ABSTRACT
Drama experiences that are focused on making and relating, perceiving and responding, and connecting and understanding open dialogical spaces for students to: gain awareness of the roles of the dramatic arts in creating and reecting understandings; build respect for the contributions of individuals and cultural groups to the dramatic arts in local and global contexts; and highlight the value of the dramatic arts as a medium for documenting human experience and expression, and examining the relationships across the arts, societies, and life. Greater selfawareness and wider/deeper insights are gained through attending to other(s)—other materials, other ideas, other images, and other forms of expression. In the process, empathetic and more informed understandings are fostered. Relations between self and other are continually addressed as personal connections and understandings are negotiated. Goldberg (2004) refers to such negotiations as oering needed spaces to explore possibilities and to develop ideas. Such spaces reduce socio-educational pressures, including constraints such as extreme shyness, fear of failure, and perceived language inadequacies that may hinder active participation by ELL students in regular classroom contexts. us, language learners may feel liberated to communicate nonverbally, alongside verbal communication, through dramatic arts experiences. By oering a broad range of ways in which students may connect and understand themselves in relation to others, teachers may help ELL students to overcome constraints to communication in the target language through participation in drama experiences such as those presented here in this section.
