Download Considerations regarding Robert Breen`s Chamber Theatre in

Considerations regarding Robert Breen's Chamber Theatre
in drama teaching.
Luke Abbott President NATD
May 1st 2014
Some further thoughts about the use of CT in Heathcote's dramatic inventions.
I have been meaning to work with the Chamber Theatre (CT) technique invented by Robert
Breen (1) for some time now but have only used its processes sporadically in my teaching
so far. Actually 43 years. Being oblivious to Breen’s concepts, until 1982, I learned with
Dorothy Heathcote how CT worked. Even then I dismissed it, as a rather quaint way of
dissecting texts such was my hubris at the time. It was not until I had to think through the
structure of the programme for the advanced year 3 Drama Teacher’s courses with the
Amman Summer School in 2012 organised by QERCD (2) in Ramallah Palestine, that it
became horribly clear that I had yet again dismissed something of huge importance and
significance too early. I do have this shocking habit I am afraid and this has cost me dear
over the years. I have attempted, in a very rough way, to give an example of how CT might
be used in any classroom from EYFS to adult. (Obviously a better way for readers to
understand more is to tackle the book written by Breen in the first place!)
So what is CT in a nutshell and why so significant to MoE?
Robert Breen (3) coined the term in his unique treatise on the analysis of how writers and
author's manipulate (or facilitate) the reader's dramatic imagination (4) as the reader begins
to construct imaginary images triggered by the text in in use. Breen drew our attention to the
conventions of western literature (both fictional and non-fictional) analysing so adeptly and
originally, how the author's voice in a written text format is 'present' throughout and how it is
used in the infrastructure of the written form. He goes on to dissect the author’s voice into 2
functions.
1. The benign observer’s voice as a description to the reader of the details to create a
detailed image of the context or the ‘major or minor narrator’.
2. The omniscient narrator who has the power to play many functions in the context and
not all of it truthful. Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol invented a great example
of such a figure with the ghosts from the past present and the future. All of whom
were functioning as narrators in the text and in the later numerous film adaptations.
These are examples of an omniscient narrator powerful and almost god-like with the
power to lift as well as destroy.
Furthermore, I contend that if we use CT, we are able to delve deeper into these voices,
constructed by the author/s for the reader to decipher. This enables us to be in a focussed
psychological position more able to decode hidden dimensions hitherto invisible.
Furthermore we can enter onto some of the subterranean levels of the text to generate
multiple layers of meaning thus increasing our intrinsic emotional enjoyment of literature as
well as understand the extrinsic structure that holds it all together.
If we are using MoE as a system for learning, then we will attempt to examine the context of
the responsible team or enterprise, under construction and scrutiny, with a view to
introducing a wider, relevant set of text(s) to deepen the participant’s understanding and
provide significant levels of challenge in their learning. Up-scaling the demand, so to speak,
on the intellectual emotional and cognitive powers of learners as a by product.
We see here, yet again, one of the invisible aspects of the teacher’s skills brought to light in
the teachings of Dr Heathcote. We can begin the selection and choice of texts but such a
process is subject to the experience and knowledge base of the teacher her/himself. How
much reading have we done in our lives? What are the literary texts that have influenced us
to bring to our classes, and what genres are we familiar with that can be harnessed to the
learning journeys we create for children and young adults? This does not speak of how we
as teachers have been trained. Rather it speaks of our life experiences that we bring in all its
richness’s or tragedies that makes each teaching series unique. In other words we are at the
mercy of our limitations as teachers in this respect. Heathcote managed to use and research
the vast terrain of her her literary knowledge to select a text to fit the contexts under
investigation. (For example she structured an ancient Welsh text, that for most people was
completely unknown!) It is clear that this hidden dimension is critical in one of the main
constructs she used within the process over time within MoE. I remember very clearly in
many of the seminars I attended during my year long (and too short) Masters programme
with her on the system, hearing how the overall process had both internal coherence and
was tightly sequenced within quite defined parameters. There would always be an enterprise
(responsible team), a client who triggered to need for the imagined responsible team to take
action, tensions would become evident through the building of the day to day conditions of
working within the imagined enterprise. These would be the basics that we all found
ourselves struggling with. Then we discovered that within the working sequences other
rhythms were likely. We would always need a ‘map’ of some sort, maybe in three
dimensional form, or a diagrammatic, model or representation of the environment we would
be investigating such as the wolf enclosure and surrounding lands in an MoE concerning the
reintroduction of wolves in the Scottish Highlands. Then the events later on whereby visitors
would be invented in the sequence who would be disempowered to have any influence to
interrogate as teachers, rather as truthful visitors from another country (Latvia) to learn the
best ways the Scottish team coped with their challenge. Then further forwards in the
sequence we could use a range of written text...........and apply CT to the chosen texts to
challenge the learning of the class further. The question here is what sorts of texts would be
possible to use with a class of year 9 students in an inner city environment that could be
usefully brought to their learning? It is still a question that haunts me still as such a choice
relies on my inner resources as a human being as well as a teacher willing to research my
knowledge and needs base in depth and breadth.
However, comfortingly, I have discovered that the choices for selection of text for CT can be
as simple or as complex as needed, depending on the class, their interests, their capacity to
be challenged, their reading skills, their willingness to tackle challenging texts together in
collaboration and so on. Could I use an extract from the script of ‘An American Werewolf in
London’? Or an extract from Wolf Brother? Perhaps I might use a scientific extract from a
technical book appropriate to the wolf agency, or may a poem......
An example from an age gone by.
Consider this anonymous lullaby as an example of a simple text. I first heard the sung
version in my early teens by my mother and grandmother when they used to rock my brother
as a baby. My Nan, although from Antrim in Northern Ireland, was a devout Catholic
believer. I have no idea if this belonged to a Catholic tradition or an Irish one. In working all
over the UK, I have discovered that many people know a similar or very close version.
The lullaby goes like this and perhaps became a children’s song (5 Iona Opie) along the way
of history perhaps?
'Bye baby Bunting your
So, if we use the CT method, we have the possibility of interrogating this particular text for
hidden meanings and constructing inquiry questions creating further imagined compound
images buried in the text. A reader may ask if any of this is new? Well no, this concept is not
new, but the implications for treating the text beyond inquiry and applying Breen’s technique
is. Breen himself refers to CT as a technique rather than an art form. However, his elaborate
details in his structured assertions offer drama and theatre practitioners’ new scope and
perhaps new horizons in learning and teaching praxis. We might also remember that Sam
Mendes used Breen’s method to construct a deeply moving and startlingly new staged
version of ‘As I lay Dying’ by William Faulkner in the 1980’s. (6)
daddy's gone a hunting, to
fetch a little rabbit skin to put
Returning to the text above however, from a straightforward ‘inquiry’ point of view, we have
many angles to consider and questions worthy of attention that drive us to seek answers to
the current perplexing circumstances within the text. We are, however, very lucky as the
anonymous author gives us many clues in the use of the words invented, but for what
purpose must remain in the pages of historical mystery.
a baby Bunting in.’
Our investigating learners can begin to investigate the text for meaning through hypothesis
and allied conjectures, for example:
•
The singing/speaking figure is signed as addressing another (perhaps) very young
figure in some manner or other. We have no idea if the being in question is actually
present or if the figure is handling ‘rabbit skin’ as a representation of the child/being.
•
There is also the question about the length of time the 'daddy' has been currently
absent, his current whereabouts, and the implications of obtaining a rabbit, perhaps
trespassing on land not owned by him resulting in his apprehension by an authority
perhaps or an enemy, depending on the period of history and social circumstance we
are in.
•
Also, for what purpose will the rabbit skin be required to perform when, and if, the
‘daddy’ figure returns?
•
Do the weather conditions prevalent have anything to with the circumstances?
•
How cold/hot/wet/snowy etc. is the environment the figures inhabit?
•
Is there the need for the rabbit skin's warmth, softness or even camouflage?
•
Where is the ‘song’ being sung?
•
Is there a tune being used, either known by habit or culture or by momentary
invention by the singer?
•
Is the child/baby in a crib or in the arms of a mother, mother substitute or currently
elsewhere?
•
Are the figures in a dwelling of some sort or in the wild?
•
For what reason is the song being sung?
•
What is the health of the child/baby/figure being addressed?
•
Are the people portrayed ‘on the run' perhaps escaping to a new place from a place
of danger?
•
To which period of history does this context belong to?
•
Beyond the singer/speaker are all people referred to currently alive?
•
Is the singer/speaker alone?
In this way, considerations such as these, however intriguing, have the alienating effect that
emotionally isolates. In addition, the inquiry process alone distances us further from the text
in the sense that it is the author's creation itself that is under scrutiny, almost as in a police
interrogation and keeps us in an objective ‘outside of the text’ position.
However, if drama is applied in any of its forms, the very nature of dramatic inquiry takes us
emotionally closer to the edge of meanings, bizarrely through the very distancing devices
within questioning, inquiry and solutions orientated pedagogy dramaturges are familiar with.
Many writers have asserted similar theoretical positions, Brecht(7), Ericsson (8) alongside
Nora Morgan and Juliana Saxton (9) and of course Heathcote (10).
But let us look at the text in another way, and this time from within. We can use any dramatic
device of course to in order to bring the text closer to our emotional being. Breen’s
techniques help us here, if we apply his beguilingly simple technique using Chamber
Theatre. To do this we ask three simple questions (11):
1. 'Who might we select/invent to utter words in the section of text under
scrutiny?
2. In what ways can the words written be allocated to protagonists and be uttered
so that we might have the opportunity to decipher the point of view the
speaker(s) is aligned to, truthful to the context?
3. Which of the chosen ‘voices’ could represent the function of the omniscient or
objective narrator truthful to the context ?'
Using the text of the lullaby, suppose we invent a script in which we keep to the cardinal rule
that no words can be tampered with, added or edited in any way, as the author’s creation
must remain as written and therefore respected. In this way too, the new creators, in this
case drama students building on the text, have the opportunity to investigate the questions
as an ensemble. Such a process creates the conditions where the divergent is uppermost
(Ken Robinson RSA Animate) and the learning will happen in groups (‘Where great learning
for growth is possible. (’Ken Robinson op sit) as investigations become more complex with
connections being invented to create the holding form where convergence is necessary.
(Witkin)
The investigators have to agree a solution to the main questions as above-who might
represent the narrator (in either objective or omniscient form). Secondly, which protagonist,
true to the context and invented from a variety of dramatic forms, might utter the words?
Finally, to decide in situ what point of view is expressed and by whom.
An example
In the following CT example, the points of view can only be demonstrated by the space
generated between people, the timbre of the words used as well as the power and pace they
are uttered. It is only through drama that this is possible as no written explanation can
convey the complexity of the moment of the ‘now’. This is drama’s unique ingredient as an
art form and cannot be replicated in any other way. In this manner, authors create drama in
the reader’s imagination in the texts designed as such. However, applying CT techniques
the dramatic imaginings come to life for the story to be seen/shown and brought into the
social setting of communal art. Otherwise the story remains in the mind of the reader of
course. Breen’s technique and other allied dramatic procedures elevate this private
individualised meaning making process to the shared social one.
Now perhaps we can begin to understand how Dr Heathcote in the 1950’s and 60’s began to
apply and incorporate CT technique to her formidable pioneering educational practices. CT
and Breen’s allied theoretical framework examining points of view for example and
representational concepts in texts, showing the story as opposed to just telling the story,
began to tackle and answer many of her emerging quandaries concerning the universal
nature of theatre and drama forms. Here in one domain of Chamber Theatre was a
technique that could unify context drama, process drama, theatre form and theatre for
performance in the intimacy of a studio/classroom/workshop.
As history has demonstrated, for Heathcote, this was only a beginning to her application of
forms of theatre and drama later to be incorporated into Mantle of the Expert. As many who
attempt the fathoming of her techniques, methods and inventions, we find out to our cost,
isolating one small aspect of her genius and claiming to know how her work in entirety, is
deeply fallacious. Her work is an amalgam of many inventions. Like any great artist, her
emerging collective techniques would be applied as if from a shimmering dramatic based
kaleidoscopic palate, and all in situ. This marvellous palate ranged from applied theatre
emanations such as Process Drama, Drama for Learning, Context Drama, Drama and Role
Play, Mantle of the Expert, Rolling Role, Chamber Theatre and the 4 Projections of Role. In
her dynamic way of working these were all practically trialled and developed under her
intellectual leadership in the academic drama field. Yet in her work, as seen in the deeply
moving account of her work in Ankara Turkey (published in the ND publication, The World’s
Greatest Drama Teachers)
In the following CT example below, we see a possible outcome from discussions and trials
of tackling the main tenets of Breen’s amazingly revealing technique, that of showing the
story within the context of an anonymous lullaby rather than telling the story.
[Scenario: The text is set in a remote landscape in Medieval England. A number of figures can be
seen around a bundle of cloth of what might be a baby. An armed figure is seen pointing at a figure of
a woman who lies still on the ground. The First woman kneels over the lying figure.]
First woman: Bye baby bunting.
Father’s voice: Your daddy’s gone a hunting.
Armed figure: To fetch a little ‘rabbit’s’ skin
Second woman (Narrator): To put a baby bunting in.
In this version we might perceive the beginnings of a tragedy, a mystery or even a black
comedy? What has happened here is clearly the result of much debate and discussion
within the group as the dramatic context unfolds from the initial seed of the text. The drama
students creating this small piece of theatrical art have clearly understood much of how to
create theatre form in a textual invention through the choices they have made. In terms of
scrutiny we can analyse the 3 questions needed for CT and ask ourselves if, from the newly
allocated worded structure, they have been incorporated. We would it seems to me, have to
witness the piece live to understand how points of view have been woven in as the bare
bones of the theatre text is not sufficient.
The performance issues and enigmas still remain of course. How is the father’s voice
emanated and from where? How are the words spoken and signed to emanate meaning?
What are points of view expressed by the speakers and so on? All this to be answered by
the live representation/performance of a piece of text created years ago and anonymously.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Notes:
1)
Chamber Theatre Robert Breen Published by
2)
QERCD is the Ramallah based foundation created by the Qattan family to support arts and education in the
Occupied Territories of Palestine. The Jordanian Summer School supports over 120 drama teachers a year. This
course was initiated and tutored by David Davies (UWE) and Wasim Kurdi (QERCD).
3)
Ibid
4)
The dramatic imagination is a concept of dramatic theory developed and analysed by Dr Dorothy Heathcote. Briefly
(TBC)
5)
The Opie’s wrote the seminal text ‘The Language and Lore of Children’ in 1960 (???) published by .........
6)
William Faulkner ‘As I lay dying’. Published in 1960 (???) by .....
7)
Berthold Brecht in
8)
Stig Erickson – Distancing at Close Range
9)
Nora Morgan and Juliana Saxton. “Drama-a mind on many colours” .....
10) Dr Dorothy Heathcote & Oliver Fialla in Drama as Context NATE 1980
11) Breen op cit pages .....