In October 2010 I moved to Wales in order to start my course at the University of Wales, Newport, now known as the University of South Wales (you can find more information here: http://www.southwales.ac.uk/ ). The course I signed up for is called Applied Drama.
Now, this is not a term that is very familiar to everyone, which is why I will attempt to define it, but be warned, it is not the easiest thing to explain.
Over the years I have heard many different definitions, one of them, maybe the most frequent one being Applied Drama as a tool to raise social issues. As much as this is true, there is the question of how much this differs from the theatre people have been putting on for thousands of years, the theatre we’ve seen on a night out. Beckett, Goethe, Brecht, Pinter, Osborne. Surely it can be argued that these playwrights wrote plays to raise certain social issues.So there must be more to Applied Drama than ‘just’ that.
I think the term becomes clearest to people when you say that what we’re talking about here is an umbrella term for different theatrical methods and theories, which can be used to improve the life quality of people, who experience themselves as being oppressed or underprivileged, are being seen as oppressed and underprivileged by others or, ideally, both. The methods I’m talking about here include Theatre for Development, Theatre in Prisons, Theatre of the Oppressed, a term coined by Augusto Boal, Theatre in Education, Drama therapy etc.
To understand Applied Drama it helps to understand that theatre, and I’m talking about the traditonal theatre here, excluded the work of groups like Rimini Protokoll, Gob Squad companies like National Theatre Wales, that this theatre focuses on the end product. Aim of the writing process, the rehearsal process is to put on a play the audience can enjoy. In Applied Drama the focus lies on the process, the journey, many times the work does not include an end product at all, sometimes, it does. The question of all Applied Drama work is always, what can the theatrical work do for the individual, how can it help, can it raise attention to certain problems and maybe highlight solutions that were already there?
Words that are used often in the context of the study of Applied Drama are “giving someone a voice”, “allowing someone to express themselves”, “improving the life quality of others”, “helping others”, “educating others”. And although I understand what people mean when they say this, I don’t like to think of myself as a person, who does all that. The way I see it, it implies that I know something or am something others are not and that thought makes me feel rather uncomfortable. I like to think of myself as someone, who happens to know certain methods to reveal what is already there,what might have been forgotten or overseen.
Further, a danger of this definition is that it separates Applied Drama from the professional theatre and rather focuses on amateur work, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Now, I understand that the whole discussion is probably to complicated to grasp in one blog post, which is why I decided to make this a series. Several blog post that will exactly explain the modules I have taken in university and how, over time, I have come to understand Applied Drama as a state of mind.
So stay tuned and switch back in or whatever, you know what I mean.
Thanks for reading.
Christina
The Confines of the Theatre 