Acting out the drama of learning

With the inclusion of drama as part of the primary school curriculum has come a formal acceptance of the value of drama and theatre as an educational resource. It is fitting then that the Abbey Theatre has engaged in a two-year education initiative to explore how the national theatre can provide meaningful access to the art form.

The initiative, jointly funded by the Arts Council, the Department of Education and Science, and the Gulbenkian Foundation, is due for completion in June after which an independent report evaluating its success will be drawn up by Dr Cecily O'Neill, associate professor of drama and education at Ohio State University. The report will evaluate the various strands of the project and look at how what has been learnt can be used in the future.

"Our focus is not to teach people to be actors, but to look at how theatre may be used as an educational resource," says Sharon Murphy the Abbey's outreach and education director. After an initial three-month research period she decided on three key pilot projects to work on.

The first is aimed at post-primary students and builds a programme around a specific production at the Peacock or Abbey. For the first play, Brian Friel's Freedom of the City, a preperformance workshop was run to help students to key into the themes of the play and resource materials given to both students and teachers before the play.

With Tom McIntyre's An Cuirt Mhan Oiche, the programme was more teacher-led, with resource materials sent out to Irish language teachers before the play so that they could build exercises around it. This involvement of teachers in developing ways if using drama in the classroom has been an important part of the education initiative.

To help with this the theatre developed a strong relationship with 15 second-level teachers who participated in a programme to develop their skills at using theatre in their teaching. For the Abbey's production of The Tempest the group, along with the Abbey Outreach team, devised 10 sessions of teaching that could be done in the classroom before seeing the play.

The sessions were designed to help students to develop an idea of what the play meant to them, and provided them with the skills to critically relate to the play's content. As an example Murphy cites girls from Manor House school in Raheny, Dublin, who found that Prospero and Miranda's relationship brought on powerful feelings about their own relationships with their fathers.

A second strand in the initiative has aimed at looking at drama in the classroom for children in early education. This has centred around a 10-week residency in the Virgin Mary National School in Ballymun, Dublin, one of the Early Start schools targeted by the Government to bring pre-school teaching to disadvantaged areas. The project has tried to explore the relationship between children's play and the play of the theatre. Five other schools participating in the project were provided with an actor by the Abbey to work with school staff in devising a two- or three-lesson programme that will work with this young age group.

The theatre has commissioned writer Irma Grothius to create a short presentational piece which Murphy hopes will be presented by some of the children in an informal setting at theatre in the future. There is also a plan to run a similar programme for children with mild learning disabilities.

On a similar model to the programme for the under-fives, the third strand of the initiative has involved a long-term residency at St Vincent's Girls National school in Summerhill, Dublin. Sharon Murphy has been working with the group over the last year and been impressed with the way the children have responded.

"I really feel that from an educational point of view these children have learnt to be more curious; their communication skills and levels of co-operation have developed, and there's been a great sense of fun."

Teachers from a number of other schools in disadvantaged areas have been following this process, and looking at how they might use some of the ideas being developed at St Vincent's in their own work. With the whole of the education initiative being captured on video by film maker Joe Lee, some of the footage was used at an drama day the Abbey held in St Vincent's to explain to other teachers about their work.

Murphy also hopes that a documentary looking at the work of the initiative can be made if they are able to secure the £30,000 necessary to produce it.

Although unplanned at the outset, an approach by the Department of Education initiated a fourth project as part of its work to encourage potential early school leavers to stay in the education system. This will involve four month-long residencies in Dublin, Cork, North Kerry and Navan, Co Meath, where a team of artists will work with youth leaders, care workers and teaching personnel in bringing drama workshops to groups of children from eight to 15 years old. The project gives the education initiative greater scope to move outside Dublin, and bring its work to rural areas and other urban centres.

As the initiative gets closer to its reporting stage, one of the big questions will be how it can translate what has been learnt in these small heavily resourced projects into meaningful programmes that can work in many schools around the whole country.

Murphy is realistic about the limitations that sharing the benefits of the initiative with a wide audience will impose, but sees the two years of work as a way of developing best modes of practice for the future.

"We're never going to get to everyone in Ireland, but what we can do is develop good quality modes of practice, and find ways of disseminating those so that regional theatre companies with outreach and education departments can use these ideas."

She hopes that educators will see that drama in schools can mean a lot more than simply learning lines or putting on a play. It can help children explore relationships with themselves and others, and provide a powerful tool in developing their communication skills and self confidence in ways traditional academic teaching might never allow.