At IDIERI 7 Pam Bowell proposed the initiation of an international collaboration that would focus on using Heathcote’s strategies (including one called ‘Rolling Role’) and digital communications and platforms. The concept was to create a drama involving young people from several different countries in responding to the same dramatic stimulus or pre-text, with the drama culminating at the Heathcote Reconsidered conference. The concept of Rolling Role is to involve different groups or classes in building a community that then faces some kind of change. The initiators create a common context and agree to the key features, affairs and concerns of the community. The students/children are then involved in building the community, the lives, events and artefacts of it and add to developments. Work is often left incomplete so another group can take it forward and continue the drama. Heathcote suggested this work lends it self to sharing through something like a website. This roundtable will focus on the development of the dramatic frame and pre-text. It will identify the implications for creating work within contemporary school systems and the affordances as well as issues which emerge from working with digital technologies in these contexts. (NB Video clips removed for this upload)

1. +
Rolling Role – Heathcote Reconsidered
Conference
Water Reckoning Projectwww.water-reckoning.net
Sue Davis s.davis@cqu.edu.au, Xenia Simou, Chris Hatton, Mary Mooney, Julian Kennard, Jen Kulik (via video), Jeffrey Tan (at conference)
Also Glenn Taylor, Angelina Ambrosetti, Mei Yee Chang, Prue Wales, Jenny Nicholls. Project proposal by Pam Bowell.

2. +
The Water Reckoning Rolling Role
Project
 The idea for a rolling role project shared
through digital technologies was floated at
IDIERI in Limerick 2012
 The proposal was to explore how Heathcote‟s
ideas and strategies are still relevant today
and may be repurposed, reworked and
extended upon into the future.
 In particular the focus was on the Rolling Role
concept and how this might be realised in the
digital age
 The Water Reckoning Project has taken place
online and live – in five school sites across the
world leading up to and during the „Heathcote
Reconsidered‟ conference

3. +
Rolling Roll – what is it?
 The concept of Rolling Role is to involve different groups or
classes in building a community that then faces some kind of
change. The initiators create a common context and agree to the
key features, affairs and concerns of the community. The
students/children are then involved in building the community, the
lives, events and artefacts of it and add to developments.
 Work is often left incomplete so another group can take it forward
and continue the drama.
 Work produced by classes if publicly open and available to
stimulate other work.
 Heathcote suggested this work lends it self to sharing through
something like a website.
(See „Contexts for active learning: four models‟
By Dorothy Heathcote ‟)

4. +
Who has been involved?
 Australia – Qld - Sue Davis
(Coordinator), Angelina Ambrosetti
(Researcher), Glenn Taylor (Teacher)
 Australia – NSW – Christine Hatton,
Jenny Nicholls, Mary Mooney
(Researchers), Julian Kennard
(Teacher)
 Greece – Xenia Simou
(Teacher/Researcher)
 Singapore – Mei Yee Chang
(Teacher/Coordinator), Jeffrey Tan
(Teacher), Prue Wales (Researcher)
 USA – Jen Kulik
(Teacher/Researcher)

5. +
Absent friends

6. +
Site – type of
school
Grade/Age Number of
students/gend
er
Drama
experience
Other relevant
details
Queensland –
Public
secondary
school – 1000
students
Year 10 –
14-5 years
25 students
22 girls, 3 boys
1-3 years Little drama outside
school. Limited
process drama
Sydney –
Independent
school 1200
Year 9, 2 x
year 10
21 students, -
11 girls, 9 boys
Elective
drama
Quite a lot of out of
school experience –
NIDA etc
Greece –
Public school
near sea,
approx. 230
students 15-18
15 years
old
12 students –
11 girls, 1 boy
No school
drama
Different type of
drama work for
students, hard to get
together for co-
curricular work.
Singapore -
polytechnic
16 year
olds
3 x classes Studying
applied
theatre
Approx 3 x 2 hr
sessions
USA- small
private
secondary
14-15 & 16-
17 years
16 students 11
girls, 5 boys
Studying
applied
theatre
Applied theatre
students leading
workshops for year 6

7. +
Why Water? Major 21st century local and
global challenges – 2013 Year of Water
Collaboration

8. +
Water issues/drama – rely on human
relationships and cooperation
 Heathcote‟s guarantee –
“students will see the real world
more clearly when they have
experienced the imagined one.”
 Humans have overcome water
issues through invention,
technological change, through
migration, and through
cooperation
 Drama as a means of
investigating and rehearsing
possible future action.

9. +
Questions to ponder
 Why is water so important to
our lives and cultures?
 What actions, activities and
rituals involve water?
 What local and contemporary
experiences can we draw on to
inform our drama?
 What different roles, dramatic
conventions, movement, music,
imagery can we use to tell our
stories?
 How do people cope in times of
water crisis?
 Can we do anything to ensure
water security – so that all may
share healthy, clean water?

10. +
Opportunities and risks
 Today‟s young creatives use a realm of
cyberspaces and digital tools to create and
share their work
 We want to position young people as
creators and global citizens, not just
consumers of culture
 We want to capitalise on using different
social media, online spaces and tools
 We need to do so in ways that are
manageable and responsible, especially
where young from school contexts are
involved
 Drama teachers/facilitators end up having to
play a key role in managing & mediating
these components, uploading and
moderating content.
Online tools & spaces Creative opportunities

11. +
Ideas we could draw on
from Heathcote‟s work
 Drama is about making
significant meaning through
commitment to an enterprise and
fiction
 Importance of finding and
creating significant objects,
artefacts, images, texts
 Teacher often works in-role with
the group, manages, questions
and facilitates from within
 Consider and use dramatic
elements movement/stillness,
sound/silence darkness/light
 Finding the universal in the particular,
the emotional connection
 Segmenting and selecting focus from
culture: work, war, education, health,
food, family, shelter, travel,
communication, clothing, worship,
law, leisure
 Find a simple starting point and build
belief in stages
 Participants should have the power to
take action and operate, drawing on
what they know and can do
 Different frame choices can offer
closeness or protection from the main
event or action
Suppose that…
I wonder what ….
If we could only …
I bet if we tried hard
we could …

12. +
Different conventions
 Visualisations
 A written account, diary entry or
report
 A story told about another
 Creation or re-creation of painting
or photograph
 Finding or drawing up plans
 Drawing or map
 Teacher in role
 Use of soundscape
 Enactment in situ.
 Enacted Role
 Hot seat role play
 Creation of role/role cards
 Gossip mill
 Finding a cryptic message
 Rituals & ceremonies
 Formal demonstrations, meetings,
briefings
 I remember
 Artefacts of a character, time or place
 Clothes of characters
p. 166-
167

13. +
Edging in, dramatic material &
focus – or pretext
“An effective pretext is simple and
functional. It sets in motion situations in
which appearance and reality, truth and
deception, and role and identity may be
contrasted and explored.”
A good pretext has … “ power to launch
the dramatic world with economy and
clarity, propose action, and imply
transformation”
Source: Cecily O’Neill (1995), Drama Worlds p.20 & 136
Suppose that…
I wonder what ….
If we could only …
I wonder if we could …

14. +
Art, drama & importance of
selectivity
 Therefore, art creates selection. It demands selection. It seems
to me that effective teaching is about selection. It has to
particularize, It has to isolate. And because it does this, it
distorts … So in art, you have: isolation of the human condition,
particularization, distortion, and forming so that you may
contemplate it. It is given shape to synthesize the importance of
the distortion.
 Heathcote in Johnson & O'Neill, 1984, p.114

15. +
High selectivity – Initial dramatic
material and context - Take 1
 Water and Time Earth
Reconciliation (WATER) Council
 Our role is to identify those times,
places and events where the time
fabric could be altered to avert
disasters and bad decisions
involving our earth‟s water
resources. Help us identify those
points in time and places where
we can go back and make a
difference
 We also invite you to tell us about
those events and times where
people did make a difference.
 Issues – documentary style –
„Water Council‟ not inspiring the
imagination
 What is the connection to
current context and student
experiences

16. +
Take 2
 Different water sources produce
different crystalline structures when
frozen
 Water takes on the "resonance" of the
energy which is directed at it, and that
polluted water can be restored
through prayer and positive
visualization
 Issues – critiques of Emoto‟s
work – pseudo-science
 Possible semi-religious
overtones (water becomes
„god-like‟)

17. +
Take 3
# Discovery of a lost culture of frozen
people underwater who experienced
times of crisis
# Responding to a message in a
bottle about the history of „Ardus
Unda‟
# Who were these people and what
happened?
# What did their emissaries learn
about stories from elsewhere around
the world?
# Is it possible to help the frozen
people or restore them to life?
Jason
deCaires
Taylor
imagery

18. +
Another layer added through fictional
frame – Teacher in role – Dr Rita
Strong, discovery of message in a
bottle.

19. +
How it has worked?
# Groups create drama work
using different conventions. Key
content and outcomes and
digitally recorded and
documented - audio, text, images,
videos
# Selected material is posted to
PlaceStories, videos on YouTube
etc
# Each group reviews what has
already been posted and
considering ways to „roll‟ the
action forward
# There are some session where
participants interact online
together

20. +
Three mains frames initially + one
more created
 Enrolling students as
the researchers who
are investigating the
history of Ardus Unda
 Emissaries and those
who left Ardus Unda
and have travelled the
world seeking answers
and documenting
events
 Those who lived in
Ardus Unda at the time
of the catastrophe
 The descendents of
those who survived

21. +
Technology use
 Teachers/facilitator
 Skype (initial planning)
 Google hangouts (live interactions – meeting up and
planning)
 Google Drive (for sharing documents)
 Google + community
 PlaceStories (with some content uploaded to
YouTube)
 With students
 Camera/ iPads/ photos/ video cameras
 Google hangout between groups
 PlaceStories (main site for posting creative content)

23. +
www.water-reckoning.net
http://placestories.com/project/85
01
Different journeys and key
experiences
(NB Videos removed for uploading to Slideshare)

24. Original pre-
text
Queensland beach
photo shoot &
response
Queensland
beach shoot
– character
& symbolic
clothing
Greek follow on

25. Sydney Site

26. Singapore - The Pre-text
Initially, while students found
the pre-text engaging they
didn’t buy into fiction
- Many said the video was
too “professional”, music
was not needed
- Archaeologists would not
make such “polished” films
Hegemonic belief/practice of
‘Singaporean pragmatism’,
we wonder?

27. Students told us
• If they were real bodies,
they would have rotted
(in humid Singapore
everything rots/turns
mouldy)
• When facilitators
emphasised that the
bodies were frozen,
students thought of
science fiction
possibilities

28. Student Reflecting on the Pre-text
• Told us they felt the
pre-text needed to be
set nearer Singapore (or
relate more to
Singapore culturally),
and be more ‘realistic’
(possible) which was
explored during the
next lesson

29. The Fiction
Students subsequently bought
into the fiction through a
video clip of Dwarka (lost,
sunken Indian city), and by
re-creating aspects of the
city
They found the ‘Rolling’ from
other locations engaging
and helpful in building
narrative
Constant struggle with
‘suspension of disbelief’,
that seems partly due the
mixture of fact and fiction,
real and unreal

30. +
Aspects of rolling – Rolling pre-text,
laying trails, following threads,
weaving them together
 Brad Haseman‟s “leaderly drama”, Jenny Simons identifies a
number of abilities that he used, these included:
 … laying trails, weaving ideas together, sensing what the group
wants, withholding in order to maintain tension and surprise,
and „smelling‟ emerging scents (Simons, 2001: 234).

31. +
Hangout – USA – in role as Ardus Unda
Residents
QLD – in role as councillors/govt officials
Aspects that rolled –
including participation in
several shared lived
interactions.

32. +
Positive aspects
 Rolling Role – great concept for enabling students (and
teachers) to collaborate with students in other places &
countries
 The aesthetic power of the Jason deCaire Taylor pre-text –
prompting the imagination
 Finding examples of many underwater cities, and current water
crises/disasters
 Effective use of aesthetic tools and artefacts – grounded the
work of the imagination
 Student responding to the sensory experiences with water &
the reality of water issues

33. +
Issues and challenges
 Time, school timetables and arrangements, finding common times
to collaborate globally
 Set up and logistics – teachers had to have confidence/experience
with process drama and digital technology and be very persistent
 Problems with technology working
 School technology vs social use of technology by young people
 Students limited experience of process drama, uncertainty, taking
time to embrace the fiction
 Amount of content being posted to PlaceStories – keeping track of
developments

34. +
Repurposing Heathcote…?
 Structuring an open-ended learning experience – is challenging for some
students – requires a leap of faith into the unknown
 Process drama not familiar for most students - need to find ways to link to
curriculum, assessment & identified outcomes e.g. rehearsed
improvisation (Qld) or playbuilding (NSW), students structuring applied
theatre experiences (USA/Singapore)
 While Heathcote said it shouldn‟t be introduced as a drama project – now
we do have to name it and the conventions of the artform as such
 Importance of use of artefacts, and creation of artefacts as aesthetic tools
to ground imaginative work
 Importance of teacher‟s role for structuring (high selectivity) modelling
teacher in role, knowing when to with-hold information and reframe action
in different ways (teacher as playwright)
 Great potential for cross school, interstate, international collaboration –
real global citizenship is actually not that common in schools at present.