Educational theatre

The Educational role of Drama, Theatre, and Performance

Educational theatre, also called Pedagogic theatre, is a general term that refers to any kind of drama theatre or performance used to teach, or in an educational/pedagogic context. There have been many forms of this, from different schools of thought.

Some of the more important are:

Pedagogical theatre

In its purest form, a term related to Paulo Freire’s notion of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and the related theories and techniques for a Theatre of the Oppressed by his colleague Augusto Boal (see below). Used a little more freely in South Africa to related to all forms of theatre utilized for educational and developmental purposes - similarly to Educational theatre and Theatre for Development.

Drama in Education (DIE)

Drama in Education (DIE) is the name usually given to the use of drama techniques in the school curriculum, both as a teaching method for various subjects and a subject in itself. It uses various dramatic elements, and acting out as a means of teaching. In many Secondary schools drama is now a separate department, also in South Africa.

In some Primary schools it is used as a method to teach a number of subjects.

In the USA this also referred to as Creative Dramatics (See the writings of Nelly McCaslin for example)

The use of this method was strongly propagated in South Africa in the 1970s-1980s, especially through an association called The South African Association of Drama and Youth Theatre (SAADYT), founded by Esther van Ryswyk. SAADYT brought various specialists out to present workshops (e.g. Dorothy Heathcote, John O'Toole, )

South African specialists included Esther van Ryswyk, Paddy Terry,

The movement to establish DIE in schools however met fierce resistance from the Educational authroities in the country under the Apartheid government, who saw the techniques involved as undisciplined and dangerously political.

Theatre in Education (TIE)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_in_education

Drama, Theatre and Health

Theatre and general health issues

Examples: Health Education Theatre Project. A developmental theatre project undertaken under the auspices of the Ford Foundation in rural Transkei and Zululand (now Kwa-Zulu) by Barney Simon and black nurses in 1973. [See Simon, 1974, Kruger 1999], * Heart to Heart by the Storyteller Group. A workshop based project utilizing role-play and the theatrical and conscientizing techniques pioneered by Boal and others to develop a rural love story which can explore social and health issues. The project also produced two published texts in the form of graphic romances. Developed with school children by Patricia Watson of the Storyteller Group and a researchers over an extended period from 1991-1996, with the two comics or graphic texts (Dream Love , developed 1991 and True Love, developed 1993) being published in 1994 (revised 1996) by The Storyteller Group. *

AIDS awareness

Clive Evian, a doctor specializing in community medicine and head of the AIDS prevention programme of the Wits Rural Facility in the Mhala Mhala district, along with the Progressive Primary Care Network, devloped a training “play” for nurses and other health care workers to alter their attitudes and approaches to patients. [Kruger, 1999, p207] * The Johannesburg City Health Department’s AIDS Prevention Programme has since the late 1980’s utilized the expertise of the Market Lab and FUBA in their programme, to perform skits to promote caution about multiple sex partners, etc. . [Kruger, 1999, p207] * Puppets Against Aids – a programme run by Gary Friedman and AREPP - * DramAid * A national project originally founded and run by Lynn Dalrymple in 198* at the University of Zululand, * Sarafina II by Mbongeni Ngema. Hugely funded and controversial AIDS-awareness play written under contract for the Department of Health. First produced at The Natal Playhouse in Durban in 199*. Eventually the production was stopped as a result of public outcry, the opposition of AIDS-activists and the investigations by the Heath Commission into financial irregularities in the allocation and management of the R14 million allocated for the play by Ngema and his company, Committed Artists. ** Broken Dreams by Zakes Mda and the Market Lab. An AIDS prevention performance which aims at dramatising the consequences of sexual abuse for children. Performed by five professional actors and the children at the several hundred schools they visited, assisted on site by professional and lay community counsellors, the play allows for the audience members to articulate and confront their own experiences. Set up in 1995.*

See also Political theatre

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