Setting
the Stage for a Dialogue: Aesthetics in Drama and Theatre Education
by Alistair Martin-Smith
For us, education
signifies an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing,
feeling, moving. It signifies the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness
and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn.
—Maxine Greene, Variations on a Blue Guitar
Examining the aesthetics of the complementary fields of educational drama
and theatre is like looking through a kaleidoscope. If you turn it one way,
you see one colorful pattern; if you turn it the other way, you see yet
another. The multiplicity of approaches to drama and theatre education,
each with its own aesthetic pattern, often obscures the common ground they
all share. As a result, in its unique emphasis on art, pedagogy, and society,
each may have its own aesthetic pattern; yet only by looking closely at
each distinct pattern can we understand more of the power of drama and theatre
to develop human consciousness.
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