Putting Process Drama into Action

Book excerpt: This new book provides a clear and accessible guide on best practice to support teachers when using process drama in establishing creative learning partnerships with their students. It offers a detailed analysis and explores the roles of actor, director and playwright that the teacher must adopt in order to develop the ‘thinking on your feet’ skills and knowledge necessary to deliver a complete process drama experience. Addressing the dynamic nature of process drama, it provides a clear and rigorous explanation of the theory of process drama and links it to practice. Drawing on a wide range of detailed examples from the authors’ international and cross-cultural practice, it demonstrates how an effective process drama operates in action. Written to help practitioners and students produce powerful, artistic and educative experiences, chapters cover: pedagogy and the improvised nature of the art form; the structural framework and making shifts in the drama; the role of actor, director, playwright and teacher; monitoring emotional range; progression and the importance of reflection; the spiral of creative exchange and the complexities of co-creativity. Putting Process Drama into Action will be an essential guide for students undertaking initial teacher training at primary level, in addition to those studying both Drama and English at secondary level. It will also prove to be essential reading for specialist and non-specialist teachers in the primary and secondary sectors who teach, or wish to teach, process drama.