Dialectical Shakespeare

This chapter considers ways to empower actors and audiences through 'a brand of performance pedagogy advanced by Dorothy Heathcote called ‘process drama’, which approaches a text (in this case, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew) not by staging a single reading but by presenting multiple critical approaches in a single presentation as a way of demonstrating the script’s malleability while also generating ownership and critical engagement within the cast and the audience. The chapter details the methodology involved, centring on a college production which toured area high schools, thereby making educators of the student actors, and it underscores what worked best and what might work better. It assumes the essential foreignness of Shakespeare to many students, a foreignness which is steeped in class as well as history, and considers how the charged politics of an unfamiliar play can become urgently immediate through a reciprocal system of rehearsal and performance.

Standing in Dorothy’s Shoes: What Can Language Teachers Learn from Dorothy Heathcote? Part Three: Process Drama in a Real-World Context

Based on research into the benefits of using process drama techniques in language teaching, guidelines for planning process drama-based language lessons were created. Using these guidelines as a starting point, two workshops were planned and carried out, with the main aim of introducing Korean elementary school teachers to process drama. The workshops featured activities based on techniques pioneered by Dorothy Heathcote and other practitioners. These activities were linked by a narrative inspired by the university the workshops took place in, introduced by the workshop leader working in-role. The feedback from the workshops showed high level of engagement, and support for the use of process drama in the teachers' future lessons.

Standing in Dorothy’s Shoes: What Can Language Teachers Learn from Dorothy Heathcote? Part Two: Process Drama and Language Teachers

To explore language teachers’ attitudes to using drama activities, and to determine the level of use and understanding of process drama techniques in language classrooms, a survey was carried out. The results showed a high level of support for the benefits many theorists and researchers have claimed for the use of drama activities in language learning. They also showed that process drama techniques were used to a lesser extent than activities such as warm­up games and scripted role­plays. Following the survey, a workshop was planned, to explore language teachers’ responses to using process drama­based techniques. The workshop was designed to include a number of process drama activities, including Mantle of the Expert, Teacher in Role, Tableau and Improvisation. The feedback from the workshop showed enthusiasm for these techniques, and for their potential use in language teaching.

Standing in Dorothy’s Shoes: What Can Language Teachers Learn from Dorothy Heathcote? Part One: Where Dorothy Came From, What She Did, and How It Can Support Language Development

From the 1960s onwards, Dorothy Heathcote became a highly influential figure in UK drama education. Her practice, based around unscripted, participatory dramas in which students were often guided by a teacher working ‘in role’, helped to shape the way drama is taught in schools today, particularly within the process drama approach. Influenced by a range of educational theorists and practitioners, Heathcote developed a style of educational drama that she saw as being distinct from ‘theatre’, and more concerned with experiencing drama than performing it. To this end, she developed a number of dramatic techniques, such as ‘Teacher in Role’ and ‘Mantle of the Expert’, to help students inhabit dramatic contexts and learn through the direct imagined experience of a particular place, time or problem to be solved. These techniques have much to offer language teaching, particularly when communication is the main goal. Placing students in dramatic contexts is claimed to enhance motivation and engagement and lead to more truly authentic communication than is often found in language classrooms. Using a framework based on Heathcote’s techniques, and those developed by other process drama educators, language teachers can begin to explore the many benefits drama can offer language learners.