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CLASSROOM
DRAMAS Kate Powell gets an assessment on what needs to happen with drama in schools, and its impact on our theatre.
When you step back and survey the rich topography of Aotearoa’s theatrescape in 2021, it’s hard to believe that 60 years ago (with the New Zealand Players come and gone) we had no professional theatres. If you get out your binoculars and peer into the distance, you’ll see the peaks and valleys of moments, traditions and ideologies that have ebbed and flowed to shape our storytelling. Colonialism. Shedding our cultural cringe. The Māori Renaissance. Multiculturalism. It’s a landscape pockmarked with pain and othering amidst pockets of change. By no means are we there yet. But what is evident is that our theatrescape is perpetually evolving, shifting and reassessing the ground it finds itself on. We are on an upward incline; a survey by Playmarket in 2019 found that of the 205 works professionally produced, 82% of the stories were homegrown. How this landscape will be shaped depends majorly on the knowledge and interests of the generation tending to it. That means how drama is being taught in our schools is vital to establishing a future of theatre that is truly diverse, and supported by audiences.
Given the changes Covid-19 has made globally, it’s timely to pause and consider how drama is taught in schools. Some of our most experienced practitioners in this area provided me with their thoughts. Prof. Peter O’Connor An expert in applied theatre, champion of the role the arts can play in healing after trauma, and currently a major advocate for better treatment of the arts in our education system Professor Peter O’Connor works out of the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education and Social Work and is the Director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation. O’Connor describes “the teaching in, through and about theatre in New Zealand schools as ‘haphazard’ – in that the quality and quantity of what happens in a school is largely dependent on the passion and interest of individual teachers/principals.” As an NCEA subject, he observes that drama “has attracted some professional development for teachers, lifted its status within the curriculum and meant there is growing academic surety about its teaching.” Drama
