Andy Kempe

Resilience or Resistance? The Value of Subject Knowledge for Drama Teachers.

This paper reports on research undertaken into what secondary school drama teachers think they need to possess in terms of subject knowledge in order to operate effectively as drama specialists. ‘Subject knowledge’ is regarded as being multi-faceted, and the paper considers how drama teachers prioritise its different aspects. A discussion of what ‘subject knowledge’ may be seen to encompass reveals interesting tensions between aspects of professional knowledge that are prescribed by government policy and local context, and those that are valued by individual teachers and are manifest in their construction of a professional identity. The paper proposes that making judgements that associate propositional and substantive knowledge with traditionally held academic values as ‘bad’ or ‘irrelevant’ to drama education, and what Foucault has termed ‘subjugated knowledge’ (i.e. local, vernacular, enactive knowledge that eludes inscription) as ‘good’ and more apposite to the work of all those involved in drama education, fails to reflect the complex matrices of values that specialists appear to hold. While the reported research focused on secondary school drama teachers in England, Bourdieus conception of field and habitus is invoked to suggest a model which recognises how drama educators more generally may construct a professional identity that necessarily balances personal interests and beliefs with externally imposed demands.

An Anthology of Voices: an Analysis of Trainee Drama Teachers’ Monologues

ABSTRACT This paper reports on research undertaken into the processes through which student teachers begin to formulate an identity as a professional teacher. Using Fullers investigations into the attitudes of trainee teachers towards their courses (1969) as a baseline, a discussion is established on the place of the student voice in contemporary initial teacher training programmes. In order to further investigate the potential importance of affording student teachers the opportunity to reflect on and express their thinking and feeling as they embark on their chosen career path, the concerns of a group of student drama teachers were recorded and interpreted. The vehicle for this exercise involved writing and subsequently performing reflective monologues. These were analysed by using The Listening Guide as composed by Gilligan et al. (2003). This paper illustrates how the methodology revealed distinct yet generally harmonious voices at work in the group in the first few weeks of their training year. Subsequent analysis suggests a model for the initial formation of a teaching identity built on aspects of self, role and character. Recognising the relative values and relationships between these factors for student teachers may, it is argued, provide greater security for them while affording their tutors insights which could help them to re‐shape initial teacher training programmes.

Self, role and character: developing a professional identity as a drama teacher

This paper reports on research into what may have influenced trainees on four post-graduate teacher training courses in England to become specialist drama teachers rather than pursue careers in the world of professional entertainment. In doing so it raises questions regarding the value of considering teaching as a performing art. The paper goes on to explore how drama trainees regard an understanding of performance, and an ability to both use and demonstrate performance techniques, as integral to their role as subject specialists. The subsequent discussion examines how a drama teacher’s professional identity may be seen as being made up of the three inter-connected elements, self, role and character. Thus, while all teaching may be considered to involve some elements of performativity, this paper suggests that, for the drama specialist, an understanding of what constitutes ‘performance’ has a particular importance. One conclusion drawn from the research is that recognising the place of performance in their practice may result in experienced teachers of drama regarding themselves as artists whose art is teaching drama; another is that recognising the different ways in which adopting a role involves different elements of performance could be of value to all teachers and teacher educators.

Widening participation in theatre through ‘relaxed performances’

In this article Andy Kempe discusses how a nationwide project has marked a significant step forward in improving access to the theatre for UK audiences who have hitherto felt largely excluded from theatre by mounting a number of ‘relaxed performances’. He makes particular reference to autistic spectrum disorders to illustrate how, in order to widen participation, theatres need to cater for a diverse range of individual needs. The article explores the challenges of catering for children and young people who may be, variously, under- or over-sensitive to sensory stimuli, in both the way performances are adapted and how the front-of-house is organized. A case study is offered of how one small regional theatre sought to address these challenges by giving a ‘relaxed performance’ of its annual pantomime. The impact of the production is considered as well as insights that have emerged from the enterprise. Andy Kempe is Professor of Drama Education and a Teaching Fellow of the University of Reading. His work with students of all ages and abilities has informed his numerous publications on a variety of issues in drama and arts education, including Drama, Disability , and Education (Routledge, 2012).

Drama and the Education of Young People with Special Needs

The use of drama in the curriculum for children with special needs is sometimes automatically equated with dramatherapy. Such an assumption may arise from the mistaken belief that if a child has some kind of learning disability, the only type of drama of any value for them must be designed to help them with their particular individual need. Dramatherapy is a developing approach to the treatment and education of specific groups based on the work of J. L. Moreno. While some children with special needs might benefit from the approach, it should not be assumed that any child needs dramatherapy any more than they need physio or electroconvulsion therapy (Kempe, 1996, pp. 10–11). Indeed, as Irwin (1979) has argued, to make such an assumption is contrary to the belief that any well structured and carefully monitored work in drama can be ‘therapeutic’ by merit of the fact that it can give the individual a greater sense of competence in the activity being focused upon resulting in heightened self worth. Given that drama is a social art form (as opposed to something that can productively be engaged with in a solitary way), active engagement in dramatic activity can facilitate positive social outcomes such as a sense of belonging to a group. While the generation of such feelings may be seen as beneficial to all (Gallagher, 2007), they may have particular importance for children who, because of their particular needs, may be excluded from a number of social situations that others take for granted

What Dramatic Literature Teaches about Disability

Disabled people have always been represented in dramatic literature. However, the appearance of disabled characters prior to the mid 20th century may be considered primarily in terms of their dramatic functionality and symbolic value rather than representing any explorations of disability itself. Tiresias, for example, is an embodiment of the proverb that ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see’, while Richard III’s deformity and both Lear’s and Hamlet’s ‘madness’ are manifestations of ‘something being rotten in the state’ as a result of the ‘natural order’, or ‘great chain of being’ having been disturbed.

Review of 'structure and spontaneity': the process drama of Cecily O'Neill

Drama As Social Intervention is the published result of the presentations and addresses at the 5th International Conference on Researching Drama and Theatre Education, held at the University of Exeter in 2005. Those who went to the conference will welcome this comprehensive reminder of the provocative debates that took place, and of the evidence presented of the multitude of contexts in which drama is used as a means of social intervention. I attended, and have valued the chance now, at this remove in time, to read and ponder again the addresses and the range of papers presented. The book will also serve as a fine record and a tribute to the achievements, inspiration and energy of John Somers, who has guided all five conferences. It is a well-presented book, comprehensive and reflective of the generous inclusive spirit of John and the Exeter gatherings. As an ‘emerging academic’ from the other side of the world, I have appreciated the atmosphere of warmth and openness at those conferences the scale, the opportunities to listen and present, the contact with the international field. Four keynote addresses from the 2005 event make up the first part of the book; the second part includes papers written by researchers and academics who presented, and the third the abstracts of other presenters. The papers cover a wide range of topics, and the book will certainly be of use to participants who want to follow up areas of interest, or refer to research initiatives in fields similar to their own. The book records and captures the debates and the challenges of that time; and though I write from geographic distance, I sense the book is a log entry of where drama/theatre was then, a point of convergence from multidirections as it were, and a vantage point for possibilities ahead. Subsequent RIDE editions have extended the debates and the ideas, something John Somers must be gratified to see. After all, as Jamil Ahmed quietly reminded us, we are all in a state of becoming and things are in flux. The four key themes of the first part open the debate, and expose some of the ethical and political issues that are part of the terrain. Bill McDonnell tackles intervention in the twentieth-century political theatre tradition, and distinguishes ‘facilitated’ from ‘organic’ activist theatre. The cases he describes share the lineage of resistance and politics, and he acknowledges the question left hanging over insider/ outsider understanding and commitment. Jan Cohen Cruz speaks of storytelling and its use in forum theatre as a methodological tool for intervention. She is cautious of the risks of shifting personal story into the collective and political space, and of public problem-solving. Whose stories are they? Are they for the telling, or the listening and are they liberating? John Somers and Glenn Roberts give a sensitive