Chapter 4 DRAMA IN THE CONTEXT OF A DIVIDED SOCIETY

by Hamlsh Fyfe (N rther! Irela!"# In 1989 parts of Great Britain caught up with other parts of the world by obtaining a centrally controlled national curriculum for schools. Previously a considerable degree of autonomy was allowed to individual schools in the planning and delivery of the school curriculum. The curriculum in ngland! "ales and! significantly for this paper. #orthern Ireland came directly into a legal and obligatory framewor$ for the first time. %n indication of the nature of the democratic processes which characterises the mother of parliaments can be found in the deliberations which surrounded the inclusion! or otherwise! of drama within this legal framewor$. %t &.1' on the morning of (arch )th 1989 an amendment which would have included drama in the curriculum for ngland and "ales was voted down by a ma*ority of two in a +ouse of ,ords which contained seven members at the time the vote was ta$en. #orthern Ireland was to be given the same economic needs-led curriculum as ngland and "ales but with variations which would reflect its .special circumstances.. In a society whose culture is predominantly religiously based! much more time was re/uired for religious education than in the more secular curriculum of ngland. 0ignificantly! drama was to appear as a compulsory part of the curriculum. The decision to include a sub*ect li$e drama within a legal framewor$ has considerable implications. Teachers! and others! began to pu11le over issues such as how the huge need for in-service wor$ in the area of drama was to be met. It was clear that assumptions were being made by the authors of the curriculum and drama was being seen as a vehicle which could promote understanding between different traditions within the community. +ow could drama do this2 Before tal$ing about the specific response of government to .the troubles. through the vehicle of education it is important to try to place #orthern Ireland and its troubles in some sort of perspective. It covers territory which is '!3'& s/uare miles. 4ver one third of its population are children and young people and the birth rate continues to be somewhat higher than the rest of "estern urope. 4nly about half a million young people live in #orthern Ireland! but they have lived through the longest period of violent disturbance to have hit the western world in modern times. +as growing up against a bac$drop of

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bombs! bullets! assassinations and riots produced a totally amoral generation of potential psychopaths! a shell shoc$ed generation of neurotics or has it had any affect at all2 +as the hatred of the past been passed on to the ne5t generation or has the futility and horror of the continuing violence caused young people to become war weary and turn away from violence in attempts to find peaceful solutions to age old problems2 fforts made by research to attempt to answer some of these /uestions have often been hampered by a number of practical and ethical issues. %s d 6airns has noted7 4ne problem is that the very act of interrogating children on a particular topic may mean that the researcher is in fact unintentionally providing information about topics of which the children may have been! up until then! entirely innocent.1 It sometimes comes a surprise to suggest that there could be anything comple5 happening there. #orthern Ireland.s media image has been that of a simple society with a two-sided problem! that of a medieval religious war or a colonial struggle. +owever time spent in 8lster /uic$ly reveals this to be a gross over-simplification. 4ne of the biggest problems is that short news reports tend to overloo$ the fact that #orthern Ireland has! and has always had! problems other than those of sectarian violence and that the violence and even the current relative peace itself is a comple5 and ever changing phenomenon. Perhaps the single most important fact which is ignored in most reporting of #orthern Ireland is that it is the least affluent region of the British Isles and this poverty is not something which has been caused by the recent troubles. I believe that poverty can have as great an impact on peoples. lives as violence can! if not greater. The poverty and the violence cannot be separated and are aspects of the same problem. The rate of infant mortality in #orthern Ireland is greater than in any other part of the 8.9. 8nemployment in parts of #orthern Ireland is running at above :;< of the adult male population. In 199&! =:< of school leavers became unemployed. The largely common social problems of both #ationalist and 8nionist wor$ing class communities in the Province have done nothing to unite them. +owever #orthern Ireland.s poverty is relative to the more affluent parts of the western world and it is by no means uni/ue. 0i5 wee$s before the ceasefire was announced! a woman was shot dead in mista$e for her Peruvian bom husband in a Belfast suburb. +er three children! the youngest of which was three! watched from the top of the stairs as their mother died in front of them. They were alone in the house and the oldest child aged si5 had to raise the alarm. >n the same wee$ a prison officer was shot dead in front of his two children. The following wee$ they were bac$ in school. The school which they attend is most li$ely to be one which serves one part of the community only. The li$elihood of these children having normal social contact with people from the other ma*or tradition in #orthern Ireland is small. ?espite the ceasefire the tragedy of violence continues through shootings and beatings which have become part of the political reality. This level of violence

Drama &! the C !te't f a D&(&"e" S )&ety obviously demands a response from any and all agencies which can respond. The organisation of a generally applicable schools curriculum gives a range of opportunities to attempt to engineer social change. Interestingly! and it forms the nub of this paper! drama is perceived ambiguously by those in control of the school curriculum. 4n the one hand it is seen as offering positive opportunities to enhance mutual understanding between divided groups in the community but on the other it has the potential to obtain and e5press views which may be politically uncomfortable and@or socially unacceptable. The discomfort on the part of many educators could emanate from! for e5ample! pieces of theatre with a macropolitical propagandist intention but also from e5posure to a process which might allow for a sharing of views about issues such as abortion which the micro-political climate in religiously based #orthern Ireland schools might not wish to encourage. This tension is what the British drama education teacher ?orothy +eathcote calls the .treasure@burden..& 0ome issues are perhaps better ignored and avoided in order to allow for .normalisation. and not to attract more division! violence and unhappiness. This type of dilemma is central to drama teaching wherever it happens but it is brought into a particularly sharp relief in the conte5t of #orthern Ireland where the sta$es are high. %n average of nine or ten deaths a month for twenty five years may not seem startling! especially when compared with the homicide rate of ma*or %merican cities! however when these figures are seen in relation to the si1e of the population of #orthern Ireland a new perspective emerges. Put at its most dramatic! if the same violence had occurred on the same scale in the 80% then more than half a million people would be dead by now. The curriculum planners assumed that if the entrenched attitude of suspicion between the two .sides. could be ameliorated then perhaps things would start to improve.: The political troubles in #orthern Ireland have formed an integral part of the everyday lives of children. ven if the violence itself has not impinged too greatly on their lives then the attitudes which surround it certainly will. The response of educators was to concentrate on the uni/ue aspects of their e5perience in #orthern Ireland! through cross-curricular themes! with particular emphasis on a study of the 6ultural +eritage of all groups in #orthern Ireland! and a specific area of study called ducation for (utual 8nderstanding $nown universally by its reductive acronym . (8A. The contribution of drama to (8 was dependent on a classic liberal consensus view of drama. Pupils might deal with areas, o f *selBrespect Cmd*relatonshipDsDbCtween! sociahCigiEusnandliulfural bac$grounds . . . ?rama gives the perfect opportunity to simulate and e5perience feel*ba*rCnareFviewsC 9hd e5amine beliefs through improyisationDandroleCplay.3 It may come as a surprise therefore to discover that! in a recent survey underta$en by Gude 6ollins of the 8niversity of 8lster'! the evidence suggests that drama is ! t seen in that light by many schools and! perhaps more

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importantly! by many children in those schools. The survey was underta$en with two hundred twelve to fourteen year old pupils in secondary schools. It e5plored children.s e5perience of and attitude towards drama. "hen as$ed if they thought that drama should be used to e5amine the troubles! almost two thirds of the pupils H=:<I thought it should and the remainder who responded H&)<I thought it shouldn.t be used. "hen this is loo$ed at in terms of the gender of respondents a small ma*ority of boys H':<I is actually opposed to the use of drama to e5plore the troubles whilst over );< of girls are in favour. ?r 6ollins characterises this difference by observing7 Jeasons for this stri$ing difference along gender lines are unclear! other than that boys generally tend to be more militant in attitude and more impatient of pretence. The notion that drama is only pretence is one that goes deep in 8lster culture. In the Protestant tradition! where the cultural heritage of Ireland is seen as the politicised domain of the #ationalist community! there can be deep suspicion of .pretenceA. %lso noteworthy in #orthern Ireland is the complete absence of a youth .counter-culture..= 0o far from rebelling against parental values! the young people! especially in wor$ing class areas! have been seen to play an active and increasingly central role in the preservation of the .traditions.. In a largely illiberal society the notion that drama should be used to subvert and /uestion established values would not seem appropriate to many children and young people. Given a choice! and this is where the tension lies! it might well be used as a vehicle to restate and further entrench the orthodo5ies of suspicion and division. It is a strange fact that! in a country in which symbol of colour and flag are understood and used daily at the level of metaphor! the metaphoric and symbolic use of language in action can often be mistrusted as li$ely to dissemble .the truthA. Part of the problem here is that in a bipolar and bi-confessional society there are two versions of everything - schools! voluntary organisations! sports associations and! inevitably! .the truthA. "hen as$ed to e5plain their thin$ing about drama! the reluctant boys in 6ollins.s survey showed a sense of frustration with drama being used to e5plore the sub*ect of division at all. To do so! many felt! would be to treat something serious in a frivolous way. It.s nothing to ma$e a song and dance about when parents have lost their sons in the troubles. 0ome felt that life itself presented enough of the troubles without importing them into the classroomK others felt that it might lead to an e5acerbation of an5ious or unhappy feeling. %nother significant issue is that certain groups of children are strongly politically committed and schools! which are all funded to some degree by the state! find it difficult to defend drama which might appear to condone violence

Drama &! the C !te't f a D&(&"e" S )&ety and result in a strengthening of sectarian views which are considered aberrant by the ma*ority of the population. %mongst the teachers with whom I wor$! this fear features prominently in their concerns about drama. They are concerned that drama which is .aboutA the troubles directly might result in considerable upset for those who have suffered from them and further entrench sectarian paradigms. The situation has been so real and so persistent that drama teachers often find the search for suitable metaphor can result in cliches which wea$en the process of drama. %mong the more positive views which the survey obtained were those of one child who said. "e could dramatise it and see what the troubles are aboutA. 4thers focussed on the idea of using the performance of plays as an information medium to offset misconceptions about #orthern Ireland - They could see what.s going on Ireland.. Girls in the survey tended to show sympathy more than e5asperation in their replies even when opposing drama for the purpose of e5amining the troubles. The idea that drama could help towards an understanding of what is going on was widespread amongst the girls in the survey. They said things li$e! .People should $now what is going on around them and why. . . . .It will show what people thin$ of the troubles.. . . Lou get into the inner part of the person that way! to find their inner fear.. Those opposed to the use of drama were concerned about the harm it might inflict! .Because someone.s relation might have been in if. The reluctance of many of these pupils to see drama as having a contribution to ma$e in e5amining the ma*or problem at the heart of British politics for the past thirty years may well indicate that they simply haven.t been e5posed to the full possibilities of the medium of drama! but it surely also indicates the genuine difficulties which arise when drama as a process is e5pected to deliver a precise series of attitude changes within a given set of socio-political circumstances. 4ver the years! the people of #orthern Ireland have attempted to arrive at a wor$ing solution to deal with! at an interpersonal level! their deeply held differences! focussing largely on whether #orthern Ireland should continue to be part of the 8nited 9ingdom Hthe Protestant viewI or part of a 8nited Ireland Hthe 6atholic viewI. 4ne solution seems to have been a general agreement not to mention those differences in .mi5ed. Hi.e. 6atholic and ProtestantI company e5cept perhaps on formal political occasions. The result has been that politics@religion - hard to disentangle in 8lster - has been a taboo sub*ect similar perhaps to se5 in other societies - and is not mentioned in polite circles unless one is very sure that one is in the company of close friends. This taboo continues to provide a safety net! even in the changed circumstances of the ceasefire! to prevent political differences spilling over into personal relationships. %ttempts to mention this taboo topic perhaps! especially in an educational conte5t such as that of (8! might not only brea$ a strongly held social convention but also upset the barely maintained political e/uilibrium which balances #orthern Irish educational provision against sectarian

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violence. There is a danger that! in the circumstances in which children in #orthern Ireland live! they are being denied a full imaginative life because of the reality of their everyday e5istence. By contrast! the reflective potential of a drama about 8lster underta$en in %ustralia by Gohn 4Toole is largely dependent on the perceptual distance which his students have from the situation to start with and their lac$ of $nowledge. %fter a session in which the participants heard Irish songs and obtained some information about 8lster from travel brochures! they were framed as %ustralian tourists holidaying in 8lster to discover their roots. 4Toole goes on to describe the session thus7 In role as an apparently *ovial M.8lster@Nictoria Oriendship.I tour operator but! in fact! a 8NO partisan using these innocents as publicity for a cause -1 invited them to ta$e part in a traditional Guly Oestival! the origins of which were .lost in historyA. Their tas$ was to design a gaily orange .Irish-%ustralian Oriendship Oloat. and learn a .traditional *ingle. - in fact the marching song The 0ash (y Oather "ore.. 0i5 women participants were elsewhere being enrolled as 6atholic Irishwomen - deeply committed IJ% supporters. They too learned a song! The Patriot Game.. "hen the two groups eventually confronted each other during the Twelfth of Guly parade! it was through these two songs. The %ustralian 4rangemen danced and waved bright favours as they sang. The IJ% women stood silently! clad in blac$ shawls. ventually the /uiet intensity of The Patriot Game. outfaced the brasher strains of The 0ash.! the unwitting 4range Paraders realised the deception implicit in what they were singing! and the web of conflicts became e5plicit in speech and violent action.) The distance of the %ustralian students from the real situation brings aesthetic strength to the wor$. It means that what would appear impossibly crude oversimplifications in #orthern Ireland! such as the violent men of the 8NO facing the passive but insistent blac$ shawled women Hshades of LeatsPI of the IJ%! can be used genuinely to increase awareness of a comple5 social and political situation for the A-stral&a! participants. The lu5ury of oversimplification! however! is not one in which teachers in 8lster can easily indulge when dealing with issues emerging directly from our own culture. There is some evidence to suggest that a rich fantasy life - an indulgence in fiction - can lead to a decline in actual aggressive behaviour. Bruno Bettelheim cites %merican research which confirms that children e5posed to violent fantasy in fictional form tend to be more creative in their general behaviour and inclined more to verbal than physical aggression than low fantasising children. 8 If you deny children the fictional representation of emotions and urges which they are actually feeling! then they will imagine themselves to be alone in engaging with them! with all $inds of terrifying results. It hardly needs

Drama &! the C !te't f a D&(&"e" S )&ety to be said that Bettelheim is tal$ing about the use of metaphor! of things represented and described as things they are not. It is my opinion that in #orthern Ireland the failure to distinguish between literal and metaphorical truth has ta$en on a moral dimension so that representations of the troubles have become synonymous with the troubles themselves. The introduction of ducation for (utual 8nderstanding as a cross -curricular theme in the #orthern Ireland 6urriculum was a direct attempt to address the issues arising from conflict throughout the child.s schooling! defined as being about7 .self-respect! respect for others and the improvement of relationships between people of different cultural traditions.. %s a result of engaging in (8! pupils would be e5pected to $now about and understand7

A how society wor$s at family! local and wider levels . . . A the different cultural traditions which influence people who live in
#orthern Ireland . . . A non-violent approaches to the resolution of conflict in a variety of conte5ts.9

%lthough created with genuine reconciliatory intentions! it seems odd that a government which includes the use of troops and the deployment of weaponry as part of its response to the situation should choose to enshrine in law the notion of non-violence as a way of solving problems. The initiative also tends to imply that if only people met together and understood each other then political difficulty which has been at least three hundred years in the ma$ing would disappear. This tends to characterise the personal attitudes of people Hincluding childrenI as .the problem. and avoids encouraging people to ta$e a broader political view of the situation. 4ddly! but not surprisingly! the group had to fight hard to e5clude the notion that attitude change should form a prescribed part of the assessment system. They won but only *ust and children in #orthern Ireland were spared the tas$ of as$ing each other how they got on in their pre*udice e5amP #ote is made in the programmes of study! at all stages of the compulsory curriculum! of the contribution of drama to the achievement of these aims. Oor e5ample! the five to eight year olds should .participate in role play about family life in the community.K pupils aged eight to eleven should .begin to e5plore! through drama! the interdependence between different peoples in the world.K by the age of fourteen pupils should .e5plore through drama the interrelationships between differing religious@cultural groups within #orthern Ireland.K and by the age of si5teen pupils should .have e5perienced drama activity which e5plores issues of segregation and integration within #orthern Ireland.. These are very incendiary issues about which many teachers and pupils have e5pressed concern! but both are sub*ect to the legal application of a curriculum and it seems that these issues must be tac$led .head on.. 0o far this intrusion

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Into the area of engineering for social and political change seems largely to have been ignored 4n the ground.. (y own concern as a teacher educator is with people who will implement this wor$. Quite early in the life of the programme I set out! with a group of third year B. d! students! to e5plore issues associated with their e5perience of having lived through a period of time which was almost entirely congruent with the recent troubles. The story was! eventually! presented as a play to an audience! called Making the Number up. The play occurred as a way of refining and securing.as #eelands and Goode have put it recently! .participatory e5periences which involve all those ta$ing part as fellow creators.. ,i$e #eelands and Goode we were . . . interested in e5tending our e5perience of participatory theatre by developing forms of participation that did not depend on a .realist. aesthetic - to play with time! space! dance sound! ob*ects and images! alongside those realist uses of role which are associated with educational d*ama*ractioe. R

(y students were concerned to avoid concentrating on conte5ts which have become cliches of the #orthern Ireland situation such as guns on $itchen tables! love across the barricades and myriad other events which were in any case largely directly outside the e5perience of this group. Their desire to marry forms of social realism with poetry was a direct response to their understanding that! as Gama$e +ighwater put it so beautifully7 The greatest distance between people is not space but culture and it is only in poetry! in its most twentieth century manifestations! that we have the slightest chance of ma$ing ourselves $nown to each other. In this way poetry is social change.11 The young people whom I teach are largely Protestant and many of them come from rural bac$grounds. They chose the e5perience of rural poverty and isolation as a central focus for their wor$. In many ways! the physical isolation and poverty suffered by the people whom the drama created became a metaphor for other even more commonly e5perienced almost spiritual deprivations of many young people in #orthern Ireland. The drama! which continued in the classroom for three months before being preserved in play form! tells the story of the life of %nn who lives on a lonely small farm in a border area of the country. The family are Protestants. %s the drama progresses we discover that %nn.s physical isolation is e5acerbated by a religious obsession in her family which further isolates her from the people around her. The story e5poses many of the undercurrents which are so destructive in 8lster society. The young people with whom I wor$ are clearly aware of hypocrisy which can ta$e on the proportions of a conspiracy to assert that one thing is true when in fact the e5act opposite is the case. The desperate and dar$ realities of the lives of %nn.s family are covered up by an authoritarian and violent assertion of discipline and religion.

Drama &! the C !te't f a D&(&"e" S )&ety ?oes this wor$! which is the result of a genuine and brave e5ploration of issues in the lives of young people in #orthern Ireland! actually fulfil any of the legal criteria laid down in the ducation for (utual 8nderstanding programme2 In part I thin$ it does but it also proves that drama is a far more subtle and poetic medium than it is often assumed to be in an educational conte5t. The drama which unfurls here is a relentlessly dar$ and really rather hopeless statement. It proposes no solutions but it does contain moments of tenderness. The wor$ is built on a series of compassionate insights into a familiar culture which were developed and e5pressed through the process of drama. The young people who e5plored %nn.s dilemma did nothing to e5plore other cultural traditions. They did not emerge having used drama to e5plore .non-violent approaches to the resolution of conflict. as the programmes of study suggest. 0o drama is finding it difficult to deliver the hoped-for attitude changes through the vehicle of a legally prescribed curriculum. +owever it remains the most significant opportunityDof*dlCfC ambiguityC liminal areaCFofF+ilttireFanC of their e5perience! *(CateverTtmay be.
Notes:

1. Ca&r!s/ E0 (%12.#0 Caught in the crossfire. 3 !" !4 Appletree 5ress0 &. Heath) te/ D0 (%124#0 I! Collected writings. 6 h!s !/ 3 a!" O7Ne&ll/ C0 (E"s0#0 3
H-t)h&!s !0

!" !4

:. The way forward Departme!t 3. Ib&"0 '. =. ). OT 8. 9.

f E"-)at& ! N rther! Irela!"0 (%121#0

C ll&!s/ 60 (%118#0 Drama &! the E!9l&sh )lassr Dance. ;&!ter0

m : ) -l" "

better0 2D - Drama and

<ell/ D0 (%12+#0 5r testa!t mar)h&!9 ba!"s0 I! Identity and culture in Northern Ireland C '/ (E"#0 3 !" !4 5e!9-&! < =s0 le/ 60 (%118#0 The process of drama. 3 !" !4 R -tle"9e0

<ettelhe&m/ <0 (%1.$#0 The -ses of enchantment: the meaning and importance offairytales. 3 !" !4 Thames a!" H-"s !0 EM programmes of study and attainment targets. (%11%#0 Departme!t N rther! Irela!"0 f E"-)at& !

1;. > 11.

"e/ T0 a!" Neela!"s/ 60 (%11,#0 5lay&!9 &! the mar9&!s National Drama" V l-me + N 80 ?- te" &! > "e/ T0 a!" Neela!"s/ 60/ p0 )&t0

f mea!&!90 The !ournal of

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