Step Four

Shaping and Refining the Collective Creation

It is important the students understand that when they decide to extend their work in the drama to the development of a collective creation, the purpose of their work shifts from an exploration of situation and ideas within a dramatic context to a synthesis and communication of those ideas to a wider audience. This necessitates some shift in the emphasis within the work itself. As always, the primary concern is the quality of thinking and feeling evoked by the dramatic situation. But once the decision is made to communicate that thinking and feeling to a wider audience, the abilities necessary to effectively communicate those intended ideas become an added concern. The extent to which a class will refine and rehearse their collective creation will depend upon the learning objectives for the particular unit of work. Not every drama will be extended into a collective creation. When the decision is made to do so, further commitment to the work by both students and teacher is required. Even a short collective creation (ten or fifteen minutes long) will demand hours of rehearsal which may well extend beyond the class time allotted for drama.

A careful reflection of the whole work by the whole class is also now required. This will include:

• re-examination of the focus and intention of the selected drama
• a recalling of the content of each of the episodes through which the students worked as the drama unfolded
• identification of roles and strategies which emerged as particularly effective in communicating the intended ideas of both individuals and the whole group
• purposeful group decision-making to choose which episodes of the drama will be refined and polished, which will require changing or reworking and which should be eliminated
• group problem-solving to facilitate the articulation of the "central thread" of the collective creation, to determine whether new episodes must be developed and to decide what form the "bridge" that will mark the transitions between each of the episodes will take. ("Bridges" can take almost any form from passages spoken by a narrator, to news headlines, to excerpts from monologues or letters that have been created by students in role, to chants by a kind of Greek chorus, to lines from student-written or other poetry, to music, to tableaux, to vaudevillian-like placards, etc.)
• a careful examination of the consensus that is reached regarding each of the above to assure that focus, tension, contrasts and symbol are evident in the work
• identification of the intended audience, the setting of a performance date and the posting of a rehearsal schedule for both in and, perhaps, out of class time.

As teacher and students approach the development of a collective creation, they will realize the value of the various forms of record-keeping that have become an essential ingredient of every drama class. The following will all prove invaluable as the collective creation takes shape: writing created by the students in role, information students offer from their journals, written records of various kinds that have been kept by the teacher and students throughout the process, brainstorming charts, webbings, maps of the fictional community in which the drama was set, floorplans, posters, other visual records that were created and displayed as the drama unfolded, and the collective memory and insights of the group about its work.

Initially, the amount of material through which a class has to sift may well seem overwhelming. One effective way to guide the students' consideration of this information is to create a rough storyboard. This means that the teacher and students identify working titles for each of the episodes. Each working title is then printed separately on a large index card. The roles, strategies and elements that were incorporated into each of the episodes are also noted on each card. Moving around the index cards facilitates the choice, elimination and sequencing of the episodes and creates a visual representation of the collective creation. The completed storyboard can be displayed in the classroom and frequently referred to as the collective creation undergoes refining and rehearsal.

As the collective creation is shaped and refined the class may decide to create a rough script to guide their rehearsals, or small groups may feel more secure if the particular episode in which they are involved is written down. It is recommended that the collective creations of secondary level students be rehearsed either as improvisational pieces (works that are not scripted) or as scripted works. The nature of collective creations is that they are in a constant state of change; they grow and redefine themselves even as they are performed. Their development is influenced by the variables of improvisation, including motivation, contrasts, presentational style, status, setting, time, focus, tension and structure.

Either the teacher or students, who are keenly interested in directing, may function as the director of the collective creation. In the theatre, the director is the individual who assumes overall responsibility for the artistic interpretation and the presentation of a dramatic work. The responsibilities of the teacher/director include:

• assuring that suggestions and decisions about the content and form of the collective creation are focused and honoured
• stimulating the stretching of students' ideas through incorporation and manipulation of the ingredients of improvisation and the elements of theatre
• blocking the play (directing the movement of students around the playing area)
• constantly clarifying the students' understanding of the intention and "central thread" of the evolving work by asking such questions as: "What is it that you are trying to say?" "Why do you think this way of expressing that is more clear than the other way?" "What is it that connects this idea to the central thread of this collective creation?"
• facilitating, as the work demands, the students' abilities to effectively communicate their intended ideas to the audience
• co-ordinating technical and other aspects of the collective creation
• assuring that the performance will be ready as scheduled.