’s principal themes. ture and understanding who they Look at my roots were. During the last few years how- Coming out of the ground ever, I could see how the Ratones How will I live? community was changing. I want [to bear] fruit I want [to offer] shade I must tell my story

34 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 groups. How else could we have Marcia: Yes, the mural Tears of Blood worked intimately and collectively was constructed very quickly. The with eighty youth! idea of proposing the figueira (fig tree) as the central image of the mural Marcia: The small group I was helped to direct the following work- working with created an image of shops through three key questions: their community’s reality as people what are the figueira’s secrets? What using different drugs. When I asked has this figueira seen? And what will them to show the future, their first become of the figueira? Why did you image was to enlarge the amount propose the figueira and what does of drugs. But later, one of them had this reveal about the role of the coor- Phase 4: Collective production: harnessing individual an idea which they chose as their dinator within your method? pride and concentration to collective production new image: collective suicide. Other groups showed painful images of Dan: Practically, in my understanding drugs and death, but these included of artistic production, the creative pro- proposal but one which I would call friendship, or cultural celebrations. cess is developed through a tangible poetic, open, capable of provoking This group showed only drugs and object and set of questions which a more reflective, pluralistic and death. focus the experimentation and deci- collective interpretation. In this sions in search of (in this case) a respect, the figueira carried profound Dan: In the evaluation of these collective product. Ideally, this object personal, democratic and political very disturbing workshop presen- emerges through the decodification resonance. tations, I asked whether these of the stories told by participants images of drugs might be a char- (inspired by their intimate objects or Marcia: The importance of hope images), the sustained looking at the was also a part of the discussions different images and ideas generated which produced the Ratones mural. by the small groups. However, in this There was a need to truthfully repre- instance, I proposed the figueira to sent their contributions, but it was accelerate the process, prioritising the also important to find and give space demonstration and completion of a to elements of hope. The bird of collective process within our dead- hope was a link to some positive lines. comments within the Ratones’ work- But the choice of this unifying shops – even representing the many and directing object was not arbi- birds you can hear! This was used trary. The figueira stands at the centre to symbolise the possibility of trans- of the Ratones community. It was formation, however difficult the real- where we first encountered the young ity. The fishes (which represent people, strumming guitars, singing their culture), pressured by unem- Phase 3: Collective experimentation: democratising and dancing. It was their youth ployment and poverty, are directed the blackboard to identify what the figueira has seen centre. In this respect, it was an and forsees in search of a collective artistic proposal. appropriate intimate community object, a generative theme which ismatic, acceptable barricade. I sus- could inspire the relevant social ques- The figueira stands pect Ratones youth were showing tions through the collective subjectiv- at the centre of the us their collective barricade to ity and cultural reality of the youth Ratones community. avoid revealing and confronting the community. It was where we first more painful, intimate and even The proposal therefore repre- encountered the young shameful poverty-related experi- sented a directive dialogic interven- people, strumming 13 ences locked inside their homes. tion . The figueira could be read to guitars, singing and However, though our research was symbolise a place where a collective dancing. It was their inhibited by the limits of the mod- gentle acoustic culture still exists, youth centre ular system, we did provide them very different to the global culture with an experience of collective which dominates their lives. Impor- decision-making and production – tantly then, this was not an ideo- logically-closed and self-perpetuating

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 35 tion, see the second dialogue in this series, Drama, Vol 8.1, Winter 2000, National Drama. 7. Dialogic in the sense that everybody is involved in a revealing, exchanging and questioning of stories which evolves into a basis of friendship and respect and becomes the basis of collective reflection and improvisation. 8. The mystical is a unique cultural and polit- ical instrument used by MST ‘to dramatise the motivation, the strength and sensitivity, the continuity, permanence, respect, affec- tion, memory, emotion, feeling... the imma- Tears of Blood: the completed mural (product 2) painted within two days and involving some 80 young people. nent possibility of collective development’ within the struggle. (Ademar Bogo, MST national leader, March 2000). 9. See Lawrence’s Story, documented in Baron Cohen, D. (1996) ‘Decolonising the Mindful towards drugs and death, but some Roque and Paulinho could take the Body ’, Performance Research, Vol 2, London: of them, through the figueira, could risks that they took. The absence of Routledge transform themselves into birds of even a subtly coercive or monologic 10. See the first dialogue in this series, in hope. approach created a space for some- Drama, Vol 7.2, p21, National Drama, thing new or authentic to emerge. 11. The accampamento is set up immediately after an occupation. People live sometimes Dan: Ratones’ contribution to our for up to six years in makeshift tents, squat- research was almost diametrically Endnotes ting unproductive but fertile land to pressure opposite to that of MST. Fraiburgo the ministry of agrarian reform to legalise their occupation. In this phase, the commu- showed us predominantly images of 1. Irma has been a community leader from 13 years of age. She was part of the Agricultural nity educates itself to combat illiteracy and hope, so tangible they are massacred Women’s Movement and of the Comissão Pas- evolve structures of collective organization. by the government! In Ratones, the toral da Terra, a church organisation, based 12. For a definition of this ‘aesthetic space’, on liberation theology that organised the see Boal, Legislative Theatre, p72. images of self-destruction and indif- landless communities in the late 70s. In ference towards death spring from Brazil, the dictatorship established a ‘green 13. For a definition of this ‘directive nature’ of a lack of vision and the cheapness revolution’, an economic and politic alliance education, see Freire & Shor (1986) p187. that resulted in 30 million landless people of life. But both gave us an image in less than 30 years. Brazilian law dictates for the narrative of Desenterrando o that the ‘earth must accomplish its social Futuro. Ratones gave us the manic function and that unproductive land should be submitted to agrarian reform’: MST knew dance of self-destructive pleasure; that there was unproductive land in the area and MST, the risky embrace of for- which they asked the government to appro- giveness in a time of war. These priate. The answer was that there was no unproductive land. MST realised that without two images enabled us to dialecti- political pressure, nothing would change. cally visualise the future and trans- 2. Fraiburgo is a settlement of 55 families late our research into a coherent where each family owns and farms a piece of Dan Baron Cohen is a community theatre aesthetic language of performance. land. The families collectively distribute their practitioner, a cultural activist who contrib- products. uted to Manchester and Derry Frontline. Importantly too, both provided a 3. As the co-ordinator of Derry Frontline, I Since the publication of the second dialogue poetic focus – an intimate object – to lived within the community of the Bogside about Unearthing the Future, he has left enable us to distil all that our partici- where our cultural projects were centred. As the University of Glamorgan to extend pants wanted to say, to question, to an insider from the outside, I acquired an his full-time collaboration with the MST insight into the community’s experience of and urban social movements in Brazil. voice. The embrace of death focused cultural imperialism, particularly when sym- and concluded the first half of our pathetic international theatre workers such Marcia Pompeo Nogueira is a community theatre practitioner, teaches at the Drama play; the embrace of life and recon- as Augusto Boal, or artists and professors from the city university entered the commu- course of the State University of Santa Cata- ciliation with the past, the second nity with only the permission of several lead- rina, Brazil, and is currently doing PhD at half of the play. ers, with little socio-political information or Exeter University, receiving fellowship from cultural history, and with no intention to col- CAPES/Brazil. Our students may have lacked laborate with the community’s own cultural the skills to bring these embraces activists to initiate development workshops. out into the open in their small 4. See Freire, P. & Shor, I. (1986) Fear and groups, but the intimate dialogic cul- Profundity, p127, Brazil: Paz e Terra. ture of the project allowed our par- 5. See ibid. p122. ticipants to risk revealing themselves 6. To understand the use of the intimate when we reunited as large group. So object in this methodology of self-determina-

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Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 37 BOOK REVIEWS

38 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 BOOK REVIEWS not disintegrate if they cannot and assessing progression, while answer a question such as, section 3 offers a wide range ‘What method are you using to of resources and practical ideas decorate that pot?’ – but offers to demonstrate how progression a challenge to find the answer is achieved in practice. The through relevant research. There three modes of activity in drama becomes a need to know and the – creating, performing and children are impelled into role responding, provide the frame- as researchers. work into which students’ The second half of the achievements can be placed and book provides a wealth of inval- built upon. Kempe and Ashwell uable guiding (and time-sav- call for a holistic approach in ing!) material for the busy planning which attends to all teacher – notes on the Drama three modes of activity in order strategies used, on Ancient to give depth and breadth to a Greek history, mathematics and programme in drama. No Royal Road to mathematicians, and 8 sets of They also offer a well laid Geometry excellent photocopiable Progression in Secondary out model for a basic policy and materials. These include pro- Drama scheme in drama as well as Eileen Pennington & Geoff Faux posed layouts and notices for a detailed progression chart in the Museum, authentic Ancient Andy Kempe and Marigold Ashwell two formats – in table form in This is a highly original Teach- Greek names in label format, the book, and as a customisable ers Resource Book linking diagrams of a variety of geo- The very title and opening downloadable pdf or a word file Drama with History and Maths, metric shapes, and fragments of pages of Progression in Secondary from the Heinemann web site. and a very welcome addition texts e.g. ‘Plato believed that it Drama immediately set alarm This is a most welcome advance to the cross-curricular Primary was FIRE that made things vis- bells ringing. I was conscious in the field as it provides books published in recent years. ible,’ and (whence the intriguing of the need for teachers to teachers with readily accessible The enjoyment that the two title of the book) ‘Ptolemy, remain vigilant to ensure that resources that can be adapted writers had in collaborating on King of Alexandria, once said to the assessment criteria do not for use in individual teachers’ the project is evident – as is their Euclid, ‘Please give me a short define educational values, but on schools. passion for their respective dis- cut to this Geometry problem’. the contrary, are always answer- Some useful features of this ciplines. The objective is clear, Euclid replied, ‘There is no royal able to educational values. For- book are: the suggested baseline with direct links made to the road to geometry.’’ tunately, the authors also seem to identify where the students National Curriculum for KS2 – The linking of Numeracy to be aware of this tension in are at; the concrete, practical Shapes and Spaces in Mathe- and Literacy through the play education at the moment. starting points; the ways of matics; the Ancient Greeks in script work shows that not all The use of the word pro- monitoring and recording stu- History; and Drama, Listening teachers are putting their peda- gression is not accidental. It dents’ progress in drama and Speaking in English. gogy into subject boxes, and the is decisively chosen and is the (although this section could Of the 10 lessons in the first guided visualisations of shapes main focus of the book, i.e. that have been longer); the dia- half of the book, 4 are Practical in a circle remind us that crea- students get better at drama. grammatic planning, assess- Maths, and could be taken at tivity is not the province of the The emphasis is unconditionally ment and evaluation sheets for a different time – (or by a dif- Arts alone. on the art form of drama, use in teachers’ own specific ferent teacher). In the other 6 This is a stimulating and and drama as a subject in its contexts; and the suggested lessons, the children are in role satisfying book for teachers who own right is identified as the Level Descriptors from Level as Museum Designers and their want to teach a holistic curricu- only way of students progress- 1 through to consideration of task is to design a EUCLID lum. ing in drama. In the absence drama at KS4. MUSEUM in modern Alexan- of any prescribed curriculum Section 3 deserves particu- dria. The sometimes perceived Vyvian Shaw for drama, this book aims to lar attention. It is divided into difficulty of using teacher-in- assist schools and drama teach- 9 chapters, each one of which role is countered by keeping it ers in their planning of what focuses on a particular area of close to the normal role, i.e. No Royal Road to Geometry the content of the drama cur- study, such as sharpening the that of knowledge giver and the Eileen Pennington & Geoff Faux riculum might be and how stu- dramatic eyesight, working with ‘one in charge’– in this case Education Initiatives (1999) dents might be taught. the voice, exploring genre and the teacher takes on the role of ISBN: 0-9537031-0-X It is in three sections, each finding the form: ‘Progression Museum Curator. further sub-divided into chap- in drama is achieved by linking The authors recognise ters. Section 1 explores the units together so that they the difficulty of working with nature of drama as a subject address overall learning objec- children in historical roles and in the curriculum. It uses the tives in a coherent and logical deliberately avoid putting the criteria currently applied in the way’. Each chapter suggests children in role as Ancient English education system to quite helpful activities, resources Greeks. They point out that demonstrate how progression is and a detailed structure with the children in their contingent upon context. Sec- designed to help students present-day role the drama does tion 2 offers a detailed frame- progress in specific skills and work for planning, monitoring areas of knowledge. At the end

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 39 Reviews Books

of each chapter, a sample unit as I am to read back on my the conclusions which Kohlberg plan – usually for between 4 accounts of moral questioning drew from his work, that the and 6 lessons – is included to through drama, I am heartened moral perspective is impersonal show how the core area of the that the questions were worth and objective identifying a chapter might be addressed with asking and that scholarly but rational, autonomous self, sub- a particular year group. A spe- practical works such as Drama, ject to the universal laws of cial strength of these chapters is Narrative and Moral Education by abstract principal, Gilligan’s that all the necessary informa- Joe Winston are able to help perspective emerges as essen- tion and resources are provided me make much more sense of tially particularistic. For Gilli- so that teachers can pick this my drama teaching (and moral gan the moral self is complex book up, go to the relevant page questioning) experience, than and defined by histories and and immediately undertake the those early (if worthy) fum- relationships. Whereas Kohlberg suggested activity. blings. sees right principle as the initial The range of content and As in the video of the ‘Jack touchstone from which moral form explored in this volume and the Beanstalk’ lesson, the action needs to be judged, for is impressive and I can see introduction of Drama, Nar- Gilligan morality is founded in teachers getting a lot out of it. rative and Moral Education con- the caring connections between There are sections on: drama Drama, Narrative and veys a primary drama lesson, people. Based on her research and poetry; ensemble perform- Moral Education this time ‘The Pied Piper’. Gilligan concludes that moral ance; focusing on form, focusing Ever the inscrutable practitioner/ knowledge is not understood on content; creating drama Exploring Traditional Tales in researcher, Winston scrutinises through reason alone and she through questioning; structur- the Primary Years this lesson after teaching it. argues that ‘narrative story-tell- ing a unit of work around: forum Following a seemingly success- ing is the form best suited theatre, a genre, a visual stimu- Joe Winston ful celebratory Drama session to hold and convey (moral) lus, dramatic tension and irony, which appears to allow for moral knowledge’ a real event; developing a pre- ‘So do you think I should have ambiguity, Winston is self criti- Here Winston draws on text; story theatre; working with lied to me mum?’ cally analytical enough to ques- allies to Gilligan’s proposition. scripts; and many, many more. The first time I was aware of Joe tion the Pied Piper lesson as Bruner states ‘To tell a story It is acknowledged that Winston engaging with ques- less challenging and morally is inescapably to take a moral although this book refers to tions about moral learning and thought-provoking than it stance,’ and adds, ‘even if it is the formal requirements of the its relationship with the dra- would at first appear. Were the a moral stance against moral National Curriculum in Eng- matic process, was when I saw children able to pose their own stances’. Winston calls upon land, the authors hope that him in role as ‘Jack’ surrounded moral dilemmas in the partic- Goldberg to emphasise that nar- these will also serve as useful by a class of six and seven ular narrative contexts offered rative is ‘irreducibly particular checks and balances for teachers year olds who had been involved by the Pied Piper drama, or and individual’ and Bakhtin to in other educational systems; in a drama where they had were there sinister predeter- remind us that narrative, in the and I would be inclined to agree ‘met’ Jack’s mum and the Giant mined moral hierarchies at form of the novel, has ‘… the with them. and they had experienced the work here? ability to convey the fundamen- Beanstalk. The lesson was on Winston’s pedagogical and tal messiness of the world, the video and although at the time philosophical soul-searching flux of events that cannot be Carmel O’Sullivan I was motivated to watch it by takes us on a narrative journey reduced to any set of explana- an interest in the practice of through moral theory, narrative tory principles’, a far cry from Teacher in Role, I was instantly theory and eventually through the formal rationality ascribed to Progression in Secondary Drama connected to the naive ques- ethnographic accounts of Drama moral development by Kohlberg. Andy Kempe and Marigold Ashwell tions which a colleague and I sessions directly relevant to the Winston helps the reader Heinemann (2000) had posed in an article in Values study. through the work that has been ISBN: 0-435-18595-0 magazine in 1986. Then we had The early chapters of the done to distinguish the Folk asked ‘Can we work out the way book, based on a research thesis Tale from the Myth, the Myth in which drama contributes to undertaken by Winston at the from the Fairy Tale and then the moral development process University of Warwick, unpack to link the Myth with morality and does the drama we engage the work of the moral theorists, plays and drama, introduces us in really effect change?’ Back in such as Erikson, MacIntyre, to practitioner research meth- 1986 we had latched on to Kohl- Bruner, Goldberg and Bakhtin. odology, and prepares us for berg who drew on the work of However, the tension which immersion in the three highly Piaget, proposing three stages of exerts the strongest influence on accessible Drama units which moral development which were the book and its analysis of the conclude the book. serial and more or less chrono- relationship between moral edu- ‘The Brahmin, The Thief logical. According to Kohlberg, cation and narrative drama, is and the Ogre’ provides the nar- behind moral growth is the con- that which results from the the- rative fictional context for an cept of people as rule-governed oretical differences between the enquiry into Drama pedagogy and the opportunities to chal- work of Kohlberg and his one for moral education. ‘The Star lenge this rule-governed moral time collaborator, the feminist Maiden’ explores moral and cul- structure within dramatic con- moral researcher, Carol Gilligan. tural values. texts was exciting. Embarrassed Challenging as she does However, I have a special

40 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 Books Reviews

relationship with the penul- Brecht, Grotowski and Brook. written is an important com- timate chapter of the book, At the very front of the book the plementary aim. The opening ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, exam- specifications for all three new A section, ‘The Foundations of ining as it does, ethical explo- and AS in Drama and Theatre Drama and Theatre’, explores ration and the risks of Carnival Studies – EdExel, AQA and the origins and variety of forms Humour. My overriding memory WJEC – are summarised and of drama and theatre in and of that video of Joe, so hard detailed, and then the authors’ beyond Western cultural con- at work with the primary class, definition of drama is estab- texts. ‘Acting Workshops and was when he gave us his ‘Giant’ lished in a general introduction: Scene Work’ provides opportu- counting out his ‘luvverly’ money ‘…drama is basically a per- nities for practical experience as the ‘Jack-like’ children, hidden formance art concerned with as an actor in two contrasting around the ‘Giant’s castle’ sup- the conflicts of the human race styles of acting and performance pressed their excitement and within an accessible cultural and focuses on Stanislavski, individually wondered what context…drama seeks to enter- Strasberg and Brecht. ‘The Work would be the right thing to do in tain and enlighten an audience’. of the Director’ provides an that particular situation. (p.xiii) introduction to the ideas of The authors state clearly that many of the twentieth century’s Paul Bunyan they are not attempting to most important directors and support devised and perform- the movement from the page ance work in this text and to the stage. ‘Textual Analysis’ Drama, Narrative and Moral refer to other books including offers strategies for reading Education Sally Mackey’s Practical Theatre– plays for performance rather Exploring Traditional Tales in the A Post-16 Approach. ‘Watching’, than as literature, a director’s Primary Years ‘Appreciating’ and ‘Evaluating’ model for textual analysis and Joe Winston have been separated from a wide range of practical tasks. Falmer Press (1998) ‘Making’ for exam purposes. ‘Devising and Analysing Per- ISBN: 0-750-70794-1 Drama and Theatre Studies: New formance’ offers a framework for Revised and Expanded Edition critical analysis of performances Also by Joe Winston: – for use with all Drama and and a ten-stage framework cov- Drama, Literacy and Moral Theatre Studies A and AS speci- ering the devising process from Education 5-11 Drama and Theatre fications is 416 pages long and first ideas through to evaluation Joe Winston Studies at A/AS Level includes numerous test ques- of performance. Semiotics and David Fulton (2000) tions and exam-style activities performance theory are intro- ISBN: 1-85346-636-0 It is a sign of the growing and detailed bibliographies. duced as critical tools to analyse strength of Drama in schools There is an emphasis on trans- the students’ own work and and colleges in England and mitting a body of prescribed that of others. The final section Wales that two substantial knowledge and the overall feel ‘Resources’ provides additional books on AS/A Level Theatre in terms of text layout and material for practical and theo- Studies should be published approach is lively but didactic. retical work and two appendices in 2000. There is a matching guide to the give explanations of practition- The first edition of Sally course requirements of the main ers, genres, periods and styles Mackey and Simon Cooper’s new English and Welsh speci- and a brief history of European book appeared in 1995 and has fications and these run clearly and Non European theatre from been reprinted six times. The through the whole book like let- 600 BC to 1910. Reference is authors decided to undertake a ters in a stick of rock. This is made to Jonothan Neelands’ new edition rather than write a heavy tome for students: and Warwick Dobson’s Theatre a completely new text because the text layout has all the Directions, a companion reader they felt there was still much in hallmarks of the authority of to this text book, which contains the original that would be useful knowledge; it is dense and sub- short extracts from the writings in the new. Encouraged by the stantial and provides a wealth of of theatre practitioners and response from users of the first information and approaches for theorists. edition, they have taken their post-16 drama and theatre stud- The authors give a very advice in putting together the ies students to digest. broad and inclusive view of the- new edition. Use is made of Jonothan Neelands and atre, suggesting that it is a a simpler framework of three Warwick Dobson in Drama and contested concept. The fun ele- main sections: Exploring Texts Theatre Studies at AS/A Level ment of the work is stressed but – including Presenting Theatre, offer a different approach to the rigorous level of scholarship Textual Analysis, and Support AS/A Level work. Theory and beneath the friendly approach is Research; Reviewing practice are intentionally mixed very apparent and informs all Productions – including Analys- with the inference that students suggested activities. ‘We believe ing Productions and a System can best gain an understanding that the theatre is the most for Performance Analysis; and of how drama and theatre work human of all art forms – in thirdly Key Practitioners – – through praxis. Preparation studying, making and appreci- Craig, Stanislavski, Artaud, for exams, both practical and ating theatre we discover more

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 41 Reviews Books

about ourselves, who we are and choice of textbooks at this level who we are becoming’. (p.3) The I would urge teachers to read LONDON DRAMA authors make clear links with both books and to consider the work done at GCSE level and very different underlying didac- at degree level and include a tic and dialectical approaches BOOK SERVICE health warning telling students these two sets of practitioners that what they are being offered offer before deciding upon All the books reviewed in Our current price for the books are frameworks and models and which textbook to purchase for this issue of Drama (as well reviewed in this issue: that nothing is cast in stone in their students. as many other useful books No Royal Road to Geometry drama and theatre. The approach (Pennington and Faux) and layout matches the dialecti- Allan Owens for drama teachers) are avail- £11.50 cal methodology advanced in the able from the London Drama Progression in Secondary Drama book: it is open, friendly, inter- Book Service. (Kempe and Ashwell) £17.50 active and dynamic whilst being Drama and Theatre Studies academically rigorous. New Revised and Expanded Edition Tel/Fax: 020 7722 4730 Drama, Narrative and Moral With the increased pressures for use with all Drama and Theatre Education Email: [email protected] (Winston) to make every moment of AS/A Studies A & AS specifications. £16.99 Level years study count, teachers Sally Mackey and Simon Cooper Drama and Theatre Studies Stanley Thornes (2000) London Drama Book Service will be increasingly on the look- New Revised and Expanded out for materials to support stu- ISBN: 0-7487-5168-8 at Central School of Speech & Edition dents’ work. If students are Drama, Eton Avenue, London (Mackey and Cooper) £17.50 given recommended text books Drama and Theatre Studies at NW3 3HY this will fundamentally shape AS/A level Drama and Theatre Studies their understanding of drama Jonothan Neelands and Warwick at AS/A level and theatre for the future: they Dobson There is a discount of 5% on these prices (Neelands and Dobson) for London Drama members. £14.99 are the drama practitioners of Hodder & Stoughton (2000) tomorrow. Now that there is a ISBN: 0-340-75860-0

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42 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND PERFORMING ARTS PROFESSIONS PROGRAMME IN EDUCATIONAL THEATRE Tenure Track Assistant! Associate Professor SCHOOL OF EDUCATION The Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, New York University, invites applications for a tenure-track position as an Assistant! Associate Professor in Educational Theatre. Qualifications: Candidates must have an earned doctorate in Drama in Education, Theatre in Education, or a related field, and previous teaching experience. Grant writing and/or practical creative work in theatre is an asset. Responsibilities: Applicants should have a record of scholarly research , directing and/or field experience. This position involves teaching in all areas of drama in education, theatre for young audiences, and creative drama. Directing full -staged productions, curriculum writing and assessment, student advice, and supervision of student research at all levels of the Programme wi ll be required. Review of applications will begin immediately. Interested people should send a letter of application describing their qualifications, a curriculum vitae and the names of three references to: Professor Alistair Martin­ Smith, Search Committee Chair, Pless Annex, Room 23, 82 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003.

NYU is an Eq ual Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Summer 2001 Drama Magazine 43 INDEXOF ARTICLES

ORDERING BACK ISSUES DRAMA 6.1 (Nov 98) Book Reviews: On the Subject of Drama Hornbrook Profile: John Rainer Shakespeare’s Mystery Play Sohmer Back issues are available as follows: Meanings of War Cathy Want Beginning Drama 11-14 Neelands 6.1, 6.2, 7.1 and 7.2: £4 each, post free, Inquiry Learning Marie-Jeanne McNaughton DRAMA 7.2 (May 00) 8.1: £6, post free The Forgotten Art Makers David Morris Profile: Sam Walters Send appropriate amount with your Shocking Tales – a music theatre residency at the What a Dump! Using Drama in Environmental order to: Lyric Hammersmith Sally Goldsworthy Education Marie-Jeanne McNaughton Working in a School/University Partnership Desenterrando o Futuro 1 – Unearthing the Future Chris Lawrence, National Drama Publications – a mentor’s perspective Dan Baron Cohen & Marcia Pompeo Nogueira at Central School of Speech and Drama Jacqui Crooks Eton Avenue, London NW3 3HY Let’s Think of it as Experimental – Learners, Theatre Review: Teachers, Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre Tel/Fax: 020 7722 4730 Life’s a Game and then You Act Anne Turvey & Anton Franks Email: [email protected] (Volcano Theatre Co; Improbable Theatre Co; Find Me in Edinburgh David Morris The People’s Art Theatre of Sichuan) Journey to Edinburgh – from Africa, Asia , Richard Jevons Please make cheques payable to America, Europe via Haringey National Drama Book Reviews: Gill McNeil Acting in Classroom Drama Bolton Cross Gender Drama in a Girls’ School Starting with Scripts Kempe/Warner Lionel Warner & Anna Parr GCSE Coursebook Kempe The Shape of Things to Come DRAMA 6.2 (May 99) – ND’s Tenth Anniversary Conference Book Reviews: Profile: Cecily O’Neill Twentieth Century Actor Training Stepping Out – the significance of focused special Hodge(Ed) needs experience for the PGCE student Helen Whelan Assessing Drama Clark & Goode Brain Right Drama John Norman Ben Jonson and Theatre Child of the World – a personal account of Cave, Schafer and Woolland IDEA ’98 Sharon Muiruri Letter: A Concrete Language of the Stage – approaches In Correspondence with East Enders to Artaud Richard Jevons Daniel Shindler Theatre Reviews: DRAMA 8.1 (Nov 00) In Bed with Phil Collins (ARC Theatre Co) Nick Buxton The Director’s Cut – a report of the Take Off ’98 Hurricane Strikes! Using Drama in Language Festival Paul Harman Education Gayle Ann Harris Book Reviews: Sight Unseen – A movement performance on the Drama Sets You Free SHA theme of blindness Teresa Izzard Drama in Primary English Teaching Making Movies – Drama in Film at the Royal Blind Clipson-Boyles School, Edinburgh Aine Murphy Key Shakespeare Two The Historic 10th Anniversary of Ackroyd, Neelands, Supple & Trowsdale National Drama Brian Heap Forward and Up –with the DRAMA 7.1 (Nov 99) Alexander Technique Profile: Maureen Rooksby Quintin Norris Exploring ‘The Listeners’ – using drama activities Scratchin’ the Surface – with Vita Nova to investigate a narrative poem Patrice Baldwin Sharon Muiruri Process or Performance? Creating attainment Desenterrando o Futuro 2 targets for Drama Anthony Clark & Peter Short Dan Baron Cohen & Marcia Pompeo Nogueira Progress and Continuity in the teaching of Theatre Reviews: Drama Michael Fleming Off Course – a Theatre in Education Project Pauline Purcell Wing It! Theatre Company: Fallen Flight – a Drama Project in Saatli, Azerbaijan Velda Harris Acting Out – with Coventry Belgrade Theatre Judith Cheston Diving for Pearls Slavka Jovanovic Book Reviews: The Making of Drama – working on a children’s Structuring Drama Work Neelands & Goode novel with a digital camera David Simpson Literacy Alive! Ackroyd (Ed) Opinion: Drama – Policy and Practice in the Primary School Teaching Drama and the Implications of the National Rooke Curriculum David Wood Response: Theatre Review: Playing Across Gender Kathleen Warren The Frantic Fenomena – Frantic Assembly Theatre Co Sally Harris

44 Drama Magazine Summer 2001 ADVERTISING WRITING Din rama Dfor rama Drama is published twice a year and is read nationally by Drama National Drama Publications welcomes new writing and new and English teachers and advisers, theatre workers and others writers. If you have an idea for an article in mind and would like to with interests in Drama and Theatre in Education. discuss it, please ring the editor.

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Drama The Journal of National Drama Summer 2001 Volume 8 No 2 Photograph: Marty Volk

In July and August last year, Greenwich Theatre and the Deptford Albany were taken over by one hundred young people performing seven original productions from five nations with many languages and cultures. This was the Spirit International Youth Theatre Festival – a four-week celebration of the creativity, ideas and talents of young people from around the world.

See page 20 for details.

Drama The Journal of National Drama