Dr.

Adriana DERVISHAJ (Lecturer at Tirana University, Faculty of Foreign Languages,

English Department)
e-mail: diana.adriana76@gmail.com
Dr. Rozana Rushiti, Professor of Albanian Language, Faculty of History and Philology

Title: Social human behavior and emotions explored within Drama as an academic discipline
and a useful creative method.

Abstract
As opposed to other subjects in the Arts and Social Sciences, there does not seem to have been the
same extensive questioning of universal assumptions about human behavior and emotions within
Drama as an academic discipline.
To some extent, a belief in a common universality of human experience has its roots in
modern acting practice, particularly with the widespread application of rehearsal exercises
developed from the work of Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski. Here, through a long process
of improvisation based on imaginative, emotional recreation, it is assumed that the student/actor can
enter fully into a character that, in terms of its cultural background, is perhaps very different from
her/his own, that experience is somehow universally translatable.
In avant-garde theatre, too, interculturalist practices (for example, the borrowing of oriental
ritual patterns and the use of multi-ethnic casts in the work of practitioners such as Eurgenio Barba,
Peter Brook and Richard Schechner) have led to a homogenizing, and in many cases distinct
westernizing of individual cultural behaviors.
Drama contributes to a more democratic distribution of powers amidst students in the EFL
classrooms by integrating language skills with social and emotional interpretative skills deriving
from the social origins of Drama as Brian Watkins uphold in his lecturing at Birmingham City
University UK where I had my MA in Drama in Education.

Key words: modern acting practice, emotional recreation, distribution of powers, avant-garde
theatre, social origin of Drama
Introduction
Drama has sprung forth as a part of worship in the history of Europe something as old, perhaps,
as the deepest desires and highest aspirations of humanity as Kennedy says in an Introduction to
Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

Drama is creating meaning and visible mental models of our understanding together, in imaginative
contexts and situations. It is not about performance, but exploration. And the teacher in drama
becomes a learner among learners, a participant, and a guide, who lends expertise to the students.
So writes Jeffrey Wilhelm in the introduction to Imagining to Learn: Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration
through Drama, a fascinating and enthusiastic book coauthored with Brian Edmiston. The goal is to
make drama a more integral part of teaching and learning in classrooms; research is an attempt to
make drama an attractive and realistic methodology for teachers.
In the specific case of drama, schools most often include drama as an extracurricular activity (e.g.,
the creation of a drama club or the production of a play after school hours). Schools have generally
not understood or accepted the value of drama as a central part of curriculum and pedagogy. Where
drama enters classrooms, it is usually through these outside specialists and guests, reinforcing
the notion that drama is something different from the work of teachers. Wilhelm and Edmiston work
to change this mentality in Imagining to Learn, providing compelling evidence that drama, when
used as a teaching methodology, can have a powerful impact on student learning.
Necessarily, one is led to the world of Play and Game in an examination of the social origins of
Theatre.
Games represent sublimated tribal activity involving religious conviction applied to the affairs of
everyday life. Like proverbs, drama contexts serve as strategies for living, derived from
accumulated experience, and distilled into wisdom by former generations. They may be utterances
that remind communities of the disasters that can befall them warning games.
The source of this power to control the unexpected or to fathom the unfathomable, resides in the
activity that constitutes the boundaries of the Game, which is called Play.
Summing up the formal characteristics of Play, we might call it a FREE ACTIVITY standing quite
consciously OUTSIDE ORDINARY LIFE as being NOT SERIOUS according to Brian Watkins,
a professor at the University of Central England in UK, but at the same time ABSORBING THE
PLAYER INTENSELY AND UTTERLY. It PROCEEDS WITHIN ITS OWN PROPER
BOUNDARIES OF TIME AND SPACE ACCORDING TO FIXED RULES AND IN AN
ORDERLY MANNER.
This definition reveals that the major function of Play is to create another world: a world within the
world we normally inhabit.
The Game represents the conscious retention, though distorted, of a subconscious experience,
genetically printed upon the human brain. The details suffer change, but the activity of playing
remains the same, in essence, as the strategies for living adopted by our ancestors.
In this Dramatically conducted activity, human community is celebrated or challenged through the
invocation of both conscious and unconscious experience.
Thus, we may encounter a description of an occurrence in normal life that may be heightened
sufficiently in its definition as to be termed theatrical. This conveys that the happening was, though
of the normal everyday world, vivid, memorable, ecstatic even.

This recognition of Theatre as a condition, allows us to pass freely between its formative activity,
the Drama, and the oracular statement, offering, meaning by inference, to our own disordered lives.
Teaching drama as an art
Using the metaphor of art to apply to teaching is useful corrective to the current tendency to see the
process of teaching and learning exclusively in clinical, over-simplified terms. Precise targets, clear
objectives, pre-determined learning outcomes and mechanical processes do not by themselves
guarantee successful teaching. The key is to recognise that in any teaching, no matter how focused
the learning objectives, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that it is above all a human
enterprise which demands sensitivity to the way participants are responding and engaging with the
context.
Drama teaching is an art in that it does not lend itself to the mechanical application of
methods and techniques. Sensitivity to contexts is essential. Drama teaching is also an art in that it
demands the appropriate selection and employment of artistic form to create meaning. It is an
argument of this assignment that teaching drama is also about enabling students to do likewise.
I was inspired also by David Lodges excellent publication, The Art of Fiction, in which he takes a
number of topics and relates these to selected extracts from novels. But it is to the writings of
Bolton, which I have found myself returning again and again for inspiration; I particularly admire
the way in which he is able to combine theory and practice so successfully.
All Art serves as a lifebelt to save us from an ocean of meaninglessness.
It also allows us to examine the activity, homogenetically with the model it provides relating the
process of learning and for the conduct of our everyday life in social interaction.
Man is conceived as an actor playing a role in a Drama that, like all plays, has no reality, except in
suspension: as in all games the complete form is only revealed at the end and then immediately is
lost forever.
This Absurdist view of reality refutes the classic Sociology that assumes there is a social order
waiting to be revealed. Instead it accepts the meaninglessness of existence as in Waiting for
Godot.
By using the Game model, itself drawn from Theory, itself derived from the greater world of Play
and Game, the Absurdist, and the Symbolic Interactionists in general, illuminate the traffic of our
daily lives.
What all this review underlines, is the immense social importance of the Dramatic activity and the
Theatre as an institution for Games playing as central to Mans being, so effectively it allows the
making of meaning.
Finally, however, we must beware of demystifying the experience by rational examination and
remember the caution of Ernst Fischer, with whose opinions the paper started:
True as it is that the essential function of art for a class destined to change the world is not that of
making magic but of enlightening and stimulating action, it is equally true that a magical residue in

art cannot be entirely eliminated, for without that minute residue of its original nature, art ceases to
be art Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But
art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it.
B. Watkins examines drama as research in chapter five, Drama as Inquiry: Students and Teachers
as Co researchers, making the argument that drama as inquiry leads to a more complex way of
looking at research questions, the creation of innovative methodologies, and the ability to read and
analyze data from multiple perspectives.
This research tries to explain that qualitative teacher research is considered valid when it promotes
transformation in practice which is evidence of learning.
This occurs when teacher researchers are actively involved in learning while researching.
The method involves the teacher setting the classroom activities so that students are engaged in a
problem based learning methodology which becomes both a teaching strategy and a foundation
for research.
The research studies professional growth whilst directly engaged in practice-based inquiry. It
represents the contributions that drama teachers can make to using drama as learning methods
through systematic research that informs practise.
Formerly drama teacher and Head of Drama at QUT, Brads current research investigates practiceled methodologies for researching the arts and creative practises, and evaluating the role of Drama
and the arts in educating the creative workforce.
Learning to Teach Drama is A Case Narrative Approach about putting drama education
theory into practice and preparing for the contextual variables that lie ahead. It is the next-best thing
to actual classroom experience, enabling readers to think through "What do I do if . . .?" scenarios
and experience vicariously a broad range of teaching situations.
Eighteen case narratives are featured in all, representing the issues every teacher faces:
planning lessons, knowing students as individuals and as members of a group, establishing
classroom climate, understanding the place of drama within the school community, and expecting
the unexpected. These teachers also assist one another, comment on each others cases, and
effectively create a learning community. In addition, special "Extensions" sections prepared by the
editors encourage readers to go beyond each narrative and relate the situations to their own
teaching.
Key sessions to be recorded are:
1. Planning Lessons
Analysis of Hamlet as a character and his the main conflict he faces
2. Classroom Climate: Working with Groups and acting out of scene 3
Finding a Focus through Play building
A Case Narrative Approach as applied by Jane Holden in UK following the steps of Augusto Boal

Augusto Boal is a theatre director, dramatist, theorist, writer, and teacher. He is the founder of the
international movement 'Theatre of the Oppressed'. He is the author of Theatre of the Oppressed,
Games for Actors and Non-Actors, and Rainbow of Desire.
Legislative Theatre:
Using Performance to Make Politics
'Legislative Theatre' is an attempt to use Boal's method of 'Forum Theatre' within a political system
to create a truer form of democracy. It is an extraordinary experiment in the potential of theatre to
affect social change. At the heart of his method of Forum Theatre is the dual meaning of the verb 'to
act': to perform and to take action. Forum Theatre invites members of the audience to take the stage
and decide the outcome, becoming an integral part of the performance. As a politician in his native
Rio de Janeiro, Boal used Forum Theatre to motivate the local populace in generating relevant
legislation. In Legislative Theatre Boal creates new, theatrical, and truly revolutionary ways of
involving everyone in the democratic process. This book includes: * a full explanation of the
genesis and principles of Legislative Theatre * a description of the process in operation in Rio *
Boal's essays, speeches and lectures on popular theatre, Paolo Freire, cultural activism, the point of
play writing, and much else besides.
Important questions to think and introduce in different real situations.
-

Can Performance Influence Politics?

Can Drama Influence Politics?

"Boal has achieved what Brecht only dreamt of and wrote about: making useful theatre that is
entertaining, fun, and instructive. It is a different kind of theatre -- a kind of social theatre...it
focuses on the mind, relaxes the spirit, and gives people a new handle on their situations." -Richard Schechner, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
Boal (Brazilian dramaturg, theorist, writer, teacher and politician) -- has long been creating a stir in
both the worlds of theatre and politics simply by fusing the two together in his own unique and
revolutionary way.
In LEGISLATIVE THEATRE, he takes one stage further his concept of the "spect-actor" -- the
spectator who intervenes in an unresolved scenario on stage and attempts to break a depicted cycle
of oppression. As a politician in his native Rio de Janeiro, Boal demonstrated that his ideas of
mixing theatre and politics could generate needed legislation and social change. This amazing work
includes full explanation of the development and principles of legislative theatre. Also included are
essays, speeches, and lectures on Popular Theatre, Paolo Friere, cultural activism, and the point of
play righting that Boal has written since his involvement with Brazilian Parliament.
LEGISLATIVE THEATRE is an insightful handbook for anyone interested in the possibilities of
social change through theatre.
"Hamlet says in his famous speech to the actors that theatre is a mirror in which may be seen the
true image of nature, of reality. I wanted to penetrate this mirror to transform the image I saw in it
and to bring that transformed image back to reality: to realize the image of my desire. I wanted it to
be possible for the spectators in the Forum Theatre to transgress, to break the conventions, to enter

the mirror of a theatrical fiction, rehearse forms of struggle and then return to reality with the
images of their desire. This discontent was the genesis of the Legislative Theatre in which the
citizen makes the law through the legislator." -- Augusto Boal
In this classic work on radical drama, Augusto Boal exposes the machinations that the ruling classes
exercised on theatre to take control out of the hands of ordinary citizens. He shows how Brechtian
and Marxian drama reverses this trend.
Games for Actors and Non-Actors sets out the principles and practice of Boal's revolutionary
Method, showing how theatre can be used to transform and liberate everyone - actors and nonactors alike! This thoroughly updated and substantially revised second edition which includes: *
Two new essays by Boal on major recent projects in Brazil * Boal's description of his work with the
Royal Shakespeare Company * A revised introduction and translator's preface * A collection of
photographs taken during Boal's workshops, commissioned for this edition * New reflections on
Forum Theatre
The first part outlines, with relevant examples, the methods known as Image, Invisible and Forum
Theatre and gives very practical advice to potential practitioners. In the second section, Boal takes
us through a wealth of games and exercises, which are devoted to integrating groups, exploring the
senses, politicising the actor, releasing expression. They are invaluable and are stimulating (I have
used them with diverse groups - trainers, actors, teachers, etc).
The third section looks at problems arising from and issues associated with Forum theatre, and lead
the way towards his subsequent work in Legislative Theatre.
Similar examples have inspired my students to create real life/political situations in the class. The
students stated that drama/theatre can be used to transform and liberate everyone - actors and nonactors alike! This thoroughly updated and substantially revised second edition which includes:
As illiteracy has been shown to be a weapon of the ruling class, so Augusto Boal shows theatre to
be a weapon, not only of bourgeois control but of revolution. He demonstrates the ways in which
theatre has come to reflect ruling-class control, drawing on the theories of Aristotle and
Machiavelli. He then shows the process reversed in Brechtian/Marxist poetics. This is now a classic
text on radical drama. Boal restores theatre to its proper place as a popular form of communication
and expression, and points to the revolutionary Augusto Boal, Cultural Activist
Theatre of the Oppressed is a way of using theatre. He also became aware of the dangers of using
theatre as a tool to question the status quo, particularly in 1960s Brazil, which was ruled by a
military junta. [4] Motivated by his belief that if theatre was to serve the interests of the
disempowered, he felt that audience-members had to be reminded that it was possible to influence
the action that they witnessed on the stage, albeit by means of transgression. In this case, the
transgression was the breaking of the theatrical fourth wall and the taking control of the action by
taking the place of the protagonist of the drama. The transgression was also symbolic, in the
perception that if the rules of the theatre can be malleable, then the rules of society must also be
negotiable.
From his mandate he began to develop a technique called Legislative Theatre, using it to consult his
electorate on law-making issues and to present his arguments for legislative amendments and

reforms before his fellow legislators. Beyond the assertion that all theatre is political', Boal openly
explored the potential of 'theatre as politics' during his term as a legislator.
More than simply an exploration of what we call 'oppression', these techniques present us with a
way of using the very human language of theatre to examine the things that we strive for and the
things that we fear, so as to begin to understand these things and to work with them. One thing that
drew me into the dramatic arts was the observation that the actor's craft required an acute awareness
of action and motivation - these are the raw elements of drama. It is this awareness of action,
motivation and options - as critical ability - that is encouraged and developed by the techniques of
Theatre of the Oppressed potential of transforming the spectator into the actor.
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6'

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