RENDIMIENTO ACADÉMICO

A comparative analysis was conducted across their different narratives. The analysis revealed how each repetition of words used, or emphasis made with respect to certain chosen vocabulary, were emblematic of their position-taking in the field of theatre education. As mentioned earlier, the unstructured interview process was chosen to enable the participants to narrate their personal stories. With this process, the participants offered a spectrum of articulations relating to the different ways in which they constructed their relationships to theatre and how the experience of theatre shaped and influenced their way of working with others, including their teaching approaches with young people.

For example with Viola, her narratives reflected theatre-related references when explicating her teaching act. She used the phrase the “actor and his audience” and “script” or text, to decode the relationship between a drama teacher and their students, signifying her position as the ‘theatre artist’ in the two-person collaboration between herself and Rita.

There is something very defined about being an artist because you have purpose prescribed. You know, it might be as an actor your job is to play a character, so you got the ‘who’ on a stage, you got the ‘where’ in an imagined, you know, environment of when and the world and all that kind of thing and all those things are very very clearly defined it happens in a scene at a time of day . . . erm you have a certain period to enter that world and you use every skill that you’ve got in order to do that performance and people are going to pay to come and see you do it. And erm teaching doesn’t feel, good teaching doesn’t feel as defined as that because teaching, well, I’m thinking about those who work on a script and if you are animprovisational artist that’s different. Erm . . . but good teaching works both from the script and from the students. So it really would be like the best kind of drama teaching I think has a kind strong plan to it but it departs from that plan. So it would be like an actor working with an audience and working on a script and then suddenly deciding to leave the script completely because the audience has given him something interesting and it is much more interesting to pursue that. What I find, what I struggle with all the time is the relationship between the script or the lesson, you know, or the kind of prescribed and how that meets the needs of the person I am working with, will be the individual, the child.

(DC400053).

Viola’s reliance on text/scripts surfaced in the later half of the interview. She reflexively interrogated her struggles working without a scripted lesson plan during her collaboration with Rita.

[W]hen you are working with somebody who doesn’t work with that script as Rita and I are doing then you suddenly realise that, then you have got to make room inside that a) for the other person you are working with and b) and for the kids who might not respond to the script in quite the way that you think they should. So I find that really interesting and challenging and I mean its interesting for me because I have to work with a script and Rita who is so reflective you know and loves to be very in the moment and that clash between those two approaches is was very erm obvious on the first, no, actually on the first day we were working together, it was the second day that we weren’t working together. (DC400053).

With Rita however, her experience with the “ensemble theatre” as well as making theatre with an “educational content” generated a distinctive preference in valuing the collective and an emphasis on process in her theatre education approach with young people.

We had exposure to all aspects and I think maybe my first exposure and not fully recognizing that in terms of the true sense of ensemble where we were all equipped all those of us that saw that, needed that, wanted to fully understand and to be able to . . . erm you know work within that rather than just these isolated roles and we were encouraged to do that we were encouraged to take the responsibility to have ownership over . . . crafting the work so we felt absolutely you know proud every time we went out. We understood it but we were never . . . we were never . . . complacent we were never comfortable cause we were always encouraged to seek you know erm . . . to develop the work really er . . . . And I think because of that . . . that which felt like an occupation in a sense beyond school. Erm you know we went to Edinburgh every year I started at 16 and I went for probably for, for 10 years in a youth capacity from being a teenager and all of, all of the delights that it brought by going away and having those first experiences with people from a wide variety of background and ages and then you know becoming . . . erm . . . older, running the venue erm . . . driving the lorries you know rigging the place up converting . . . you know . . . erm . . . places that were not normally theatre spaces in the year . . . erm . . . . And then TIE. We had a school-based theatre company and we toured locally within Leicestershire, erm Leicestershire schools. But then we would take our work up to the festival. Erm so I could, you know, in my own, it was progression for me in those ways . . . I think also for the fact to being involved within the TIE productions that were also built out of the Leicestershire youth theatre and the organization within that I was given additional responsibility of understanding . . . erm the educational content and value of the work that we did er and what we were presenting for young audiences erm you know the true sense of participation erm . . . and engaging young minds and opening young minds. We were involved in new writing and . . . erm yeah it was just layers upon layers very carefully revealed by this amazing man that allowed us step by step to erm . . . to grow and take as much as we need and to be . . . challenged if we felt that was appropriate where if you were a hungry child you know there was, there was plenty you know so that I think for me that’s absolutely kind of you know my, where my core values come from and I owe that to him directly. (DC400050).

Her preference for an ‘unscripted’ lesson plan was a commitment to the idea of the ensemble as a process of “crafting”, “developing”, taking on the “responsibility” of a “true sense of participation” through working collectively. A scripted text would negate her experience of “engaging” with the young people and privileging their voice.