Teaching for Community: Empowerment through Drama

Building Community in the Classroom I am keenly interested in the impact of the group dynamic on learning and on the use of drama strategies to enhance enquiry, engagement and empowerment. Much of my work has entailed an exploration of how to educate in such a way as to enhance resilience, agency and integrity. In this article I draw on research examining how the drama educator can teach for community and at the same time pursue skills and understandings in the art form. I examined these interests in a term-long research study with a Year 11 drama class. The project entailed taking a reflective practitioner perspective on a series of drama workshops in which the students explored the theme of Coping with Change and Challenge. They used anti-naturalistic techniques to examine power, choice and the internal and external influences on behaviour and relationships. They developed and performed short dramas designed to reveal an important issue to an adult audience. The dramas examined instances of powerlessness, shame and help-seeking and were interlaced with parodies of common fantasies of escape and rescue. In addition, the students worked as an ensemble in forum-style improvised theatre. In the forums, the actors and a range of audience members improvised together, exploring predicaments requested by the audience. Data was collected from each of the twenty students in the form of interviews and written feedback and from audience members