‘Many Mickles Make a Muckle’ – Role-Shifted Discourse, Restored Behaviour and the Radical in Performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Dorothy Heathcote’s perspectives concerning ‘role-shifted discourse’ within what she latterly called ‘Model 1: Drama used to explore people’ exhibits a strong alignment with the didactic purposes of ‘living history’ performances at heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. Kershaw’s ‘points of process’ concerning the ‘radical in performance’ are introduced as a proposition for analysing and reconceptualising both the character of ‘living history’ performances and the fundamentally radical nature of Dorothy Heathcote’s pioneering innovations for drama-based learning and teaching. This line of ‘theoretical/conceptual’ inquiry offers new propositions about intersections between Dorothy Heathcote’s insights concerning role performance within ‘the drama frame’ and Schechner’s perspectives concerning the dramatic tensions that reside within what Turner identified as ‘liminoid’, threshold-crossing experiences for participant/observers of ‘living history’ performances at museums and heritage sites.