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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. References Beckerman, B. (1990) Theatrical presentation (London, Routledge). Bruner, J. (1986) Actual minds, possible worlds (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Coveney, J. & Binton, R. (2003) In pursuit of the study of pleasure: implications for health research and practice, Health, 7(2), 161–179. Deldime, R. & Pigeon, J. (1989) La mémoire du jeune spectateur (Brussels, de Boeck – Wesmael). 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