Theatre As Education: A Distinctively Canadian Approach To Secondary School Drama

Abstract

In recent decades, drama has earned an increasingly secure place in Canadian secondary school curricula. The teaching of high school drama has been influenced by a number of national and international trends, including two British variations of process drama. Focusing on the process of developing original drama through improvisation rather than on the production of scripted plays, this method is used to promote personal development and to explore issues associated with other subject areas besides drama. Critics of process drama have objected to a perceived lack of theatre knowledge and skills in this approach. Canadian teachers, however, have found an effective means of bridging the process-product divide in a multi-level programme that begins with process drama and leads to a study of interpretative theatre production. Particularly useful is the collective creation of dramatic anthologies. This strategy parallels a collective trend in Canadian theatre history while, at the same time, drawing on the inherent educational power of theatre.