Creative Copying?: The Pedagogy of Adaptation

Abstract

While it may seem counterintuitive to promote creativity through “copying,” teaching drama and theatre through adaptation-based methods fosters creative and critical thinking. Learning how many of the great masterpieces of the dramatic canon are actually adaptations themselves pierces the mystique surrounding the creative process, making it less intimidating to students who have been led to believe that great art is created out of thin air by artists possessed of divine genius. Learning the tools and techniques of adaptation puts creativity within the grasp of “ordinary” students and motivates them to create works of their own by emulation, quotation, and parody – which is exactly how many of the great artists learned their trade. Moreover, studying and producing adaptations using the critical techniques of such authors as Anne-Marie MacDonald, Djanet Sears, and Tom Stoppard reveals how critical and creative process are related, not antithetical, and dispels the common fear that thinking critically about creative process somehow diminishes or damages one's creative faculty. This essay draws on current creativity theory and the author's recent dissertation on Canadian adaptive dramaturgy to illustrate some examples of their application to tertiary theatre teaching.