Introduction

I have been privileged to live in circumstances which have always fused my personal and professional life because my interests revolve around people and everything affecting individuals and communities. My professional life has been conducted under two headings: “drama” and “teacher”. The first was inevitable from the moment I was a conscious thinker, and the latter I am still discovering the meaning of in practice. Some years ago, I realized that “teacher” is a gift word and you cannot give it to yourself. Some days I think I've earned it, but often I'm not so certain.

What I am certain of, is that I never tire of the challenge of trying to make meaning alongside the classes (groups) of people I'm privileged to work with. Drama based work to me is always concerned with “what it is to be human” and the amazing variety of ways we have that we have developed in sharing our stories and experiences. That is why I find the schisms which we have generated between the arts, sciences and humanities so irrelevant. The arts create the means of expressing, and teaching must attend to the means by which changes of understanding can be achieved. As Aristotle  has pointed out “We deliberate not about ends but about means. A doctor does not deliberate about whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade; nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order. Nor does anyone debate or deliberate about his end; they assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained”.

Exploring what it means to be human, and planning learning engagements mirroring all the affairs of humankind naturally involves me in any joints I can find where arts and sciences meet.

I have been privileged to live in circumstances which have always fused my personal and professional life because my interests revolve around people and everything affecting individuals and communities. My professional life has been conducted under two headings: “drama” and “teacher”. The first was inevitable from the moment I was a conscious thinker, and the latter I am still discovering the meaning of in practice. Some years ago, I realized that “teacher” is a gift word and you cannot give it to yourself. Some days I think I've earned it, but often I'm not so certain.

What I am certain of, is that I never tire of the challenge of trying to make meaning alongside the classes (groups) of people I'm privileged to work with. Drama based work to me is always concerned with “what it is to be human” and the amazing variety of ways we have that we have developed in sharing our stories and experiences. That is why I find the schisms which we have generated between the arts, sciences and humanities so irrelevant. The arts create the means of expressing, and teaching must attend to the means by which changes of understanding can be achieved. As Aristotle  has pointed out “We deliberate not about ends but about means. A doctor does not deliberate about whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall persuade; nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order. Nor does anyone debate or deliberate about his end; they assume the end and consider how and by what means it is to be attained”.

Exploring what it means to be human, and planning learning engagements mirroring all the affairs of humankind naturally involves me in any joints I can find where arts and sciences meet.

A few voices.

Richard Selzer2, poet and surgeon: 

“I sing of skin, layered fine as baklava, whose colours shame the dawn, at once the scabbard upon which is writ our only signature, and the instrument by which we are thrilled, protected, and kept constant in natural place. Here is each man bagged and trussed in perfect amiability. See how it upholsters the bone and muscle underneath, now accenting the point of an elbow, now rolling over the pectorals to hollow the grotto of an armpit. Nibbled and umbilicated, and perforated by the most deverse and marvelous openings, each with its singular rim and curtain.”

And again Selzer3:

“I am finished one operation and am waiting to begin another. The room in which I am working must be cleaned and prepared. For this time, I have entered the room adjacent to mine, to learn, to encourage, to measure. An operating room is not a quiet place. The voices of men rise and fall. Orders are given. There is anger. One hears laughter. Somewhere a machine bubbles. Electronic beeping counts out the rhythm of a heart, and always the to and fro sound of breathing that is controlled by a hand squeezing a rubber bag. But this operating room that I visit is quiet. There is none of the clangor that punctuates these labours. In this room, voices are used softly. They murmur. They purr. The wrists of these surgeons are slender, their fingers fine. When men huddle around an operating table, their heads bowed between bulky shoulders, they have the appearance of strength and mass. They group like buffalo. But these, in this room, are deer. Their necks are long. They turned them like deer. They are women”....

Your members of CODE surely, as I do, cannot avoid hearing and seeing the dancer’s art lifting from the pages of Selzer's meditations. The transformative vision of humans. Now “see” James Kirkup’s  poem written whilst watching an operation in Leeds infirmary. Kirkup makes us see movement upon a fine detailed canvas; as through a telescope, the line and color leap to our gaze in fine detail.

Cleanly sir, you went to the core of the matter.
Using the purest kind of wit, a balance of belief and art,
You with a curious nervous elegance laid bare
The roots of life, and put your finger on its beating heart.

A calligraphic master, improvising, you invent
The first incision, and no poet's hesitation
Before his snow-blank page mars your intent:
The following stroke is drawn like an uncalculated inspiration
 
A garland of flowers unfurls across the painted flesh.
With quick precision the arterial forceps click.
Yellow threads are knotted with a simple flourish.
Transfused, the blood preserves its rose, though it is sick.

We have sculptors like Barbara Hepworth drawing surgeons at work, and Henry Moore capturing images of Londoners during the blitz in World War II which invite the dance form, and the physicist Fritjof Capra5 turning to Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings to consider natural forms of grasses, water and human hair “... seeing nature as a model and mentor, is now being rediscovered in the practice of ecological design... underlying such an attitude of appreciation and respect for nature is a philosophical stance that does not view humans as standing apart from the rest of the living world but rather as being fundamentally embedded in, and dependent upon, the entire community of life in the biosphere.”

Finally, to return to an earlier point. “Stories are the secret reservoir of values; change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.”6

All my teaching practice draws constantly upon this symbiotic relationship of arts and scientific ways of expressing meaning and concerns. Drama is the universal joint among all the affairs of humankind because it is expressed in now, immediate time of doing. Thus, all the behaviors of people are its source of energy, ideas and forming. In the English language, there is no opposite to “behaving”. We cannot not behave: in stillness or action, silence or sound, seen and unseen, we do. These six elements form the palette of all “sign” in theatre and life. This is my mantra.

My experiences (as yours) have formed my teaching “culture” -- used in this instance to be interpreted as science and humans interacting.

I worked in a weaving mill among noise, patterns and movement. I was privileged to grow up in a family where children were not excluded from any business arising, and time with my grandmother who told stories and let me be around when she and neighbors and friends gossiped. There’s a wholesome word -- spreading the news, holding opinions, widening my areas of reference regarding what grown-ups get up to. Like all children, I made what sense I was able to at any time and the rest slid away, sometimes to be comprehended later.

I was able to study at the newly formed Theatre School in Bradford and had three years working with Rudolph Laban and Esmé Church and meeting the “greats” in theatre of that time in Britain. All this was possible because my mill owner listened to some of his weavers regarding my talents, such as they were displayed there in a local concert party and village festivals around the mill.

For two years afterwards I taught evening classes in the villages of Yorkshire, meeting a wide variety of humans!  Businesspeople, wealthy landowners, farmers, professional people and strange idiosyncratic characters, all united by wanting to produce plays in their village halls and churches. I also had a part-time position in the theatre school working with teachers meeting in the evenings for a variety of reasons. Improving their public speaking, selecting and producing plays in school were of special concern to these.

One such person, a headteacher, made me apply for a newly created post at the University of Durham (later to be split and form also the new University of Newcastle upon Tyne). I was amazed to find myself in an academic milieu at 24, and when I left the university aged 60, I remained still somewhat bewildered by the attitudes of some, by no means all, of the “grey men" who could reduce to dust some of the splendid aspirations of the students who took the trouble to study with us. For thirty-six years, I worked with a succession of deans and professors who let me “do it my way”. I wonder if it could happen today?

I married a supportive engineer who was concerned with form, design, processes, interaction of making, working with machines and responsibility that all should be “fit for purpose and formed”. His support also involved tolerating a frequently full house of strangers of many cultures, professions and creeds and my frequent absences in other countries and areas of the United Kingdom. (I kept the deep-freeze full from the yields of our large garden, worked in harmony by ourselves and he was good at taking things out in date order and mixing menus.)

A huge bonus was all those willing teachers to lent me their classes of all ages and abilities to practice developing Aristotle's means of achieving changes in knowing and understanding. This generosity still continues, and so I still am privileged to keep honing and understanding bit by bit how to structure learning situations using the “I do” elements in drama and dance forms. But I am also privileged to work in the total curriculum of human affairs, so you will find as much writing, painting, reading, talking, calculating and making, as you will see, the “I do” of drama in my encounters with learners.

This brings me inevitably to considerations of power relationships between learner and teacher. I have never divided these positions; other than I hold myself responsible for the safety of those I'm working with. Dramatic forms also include considerations regarding the emotional and private safety areas of my charges. I have always wanted students to be colleagues/apprentices, and to share in the making process. Thus, when confronted with three “naughty” boys deemed to be antisocial, this dilemma of power had to be resolved if we were all to survive for a whole week in a cell of a room and get ourselves by hook or by crook to a certain stable around Judea by Friday, last lesson. Inadvertently, I invented Mantle of the Expert. Their elevation to Kingship enabled my “go for” teacher position to preserve point of view, responsibility and episodic story development. These three elements are at the heart of the style of learning.

The name confuses, but I've never found a more useful one. “Mantle” is in this instance not a cloak of protection, but a signifier of stature and responsibility. My mantle declares my standards, integrity and service in my culture. “Expert” means I am a continual student, aware that information must be sought for, skills constantly honed and shared with others. So the style of learning absolutely embodies what our schools are supposed to do. Nurture young people into becoming interactive, generous members of their society/culture and remain open to learning whatever is required of them throughout their lives.

Once I could name the process, I could see how appropriate it is to formal schooling situations IF the teacher power to tell, know more, and generally be in control of the ordering of the learning encounters, can be changed. One model could be the master/apprentice relationship. But that relationship requires clients to demand results appropriate to their expectations. From considering this, I evolved the notion of running enterprises. Running enterprises involves cooperation and collegiate practice. Enterprises can be invented to suit learning needs and such inventions involve recognizing that we are playing at a very deep level. Playing at using power to positive ends (the clients needs) and playing at being grown up in legitimate circumstances which bring dignity, not embarrassment. Teachers and students play alongside each other in “growing” the enterprise which is also in “process of becoming” during dramatic action -- we do, we are doing to make meaning.

An important drive for me in trying to help teachers to use drama in their classrooms, was that many teachers fear the active, unpredictability of drama. Even today, many teachers have little notion of the “dramatic event” though they may encounter some learning about it during their training. Often their own schooling experiences involve taking part in or watching plays, and the position of director seems a natural one for the teacher to assume. This is not so. I have to constantly develop the playwright muscle. To structure, as colleague, action events which through productive tension engage the students in exploring encounters relevant to the mantle learning and the expert practicing of knowledge.