ABSTRACT
The word ‘meaning’ has already been used often during this book, invoking a number of apparently different dimensions. What the word ‘meaning’ in the arts actually means has been variously defined, including among the more portentous: ‘satisfying the need for identity and community’,1 and ‘defamiliarisation to recover the sensation of life’.2 Exponents of drama in education spend a considerable time wrestling with the word, as part of their artistic and professional responsibility for ‘learning’; our definitions range from the early ‘development through drama’3 and ‘learning through drama’4-where meaning is specifically and totally attached to the pedagogical aims-through ‘change of insight (or understanding)’5 where it is attached to the individual’s personal meaning systems-via ‘deconstructing or reconstructing official reality’6 to ‘subverting the theatricality of schooling’7-which ascribe a social construction and even a pro-active component to the dramatic meaning.
