Teaching Drama in Primary and Secondary Schools

An Integrated Approach

Michael Fleming

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134121618
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

This book will be of major interest to student teachers, teachers, lecturers and researchers. It provides a case for an integrated approach to the teaching of drama in primary and secondary schools that will help practitioners develop a theoretical rationale for their work. It also offers practical examples of lesson plans and schemes of work designed to give pupils a broad and balanced experience of drama. These are presented within a framework that argues for an integration of content and form, means and ends, and internal and external experience.Whereas the author's previous work argued for an inclusive approach that reconciled polarized views about performance drama and improvisation, this book shows how those activities can be related to each other in practice in an integrated curriculum.

CHAPTER 1

Learning in drama: content and form

Introduction

Two different drama lessons are being taught in two neighbouring schools. In the first the teacher has given the pupils a group task to work out how they might represent through dialogue and movement the landing of a spacecraft on an alien planet. Towards the end of the lesson the pupils demonstrate their ideas and each group’s performance is subject to critical comment by the teacher and class. In the second school, during an improvisation of an imaginary press conference set in the future, four pupils in role as space travellers are being questioned about the civilisation they encountered on another planet.

One way of characterising these two approaches is to say that one is placing more emphasis on form, the other on content. Whereas the first lesson is more focused on technical questions associated with representation, the second lesson is rather more concerned with the theme. The focus of the learning in each lesson also seems to be different; in the first case the emphasis is more on developing technical skills in contrast to the second lesson which on the face of it seems to have more potential for exploring ideas. The two cases are given here as examples rather than to imply any qualitative judgement about these lesson extracts taken here out of context. To make any significant judgement it would be necessary to evaluate not just a single lesson but the project as a whole. The first lesson might lay the foundation for the devising of a drama which poses significant questions about human life and nature through a fictional journey to another planet. The second lesson may continue in a way which makes a rather more elaborate use of dramatic form.

The concepts of ‘content’ and ‘form’ have been convenient ways for some writers of characterising different approaches to drama teaching. Daldry, in his forward to Hornbrook’s (1998) edited collection On The Subject of Drama, claimed that ‘too much drama work with young people privileges content over form’. In the last 30 years drama lessons have focused on social concerns like homelessness, bullying, child abuse but ‘what we see more rarely, however, is an exploration of theatre forms’ (ibid: ix). Along with an undue emphasis on content he suggests there has been a preoccupation with a ‘semi-improvised naturalism’ as the ‘dominant mode of expression’. Daldry is making a criticism here about the predominance of one style of drama which might have had some truth in the 1970s but is no longer the case; even a brief skim of any recent book would show the wide range of varied approaches which are now part of the drama teacher’s repertoire (Nicholson 2000, Bennathan 2000). His criticism, however, does raise questions about whether content or form should have priority in defining learning objectives in drama. A prior question, however, is to ask what is meant by the term ‘form’.

Uses of ‘form’

In writing about drama the concept of form is used in different ways with different types of emphasis reflecting the varied use of the term through the history of art theory, e.g. ‘balanced structure’ (Aristotle), ‘harmony leading to perception of essential being’ (Aquinas), ‘metaphysical structure of reality’ (Plato), ‘design’ (Kant) (Hanfling 1992:144). For the purpose of this discussion I propose to describe five different uses of the term in the context of drama. It is important to stress that this is not an attempt at systematic categorisation but rather a description of language in use. This is an important distinction because a presentation of categories implies a listing of discrete types which can be easily distinguished from each other. The five uses of ‘form’ (described here by using the terms ‘essential’, ‘genre’, ‘style’, ‘cultural’ and ‘individual’) overlap to a considerable degree and are often subsumed one within the other which makes the use of the concept all the more confusing.

The word ‘form’ is sometimes used to refer to some general notion of the defining characteristics of art itself, what might be termed ‘essential’ form. In some ways this is a poor choice of term because the dangers of essentialism in ascribing meaning to language is a central underlying theme of this book. However, it does highlight one important defining characteristic of art. According to Schopenhauer the art form ‘plucks the object of its contemplation from the stream of the world’s course and holds it isolated before us’ (quoted in Hanfling 1992:146). The Russian formalists saw the process of art or literature as one of ‘making strange’ or ‘defamiliarising’ the familiar (Shklovsky 1988 (first published 1965)), a similar concept emerging in the work of Brecht with more social and political purpose. Expressing a similar sentiment, if somewhat more obscurely, Sartre (1972) refers to the work of art as an ‘unreality’. What these views have in common is that art relies essentially on human intervention and intention which is what distinguishes the notion of ‘art’ from the ‘aesthetic’. We can be moved aesthetically by a sunset but we reserve the term ‘art’ for products made by an artist. This idea is captured well by Dewey (1934:48):

Suppose for the sake of illustration that a finely wrought object, one whose texture and proportions are highly pleasing in perception, has been believed to be a product of some primitive people. Then there is discovered evidence that proves it to be an accidental natural product. As an external thing, it is now precisely what it was before. Yet at once it ceases to be a work of art, and becomes a natural ‘curiosity’. It now belongs in a museum of natural history, not in a museum of art.

This insight can be related to drama by means of an example. Imagine that a drama lesson is taking place in a school classroom. In the ‘play’ a ‘normal’ lesson is taking place with the teacher and pupils assuming the roles of teacher and pupils: as yet nothing particularly out of the ordinary is happening during the fictitious lesson. If anyone walked in from outside they would be hard pressed to know that what is going on is not in fact just a lesson. It would not be unreasonable to say that there is little use of form (in one sense of the term) in the lesson. But form is involved in the broadest abstract sense because all participants are accepting the overarching convention that the situation is not real.

Peter Handke’s play Offending the Audience (Handke 1997) explicitly challenges all the normal conventions of the theatre. As one of the speakers (not characters) says:

These boards don’t signify a world. They are part of the world. These boards exist for us to stand on. The world is no different from yours. You are no longer eavesdroppers. You are the subject matter. The focus is on you. You are in the cross fire of our words…. We are not conducting an exhibition purely for the benefit of your enlightenment. We need no artifice to enlighten you. We need no tricks. We don’t have to be theatrically effective. We have no entrances. We have no exits, we don’t talk to you in asides.

Yet there is, as Kuhn (ibid:x) puts it in the Introduction, a ‘glorious paradox’ in that the piece which takes a stance against the normal conventions of theatre is being presented inside the theatre and cannot escape its one, overriding essential defining characteristic.

The term ‘genre form’ has been adapted from Eldridge (1992) to refer to general defining aspects of drama, as distinct for example from other art forms such as visual art, music or the novel. O’Toole (1992:3) uses the term ‘genre’ to describe different manifestations of drama practice (of which drama in education is one) and points out that the use of the term has become complicated by genre theory. Bolton and Heathcote (1999) refer to different types of role play genres. The intention here is to describe rather than prescribe different characteristic uses. Reflection on how drama as a genre itself is different, say from poetry or the novel, can illuminate practice. Drama operates through the use of space, time, tension, focus and symbol but other arts employ these aspects of form as well. Listening to a concert takes time as does contemplating a painting. Sculpture occupies space; a novel often relies on creating tension, and poetry uses symbol. It is more helpful to explore how drama employs these and other aspects of form in distinctive ways.

Examples of genre form in relation to drama:

• meaning is largely conveyed through dialogue

In as much as drama penetrates the internal world of its characters, it does so through external dialogue rather than through discursive description of inner states as in the novel. This is important because pupils need to acquire the skill of exposition without the luxury of using prose description for scene setting. Overuse of a technique like thought tracking or narration is contrary to drama as genre because one of its essential aspects is to convey hidden meanings and sub-texts through surface dialogue and action.

• time can be manipulated but also constrains

When a drama is in the process of being devised it is possible to intervene and freeze time (although this facility does not extend to the performance of a play as a product). It can accelerate or slow down time (as in the case of the novel) but it gives the illusion of occupying ‘real time’ (unlike the novel). A play takes a defined amount of time (2 to 3 hours) irrespective of the time span covered in the fictional context.

• it operates in the immediate present

The fact that drama operates in the immediate present (not in a recorded past as with film) is one of its distinctive aspects. It is important for teachers to recognise that live drama is different from film and television drama. It cannot be subject to editing in the same way. It relies in performance on the presence of a live audience to whom the actors react and relate. It is therefore a more communal experience than film or television.

• it relies on focus

Visual art also relies on focus. The importance of focus in drama, however, is that it selects and foregrounds particular elements for attention while giving the illusion of replicating real life. The fact that in drama participants can create the appearance of reality (because they are real people, occupying real space and time) knowing in fact that their actions are free from real consequences is one source of its educational power. So much has been written against the use of naturalism in drama teaching that it is tending to appear less and less in the drama classroom (in favour of such techniques as tableaux, stylised repetition, thought tracking, etc.). However, Styan (1981:1) has rightly pointed out that what counts as ‘naturalistic’ changes over time. He quotes Edward Craig who observed in On the Art of the Theatre that each development in acting seemed more ‘natural’ than what came before.

In time Antoine made Irving look artificial, and in turn Antoine’s acting ‘became mere artifice by the side of the acting of Stanislavski’. What then, asked Craig, did it mean to be ‘natural’? He answered, ‘I find them one and all to be mere examples of a new artificiality – the artificiality of naturalism.

Styan suggests the same thing is true of writing plays. The depiction of a breakfast scene or of a family watching television if it is to count as ‘good’ drama, is unlikely to be entirely naturalistic because it is unlikely to reflect reality in a simple way (see Chapter 9).

These descriptions of form have to be seen as a characteristic rather than necessary aspects of the artistic medium in question. For example a novel may be written purely in dialogue, just as a monologue or soliloquy in drama appears to depart from the more normal dialogic form. Shakespeare used soliloquy to convey inner thoughts while Greek drama used the chorus as commentary on the action. These examples do not deny the value of identifying aspects of genre form but indicate exceptions to the rule will be found. Drama evolves and changes over time: it is always trying to ‘find ways of breaking out of the temporal and spatial restrictions of its medium’. (Styan 1981:1).

The term ‘form’ is also sometimes used to describe what might be termed different dramatic ‘styles’ (e.g. realism, symbolism, expressionism, epic theatre), also sometimes called ‘genres’. ‘Style’ has been described by Styan (1981:xii) as ‘the way of seeing of writer, player or spectator’ and the ‘sine qua non of dramatic communication’. Although different styles tend to be associated with different playwrights they are often interwoven:

Ibsen is a realist and a symbolist, Strindberg embraces both naturalism and expressionism, in writing a symbolist drama Pirondello becomes a progenitor of the absurd …

(ibid:xii)

Style may influence the way we describe genre (providing further evidence of the complexity of the use of the terms). Among the characteristics which Styan lists as being associated with the early expressionist play he includes the following: ‘the plot and structure tended to be disjointed … instead of the dramatic conflict of the well-made play, the emphasis was on a sequence of dramatic statements … the dialogue, unlike conversation was poetical, febrile, rhapsodic …’ These characteristics might provide a different description of genre form than if we had a more conventional ‘naturalistic’ play in mind. Such considerations show how fluid these concepts are.

The term ‘form’ is also used to refer to different approaches across ‘cultures’ as in theatre forms (kabuki, noh). Brachmachari in Hornbrook (1998) points out possibilities of investigating the particularities of peoples, histories and artistic practices through drama. She argues that giving pupils experience of theatre from different countries (particularly non-western traditions) is likely to promote values of tolerance, sensitivity and understanding as well as widening pupils’ predominant conception of drama as pure naturalism. This is not to advocate a study of other forms of theatre simply as that of an exotic ‘other’ but ‘as a means of exploring the exchanges which have, and are, taking place between peoples of different cultures and histories’.

The term ‘individual’ has been used to refer to those aspects of form which distinguish one piece of work from another (specific use of movement, lighting, sound, symbol). Eldridge (1992:159) describes individual form as follows:

When … we are struck by the distinctiveness of a particular work and by how any alteration in it would ruin its particular sense and effect, then we are tempted to say that an artistic form is just what is proper to any particular work.

In an educational context individual form can also refer to specific conventions within a drama (freeze frame, questioning in role).

To summarise then, the term ‘form’ is used in the context of drama in varied ways. These uses are not definitive categories for they overlap and relate in complex ways. ‘Focus’ for example can be seen as an example of essential form (because all art selects or brackets off from the current of real life), of genre form (because this selection and bracketing happens in a particular way) and individual form (the aesthetic impact of a particular drama often relies on a specific type of focus). The descriptions are not definitive. For example one might want to add that the concept has been used in the past in a prescriptive sense as when Aristotle elucidated the concept of tragedy in terms of specific formal characteristics or in a more abstract sense as when Langer (1953) defined form as ‘an articulation’. Form is often used in writing about drama teaching to refer to structure (which will be addressed in Chapter 2). The five uses identified here, however, will serve the purpose of exploring the concept of form in relation to teaching and learning of drama.

When Daldry argues that school drama has not emphasised form he may be correct only in the sense that schools have not used theatre forms from different cultures or a range of styles. It might well be argued that a drama curriculum which provides superficial knowledge of a range of different cultural and style forms may run the risk of inhibiting rather than promoting deep understanding of genre form.

Much of the educational value of drama derives from its ‘essential’ form, from the way it functions as an art form in the broadest sense. Its value lies not so much in replicating real life (an assumption which many pupils through the influence of television bring to their work) but in exploring experience in ways which cannot happen in real life. This insight is important when considering the type of drama which is appropriate for young children. In the early years of primary school the work more resembles children’s dramatic playing. It would be a mistake to introduce types of individual form prematurely in order for the work to qualify in some sense as art. The source of learning is likely to be found more in the ‘essential’ form.

Technical knowledge about drama is often conceived in terms of individual form but this sometimes results in a rather low level of objective. It is easy to see why this is so from the analysis given here. Individual form is embedded in a particular drama and therefore is difficult to abstract as a skill divorced from context. Many attempts to describe skills in drama in relation to conventions seem rather lame precisely for that reason. One of the assumptions of drama in education practice was that with a skilful teacher outstanding drama could be produced with a group, irrespective of their skill or experience. This is one extreme position. But the opposite view is to make the mistake of elevating practices which come fairly naturally to pupils to the status of a skill to be specifically taught. Harland et al. (2000) describe ‘improvisation’ as a technical skill but most pupils who are old enough to hold a conversation find improvisation easy provided they have something to say. Most groups can be taught how to create a tableau within minutes; ability in drama resides not in practising the abstracted skill of tableau but in creating a tableau which embodies significant meaning. It is the relation of individual form to content which is important.

Unity of content and form

One of the problems when discussing the relative claims of content and form is that they are not always easy to distinguish. The unity of content and form or ‘matter’ and ‘substance’ has been a long held tenet in thinking about art. It derives partly from the idea that meaning in art is unique and not able to be paraphrased or translated: ‘It is impossible for a work of art to say or to show what it does in any other form without significant loss of content’ (Graham 1997:50). Another associated idea is that ‘content’ and ‘form’ cannot be separated from each other: ‘the only true works of art are those whose content and form prove to be completely identical’ (Hegel quoted in Szondi 1987:4). This in turn leads to the notion that attempts to explain the meaning of a work of art are bound to be unsuccessful. ‘The art created is the meaning; it does not have to be extricated to serve propositional knowledge’ (Abbs 1992:5). Kaelin (1989:12) expresses the idea as follows:

Content and form … are not antithetical term...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Learning in drama: content and form
• 2. Planning lessons: structure and experience
• 3. Planning schemes of work: means and ends
• 4. Assessing drama: internal and external experiences
• 5. Progression in drama: making and responding
• 6. Working with script: feeling and form
• 7. Performing drama: process and product
• 8. Drama and language: meaning and logic
• 9. Drama and aesthetics: expression and representation
• 10. Conclusion
• References
• Index