Dramatizing gender: Exploring gender constructs through drama-based strategies

ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which drama-based strategies were used to stimulate critical inquiry into constructs of power, gender and sexual orientation amongst a group of Grade 10 learners. Drama, with its emphasis on the human condition; and drama-based strategies (in specific role-play) with their empathetic, metaxical and metacognitive possibilities, are appropriate means to do so. By referring to learners’ reflections on learning sessions, the article demonstrates how drama-based strategies, used as instructional tools, revealed the ways in which they understood gender constructs and how the sessions fostered critical (if not ontological) inquiry.