With some practical questions to consider after each component

Engaging with problems: Dorothy Heathcote once defined drama as “a man in a mess”. For a play to be interesting there needs to be some sort of problem that the people presented in the fiction are dealing with. It is useful to have a problem that is based on a human contradiction – there is no simple solution, or clear ‘good’ and ‘bad’ roles – but contradictions that offer themselves for examination. Through the play the audience – or in our case the participants – can engage safely with the problem as it is happening in the fictional world and not in reality. The problem of course is present at two levels. There is a meta-layer, an underlying central problem and this is manifested in the plot, in the situations in different ways. 

Choosing the appropriate problem and situation for a specific group is one of the challenging tasks of the teacher. It is important to find the ‘angle of connection’ for the participants, which aspect of a situation or a story would be engaging for a specific group? 

Creating the ‘other’: Drama in Education relies on offering some form of the other to the students – this can be another person, or situation, or even an object – something that the students can examine and explore through dramatic forms. The central problem of the drama needs to be expressed in this ‘other’ – it needs to be made tangible through a specific situation which could contain objects, people or images expressing the problem. 

What is the situation, the tangible form that expresses the contradictions, the human aspects of a certain story that we want to engage with? What ‘other’ can we offer to the students that they will be interested in engaging with? 

‘Making’ fictional situations: It is an important component of drama in education that the participants and the facilitator are making the fictional situation or story together. It is the responsibility of the facilitator to offer the structure and some defining elements of the collective work, but it is also her/his responsibility to offer space for the participants to take ownership of the story and bring in the aspects, questions that are important for them. It is useful to structure the lesson so participants can be makers of the story in different forms: sometimes discussing what should happen directly, but also through creating/playing scenes, or taking part in improvisations where they build the story further from within the dramatic form. 

What is it useful to offer as ‘givens’ in the story and what should be left free for the participants to decide? When is it useful to progress with the story and when is it useful to explore what is behind it? 

Protecting the students into role: Participants can engage with fictional situations through taking on roles within the story. This can enhance the experiential nature of drama; participants can step into other people’s shoes and understand their perspective and position better. But students need to be protected into roles so that the experience does not become superficial and they can really engage with another person’s situation. 

The facilitator needs to ask what steps will help participants to engage with a role. How can the perspective of a certain role be brought in step by step so that participants are not pushed into a role that they cannot deal with? 

Situations in context: The basic component of all drama is situation. In Drama in Education we explore human situations and try to understand why people do what they do. A situation always happens in a space, happens between people, and contains some problem that can be manifest in many different ways. There is also always a wider socio-political and cultural context in which situations happen, and this will also impact on how the different roles will react to what happens. 

Although we all know that the situation of the drama is created/fictional (even if it is based on a real situation) all of us have to suspend disbelief and think about it ‘as if’ it was real. 

What are the important elements of a situation that the facilitator has to offer, and which are the ones that the participants can build/create to make it their own? How can the cultural, socio-political elements of the context be brought into the situation? 

Slowing down time – doing and making meaning: In order to explore human situations drama aims to slow down time, so participants can make meaning of what is happening, how people are behaving, how actions are impacting on different actors of a situation. Drama is based on the same sign system as real life, but the signing is highly selective so the audience can read it. Through drama participants become conscious of reading and also creating sign for others to read. 

The facilitator needs to think about what forms would allow participants to make meaning and think about the significance of what is happening.