Being ‘academic’ in drama is more than just writing

When we consider ‘academic drama’, opinion is often split two ways. Some colleagues champion drama as ‘practical’ and believe written work is a threat to the subject. Others embrace the subject academically and promote written work within every lesson. I struggle with both sides.

When we focus the debate on the notion of ‘practical vs written’, I fear we oversimplify our subject and lose sight of what being academic might actually mean.

Being academic = writing stuff?

A few years ago a non-specialist colleague told me about the amazing academic drama lessons he had seen in another school. He explained that students were writing in every lesson and that I should check out what they were doing. I was dubious but made contact with the department. Students were indeed writing in every single lesson but it quickly became clear that this was a box-ticking exercise. These drama lessons looked academic (and kept the leadership team happy) but the written tasks seemed tokenistic. Keen to do the right thing, I tried similar activities within my own classroom such as end of lesson reflections, tracking documents and essays. The tasks were awkward and clunky but I felt like I was doing the right thing. After a year, I realised that I was wasting lesson time and ended up scrapping written work for the sake of it. I had made the mistake of conflating writing with being academic.

I now seldom set written tasks in key stage 3 drama, however, I continue to be someone who fiercely advocates drama as an academic field. Of course, it is.

A revelation for me was focussing my energy on what my students were learning in lesson time and not just what they were doing. My students might not sit with a clipboard and pen but that doesn’t mean they aren’t being academic. To be academic is to show scholarship or demonstrate a theoretical understanding within a subject. This can be achieved without writing.

In their very first lesson of Year 7, my students are introduced to semiotics and how actors use physical space to convey meaning on stage. They convey their academic understanding of this theoretical concept in many different ways. Usually, they are tasked with practically staging the opening scene from War Horse to reveal character relationships and create a coherent picture on stage. Due to COVID restrictions, I currently teach Year 7 drama behind desks so students are having to learn the same content in a different way. They may annotate a production photo in order to reveal their understanding. A second class may draw a storyboard and a third may write a paragraph about how they would direct actors to use space. The tasks are all different, but the academic learning is exactly the same.

The same was true when I trained at drama school. We didn’t attend lectures or write essays about Stanislavski or Meisner but instead spent years grappling with their theories within workshops, rehearsal rooms and college productions.

So, should we do away with writing?

If academic drama is about more than writing, do we need to write at all? Should we cancel written exams and scrap written coursework? You could probably argue the case for every subject so why should drama be any different? Of course, there’s no point setting written work for the sake of it but it’s useful to appreciate its merits. I like written work in drama because it’s an efficient way to test knowledge and understanding. Also, writing is a wonderful skill and something to be embraced within every field. What might be an alternative method? A lengthy viva with each individual student?!

As an art form, we assess our students’ knowledge in varied contexts so while written work is good, I think we gain a far clearer perspective of our students’ academic understanding when we give sufficient credit to their practical application too.