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Rolling Role – Heathcote Reconsidered ConferenceWater Reckoning Project www.water-reckoning.netSue Davis s.davis@cqu.edu.au, Xenia Simou, Chris Hatton, Mary Mooney, Julian Kennard, Jen Kulik (via video), Jeffrey Tan (at conference) Also Glenn Taylor, Angelina Ambrosetti, Mei Yee Chang, Prue Wales, Jenny Nicholls. Project proposal by Pam Bowell.

+The Water Reckoning Rolling Role Project

The idea for a rolling role project shared through digital technologies was floated at IDIERI in Limerick 2012

The proposal was to explore how Heathcote’s ideas and strategies are still relevant today and may be repurposed, reworked and extended upon into the future.

In particular the focus was on the Rolling Role concept and how this might be realised in the digital age

The Water Reckoning Project has taken place online and live – in five school sites across the world leading up to and during the ‘Heathcote Reconsidered’ conference

+Rolling Roll – what is it?

The concept of Rolling Role is to involve different groups or classes in building a community that then faces some kind of change. The initiators create a common context and agree to the key features, affairs and concerns of the community. The students/children are then involved in building the community, the lives, events and artefacts of it and add to developments.

Work is often left incomplete so another group can take it forward and continue the drama.

Work produced by classes if publicly open and available to stimulate other work.

Heathcote suggested this work lends it self to sharing through something like a website.

(See ‘Contexts for active learning: four models’ By Dorothy Heathcote ’)

+Who has been involved? Australia – Qld - Sue Davis

(Coordinator), Angelina Ambrosetti (Researcher), Glenn Taylor (Teacher)

Australia – NSW – Christine Hatton, Jenny Nicholls, Mary Mooney (Researchers), Julian Kennard (Teacher)

Greece – Xenia Simou (Teacher/Researcher)

Singapore – Mei Yee Chang (Teacher/Coordinator), Jeffrey Tan (Teacher), Prue Wales (Researcher)

USA – Jen Kulik (Teacher/Researcher)

+Absent friends

+Site – type of school

Grade/Age

Number of students/gender

Drama experience

Other relevant details

Queensland – Public secondary school – 1000 students

Year 10 – 14-5 years

25 students22 girls, 3 boys

1-3 years Little drama outside school. Limited process drama

Sydney – Independent school 1200

Year 9, 2 x year 10

21 students, - 11 girls, 9 boys

Elective drama

Quite a lot of out of school experience – NIDA etc

Greece – Public school near sea, approx. 230 students 15-18

15 years old

12 students – 11 girls, 1 boy

No school drama

Different type of drama work for students, hard to get together for co-curricular work.

Singapore - polytechnic

16 year olds

3 x classes Studying applied theatre

Approx 3 x 2 hr sessions

USA- small private secondary school

14-15 & 16-17 years

16 students 11 girls, 5 boys

Studying applied theatre

Applied theatre students leading workshops for year 6

+Why Water? Major 21st century local and global challenges – 2013 Year of Water Collaboration

+Water issues/drama – rely on human relationships and cooperation

Heathcote’s guarantee – “students will see the real world more clearly when they have experienced the imagined one.”

Humans have overcome water issues through invention, technological change, through migration, and through cooperation

Drama as a means of investigating and rehearsing possible future action.

+Questions to ponder

Why is water so important to our lives and cultures?

What actions, activities and rituals involve water?

What local and contemporary experiences can we draw on to inform our drama?

What different roles, dramatic conventions, movement, music, imagery can we use to tell our stories?

How do people cope in times of water crisis?

Can we do anything to ensure water security – so that all may share healthy, clean water?

+Opportunities and risks

Today’s young creatives use a realm of cyberspaces and digital tools to create and share their work

We want to position young people as creators and global citizens, not just consumers of culture

We want to capitalise on using different social media, online spaces and tools

We need to do so in ways that are manageable and responsible, especially where young from school contexts are involved

Drama teachers/facilitators end up having to play a key role in managing & mediating these components, uploading and moderating content.

Online tools & spaces Creative opportunities

+Ideas we could draw on from Heathcote’s work Drama is about making

significant meaning through commitment to an enterprise and fiction

Importance of finding and creating significant objects, artefacts, images, texts

Teacher often works in-role with the group, manages, questions and facilitates from within

Consider and use dramatic elements movement/stillness, sound/silence darkness/light

Finding the universal in the particular, the emotional connection

Segmenting and selecting focus from culture: work, war, education, health, food, family, shelter, travel, communication, clothing, worship, law, leisure

Find a simple starting point and build belief in stages

Participants should have the power to take action and operate, drawing on what they know and can do

Different frame choices can offer closeness or protection from the main event or action

Suppose that…I wonder what ….If we could only …I bet if we tried hard we could …

+Different conventions

Visualisations

A written account, diary entry or report

A story told about another

Creation or re-creation of painting or photograph

Finding or drawing up plans

Drawing or map

Teacher in role

Use of soundscape

Enactment in situ.

Enacted Role

Hot seat role play

Creation of role/role cards

Gossip mill

Finding a cryptic message

Rituals & ceremonies

Formal demonstrations, meetings, briefings

I remember

Artefacts of a character, time or place

Clothes of characters

p. 166-167

+Edging in, dramatic material & focus – or pretext

“An effective pretext is simple and functional. It sets in motion situations in which appearance and reality, truth and deception, and role and identity may be contrasted and explored.”

A good pretext has … “ power to launch the dramatic world with economy and clarity, propose action, and imply transformation”

Source: Cecily O’Neill (1995), Drama Worlds p.20 & 136

Suppose that…I wonder what ….If we could only …I wonder if we could …

+Art, drama & importance of selectivity

Therefore, art creates selection. It demands selection. It seems to me that effective teaching is about selection. It has to particularize, It has to isolate. And because it does this, it distorts … So in art, you have: isolation of the human condition, particularization, distortion, and forming so that you may contemplate it. It is given shape to synthesize the importance of the distortion.

Heathcote in Johnson & O'Neill, 1984, p.114

+High selectivity – Initial dramatic material and context - Take 1 Water and Time Earth

Reconciliation (WATER) Council

Our role is to identify those times, places and events where the time fabric could be altered to avert disasters and bad decisions involving our earth’s water resources. Help us identify those points in time and places where we can go back and make a difference

We also invite you to tell us about those events and times where people did make a difference.

Issues – documentary style – ‘Water Council’ not inspiring the imagination

What is the connection to current context and student experiences

+Take 2

Different water sources produce different crystalline structures when frozen

Water takes on the "resonance" of the energy which is directed at it, and that polluted water can be restored through prayer and positive visualization

Issues – critiques of Emoto’s work – pseudo-science

Possible semi-religious overtones (water becomes ‘god-like’)

+Take 3

# Discovery of a lost culture of frozen people underwater who experienced times of crisis

# Responding to a message in a bottle about the history of ‘Ardus Unda’

# Who were these people and what happened?

# What did their emissaries learn about stories from elsewhere around the world?

# Is it possible to help the frozen people or restore them to life?

Jason deCaires Taylor imagery

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Another layer added through fictional frame – Teacher in role – Dr Rita Strong, discovery of message in a bottle.

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How it has worked? # Groups create drama work using different conventions. Key content and outcomes and digitally recorded and documented - audio, text, images, videos # Selected material is posted to PlaceStories, videos on YouTube etc# Each group reviews what has already been posted and considering ways to ‘roll’ the action forward# There are some session where participants interact online together

+Three mains frames initially + one more created

Enrolling students as the researchers who are investigating the history of Ardus Unda

Emissaries and those who left Ardus Unda and have travelled the world seeking answers and documenting events

Those who lived in Ardus Unda at the time of the catastrophe

The descendents of those who survived

+Technology use

Teachers/facilitator Skype (initial planning) Google hangouts (live interactions – meeting

up and planning) Google Drive (for sharing documents) Google + community PlaceStories (with some content uploaded to

YouTube) With students Camera/ iPads/ photos/ video cameras Google hangout between groups PlaceStories (main site for posting creative

content)

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www.water-reckoning.nethttp://placestories.com/project/8501

Different journeys and key experiences(NB Videos removed for uploading to Slideshare)

Original pre-text

Queensland beach photo shoot & response

Queensland beach shoot – character & symbolic clothing Greek follow on

Sydney Site

Singapore - The Pre-textInitially, while students found

the pre-text engaging they didn’t buy into fiction

- Many said the video was too “professional”, music was not needed

- Archaeologists would not make such “polished” films

Hegemonic belief/practice of ‘Singaporean pragmatism’, we wonder?

Students told us• If they were real bodies,

they would have rotted (in humid Singapore everything rots/turns mouldy)

• When facilitators emphasised that the bodies were frozen, students thought of science fiction possibilities

Student Reflecting on the Pre-text

• Told us they felt the pre-text needed to be set nearer Singapore (or relate more to Singapore culturally), and be more ‘realistic’ (possible) which was explored during the next lesson

The Fiction

Students subsequently bought into the fiction through a video clip of Dwarka (lost, sunken Indian city), and by re-creating aspects of the city

They found the ‘Rolling’ from other locations engaging and helpful in building narrative

Constant struggle with ‘suspension of disbelief’, that seems partly due the mixture of fact and fiction, real and unreal

+Aspects of rolling – Rolling pre-text, laying trails, following threads, weaving them together Brad Haseman’s “leaderly drama”, Jenny Simons

identifies a number of abilities that he used, these included:

… laying trails, weaving ideas together, sensing what the group wants, withholding in order to maintain tension and surprise, and ‘smelling’ emerging scents (Simons, 2001: 234).

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Hangout – USA – in role as Ardus Unda ResidentsQLD – in role as councillors/govt officials

Aspects that rolled – including participation in several shared lived interactions.

+Positive aspects

Rolling Role – great concept for enabling students (and teachers) to collaborate with students in other places & countries

The aesthetic power of the Jason deCaire Taylor pre-text – prompting the imagination

Finding examples of many underwater cities, and current water crises/disasters

Effective use of aesthetic tools and artefacts – grounded the work of the imagination

Student responding to the sensory experiences with water & the reality of water issues

+Issues and challenges

Time, school timetables and arrangements, finding common times to collaborate globally

Set up and logistics – teachers had to have confidence/experience with process drama and digital technology and be very persistent

Problems with technology working

School technology vs social use of technology by young people

Students limited experience of process drama, uncertainty, taking time to embrace the fiction

Amount of content being posted to PlaceStories – keeping track of developments

+Repurposing Heathcote…? Structuring an open-ended learning experience – is challenging for

some students – requires a leap of faith into the unknown

Process drama not familiar for most students - need to find ways to link to curriculum, assessment & identified outcomes e.g. rehearsed improvisation (Qld) or playbuilding (NSW), students structuring applied theatre experiences (USA/Singapore)

While Heathcote said it shouldn’t be introduced as a drama project – now we do have to name it and the conventions of the artform as such

Importance of use of artefacts, and creation of artefacts as aesthetic tools to ground imaginative work

Importance of teacher’s role for structuring (high selectivity) modelling teacher in role, knowing when to with-hold information and reframe action in different ways (teacher as playwright)

Great potential for cross school, interstate, international collaboration – real global citizenship is actually not that common in schools at present.