ABSTRACT

Drama is the art form of social encounters and it offers a rich experience for learners. It also offers an opportunity to construct imaginary worlds from different times and cultures. It enables speculation, modification and transformation of our understanding through examining different people's perspectives, alternative possibilities and the consequences of our actions. Through drama one creates a situation with a set of human problems to be resolved in some way: thus it is invaluable as a way of teaching understanding of historical situations. Drama is a medium par excellence for teaching history. History is fundamentally about people: in examining evidence (e.g. artefacts and documents from the past), we are trying to get at the lives behind the evidence. Drama can help us to do this in three ways. First, it can act as a means for exploring material presented in stories, documents, artefacts and other forms of evidence through enactive representations of past events, lives and situations. Faced with the decisions which people had to make in the past (e.g. whether to flee the rebels marching on London to depose you as monarch, or to gather an army of loyal soldiers and face the rebels in battle), we can begin to understand the historical situation from the inside. The second value of drama lies in its engagement of the emotions. Through acting out a scene of Mary I consulting her advisers on whether to stand her ground or to flee, the participants in the drama as well as the observers experience or are privy to the emotions which might be felt by someone in such a crisis: fear, anger, anxiety, pride in oneself, a sense of duty to the country and inner strength in facing up to the danger. Finally, drama has very strong links with play. In enjoying imaginative play, children re-enact situations, both familiar ones such as school, and unfamiliar ones such as invasion by aliens from another planet, or knights guarding a castle. They will invent situations, allocate roles, create ‘pretend’ spaces for action (e.g. the forest, the spaceship), and suggest events and actions, literally making it up as they go along. In teaching through drama, teachers will be drawing on some of these processes and harnessing children's natural way of learning.