School drama and representations of war and terror – some theoretical approaches to understanding learning in drama in troubled times1

1. The first version of this paper was presented at a symposium, ‘El currículum olvidado. Los contenidos culturales de ficción en la construcción del imaginario de las nuevas generaciones [The lost curriculum. The materials of a culture of fiction in the construction of the imagination of new generations]’ as part of the IV Jornadas de Desarrollo Humanos y Educación [4th Conference on Human and Educational Development], Fundación Infancia y Aprendizaje [Foundation for Children and Learning] y Universidad de Alcalá at Universidad de Alcalá, 9–12 September 2005.

Abstract

The argument here proceeds from an understanding that learning in drama is about participating in forms of cultural production whilst simultaneously engaging thought and feeling to make sense of aspects of contemporary life. In contemporary culture, acts of war and terror are mediated through television and digitised media and are thereby given immediate proximity to everyday life. As well as having real and terrible effects in real situations, acts of violence and terror appear to be constructed with the consciousness of their instantaneously mediated effects on audiences. How might learners, particularly in culturally diverse urban classrooms, understand the effects of televised violence? In what ways do they represent or reproduce violence, war and terror in the drama classroom? What does this tell teachers and researchers about learning in drama? How might drama educators describe, analyse and understand the effects on developing minds? An example taken from a drama lesson is described and analysed here in reference to a theoretical framework constructed from critical cultural theory, multimodal social semiotics and a cultural approach to the development of mind. This is by way of developing a way of understanding the practices, pedagogies and modes of production in drama education in an age of real and powerfully mediated acts of violence.

Keywords:

• learning
• dramatisation
• culture
• multimodality
• motivation

Notes

1. The first version of this paper was presented at a symposium, ‘El currículum olvidado. Los contenidos culturales de ficción en la construcción del imaginario de las nuevas generaciones [The lost curriculum. The materials of a culture of fiction in the construction of the imagination of new generations]’ as part of the IV Jornadas de Desarrollo Humanos y Educación [4th Conference on Human and Educational Development], Fundación Infancia y Aprendizaje [Foundation for Children and Learning] y Universidad de Alcalá at Universidad de Alcalá, 9–12 September 2005.

2. I first used this example in a chapter (Franks 1995).

3. David Hare, ‘Holding forth’, Guardian Review, July 16 2005.