Keeping the flame alive: legacies of Heathcote’s practice across the tasman

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, two mid-career drama education researchers use duoethnography to reflect on Professor Dorothy Heathcote’s legacy in Australia and New Zealand. Drawing on personal artefacts and a shared metaphor, we create narratives that consider Heathcote’s influence on our particular contexts and practice, particularly our work with Mantle of the Expert and Rolling Role. We describe the balancing act of honouring the work and ensuring it continues to be responsive in educational and cultural contexts very different to Heathcote’s own. We also consider the tensions of engaging in and representing the Heathcote tradition without having been directly taught by her. Framed as a personal exchange between two individuals, we suggest that this conversation is one that needs to occur as next generation practitioners and researchers in Drama education work together and repurpose her legacies of theory and practice to move the field into the future.