‘The purple plants!’ shrieks one student loudly and drops on to the floor clutching reams of purple fabrics; other children dash over to her, there is chatting and exclaiming erupts around the classroom. The TA looks over nervously. Spontaneous conversations are happening, a young boy wails ‘nooooo’ dramatically, is someone actually crying? Everyone is talking at once. ‘I can't believe it’ one girl mouths to me over the din. I am standing in middle of it all, happily in ‘out of control’ control.
The students are not misbehaving, far from it, they are reacting in role to a plot development in a story – their own story – that we have been co-creating for four weeks now as part of ongoing Imaginary Communities work from Chol, which I am privileged to be part of.
Chol Theatre
Chol Theatre began in 1989 (when I was about as old as these Year 3 children I'm teaching!) committed to ‘bringing artists and communities together’ and are now ‘national leaders in live story-making’. Imaginary Communities (IC) is a core programme, originally conceived 2011/12.
IC is a dramatic story-based pedagogy, that to my mind draws on the ‘best bits’ of Mantle of the Expert, Process Drama, Child Drama, and Theatre Practice. The main concept being that every participant is part of co-creating an imaginary narrative, each taking on a unique character, and then working in and out of role to explore setting, characters, and plot – a drama teacher's dream.
Vicky Storey, artistic director at Chol, and pioneer of IC explains how the work is ‘Learning from the core traditions of drama education, whilst also reviving practices and ideas that may have been previously sidelined.’ Having been in educational drama for 15+ years myself, it does feel like an innovation, and an exciting one at that.
Stages
Dr Storey presents the pedagogy in five accessible stages: Idea Generation, Dramatic Setting, Characters, Shared Starting Points, and Equal Playmaker Strategies. So, at the start of our work when I asked (in our Stone Age story) what is there? Y3 sprang into idea generation, discussing and acting out our new setting, including waterfalls, and secret caves, standing stones and tall cliffs – the purple plants came later.
These clear stages, along with model lessons delivered by practitioners like me, mean the work is accessible for teachers to apply. IC is designed to be CPD; and Chol practitioners reflect and co-plan with classroom teachers weekly as part of the process - aiming to: ‘de-mystify open-ended Drama processes.’ says Storey, which can indeed be daunting for teachers new to it.
So, following the stages, we mapped out our world using drawings and drama, we then developed characters and refined them, playing out conversations with people such as ‘The Man in the House in the Grass,’ and other brilliant ideas. Along the way, we ran what has to be one of most engaging and exhilarating parts of the process; the ‘fabric build’ – which is where students take materials and transform the classroom into the Imaginary Community itself in 3D – and where we first heard of the Purple Plants. One girl had carefully built a twisty tower of purple cloth up a table leg to create a mystical flora.
Shared starting points
Outside of the one-hour IC time, the teacher followed up with work creating scientific diagrams of other rare plants that might be found in our world, and ultimately, we were using the IC journey to inform a piece of descriptive writing. IC easily supports and complements the delivery of other curriculum content. So far in other Imaginary Communities such as: Secret Coastline, The Magic Forest, Our Futuristic City, Out of Space Planet, the narratives and character work have led to art exhibitions, maps and keys, directions and coordinates, persuasive writing, poetry, speech writing and more.
‘Shared starting points’ are a key tool here – listening and responding to children's ideas in the moment to inform the direction of the work. So, when the purple plants were first discovered, we wanted to know more. Why were they so special? What magical properties did they have? The girl explained, they were the life blood of the Stone Age World, the cave dwellers needed them – but they had been going missing! Now to find out what was happening to the plants… This example really highlights the importance of one child's idea and using it as a shared starting moment for the whole group, and demonstrates one of the most important tenets of IC – agency. Children know their ideas will be valued and acted on and that they can take control of the story, rather than be the actors in a story created by the teacher.
Immersing yourself in the story
Using explorative strategies, we spent the next sessions developing the narrative. It turns out ‘the man in the house in the grass’ was harvesting the purple plants to build his new roundhouse dwelling, and this was the moment the class erupted.
So immersed in the story, and invested in the action they lost themselves beautifully. Isn't that Theatre? It is magic of story, of drama, that meant the students were so engaged, and with the safety net of fiction, could imagine, and learn, and put their learnt knowledge and skills into a context. I for one hope Imaginary Communities continues to grow, and more schools can put drama at the heart of their timetable.