Literature Review 3

Literature Review: Starting Drama Teaching – Mike Flemming

My next selection is Mike Fleming’s Starting Drama Teaching. With Process and Product drama still my focus of inquiry, I seek to gain an insight into the classroom. I’ve been considering the ideas of various practitioners and pioneers, but it was time to look at the day-to-day approach to the drama class. Lesson plans; classroom management guidelines and techniques can all be found in Flemming's literature. He opens by comparing process and product drama. Categorising it as drama/theatre Fleming advises that the,

Descriptions given above is what most people might describe as successful versions of both approaches… It is temping in drama to compare a successful account of one’s own preferred methodology… leading to the distortion when it comes to theorising… It might be helpful to foster an open mind.

Fleming makes an important statement here, within the world of an arts capacity. Such over-theorising can lead to the distortion of the results, suggesting an open-minded approach to the idea of process and product drama.  Fleming wraps this argument up by simplifying it as, “to every process is a product”.

Fleming then affirms the different forms of the dramatic arts, begining with the differentiation of ‘spontaneous’ and planned improvisation.  Claiming that spontaneity is at the heart of what it means to improvise. Giving an opportunity of, “experiencing the drama at life’s pace”, can potentially enrich a student’s work. However ‘planned improvisation’ does allow for the preplanning of the conceptual aspect of the drama.  Next he exposes a text technique that enables students to look deeper and further into the meaning of the text. Explaining that by deleting the character names, and asking them to identify who is saying what, the students dissect what is being said and marry up the meaning to the character. Fleming continues to suggest lesson ideas and gives great guidance for teaching drama. Constructivism is at the root of my learning here, where I lack in the experience of that of which I don’t know. I look to the experience of Fleming to inform me of the every idea of working within a drama capacity of an educational environment.

Fleming remains nonpartisan in his conclusion, explaining that tension is at the heart of teaching drama. In the centre of this notion it’s process, ever changing and evolving, claiming it unwise to look for easy solutions to all the theoretical and practical problems it presents.

Fleming, M.  2003. Staring Drama Teaching; Second Edition. David Fulton Publishers, London.