Drama Strategy: Conscience Alley

Conscience Alley is a drama strategy, sometimes referred to as a Decision Alley or Thought Tunnel. The words conscience, decision and thought clearly indicate this strategy's link with thinking skills. It enables students to collaboratively generate a character's inner (and possibly conflicting) thoughts, usually at a key moment of indecision within a drama. The character may be in a dilemma, weighing up the pros and cons of taking a particular course of action. For example, Macbeth could walk through a Conscience Alley when wavering about whether to murder Duncan. The character's voiced thoughts may come directly from a script or might be inferred from it.

How do you set up a Conscience Alley?

Ask the class to get into two straight lines about a metre apart, facing each other. The character will be passing between the lines. One line will try to persuade the character into a particular course of action and the other line will try to dissuade them from it, as they pass by.

The character walks through slowly, at a speed that enables each thought to be heard by everyone: ‘Kill him, Macbeth. You will be a better king than old Duncan’ or ‘Don't harm him. He is your guest and he trusts you.’ You might ask for just one sentence from each student, or encourage extended responses that enable extended justification, reasoning and explanation.

Make clear your expectations about the length of their utterances.

Extensions and variations

• The character (often represented by the teacher), could first speak a short monologue as the character, before walking through the alley: ‘I cannot decide what to do. My mind is in turmoil.’ This sets the scene, focuses the students’ attention and brings them into ‘the moment’.
• The character could speak first, as a storyteller (in the third person), before walking through the lines: ‘Macbeth was in turmoil. His wife was pushing him towards killing Duncan but thoughts were battling in his mind…’ The narrative opening gets everyone's attention, sets the scene and helps ensure that all students are ready and in the moment.
• The character could pass along the lines more than once, listening again, to the same thoughts. This gives additional time for reflection. The character might respond to the thoughts as they pass by a second time, rather than just listen to them: THOUGHT: You know you want to be king CHARACTER: Yes, but without murdering Duncan. He has been good to me.
• A teacher, as the character, has the opportunity to highlight particular thoughts and responses in role that they want to bring to students' attention.
• Before passing through the lines a second time, a character might claim still to be undecided and need to hear more compelling thoughts before making a decision.
• Someone other than the teacher could walk through the alley as the character. You might suggest that they do this with their eyes closed. This helps focus the walker's attention purely on what is being said, with no visual distractions.
• The lines of the alley can be lengthened (as happens in country dancing) by the students breaking away and re-joining the line at the far end, once they have spoken. This enables a continuing, longer alley with more thoughts and more time for sharing and reflection. A continuing alley works well when the character is on a journey of some sort, such as Macbeth's thoughts as he rides away from the three witches.
• The alley can be made to represent part of the setting: the door to Duncan's room could be at one end of the alley and the alley becomes the castle corridor leading to it.
• After passing through a Conscience Alley, the character can be placed in the centre of a circle (eyes open or closed) and the thoughts can travel past the character instead of the character passing the thoughts. The students as thoughts, (in no particular order) pass from one side of the circle to the other and speak to the character as they pass by.
• You can gather and write the spoken thoughts on self-adhesive labels and place them within a large thought bubble or around a ‘Role on the Wall’ outline that represents the character. This enables you to return to these thoughts for further reflection, later in the drama.
• You can record the two lines of thoughts, (as pros and cons) in columns afterwards, on a flipchart. This provides a visual organiser that can act as a writing frame to subsequently support reasoned argument, leading into persuasive writing.