Abstract
My privileged opportunity to work with renowned Drama theorist, Dorothy Heathcote, in Melbourne in the 1970s, set a foundation for what I now call Theatre as Education research. Formerly a teacher of Secondary Drama, I became very experienced at creating plays with my students, based on their own ideas, or inspired by the stories of the community. When working in a tiny country town in Victoria, I took my Drama class to visit the Senior Citizens in our community, and collect anecdotes of their youthful experiences. The adolescents asked, 'What was it like- here in this town - when you were my age?' The responses were candid and sometimes less likely than fiction. We wrote a one-act play, which incorporated the many different dialogues, and we performed it for the town. Our co-researchers were the special guests, taking front row seats. They watched their lives re-enacted, and an inter-generational bond was forged. This paper will present my approach to creating plays out of chaotic, narrative data. There has emerged a kind of formula, which is flexible enough to apply to groups of students or adults, with varying abilities in qualitative research data collection and in the performing arts. I have used the Theatre as Education formula to showcase research data in both schools and at academic conferences, as well as in print. This paper presents a step-by-step approach to collecting, analysing, interpreting and restructuring oral data for performance text. It will also present some examples from published plays, which were born of narrative. I believe Theatre as Education works as both an engaging pedagogy for teachers, and an innovative framework for the presentation of primary research data. I would like to share my approach with you.
Journal
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Publication Name
AARE 2011 Conference Proceedings
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ISBN/ISSN
1324-9320
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Issue
2015
Pages Count
8
Location
Freemantle, WA, Australia
Publisher
Australian Association for Research in Education
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Publisher Location
Deakin, ACT, Australia
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DOI
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