Drama Boreale - Åbo Akademi

diaries again I see that the investigatory, analytical and reflective approach is perhaps not
so evident after all. Maybe we should reach behind the aesthetic experience (cf. the work
of Eisner, Ross, Abbs and Best) and state that knowledge gained through drama
experiences cannot be put into words, only felt physically or transferred to the sensory
world, and further into a deeper consciousness. However, I still feel that this explanation
is not enough, particularly as students express the issue almost in passing as an idea or
wish:
• If you take classic example of bullying, and if there are two children in a class
of young children who are been bullied, drama is a way to make all the children
aware of how those two children might feel. Drama makes people think and
question how it feels to be in that position.
• Drama is a really good way of deconstructing things and children don't often get
the chance to rip something to pieces and deconstruct it.
How effective is this kind of learning in reality? I have been involved in annual school
tours introducing Theatre-in-Education programmes in the Jyväskylä region in Finland.
Our group, Drama teacher students, have also gone into schools to make process drama.
Themes we have dealt with vary from fairytale worlds to the issue of violence amongst
young girls. I am always left with the feeling that we have been able to make people stop
and think, and the schools look forward to having us back the next year. Thus, it is easy
to believe that drama does have an effect – at least it seems to have a positive effect on
teacher students. But what about school children? If schools do not have systematic
drama and theatre education, can we even expect learning results from those short visits?
“Would it the be better to do nothing if it has no benefit?” asked Howard Gardner in
Paris in 2006. Project Zero, a Harvard University research project spanning several years
on the effects of art education, raises this question. In their book “Cooling conflict: a
new approach to managing bullying and conflict in schools” John O'Toole, Bruce Burton
and Anna Plunkett (2004) talk about a multi-year research project that, as a drama and
peer teaching method accepted by the entire school community, has reaped good results.
A systematic approach and the school as a community are perhaps key factors in this
project.
Drama education is structured and developed similarly to the way drama worlds are
created in the theatre, and participation in the creation of these worlds can be satisfying,
pedagogically and dramatically speaking significant. Opening the door to the drama
world can start, for example, by a picture, poem, expression, idea, place, character or
story. This stimulus only cracks open the door; the drama story itself is more significant,
framing and guiding the work. The drama story – and by this I mean both making theatre
and process drama, and applied drama, which can all be approached by an open drama
story – creates the basis for a drama process, it starts up role work and instantly creates a
joint imaginary context. The purpose of the story is to set up expectations and tensions.
A good drama story frames the drama world; it is like a script that needs completing.
The drama story also puts the drama process into focus. The teacher is responsible, based
on the drama story, to guide the group’s work and create tensions in the drama by
various aesthetic and dramatic choices. Real-world relationships no longer apply. In this
jointly created fiction participants have permission to change their status, role,
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