Download DISCLOSURES IN APPLIED DRAMA

DISCLOSURES IN APPLIED DRAMA
By Ana María Rozzi de Bergel
Applied Drama – A Definition
Theatre has always depicted psychological, social, political, philosophical and even
religious problems. It is within its very nature to explore human and social issues and
get audiences involved both with the aesthetic aspect of performances and with their
ideological content. Even those who believe in art for art’s sake and who reject the idea
that theatre should have educational messages are stating their ideology through their
work. At moments of revolution or evolution in world history, theatre has been an
important agent of social and political change. However, this is not enough to turn
theatre into an “applied” discipline.
According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary/Thesaurus (1996), drama is “a
composition in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story
usually involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue and typically
designed for theatrical performance”.
A definition of Applied Drama must necessarily consider the different ways and means
in which theatre and drama are used for educational purposes. Our students may draw
valuable teachings from a visit to the theatre, but attending a performance of a theatre
play with our learners is not Applied Drama more than a visit to the Rural Exhibition
would be Applied Agriculture.
The staging of a school play, which might be called Educational Theatre, and the
training learners receive at Drama lessons have a high educational value, but if we
called this Applied Drama, we ought to attach the word “Applied” to all the other
subjects in the curriculum, as they all have an educational value beyond their
instructional purpose. Schools do not teach Mathematics only because people need to
know how to add and subtract, but also because of the enormous contribution of the
subject to the development of a person’s thinking and reasoning abilities. Yet, this does
not make the discipline Applied Mathematics.
The use of theatre principles and methods to design classroom activities, to train
teachers to become better communicators or as a theoretical background to teaching
appears as a clearer manifestation of Applied Drama , mostly because in this type of
application there is no theatre performance of a finished work before an audience and
drama is used for purposes other than staging a theatre show or training learners in
drama arts, but if we were to take this application as the only one, we would be severely
restricting the scope of Applied Drama.
The identified field seems to consist of a large number of different dramatic-aesthetic
practices, concerned with making an impact on specific socio-cultural contexts. These
practices are drawn from theatre but acquire an identity as autonomous, professional
practices not ruled by the same aesthetic principles. In theatre, aesthetic approaches are
originated by artists creating a way to make an artistic impact on the social context; in
Applied Drama, aesthetic approaches are enslaved to the needs of the context and have
lost all their autonomy. Practitioners are not seeking to make an artistic impact but to
produce a desired, describable effect, mostly, for changing or developing their target
context.
The field of Applied Drama appears, then, as defined by its purpose, its input cycle, its
manner of evaluation and its addressees rather than by its methods. The purpose should
always be to deliberately change or develop a social context: psychodrama (Moreno,
1969) is used in psychotherapy, the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1976) sought to
raise awareness of social issues among marginal communities, role-play is used to
improve learners’ communication in a foreign language (Di Pietro, 1989), among other
applications. The purpose is never theatre-based but community-based. Applied Drama
is thus subordinated to other fields, to which it makes a contribution by undergoing an
adaptation process. In this adaptation, it loses part of its independence as an art form.
This definition of purpose has a direct bearing on evaluation, which can only be carried
out by measuring the extent to which the context-related goals have been achieved, so it
is vital to find clear indicators of these goals, indicators that may be ostensible and
measurable. The goal of “improving motivation” may be measured through observable
indicators such as number of learners who volunteer participation in class, instances in
which learners contribute materials or ideas, or any other type of behaviour the teacher
may wish to originate or modify. Theatre professionals not involved with Applied
Drama measure the impact of their performances by the audience’s reactions, but they
are mostly concerned with the artistic quality and success of their own work than with
the changes brought about in the spectators’ behaviour. In fact, these changes are
usually impossible for performers to assess or even know, assuming they exist at all. In
theatre, outcomes are good or bad according to aesthetic standards; in applied drama,
they are either good or bad according to values external to the aesthetic process
(Rasmussen, 2000).
The input cycle for Applied Drama starts with an analysis of the social context it seeks
to act upon and the results of this exploration conditions not only the subject-matter but
also the methods and style to be used. The practitioners’ views on theatre or their
aesthetic styles make an important contribution to Applied Drama, but they should,
again, lose their autonomy and become subordinated to the needs of the context. If these
needs are met, artistic flaws or concessions made to style or aesthetics are fully justified.
The context shapes the practice and the practice affects the context, so there should be
an empathic relationship between them (Rasmussen, ib.id.).
The addressees of Applied Drama are the members of the well-defined social context
previously studied by the practitioners and that is to be modified or developed: a class
of learners of a foreign language, in the case in hand. The participation of professional
artists cannot be ruled out, but the active involvement of the addressees in the
construction of the Applied Drama activities should be the key element in the
application. Therefore, a particular instance of Applied Drama is hardly ever
transferable to various contexts and is exhausted once it has attained its aims.
When defined from the point of view of its purpose, evaluation, input cycle and
addressees, Applied Drama becomes a comprehensive field which can accommodate
visits to the theatre, the staging of school plays, drama teaching or the use of dramabased methods in the foreign language classroom. We cease to focus on the form of the
implementation to concentrate more on its ruling principles.
This change of focus is extremely relevant if we are to explore the theoretical
framework of Applied Drama, a necessary undertaking in the study of any academic
discipline. It is regrettable that foreign language teaching has been discussing “drama
techniques” for years, not paying enough attention to the fact that techniques are parts
of methods and methods derive from theoretical principles. Applied Drama is a field
where authors of materials for language teaching have found it viable to supply menus
of “techniques” devoid of theoretical content. This has come to happen because Applied
Drama is not a part of teacher education and teachers lack knowledge and insight to
analyse the materials they are fed. At the same time, it is precisely the reduction of
Applied Drama to a set of techniques what has made it lose its academic status and
banned it from the teacher education curriculum. Until this vicious circle is broken, the
discipline will not make a significant contribution to foreign language learning and
teaching.
Evaluation
Target
context
Modified target context
shows
determines
Addressees
Purpose
Evaluation
change
Addressees
involving
APPLIED
DRAMA
PRACTICES
shape
determines
New characteristics
of addressees, new
purpose and manner
of evaluation for
more Applied Drama
practices resulting in
further modifications
of the target context.
In the late XX century, the focus of foreign language teaching shifted from methods and
procedures to learning and communication. Studies in learning styles and strategies, the
notional-functional description of language and the awareness of the importance of
context and communicative activities created the conditions for learner-centred foreign
language teaching.
The present-day foreign language syllabus includes models of social interaction, the
acquisition of knowledge of different topics, the development of study skills and
opportunities for metacognition. Materials are mostly task and topic-based, with project
work and cross-curricular associations, and great attention is paid to cultural issues.
(Nunan, 1998)
The teacher is regarded as a facilitator, a consultant and a leader rather than an
instructor or lecturer. The “jug and mug” metaphor, which purported that the student
was an empty mug that the tutor had to fill with knowledge, has been set aside in favour
of views of learning which consider the learner’s previous experience as the foundation
for the acquisition of more knowledge. It is widely accepted that this acquisition will
take place within the context of social interaction and that the learner is not just a brain,
but a person whose feelings, principles, convictions and emotions also have to be
addressed for learning to be successful. We may say that teaching EFL has been
inserted into the broader concept of educating in a foreign language, and that learners
are considered whole persons and developed as such.
The teachers who carry out this foreign language education need, besides their
professional skills as language tutors, the capability to
 help in the development of their learners as whole persons, in physical, intellectual,
ethical, artistic and social aspects.
 provide an education in practical skills for work or study purposes.
 favour creativity.
 help learners in their adaptation to the social medium past and present by providing
a link between the school and the socio-cultural environment, its culture, history and
traditions.
In this concept of teaching and learning, traditional teacher education, with an emphasis
on language and methodology, appears insufficient. Applied Drama could well be the
missing link, the discipline which would help in the exploration of cultural roots and
offer the framework to construct meanings and model behaviour. It would also help
teachers develop creativity and a deep understanding of the dramatic nature of human
interaction.
The relevance of Applied Drama for TEFL may be accounted for by exploring the
principles of constructivism (Vygotsky, 1988), the theory of the mind (Humphrey,
1986)and the narration theory(Bruner, 1991). Constructivism explores the construction
of new knowledge on the basis of previous knowledge with the aid of social interaction,
which plays a central role in education. Vygotsky also states the need to provide
numerous opportunities for learners to play in order to expand their conceptual and
creative capabilities and to model cultural patterns and behaviour. He asserts that the
imitation of cultural conventions generates opportunities for intellectual development,
pointing out that children first reproduce in their games very concrete situations but
later, through their imagination and the apprehension of the non-written rules for social
interaction, acquire full command of abstract thinking. Language plays a central role in
this development and school should provide plenty of opportunities for learners to
access what he terms the third stage of language, internal language, the motor of the
higher mental processes.
Applied Drama has a strong ludic component, evidenced in activities such as role-play,
drama games, improvisation and the necessary play at social interaction required by
these activities. Through Applied Drama, learners test their hypotheses about social life
and examine their behaviour within a safe environment, as they can feel they are not
themselves but the characters they impersonate. They are also working within the
permissive framework of play and creation, where everything is possible as long as it is
socially accepted.
An added advantage is that learners can give up their roles and regain their identity to
discuss their performance as spectators, thus engaging in self-evaluation under the
protective shield of role switch. The same person, but in different roles, feels more like
an outsider to his/her own performance and can evaluate it more objectively.
The possibility to shift from the performer’s to the spectator’s or critic’s role helps in
the development of several abilities:
The ability to transfer knowledge from one context to another, as it is possible to reflect
upon similar circumstances or to draw general conclusions from the examination of
concrete cases.
The understanding of cultural differences, as playing a role entails playing it within the
social environment where it occurs. According to the tenets of constructivism, cultural
tools are not acquired by mere examination but it is necessary to experiment with them
in real social interaction. This concept is particularly relevant for the acquisition of a
foreign language with no real cultural relevance for the learner. Drama provides an
adequate framework for this process.
The capability for playing an active part in cooperative learning.. Constructivism
considers cooperation and social interaction as the vehicles for learning. Drama fosters
team spirit and the integration of different talents and abilities.
The use of language as a fundamental tool for the process of social integration, learning
and the apprehension of culture.
Bruner’s narrativiy theory and Humphrey’s theory of the mind provide an even more
solid conceptual background to the use of Applied Drama for TEFL. Bruner (Ib.id)
places human psychology in interaction with the social environment, with culture as a
component of the mind. Man can only produce, interpret and construct meanings within
his culture, and it is also this culture which restricts his interpretation of meanings to
those that are socially coherent. People’s success at interacting by making a series of
moves to achieve their aims depends largely on their ability to predict and interpret the
interlocutors’ beliefs, expectations, ideas and reactions, and not knowing their cultural
background will greatly hinder this process. Drama is always grounded in the culture
and traditions of social groups and relying heavily on the individual’s capability for
producing strategic interaction leading to the achievement of personal goals.
In Bruner’s narration theory, narration provides a nexus between the social environment
and the personal world of intentions, wishes and hopes. It provides a useful metaphor to
explain human psychology, with man as an agent and receptor of culture. In this
context, people create their version of the world and their place in it through narration,
where there has to be an actor, an objective, a scenario and a means of communication.
These are necessary components of human psychology and we are all generators of
imaginary worlds, like the authors of novels, plays, short stories, biographies or
chronicles.
We are born into a world which has a past, events in progress and other people who
came here before us and already have a system of social rules, cultural conventions, a
legal system and, among other things, a language. To find a place in this environment,
man has to link his individuality to the canonical reality. This is done through
intentional, objective-oriented behaviour. He is like a stand-in replacing a sick actor in a
play with an experienced cast. Children learn the stories of their community, its laws,
history, myths and conventions while at the same time building a personal history and
carving a niche for themselves within their society, using their games to rehearse,
correct and analyse the behaviours and conflicts of the adult world.
The theory of the mind (Humphrey, ib.id) is relevant to the theoretical background for
Applied Drama in that it describes the human beings’ capability, as born psychologists,
to get into other people’s minds to predict their emotions and reactions and thus play the
“social chess” by “reading” the minds of others in order to carry out social interaction.
This ability is described as biological and innate, a true inner eye (Rivière A. & Núñez,
M.,1996).
To read other people’s minds, humans have an Intentions Detector, according to Baron
Cohen (1995), which allows the identification of an agent of social interaction, another
person, to whom intentions, goals or wishes are immediately attributed. It contains the
Eye Contact Detector, which follows the stare and tries to decode it, the Shared
Attention Mechanism, which detects the relationships between agents and objects, and
other devices to interpret beliefs, thoughts, deceit and intentions.
When we talk about agents we are drawing a distinction between behaviour and actions.
Agents perform intentional, purposeful actions which always have a concrete objective.
This is a basic principle of acting (Stanislavski, 1959) Actors cannot perform fear or
love. They can only perform fear or love of something and their performance is drama
only if it triggers more action and is coherent with the objective of the scene. Behaviour,
on the other hand, is mechanical or functional, like brushing one’s teeth or doing pushups.
Creations of imaginary, fantastic worlds occur when interaction and scenarios depart
from socially accepted conventions. We will never question why the doorman says
“Have a good day” to us in the morning, but if this happens in the evening we will start
wondering why he has done this. Human beings can also purposefully depart from
accepted courses of interaction to generate fantasy, humour, irony or simply to achieve
their goals in the intricate network of social transactions, particularly in what concerns
ulterior motifs or hidden intentions. It is highly necessary to have a good command of
“tactic deceit” to move within this domain, the capability to lie creatively, not to cheat
or harm other people but to create imaginary worlds and use our fantasy and creativity.
The impossibility to handle tactic deceit or creative lying is a serious limitation in
interpersonal relationships because it restricts interaction to the concrete, literal level.
This is almost never sufficient and does not allow the person to enjoy or even interpret
humour, figurative meanings and symbols or to make abstract generalisations from
concrete cases.
What the narration metaphor and the theory of the mind have in common is their
conception of man as a part of a culture and as a creator of his own reality on the basis
of the others’ conception of their realities and his interaction with the social
environment. There is no narration without a theory of the mind, as the stories we create
are always aimed at social integration and therefore heavily influenced by the other
human beings in our community. We create the stories – even our personal histories –
that best match our objectives within our environment, be they the desire to be accepted,
to conform or to challenge or provoke.
Both theories have great relevance for classroom practice. Teaching is largely based on
reading the learners’ minds to find better ways of approaching them. The problem might
be the match between the life stories that the teacher has created for himself and how he
uses his role to condition the learners’ behaviour so that they will fit into them.
Humphrey (Ib.id), in his research with chimpanzees, notes that if chimpanzees had a
mind, it would anyway be a chimpanzee mind. The assertion, stated a little
metaphorically, states our impossibility to attribute to others those feelings, intentions
and wishes we do not experience ourselves. What happens, then, if a teacher has a
chimpanzee mind? It might be a requisite for successful teaching to take it for granted
that our learners have a receptive, creative and intelligent mind. If the teacher believes
this, he will try to find these traits in the learners and tune in to them, but this depends
on his conception of his own mind and the world around him. A chimpanzee teacher
will only be prepared to find chimpanzee minds.
In this highly conditioning relationship, we may distinguish two extremes: the stances
“from without”, which conceive of the learner as somebody whom the teacher has to
inform and educate, or the stances “from within”, where teachers concentrate on what
learners can do, what he thinks they are doing and the aims that propel the learning
process. As all extreme positions, these two stances on teaching and learning are not
sustainable alone and should rather supplement each other. We cannot deny the
teacher’s role to put the learners in contact with pre-established knowledge, with proven
skills and validated theories, but he can do this and also make room for
experimentation, discovery, deduction and independent, self-monitored learning.
Task-based learning seems to provide a suitable framework for a balance of guidance
and autonomy. The concept of products , put forth by Meyerson (1948) and related to
task-based learning in Nunan’s conception (1998) goes hand in hand with learning by
doing or producing work that is then shared with the community, in an enriching
exchange of experiences. In task-based learning, we not only establish what learners are
going to learn but also what roles they are going to play while they carry out their tasks
and what the teacher’s role will be (Wright, 1987). Interpersonal relationships are
planned in such a way that they will lead to the achievement of learning goals.
Part of learner autonomy is self-evaluation and the capability to plan future learning on
the basis of the results obtained. However, receiving rewards and praise from teachers
or experts fosters self-esteem through social acceptance. A school which relied
exclusively on self-evaluation might be depriving its learners of a dose of expert and
social support that might lead to discouragement and lack of motivation.
In the process of self-evaluation, students look for references to assess their relative
position in the group. They make comparisons and decide they are “better” or “worse”
than their peers. The teacher must intervene as a guide and to advise the class about
parameters and criteria for self-assessment. As performers in a play, students need the
audience’s applause but also the critic’s more enlightened opinion. Their final selfevaluation, however, will inevitably be in agreement with their personal opinion of
themselves and the life-stories each of them is creating.
Summing up, the communicative approach (Brumfit & Johnson, 1978), the natural
approach, (Krashen, ibid), task-based learning (Ellis, ibid), the total physical response
method (Asher, 1986) and cooperative learning (Curran, 1986), all belonging to the late
XX century, contain classroom activities which model social situations and train
learners in “mind-reading” to achieve concrete goals through interaction. These
activities require the identification of subtleties, feelings, mood, nuances of meaning,
cultural patterns and other aspects of messages, both linguistic and non-linguistic.
(Howatt, 1994) They also call for a favourable classroom environment for their
development and the establishment of teacher-learner rapport.
These characteristics point out the relevance of drama training in teacher education, to
enable teachers to create strategic scenarios in which participants interact within a
common conflict and hidden agendas, each person trying to achieve an overt and a
covert goal (Di Pietro,Ib.id.) This is the essence of dramatic action. It offers the
possibility to reproduce behaviour found in the environment, in a kind of rehearsal of
social life. To develop and resolve the dramatic conflict, it is essential to read the
other’s mind, to acquire an inner eye and to adjust one’s strategies to these perceptions.
According to Rivière y Núñez (Ib.id.) , this capability for strategic interaction enables
human beings to:
 succeed in their strategic and purposeful interaction, since they will be able to
predict reactions, detect mood, intentions, etc. and better plan their responses
 adapt to the social medium, and share ever deeper and enriching experiences.
 learn from other people’s experiences and also enrich them.
 understand others better and their own behaviour, through an analysis of the other
people’s reactions to it.
 detect and enjoy metaphor. This will lead to the enjoyment of art and literature,
which is a mentalist activity: the spectator establishes a dialogue with the artist,
capturing the latter’s emotions and intentions.
 gain acceptance from the social medium, by learning and respecting codes of
behaviour, social convention and customs.
 understand, justify, forgive, admire and generally acknowledge the others and
behave ethically towards them.
Learners who have not internalised these capabilities will be limited in their
communications even if they have learnt vocabulary and syntax in an academic context.
The big challenge is for teachers to create conditions for language to develop and grow
in the learners’ minds together with their communicative competence.
Bibliographical references
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Teaching, pp.87-98. Cambridge,UK:Cambridge University Press.
Baron Cohen, S. (1995) Mindblindness. An essay on autism and theory of mind.
Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press.
Boal, A. (1976) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto Press.
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Teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Bruner, J. (1991). La educación, puerta de la cultura. Madrid: Visor
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Teaching, pp.113-127. Cambridge,UK:Cambridge University Press.
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