Why Drama Education? Part One: Creative Thinking

Preface:
At the moment I am employed by Seattle Repertory Theatre as their Education Intern. This means that I am spending most of my time these days bringing theater into the classroom, or bringing students into the theatre. But with all of the things that schools are expected to do these days – provide healthy lunches to students, educate them about substance abuse, teach sex ed (or “no sex!” ed), and provide after-school daycare, not to mention teach kids to read and write so they don’t fall through the cracks and math and science so we can keep up with China – what is the value of art? And do we have time in our busy schedules for Drama education? Why take a whole class period to do a prep workshop with a teaching artist, just to spend another full class period or two taking a field trip to the Rep to watch “The Three Musketeers”?

There are some very idealistic answers out there such as, “Art is what we live for!” or other things that invoke the soul, but I will leave metaphysics out of this discussion for now. Not because I disagree with the idealists about the power of art in the world, but because most educators I know (especially teaching artists) are incredibly down to earth about what they do. I’m sure if you asked each of them why arts in education is important, you would get several different answers. These are mine, and as I am a drama student/educator/enthusiast, they will be in the realm of drama.

DRAMA ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING
In many standard classrooms – teaching any topic – there is a propensity to encourage correct answers over incorrect answers. In basic studies, such as grade-school level math, geographic memorization, scientific principles, and historic facts, the model of “correct versus incorrect” makes a ton of sense. Because 1+1=2, no matter what any “decide-for-yourself Montessori mom” may say. (I love Montessori school, but seriously? Math is not very kumbaya!) Columbus ran aground in 1492, Baton Rouge is the capitol of Louisiana, and water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen.

However, as we all find out when we get older, most of the important problems in life that we will be expected to solve are not so black and white. What is the most effective way to combat an auto-immune disorder? What transportation modes will be best for the Puget Sound region in the next ten years? What are the best financial decisions that someone can make so that their kids can go to college in fifteen years? How do we get more butts into the theater? How can one person with a given skill set most effectively make a positive impact on the world? These are all complicated questions with no correct answers, and they all require some amount of creative thinking, experimenting, failing, being bold, and outlining objectives and tactics for achieving those objectives.

The funny thing about school is that we begin to encounter gray-area questions at different points in each field. As soon as we have mastered grammatical rules, grammar class turns into a creative course on writing styles in prose and poetry. But at what point in business classes is there more than one right answer? College? 3rd year of college? Dave is in 2nd year medical school and there’s still a predominant culture of having the right answer. When med students turn into doctors they need to make judgment calls on which of several treatments will be most effective, and “being right” is more about finesse and je ne sais quoi than it was in school.

Drama education prepares students – even those who never plan to pursue drama as a career – to think creatively in these gray areas. Forgetting drama history classes for a moment, there are no correct answers in the acting classroom. There are bold choices that you need to justify. There are characters and situations you need to establish. There are requirements to think on your feet. You need to know your strengths and the strengths of your scene partner. And Drama education, unlike most other areas, does not require as much in-class foundation building as the rest of education. You have experience living in the world? Great! You get to think creatively about how you are going to approach a problem – or in drama terms, what is the tactic you are going to apply in order to overcome your obstacle and get to your objective?

And this is the first of many reasons why I believe Drama in education is valuable. It trains students to think about the various ways to creatively tackle a problem – without fear of getting marked down for being wrong – well before other areas of study have built a base upon which students can be creative. And to tell you the truth, I desperately want my future scientists to be bold in their hypotheses, I want my future geographers to seriously consider character and setting when they study distribution of wealth, and I want my business execs to think on their feet (not to mention be killer public speakers!). Drama builds these foundations.