Download analysing the tension at the heart of Theatre in Education

Journal of Moral Education
Vol. 34, No. 3, September 2005, pp. 309–323
Between the aesthetic and the ethical:
analysing the tension at the heart of
Theatre in Education
Joe Winston*
University of Warwick, UK
Theatre in Education is a recognized form for exploring ethical issues in schools. Although the
relationship between functional, didactic objectives and theatre artistry is recognized as complex
and difficult, there has been little analytical work to elucidate its nature. This article takes the form
of a case study intended to illuminate this tension by analysing a play that toured recently in
secondary schools in Birmingham, UK. It concentrates on two aspects of this particular
performance: its transgressive elements – the way in which it played with the boundaries of
institutionalised values – and the features of its narrative that tended, in Eco’s term, towards an
aesthetic of openness. Rather than attempting to offer a clear-cut theory, this article examines how
these essentially theatrical elements of the performance meshed with the play’s ethical agenda. I
conclude that, despite the risks of transgressive play, it was the playful and open aspects of the
enacted narrative that energized the students’ moral engagement and subsequent reflection, and
suggest that this has implications for moral pedagogy beyond the field of theatre.
Introduction
Theatre in Education (TiE) is an established and popular dramatic form in both UK
and US secondary schools, used for exploring ethical issues relating to moral and
health education.1 Although local authority funding for theatre in education was
drastically reduced in the UK in the 1980s, since then finance has become available
from a variety of local and national agencies and charities, such as the Children’s
Fund and the Wellcome Trust. This funding is dependent upon the programmes
addressing specified areas of social and moral concern, such as drug and alcohol
abuse, peer group pressure and adolescent sex and relationships. It is the nature of
such programmes, however subtly constructed they might be, to have a didactic
agenda, approaching the issues from a broadly agreed moral position, promoting
conventional ethical behaviour consistent with the dominant liberal discourse of
*Institute of Education, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Email: j.a.winston@
warwick.ac.uk
ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/05/030309-15
# 2005 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/03057240500206147
310 J. Winston
contemporary Western values. Yet it has long been argued that didactic theatre
speaks only to the already converted. In the words of Beckerman, such theatre ‘does
not change people’s minds. Rather, it affirms the opinion of believers. It is, in short,
a celebration of (certain) values’ (1990, p. 81).
The tension between didacticism on the one hand, and the promotion of
autonomous ethical reflection on the other, between the tightly defined instructional
objectives often required by funding agencies and more open-ended expressive
objectives, is one that contemporary TiE programmes must out of necessity
negotiate.2 Closely related to this is another tension, between the programme’s
educational agenda and its artistry, the one being moral and purposeful in its
concerns, the other aesthetic and playful. The negotiation of these tensions has long
been recognized as central to effective TiE practice yet, apart from the work of
Jackson (1993, 1999, 2001), little research exists to cast theoretical light on the
process. If theatre has the potential to offer a special and unique experience in the
field of values education, an investigation into this area of tension would appear to be
a priority.
Catalyst is a well-established Theatre in Education Company based, at the Play
House in Birmingham, UK, with a strong reputation for its well-targeted
programmes, specifically in the area of sex and relationships education.3 Changes,
targeted at Year 8 and Year 9 students (12–14-year-olds), was a TiE programme
funded by the Children’s Fund that devised and toured in Birmingham schools in
the spring term of 2003. Its instructional objectives related to the dissemination of
information on safe sex and the clarification of misunderstandings concerning
pregnancy avoidance. The expressive objectives were concerned with helping the
young audience explore their understandings of relationships, the fluctuating
feelings connected with their development and the ethical implications of the actions
of the characters in the play. The company has a well-established way of working
that uses participatory processes as an integral part of the developing drama. Changes
was no exception to this and contained two lengthy sessions in which the students
could use hot-seating and forum theatre techniques to question the characters,
comment on the action and influence characters’ decisions.4 The company also
made a decision to incorporate physical theatre techniques into the programme, in a
conscious attempt to stretch its artistic boundaries. To assist in this new direction, it
employed the advisory services of Liam Steel, well known for his work with the
London based physical theatre company DV8. 5
I was asked to evaluate the programme and, during the process, became struck by
aspects that I felt could help elucidate the complex relationship between moral
content and artistry, between the ethical and the aesthetic in TiE practice. This
article has emerged from the evaluation, differing from it inasmuch as here I
concentrate on process rather than outcomes, on aesthetic form rather than content.
I draw only upon data relevant to its focus. Principal sources are my own observation
notes and video recordings of the performance in three schools, each with
contrasting cultural and ethnic intakes. In each of these schools I also conducted
post-performance interviews (taped) with focus groups, selected by the teacher to
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 311
more or less mirror the ethnic diversity of the school as well as to provide a gender
balance. These interviews were semi-structured, thus allowing for some opportunities to follow through different lines of discussion with each group. In addition, I
interviewed the company’s artistic director whilst the programme was still in
rehearsal, to discuss its overall rationale, as well as teachers who saw the programme
in each of the three schools I visited. I was also able to make use of the group leader’s
evaluation journal, in which were recorded her thoughts and reactions to all of the
performances throughout the two months of the programme’s tour. Finally, I was
given access to 22 completed teacher evaluation sheets and I selected a sample of
completed student evaluation sheets from one of the classes, 26 in all, for close
analysis.
The theoretical exegesis that has emerged in this article concentrates upon just two
aspects of the play’s form that I believe hold implications for values education within
the field of theatre practice and beyond. The first is the role and the risks of
transgressive playfulness in harnessing attention and opening-up issues for discussion
and debate; the second relates to what I call ‘aesthetic openness’, or the ways in which
the dramatic narrative managed to avoid closing down meanings whilst retaining a clear
focus on the ethical issues it wished the students to focus upon.
Changes: a summary of the programme
The programme lasted for approximately 90 minutes and was performed to single
classes with an average audience size of about 25–30 students. It began with students
being welcomed into the hall space by the group leader and introduced to the other
actors who were not yet in character. They were then divided into three groups and,
still out of character, each of the actors led one of the groups for a ten-minute
discussion on relationships. The group leader then invited the students to sit on
chairs in front of the performance area, which consisted of a simple set of bars and
platforms that did not in any way represent a specific place but that could be used in
different ways by the actors to suggest places such as a playground, park or living
room. The drama proper began with Sinead and Naomi, two good friends in Year
10, meeting Michael, a new boy to their school. Sinead, the more confident of the
girls, starts a relationship with Michael, leaving Naomi increasingly isolated. The
couple grow closer and are soon presented with the opportunity of spending a Friday
evening alone at Sinead’s house. It is at this point that the first participatory session
occurs, in which the students have the opportunity to hot-seat Sinead and Michael in
turn to discuss their expectations, fears and misconceptions with regard to having
sex for the first time. Michael’s priority is to get the act over and done with, whereas
Sinead’s is to have a romantic evening that might well culminate in sex. In the
subsequent scene, the group leader acts as facilitator while the actors stop at regular
intervals, seeking the students’ advice as to how each might best proceed in order to
achieve their individual objectives.
The action now moves forward three months to a party where Sinead discovers
that Naomi is secretly attracted to Michael. Reacting angrily, she initiates a quarrel
312 J. Winston
and Naomi becomes upset. When Michael finds her crying, he tries to comfort her.
Naomi embraces him and the two begin to kiss. At that moment Sinead discovers
them together and the action stops. The drama concludes with the students
exploring the consequences of this and actively trying out, through forum theatre,
ways in which both Michael and Naomi might try to repair their relationship with
Sinead.
Theatre and playfulness
Most comments made by teachers in their evaluation sheets concentrated on the
content of the programme or, to use Fischer-Lichte’s terminology (1992), its
referential aspects, namely the issues that the play was designed to elucidate and
explore. However, a final open-ended question solicited additional comments of any
sort. All but one respondent focused their praise upon the programme’s performative
aspects, aspects that relate to ‘the power and impact [derived] primarily from its
performance qualities and the specialness of its relationship with the audience’
(Jackson, 2001, p. 169). Such aspects as the quality of the acting, the immediacy of
the action, the physicality of the performance and the way in which the actors
interacted with the students were particularly noted. The students I interviewed,
when asked for their initial responses, praised the quality and realism of the acting.
There was a clear indication, then, that the effectiveness of the play in connecting
with the audience of both teachers and pupils alike did not rely upon its referential
qualities, upon the issues it raised, despite the fact that these were themselves
recognized and appreciated. Rather did it find its power of communication in its
performative qualities. Jackson notes that this is characteristic of successful theatre:
the performance, the acting, the set, the chemistry of an event taking place and
communicating on many levels at once (some of which may be contradictory,
encompassing for example the celebratory, the emotionally unsettling, the sheer
enjoyable fun), elements that take the eye, that stimulate the senses, engage the
emotions, absorb the mind and deny the easy extraction of a pre-packaged meaning.
(Jackson, 2001, p. 170)
Jackson also notes that such plays attend to what Sauter (2000) has described as a
‘playing’ rather than ‘written’ culture. Playing, writes Sauter, becomes art when a
communicative act between player and observer takes place. Here the spectator does
more than observe:
As Sauter insists, the ‘player and observer participate in the playing’ and ‘the processes
of creating and experiencing theatre are united through the act of playing, through the
mutual contact between performer and spectator. (Jackson, 2001, p. 169)
Loosening conventional ethical boundaries through transgressive play
In a recent article, Coveney and Binton (2003) point out that the experience and
social management of pleasure is by no means universal across cultures or through
history, but that:
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 313
Pleasure and pleasure seeking activities are often conceived to be at the root of
irrational, often spontaneous actions, which predispose individuals to unhealthy, socalled risk-taking behaviours. (2003, p. 166)
They explore different ideologies of pleasure and propose that, in the contemporary
developed world, the concept of ‘disciplined pleasure’ is at the foundation of many
public health initiatives.
Rationalized, disciplined pleasure stands against vulgar and emotional displays of
enjoyment. The first being reasoned, reasonable and safe, the second being
unpredictable, perverse and risky. (2003, p. 171)
This approach to the pleasures of sex is (unsurprisingly) very much at the ideological
heart of Changes, following, as it must in England and Wales, guidelines to sex and
relationships education provided by the Department for Education and Skills and
published in July, 2000. In line with the argument of Coveney and Binton, the
emphasis is upon encouraging students to think rationally and in an informed
manner about the choices available to them in issues to do with sex and
relationships. This does, of course, exemplify the tension, signalled in the
introduction, between function and artistry. Reasoned, reasonable and safe theatre
is a recipe for dull, predictable theatre. Such attitudes are more associated with the
institution of school. Unpredictable, risky and even perverse are, however, qualities
characteristic of much critically successful contemporary theatre, particularly of the
kind with which Liam Steel and DV8 have been associated.6 However, although it
promoted a liberal, rational message, Changes was never seen to be dull by the
students. Initial responses were typified by comments such as ‘really good’; ‘better
than TV’; ‘really interesting’. I propose the intrinsically playful style of the
programme, with much of this playfulness being humorous and transgressive in its
thrust, to be one of the main reasons for its effectiveness, both as theatre and as a
means to engage the students in active debate over ethical values.
The concept of transgression in cultural and literary studies is influenced by
Bakhtin’s theory of Carnival, and consists, in the words of Stallybrass and White, of
a ‘recoding of high/low relations across the social structure’ (1986, p. 19). The
celebratory acts of popular public festival often included an inversion or levelling off
of social status, creating a playful space where the normal everyday rules of
behaviour were temporarily loosened. An element of transgression, of playing with
the boundaries of what is and what is not permissible, was quickly established by the
players in Changes. The opening scene poked fun at adults from a teenage
perspective and was immediately followed by a scene in which the two performers
who were to become Sinead and Michael shared their rules for relationships with the
opposite sex. Drawn from a range of teen magazines, they included ‘treat ‘em mean
and keep ‘em keen’; ‘play hard to get – boys love a challenge’; and ‘never go out with
your friend’s ex – unless he’s really fit!’ At the end of this sequence, Sinead was
standing on the floor, beside Michael, on a raised box. She grinned mischievously at
the audience and looked at Michael’s feet. ‘You can learn a lot from a guy’s trainers’,
she told them, ‘Like the size of his …’. There was a glint in her eyes as they moved
up his legs before lingering on his groin. Then she looked at the audience in mock
314 J. Winston
innocence; ‘… feet’ she said simply, in a voice which insinuated ‘so, what did you
think I was going to say?’ Such an opening quickly established a lot about the
content of the play and, in particular, the discourse within which the subject of sex
and relationships would be examined. In performative terms, its playful sense of fun
and teasing of the audience signalled that this would not be moralistic and that, in
crossing an imaginative line into a story set outside the classroom, it might indeed
transgress beyond the moral code of the classroom, too. The knowing smiles
exchanged between students during these opening moments were visible evidence of
a frisson of transgression. In one school the news spread quickly and the younger,
Year 8 students who had yet to see the programme, were approaching the actors with
questions such as ‘Is your play dirty? Do you really kiss?’ I would argue that this
frisson was a major factor in capturing the students’ initial attention. In the words of
one TiE director: ‘Always at the beginning of a piece of theatre you need to shake up
people’s expectations so they don’t get what they thought they were going to get’.
(Jackson, 2001, p. 175). In this case, that would have been another lesson with
adults telling the students how to behave sensibly.
The knowing smiles could also be interpreted as smiles of recognition, of course.
In post-performance interviews, praise was always directed at the play’s realism and
the realistic quality of the acting. ‘I like the way they actually got off with each other.
It’s like proper acting … like you were watching TV’; ‘the acting was so real’; ‘It was
more realistic because you get some actors which are like men and women and they
try to act our age and they don’t really do it properly because they don’t know the
sort of things kids our age do, which they did’. The last comment, in particular, is
interesting as it articulates a perceived connection between the world of the play and
the children’s own lives in terms that stress the performative rather than the
referential; it is the realism of the actors, not of the story, that is praised. Although
the story, too, was commended for its realism, it was always the players who were
given the first mention.
Transgressive play is risky and needs to be well managed. In the event, it was
extremely well managed, through a combination of artistic and pedagogical skill and
the dramaturgical rhythm of the piece. At no point did the actors swear or use crude
terminology for sexual organs or practices. In the participatory scenes, students’ use
of such terms, should it occur, was managed by the facilitator who responded openly
and in an unembarrassed manner with the more acceptable term. Before the drama
began, actors met the students and discussed relationship issues with them for ten
minutes and introduced them briefly to the play’s concerns. So before the
playfulness there came a brief ‘bonding’ session with the actors as people and,
with it, an implied contract; we see you as mature, we talk to you openly and with
respect and we expect the same in return. The transgressive nature of the
participatory scene lay in the open, often comic way the actors in character expressed
their desires and misconceptions during the hot-seating and, in particular, in the
request from the facilitator that advice be given to both characters to help them
achieve their stated aims. This scene was interesting as it was the same accentuated
spirit of playfulness on the part of the actors that enabled it to succeed in both
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 315
aesthetic and educational terms. The aesthetic here was openly playful in the manner
of the improvisation games popularized in such successful UK TV series as Whose
Line is it Anyway? in which the success of the game relies upon how well the actors
respond to the instructions and challenges shouted from the audience. In the case of
Changes, if Michael was told to bring Sinead a bottle of wine and a teddy bear that is
what he would do. If he was advised to try to get her into the bedroom as quickly as
possible, that would become his point of concentration. Their success as actors
would be gauged by the witty and believable ways in which they performed the
situations proposed by the audience. Educationally, this activity succeeded, as the
aims of both Michael and Sinead were framed as ethically incompatible. The scene
invariably led to an impasse between the characters and the challenge for the
students was to reflect upon why and to consider alternative courses of action that
might have led to both characters feeling happier in themselves, with each other and
with their actions. The need to talk openly with one another in a relationship and the
drawbacks of rushing into premature sex for dubious reasons were the self-evident
‘liberal’ values that students often voiced, but other, more morally conservative
views were expressed, as were, in one or two notable cases, some aggressively sexist
values on the part of the boys. These, I believe, can be usefully analysed within the
conceptual frame of transgressive play.
Dark play, the subaltern response and the subversion of dominant values
Little work has been done on adolescent play, in contrast to the wealth of literature
on children’s play in the early years. Voss Price, who has written on adult role play,
postulates that all play is subject to a stringent set of permissions and gate-keeping.
In the case of adults, she proposes that this is achieved by ‘assuming a mantle of
deviance’ (cited in O’Toole, 2001, p. 96) and that playfulness for adults exists on the
margins, ‘on the edge between immersion in play and regression into the real world’
(p. 98). This latter comment suggests that, for the adult actors, there will be an acute
awareness of metaxis in these consciously playful moments; in other words, rather
than being immersed in their roles, they will be playing a game of skill, matching
their craft to the suggestions of the students. Although it is by no means clear that
students were necessarily aware of this exchange as a game, there was a suggestion
that boys were more so than girls and that they consciously at times tried to catch the
actors out rather than play within the rules. This attitude became particularly
challenging when accentuated into an attempt to subvert the moral agenda of the
performance. Actors tended to perceive this as ‘sabotage’, particularly as it was often
accompanied by challenging gender attitudes: ‘Basically we don’t respect what you
say because you’re a woman’; ‘She is a slag for carrying a condom’. ‘Michael should
dump Sinead then he can have sex with Naomi instead’.
There are two theoretical lenses through which we might interpret these boys’
responses. The first is to see their subversiveness as an expression of their having
assumed a ‘mantle of deviance’ within the form of what Schechner defines as ‘dark
play’. In other words, they were playing, but playing differently and defiantly. ‘Dark
316 J. Winston
play’, writes Schechner, ‘occurs when contradictory realities coexist, each seemingly
capable of cancelling the other out’ (1993, p. 36). When the reality of the boys’ game
contradicted the reality of the actors’ game, the actors did not refrain from dark play
of their own. They chose to respond to the ‘extreme’ suggestions with ‘extreme’
representations, in the group leader’s words ‘Playing up the detrimental
consequences of any dodgy suggestions in the Friday night scene’. They also chose
to play the role of Michael differently, less typically male, with any future group of
this kind. In the event, no such group emerged but what is interesting here is that the
decision to play Michael differently was a strategic rather than an ideological one; a
‘playful’ response to a ‘playful’ agenda, and no less serious for that.
dark play’s inversions are not declared or resolved; its end is not integration but
disruption, deceit, excess and gratification. (Schecher, 1993, p. 36)
Perhaps this definition is more applicable to the boys’ agenda than to the actors’;
however, the actors, too, were prepared to disrupt the boys’ play rather than change
their own agenda in order to integrate it.
The second theoretical lens is not exclusive of the first and it is to understand
these boys’ resistance as a ‘subaltern’ response. This postcolonial concept,
developed by Spivak (1988) refers to the alternative and marginalized voices that
the dominant, colonial discourse refuses to acknowledge and that will consequently
often express themselves in uncomfortable, disruptive and parodic ways. The class
that caused most calculated disruption was the top set of a class in a school with a
largely Muslim population. It is possible that these boys were resisting the agenda of
a play with such evident Western values at a time when the war with Iraq was still
less than one week old.7 Their exaggerated, illiberal sexist comments and deliberate
undermining of any rational and moderated resolution to the Friday evening scene
was vividly recorded in the project leader’s diary and can be seen as a game,
ideologically driven, a form of postcolonial resistance to the colonizers’ agenda. Such
an interpretation is controversial and contestable, and may be incorrect (it is easy to
theorize at such a distance from the event). But, although it does not offer any
comfortable answers, it could perhaps shed some conceptual light on a problem that
is of major concern to values education in the increasing pluralism of contemporary
schools and in the post-9/11 world.
Playfulness and humour as assisting with ethical recall
The humour of the piece was pronounced so I asked the students if they felt this
distracted from any serious moral agenda. With all groups the response was an
emphatic no. ‘No it had points that were serious.’ ‘There were serious bits as well.’
‘You’re more interested in it. You won’t lose interest if you’re laughing.’ Two
students made specific reference to memory in the context of humour. ‘Because
when you’re laughing you’re more likely to remember what’s happening instead of
just forgetting it.’ ‘I learned a lot about it. I remember everything that happened.’
The most detailed longitudinal study made of theatre and the young spectator’s
memory (Deldime & Pigeon, 1989) signalled a number of characteristics with regard
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 317
to what young people remember most from theatre. Those elements that shock,
disrupt or surprise were rated high on this list and surprise is intrinsic to what makes
us laugh – we seldom laugh if the punchline of a joke is too obvious, for example.
Surprise, and the surprise of laughter, can grab our attention and, built skilfully into
the dramaturgy of a play, it can assist with its rhythmic energy, thus holding our
interest as the narrative unfolds. That the interest of these students had been held
was evidenced by the detail in which they were able to recall and describe specific
scenes, not limited to those that made them laugh. For example, when I asked if they
could recall any particularly serious part of the play, one girl replied in detail:
I thought a serious part was when Sinead was getting something from the kitchen and
Naomi was starting to cry when Sinead had shouted at her and then Michael was sitting
there and Michael said to Naomi ‘Are you all right?’ and then they got up and then
Naomi put her arms around Michael. After that, when Sinead found out, that’s when
Michael was getting all guilty and didn’t know what to say.
The clear suggestion here is that the fun and humour that emanated from the actors’
playfulness helped with detailed recall of those parts of the action which explored
ethical issues, and not simply of those that were funny in themselves. If, as has often
been argued, narrative story plays a key role in helping us reflect upon the moral life
(see, for example, Gilligan, 1982; Bruner, 1986; Nussbaum, 1986), the playful
elements of theatrical narrative can offer possibilities for laughter and lightheartedness that complement those aspects of moral education concerned with
principles and ethical codes.
The open narrative and multiple ethical readings
Through an aesthetic transgression of institutionally defined moral boundaries,
theatre can, therefore, loosen the rituals that bind young people into articulating
prescribed values. Although this carries the risks inherent to ‘dark’ play, of
playfulness being responded to by further subversive forms of play, there is, too, an
energizing, celebratory aspect to such an experience that can grab attention and
absorb children, helping them internalize a complex web of emotional and ethical
detail. This, I believe, was enhanced by the particular form of narrative that the play
enacted.
When I spoke to the artistic director of Catalyst, he justified the company’s chosen
area of artistic development in the following terms:
The sensitive nature, the content of the programme and the multi-cultural nature of
many of the participating schools led us to use physical theatre and symbol as a means
of making the material both more accessible and true. This helped us make the Changes
programme as universally applicable as possible with the issues addressed being familiar
to a wide range of young people.
The two problematic terms in this analysis are ‘true’ and ‘universally applicable’,
suggesting as they do a prioritized, single meaning that is detectable beyond
language and culture. On the contrary, it is my belief that the success of the piece
and its ability to convey meaning to a diverse range of students from different ethnic
318 J. Winston
and cultural backgrounds was, in fact, due to the play’s ability to open up rather than
close down meanings. This facilitated multiple rather than singular readings,
accessed through the students’ ability to connect imaginatively with the characters
from the perspective of their own cultural experience.
Umberto Eco (1989) developed the theory of the open work and has analysed its
characteristics and concerns. In traditional works of art, Eco suggests, the artist tries
to predetermine the meaning that the ‘addressee’ of the work will read into it.8
Absolute predetermination is impossible due to the different histories, life
experiences and aspirations of individual addressees, but the work’s meaning is
clearly bound within the twin poles of the author’s intentionality and the addressee’s
subjectivity. However, he notes that in contemporary aesthetics, artists have begun
increasingly to experiment with ways of achieving greater openness, and with this,
greater autonomy for the addressee. Hence openness has become one of the key
conceptual sites for artistic experimentation. Such works will often experiment with
what he calls ‘informative disorder’, whilst remaining aware that the risk of total
unintelligibility is one to be avoided; ‘chance’ and ‘openness’, he insists, are not the
same thing (p. 117). The very proliferation of experimentation into openness, so
characteristic of contemporary aesthetics, reflects a perceived sense of uncertainty,
confusion and disorder in the modern world.
The aesthetics of openness have long been an area of experimentation in
mainstream TiE and have been consciously addressed in theory and practice. For
example, Jackson (1999) has argued that the aesthetics of TiE are dependent upon
‘creative gaps’ that require the audience to construct meaning actively through
imaginative engagement. Such an attraction for an aesthetic of openness is
understandable in a form that can all too readily slip into the closure of didacticism
and the dangers of producing in its student audiences a reaction of ‘psychic inertia’
(Eco, p. 80, citing Pousseur). Theories of drama as moral education (Winston,
1999) also point to the desirability of an open moral agenda, one that has among its
aims the induction of students into the moral life as opposed to straightforward
moral instruction. Inductive learning is characterized by the openness of its
outcomes, which cannot be predetermined in advance.
Changes had a number of features that approached aesthetic openness, both in
referential and performative terms. Those instructional objectives that dealt with
facts about, for example, safe sex, were in fact far less significant to the content of the
play than the expressive objectives that dealt with ethical issues relating to friendship
and the management of relationships. The plot or ‘moral’ of the play finished on a
note of incompletion. There was no resolution, no dénouement, apart from any
suggested by the students themselves – and the form ensured that multiple
possibilities were explored. There was also a thickness to the plot, which one teacher
saw as opening up access to the students’ engagement:
You’ve got the conflict between the boyfriend and girlfriend, should they-shouldn’t they
have sex; you’ve got the conflict between, the friendship thing going on; you’ve got the
girl, you know, wanting to have the girlfriend’s boyfriend. You’ve got all those three
scenarios going on, which, each one, they can plug into according to the students’ own
personal experience.
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 319
In interviews and questionnaires, there was evidence from students’ reflections after
the play and from their reactions during it that they drew different moral readings
from it. Some thought Naomi to be at fault, others Sinead; some thought Michael to
be innocent, others weak. One very articulate boy thought that he had finally got the
girl he wanted. One Muslim girl greatly appreciated the play and the fact that it was
‘teaching us not to have sex at fifteen’ whereas others described its ‘message’ in
terms of the need to use contraception; to only have sex when you’re ready for it; and
that the decision to have sex must be your own. This range of response, evidently
influenced by gender and culture, was testimony to a strong, if focused, element of
openness in the play’s moral agenda.
The key dramatic strategy deployed to provide the play with aesthetic openness
was its participatory format. At key points in the action, students were invited to talk
with the actors in role as the characters, to discuss their misconceptions, offer them
advice and to shape their actions. Such an invitation to the audience to participate in
the action is seen to be among the most radical of strategies for openness in noneducational performance contexts. However, the boundaries of this participation
were clearly delineated by the company in ways that are broadly concurrent with
Eco’s definition of a ‘work in movement’, which offers:
the possibility of numerous different personal interventions but … not an amorphous
invitation to indiscriminate participation. (1989, p. 19)
So there are necessary boundaries, as was testified by the actors’ sense of discomfort
when the boundaries were challenged. And this will always be the case for theatre
that must out of necessity follow a moral agenda that is to a greater or lesser extent
prescribed in advance. Although this means that any approach towards openness
must therefore involve some form of struggle, it is an artistic truism to say that the
best art emerges out of struggle.
There are three ways argued so far, then, in which a tendency towards openness as
a characteristic of Changes can be seen as a significant model for combining aesthetic
form with values education so that the two re-enforce one another:
N
N
N
openness operates against ‘psychic inertia’, offering more of a challenge and
therefore engages the audience;
openness offers multiple avenues of entry to aid the audience’s understanding of the
action, making the referential aspects of the play more variously accessible; and
openness is present in the ‘thickness’ of the story, in the ambiguity of its meanings
and its moral implications.
I will now go on to argue that there was one further way that the work approached
what we might term an ‘aesthetic of openness’, where meanings were opened up
rather than closed down, and this was through its conscious use of symbol.
Openness and the interpretation of symbol
A successful use of symbol as an additional theatrical language can be expected to
have added to the play’s richness; to return to Jackson’s earlier quote, as one of the
320 J. Winston
elements intended to ‘absorb the mind and deny the easy extraction of a prepackaged meaning’. In Changes, the principle symbolic object was a necklace that
Michael presented to Sinead early in the relationship. Sinead did not appreciate the
gift and, on request, handed it over to Naomi, who wore it continuously until, at the
party, Sinead demanded its return as soon as she realized that Naomi was attracted
to Michael. In interviews, students were readily willing to engage in discussion
centring around the play’s use of symbol, and did so with energy and interest. In one
school I asked whether anyone remembered the moment when Sinead realized that
Naomi fancied Michael. One boy’s instant response was: ‘Yeah, she asked for the
necklace back straight away’. When I asked why he thought that was, he said: ‘She
realised she was getting too attached to the necklace and to the boyfriend as well.
Anything she had to do with him she wanted it back’. In another school a girl
brought up the subject of the necklace herself. ‘I thought it was interesting how
Naomi wanted to wear the necklace and Sinead says ‘‘Oh, yeah,’’ and didn’t think
she’d get the wrong end of the stick’. I asked why the necklace was important and
three students answered together that it was because she fancied Michael and that’s
why she kept wearing it.
The readiness of the students’ ability to interpret and reach consensus about the
symbolic meaning of the necklace may suggest a closed rather than an open
aesthetic. However, symbol or metaphor is, by its very nature, suggestive rather than
prescriptive and operates by refusing to name that which it might represent. One
section on the sample feedback sheet was designed to evaluate students’ responses to
certain aspects of the play’s use of symbol. Two of the questions asked students to
reflect on the meaning of the two symbolic moments in the play centring around the
necklace;
1. when Michael gave the necklace to Sinead; and
2. when Sinead took the necklace back from Naomi.
No suggestions were offered and students were invited to write their own comments
in the space provided. The sample analysed in Table 1 was drawn from one class
with a strong ethnic mix, where every student provided a response. I took their
answers and developed categories from them, which I then presented quantifiably in
tabular form. So, for example, in answer to Question 2, ten students wrote sentences
such as ‘she was jealous of Naomi’ or ‘Sinead was feeling jealous’. In response, I
grouped them together under the same category: ‘Sinead’s jealousy’.
Interpretations were most uniform in responses to Question 1, where most,
though not all, focused on the feelings Michael had for Sinead. Students’
understandings here were delineated by the common intercultural practice of
offering a gift to someone. Their reading therefore centred around the intensity of
the feelings that promoted the action, rather than the meaning of the action itself. In
Question 2, however, there is greater freedom of interpretation but it is still bounded
by the logic of human response. All responses are compatible with one another and it
is quite possible, indeed probable, that Sinead’s action could be driven by a
combination of some or all of those feelings. This increased openness of response is
Tension at the heart of Theatre in Education 321
Table 1. Students’ responses to the play’s use of the necklace as symbol
1. When Michael gave the necklace to Sinead, what did it show?
Category of response
His love for Sinead
That he had feelings for Sinead
That he really liked her
That he cared for her
That he cared for and respected her
Loyalty and respect but disrespect from Sinead
Nothing, but disrespect from Sinead
boys
girls
total
8
1
1
1
0
1
1
7
4
1
0
1
0
0
15
5
2
1
1
1
1
2. When Sinead took the necklace back from Naomi, what did it show?
Category of response
Sinead’s jealousy
That Sinead felt she could no longer trust Naomi
The end of the girls’ friendship
Sinead’s possessiveness of Michael
Sinead’s realization of what the necklace meant to Naomi
Spitefulness on Sinead’s part
That Sinead was letting Naomi know she could not have Michael
Sinead’s sense of betrayal
boys
girls
total
7
0
1
1
1
2
1
0
3
4
2
1
1
0
0
1
10
4
3
2
2
2
1
1
still, then, recognizably situated within the boundary of the play’s intentionality,
whilst allowing room for subjective interpretations to carry marked differences of
emphasis.
Conclusion
I have argued in a previous article for the Journal of Moral Education that one of the
key contributions theatre has to offer the field of moral education is its ability to
problematize moral positions, to raise questions rather than offer answers, to
provoke rather than resolve debate (Winston, 1999). This article, concerned as it is
with the relationship between aesthetic form and value content, has had a
complementary emphasis. Its argument suggests that those playful and participatory
practices of Theatre in Education that loosen ethical boundaries can, at the same
time, engage children effectively in ethical reflection and debate; and that those
elements of dramatic form that open rather than close down narrative meanings
complement this process. The implications beyond theatre practice lie within the
potential afforded by playfulness, transgression and open forms of narrative to a
more general pedagogy for moral education, whether through stories, discussion or
debate. Their effective deployment, I have argued, can create a liminal space in
322 J. Winston
which expectations become subverted, codes loosened and boundaries shifted. As a
result of this temporary freedom from institutionalized values, students’ attention
can become energized and engaged, encouraging frank and autonomous, if playful,
exchanges of value-related positions.
Notes
1. Numerous websites testify to this. See, for example, the London-based company Y Touring
(www.ytouring.org.uk) and the Chicago-based Health Works Theatre (www.
healthworkstheatre.org).
2. These terms were coined by Eisner (1969).
3. Catalyst can be contacted at [email protected]
4. Hot-seating is an improvisatory strategy whereby audience members can question an actor
who remains in role throughout, responding as the character within the drama. Forum theatre
allows members of the audience to offer advice to actors in role as the characters as to how they
should act in specific situations. Actors follow their advice, thus allowing its effectiveness to be
scrutinized (see Neelands, 1990).
5. DV8 (www.dv8.co.uk) is a successful UK-based company, famous for their innovative
physical performance style and their provocative subject matter, which often focuses on sex
and relationships. They are popular with young people in the UK, particularly those studying
for examinations in theatre and performance. Liam Steel has been with the company for over
ten years and is regularly employed to deliver workshops for both teachers and students.
6. Their 1993 production, MSM, for example, dealt with the theme of illicit gay sex and their
1995 piece, Enter Achilles, explored issues of homophobia and misogyny. Both productions
received very positive critical notices in the press.
7. I was in the same school later that week and was struck by the amount of messages pinned on
the partition on the outside of the hall, all of which responded in a critical way to the war in
Iraq.
8. In the case of educational theatre, of course, the addressee is the student audience.
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