It turned out I was top of the bill. On the cusp of my 62nd birthday, I found myself in front of an audience of peers, dressed up in their finery and radiating warmth. As focused an audience as anyone could reasonably expect after a slap-up dinner and an open bar.
“And the winner of the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for Drama goes to …”
I run a character exercise inviting actors to use a signature song as their internal soundtrack. The song informs everything from the way they move to their emotional map. To distract from the potential hazard of tripping base over apex on the red-carpet runway, I played the Talking Heads/Brian Eno song Once in a Lifetime to myself as I walked up to the stage to pose for the photo.
“You may ask yourself … how did I get here?”
I love the metaphor of time as a spiral staircase. It places learning at the centre of your life’s purpose. Each turn ends not with an answer, but with a new question. As you make your spiral journey, you return again and again to the same themes, but with the benefit of experience.
This doesn’t of course mean you’re getting inexorably better. The younger you will have qualities the older you has let go.
I look down the well of the spiral and chat to my younger selves. They teach me things for tomorrow.
The spiral started long before I made my entrance and will exist long after my exit.
At this turn of the spiral, here are ...
6 things I think I’ve learned about educational drama.
💡1. Passing on the baton is a responsibility.
My mentors made me aware of being part of a movement, part of a tradition. My drama education ancestors were pioneers. Dorothy Heathcote, Joan Littlewood, Augusto Boal, and many more, embodied values, skills and attributes that shine a light for me every day.
When we got stuck at Theatre Royal Stratford East, we asked ourselves: ‘What would Joan do?’ Whatever the answer was, we knew it would be grounded in integrity, rigour, and divergent thinking.
I’d go as far as to say, if you’re a drama educator you have a responsibility to know your history. To pass the baton on.
💡2. Reading books changes your life.
A cartoon appeared in the New Yorker in the 1970s, the original is now hung above my desk. Two middle-aged men are gossiping at a party. One says: ‘Watch out for the Bravermans, they just read a book that changed their lives.’
When I was recovering from major surgery back in the early noughties, that book was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
"Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue ..." Viktor Frankl
Frankl gave me an everlasting lightbulb💡. It pings above my head almost daily.
I’d encourage you not to let anything labelled ‘theory’ baffle you. To be the best you can be at drama for learning, embrace battling with the Jargon Dragon. The prize is a treasure chest of illuminating ideas.
💡3. Find your Ikigai.
Ikigai is an almost untranslatable Japanese idea. It’s been diluted, sadly, within the world of management-speak, but at its essence it’s a way to find out what gets you out of bed in the morning.
Check out Tim Tamashiro's great TEDtalk on the subject.
Ikigai asks four questions:
1. What am I good at?
2. What do I love?
3. How can I be rewarded?
4. What does the world need?
Ikigai can be a powerful focus for aspiring performers, who are typically good at answering questions 1 and 2 but find questions 3 and 4 more challenging.
Note how understanding your contribution to making the world a better place is a core component. I've noticed that many students don't see their working life in terms of making a contribution to wider society. The question can unlock some fundamental questions about the role of culture.
Being rewarded, of course, embraces more than money, while recognising we all need to keep the wolf from the door. The concept of being rewarded goes beyond extrinsically motivating factors like applause, reviews and … awards. When I think about the rewards of a lifetime ‘doing drama’, it’s the professional collaborations and change in students’ lives that have been intrinsically motivating.
See what happens if you articulate your Ikigai as a simple active verb. Think of it as a super-objective, as if you were the protagonist in your own winning script. Last time I tried this, I came up with the Ikigai: ‘to engage’. It goes beyond being a theatre-maker and teacher and says something about me as a friend, partner, and father as well.
💡4. Celebrate diversity.
It seems to me that there’s nothing more stultifying than aspiring to be normal. When did this become an ideal? Norms are reductive and the enemy of creativity.
“Why not propose that just as biodiversity is essential to ecosystem stability, so neurodiversity may be essential for cultural stability?” Judy Singer
Different ways of experiencing the world are enriching for groups in creative learning processes. Rather than seeing neurodiversity as either a problem or a spectrum, why not conceive of it as a constellation?
As well cognitive approaches, we should celebrate our diverse backgrounds, ages, and experiences. This adds depth to collaboration. The concept of equity, distinct from equality, recognises that we don’t all start from the same place. Working at equal voice is rewarding for creativity. Delight in the constellation of experiences, realise that striving for equity is a process, not an end, and enjoy being surprised.
As a wordy person, my favourite collaborations have been with magnificent movers, visionary visualisers, and sound supremos. I have learned to delight in how not like me they all are. So, celebrate the differences in the room.
💡5. Find the memorable in the Swamp of the Ephemeral.
Let’s face it, there’s too much culture. So much, we don’t even notice it. Immense reservoirs of creativity are expended on advertising stuff, making disposable social media content, and coming up with rehashed TV formats. The best performance experiences, on the other hand, stick. This could be taking part in a workshop, a drama lesson in your school or community centre, a one-person show, a great gig or a brilliant production of King Lear.
Why?
My feeling is that performance is sticky when three basic elements interact: the social, the educational and the emotional.
Being part of a temporary community, the social, is critical. We experience memorable moments when connected to others, often strangers.
Our species is programmed to be curious, to enjoy thinking, to discover more about who we are and the world we live in.
Finally, we want to feel. As Ken Robinson points out, the opposite of aesthetic is anaesthetic. Art should awaken us, not put us to sleep (bad Shakespeare productions, I’m looking at you).
Recently, I reflected on the shows that have stayed with me. Last year, it was the joy of the Richard Hawley musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge. For me, this was a spiritual experience. I was uplifted. It was memorable.
💡6. The artist and the teacher are the same person.
When I was getting advice on what to do after school, I was persuaded to take a Drama and English degree. Going to drama school was considered too risky. They said: “If the worst comes to the worst, you’ll always have teaching to fall back on.” Fall back on! It took me a while to realise that teaching was an art and art is teaching.
What if teachers saw their work as theatre?
They’d think about the teaching space and start to ask themselves about the proxemics. Would this work better in the round, or in traverse? How is light working in this space? How do I work with the acoustics?
They’d think about narrative. What is the emotional journey I’m designing for my learners?
They’d think about rhythm and colour and texture.
They’d think about making the content relevant to the learner’s lived experience.
And, what if artists saw their work as teaching?
They’d realise that the best art creates dialogue, engages its audience with the world.
They might question whether ‘delivering messages’ works (in my view - rarely).
I’ve got a lot more lifetime left, I hope. The latest turn of the spiral staircase is taking me towards creative coaching. As always, engaging through opening dialogue is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
So, if you want to talk, then get in touch:
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