Process drama in the virtual world – a survey

Abstract

Process drama is a form of improvisational drama where the focus is on the process rather than the product. This form of improvisational activities has been used extensively in many domains. For example, role play has been used in health therapy as well as for training health personnel. Creative drama is a form of process drama that focuses on the use of story dramatisation techniques; it has been extensively used to promote language and literature skills as well as creative and critical thinking. In these domains, process drama exhibits itself in physical space. Recently, there have been many advances in technology that allows process drama to be exhibited in virtual space. In this article, we look at the form and structure of process drama. We specifically discuss process drama, especially creative drama. We outline several key factors of process drama that affect its effectiveness as a learning vehicle, including involvement and reflection. Through this lens, we survey several cases of virtual process drama both as a single person experience as well as a multi-user internet-based virtual experience.