Jane Isobel Luton
Dr. Jane Isobel Luton is a UK-trained Secondary School Drama teacher. In 2015 she submitted the first Phd (Education) through creative practice at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand, supervised by Professor Peter O’Connor (2011-2015). She was awarded first prize at the University of Auckland’s annual Exposure Variety Showcase in 2013 for a performance of an extract from this doctoral research and performed the full hour-long drama with set, lighting, costumes, and props in 2014 at The Maidment Theatre, Auckland. As a part of her research, she developed a drama-based and playful methodology, Embodied Reflections to generate, mediate and share stories from key drama educators. In this research, she invites particpants to imagine a Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre (MEDAT) with the researcher as the Archivist who receives the stories to be used as installations in the Museum. Jane has used this method with various participants using other imagined locations including ICARUS - the International Centre for Academic Researcher's Untold Stories.
Jane has several chapters and articles published nationally and internationally about her creative practice methodology, secondary drama teaching in New Zealand, and most recently how Covid-19 altered the drama classroom space. She was the lead co-author for the ESA NZ (now LearnWell) NCEA Drama Study Guides. She has presented at conferences in Ireland, New Zealand, and most recently in person at the 2022 TaPRA [Theatre and Performance Research Association] Conference, Practice-as-Research Gallery, University of Essex, England.
Supervisors: Professor Peter O'Connor and Dr Adrienne Sansom
Address: Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Jane has several chapters and articles published nationally and internationally about her creative practice methodology, secondary drama teaching in New Zealand, and most recently how Covid-19 altered the drama classroom space. She was the lead co-author for the ESA NZ (now LearnWell) NCEA Drama Study Guides. She has presented at conferences in Ireland, New Zealand, and most recently in person at the 2022 TaPRA [Theatre and Performance Research Association] Conference, Practice-as-Research Gallery, University of Essex, England.
Supervisors: Professor Peter O'Connor and Dr Adrienne Sansom
Address: Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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Book chapter by Jane Isobel Luton
space, Penguin, 1968), have for decades offered an example of the principles of the Innovative Learning
Environment (ILE). This is a space which promotes the ideals of collaborative learning and the sharing and
creating of knowledge between students and teachers. As a drama educator, I explore some of the historical
documents concerning the creation of drama spaces in schools in the United Kingdom. I highlight the
similarity in concept to the ideas for ILEs as expressed most recently by the Ministry of Education in New
Zealand. I draw on enacted narratives from international drama educators using embodied reflections.
These educators regard the drama space as a democratic space for learning, a space in which power can be
shared between student and teacher/facilitator-where partnerships can be enacted. The chapter discusses
the ways in which drama as a pedagogy thrives within and is informed by the open space, inviting
collaborative embodied learning, often through discovery. This collaborative learning is not only enacted
between pedagogue and learner but between students as they encourage, challenge and support each other.
Acknowledging the long history of flexible, open spaces for shared and embodied learning in drama
contributes to the literature supporting the ILE as a positive way forward in schools
Serious research can use fun and playful methods. The title of this chapter is taken from a comment made by one of my participants in the research that I developed for my doctorate. The idea of ‘fun research’ may seem like an oxymoron but my methodology involved playful dramatic interviews with several key drama education practitioners. This playful research, I discovered, can draw out rich embodied narratives from participants.
Papers by Jane Isobel Luton
The Sinodum Players in Wallingford Oxfordshire had as its president in the 1970s Agatha Christie who lived locally for many years. I had attended the pantomimes with my family growing up in Brightwell-cum Sotwell and loved their vitality and professional quality. I was very privileged to be given access to the Chairman, Director and Publicity Manager for this project. I saw as part of the project the production of Rashomon, which I remember vividly to this day. I offer it here as a small window into a local British amateur theatre which still operates today. It's external and internal building played a starring role in some episodes of the British TV series Midsomer Murders.
Dr Jane Isobel Luton (née Charlton).
to produce drama productions in schools and the subsequent effect this has on the health of drama teachers. Guided by documents
drawn up by the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association Te Wehengarua (PPTA) I question what drives drama teachers to
commit themselves to provide co-curricular and extra-curricular productions in schools, above and beyond normal teaching hours. This
commitment is, according to the PPTA, “unrecognised” and not funded which begs the question why do teachers feel obliged to volunteer
their skills. What do they believe the school production and other extra-curricular drama events offer the students? How do drama
teachers sustain themselves delivering the long hours required to produce these performances? Weaving the PPTA documents, health
and safety regulations and academic research this discussion challenges attitudes towards the provision of extra-curricular drama as an expected yet mainly unpaid requirement of the job. Since the writing of this article there has been a change of government which may
offer further hope for the arts and in particular those drama teachers drawn to providing extra-curricular productions.
international drama educators to embody their stories of the battles and barricades inherent in
drama education using imagination and role play. Instead of a traditional qualitative interview I
devised a framing device – the Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre – and took
on role of an Archivist’s Assistant to facilitate the generation of stories. Inspired by arts-based
research and performative inquiry this method offers an alternative to traditional qualitative
interviews by suggesting that drama can be used to embody stories in a dyadic situation. This
research resulted in the development of a play which re-imagined and re-enacted some of those
stories.
paper at IDIERI 7, (July 10-15th, 2012) I wondered where to begin. There are so many
recollections and moments of inspiration, a sense of excitement and disbelief that I was really
there. It had been eighteen months since the 2010 inaugural drama symposium at Auckland
University when conference director, Michael Finneran, put out the call for delegates to come
to Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick in Ireland. I recall raising my hand and
telling myself, yes I will be there. So the following reports a few highlights seen from my
point of view and interpreted from my own position as a drama teacher now turned doctoral
student.
Books by Jane Isobel Luton
The book uses the language of the Drama curriculum and a te reo Māori translation of important terms to help students and teachers develop their appreciation and understanding of the bicultural nature of New Zealand.
The topics selected for inclusion have all been taught with success in the classroom. The book is divided into four parts, as follows.
Part A is introductory.
Part B, Devising drama, provides ideas and themes for the creation of drama.
In Part C, Study of texts, dramatic works by seven playwrights from diverse backgrounds and spanning four centuries are presented for in-depth study.
Part D, Analysis of performance, gives students ideas for practical exploration of drama, with the emphasis on interpreting and enjoying live performances.
space, Penguin, 1968), have for decades offered an example of the principles of the Innovative Learning
Environment (ILE). This is a space which promotes the ideals of collaborative learning and the sharing and
creating of knowledge between students and teachers. As a drama educator, I explore some of the historical
documents concerning the creation of drama spaces in schools in the United Kingdom. I highlight the
similarity in concept to the ideas for ILEs as expressed most recently by the Ministry of Education in New
Zealand. I draw on enacted narratives from international drama educators using embodied reflections.
These educators regard the drama space as a democratic space for learning, a space in which power can be
shared between student and teacher/facilitator-where partnerships can be enacted. The chapter discusses
the ways in which drama as a pedagogy thrives within and is informed by the open space, inviting
collaborative embodied learning, often through discovery. This collaborative learning is not only enacted
between pedagogue and learner but between students as they encourage, challenge and support each other.
Acknowledging the long history of flexible, open spaces for shared and embodied learning in drama
contributes to the literature supporting the ILE as a positive way forward in schools
Serious research can use fun and playful methods. The title of this chapter is taken from a comment made by one of my participants in the research that I developed for my doctorate. The idea of ‘fun research’ may seem like an oxymoron but my methodology involved playful dramatic interviews with several key drama education practitioners. This playful research, I discovered, can draw out rich embodied narratives from participants.
The Sinodum Players in Wallingford Oxfordshire had as its president in the 1970s Agatha Christie who lived locally for many years. I had attended the pantomimes with my family growing up in Brightwell-cum Sotwell and loved their vitality and professional quality. I was very privileged to be given access to the Chairman, Director and Publicity Manager for this project. I saw as part of the project the production of Rashomon, which I remember vividly to this day. I offer it here as a small window into a local British amateur theatre which still operates today. It's external and internal building played a starring role in some episodes of the British TV series Midsomer Murders.
Dr Jane Isobel Luton (née Charlton).
to produce drama productions in schools and the subsequent effect this has on the health of drama teachers. Guided by documents
drawn up by the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association Te Wehengarua (PPTA) I question what drives drama teachers to
commit themselves to provide co-curricular and extra-curricular productions in schools, above and beyond normal teaching hours. This
commitment is, according to the PPTA, “unrecognised” and not funded which begs the question why do teachers feel obliged to volunteer
their skills. What do they believe the school production and other extra-curricular drama events offer the students? How do drama
teachers sustain themselves delivering the long hours required to produce these performances? Weaving the PPTA documents, health
and safety regulations and academic research this discussion challenges attitudes towards the provision of extra-curricular drama as an expected yet mainly unpaid requirement of the job. Since the writing of this article there has been a change of government which may
offer further hope for the arts and in particular those drama teachers drawn to providing extra-curricular productions.
international drama educators to embody their stories of the battles and barricades inherent in
drama education using imagination and role play. Instead of a traditional qualitative interview I
devised a framing device – the Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre – and took
on role of an Archivist’s Assistant to facilitate the generation of stories. Inspired by arts-based
research and performative inquiry this method offers an alternative to traditional qualitative
interviews by suggesting that drama can be used to embody stories in a dyadic situation. This
research resulted in the development of a play which re-imagined and re-enacted some of those
stories.
paper at IDIERI 7, (July 10-15th, 2012) I wondered where to begin. There are so many
recollections and moments of inspiration, a sense of excitement and disbelief that I was really
there. It had been eighteen months since the 2010 inaugural drama symposium at Auckland
University when conference director, Michael Finneran, put out the call for delegates to come
to Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick in Ireland. I recall raising my hand and
telling myself, yes I will be there. So the following reports a few highlights seen from my
point of view and interpreted from my own position as a drama teacher now turned doctoral
student.
The book uses the language of the Drama curriculum and a te reo Māori translation of important terms to help students and teachers develop their appreciation and understanding of the bicultural nature of New Zealand.
The topics selected for inclusion have all been taught with success in the classroom. The book is divided into four parts, as follows.
Part A is introductory.
Part B, Devising drama, provides ideas and themes for the creation of drama.
In Part C, Study of texts, dramatic works by seven playwrights from diverse backgrounds and spanning four centuries are presented for in-depth study.
Part D, Analysis of performance, gives students ideas for practical exploration of drama, with the emphasis on interpreting and enjoying live performances.
Working with methodologies that are emerging and which challenge established notions of empirical research can present particular opportunities and challenges for postgraduate researchers. We present the critical moments from our research journeys, our ‘lost moments’, 'aha moments’ and affirming ‘found moments’. We invite the audience to engage with this performed presentation as part of our attempt to take methodological theory into practice. We use narrative, metaphor, symbol, poetry and dramatic conventions in many different ways in our research projects. We make use of them in this presentation to invite your critical and felt responses to our work.
This collective presentation demonstrates that although the PhD journey is an individual one it can still involve and benefit from collaboration, synergy and the cross pollination of ideas.
The play was devised and performed by the following doctoral students:
Claire Coleman, Esther Fitzpatrick,Jane Isobel Luton, Molly Mullen and Adrian Schoone.
Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand: July 2014
During my creative practice doctoral research, I became embodied by serendipitous necessity. I recognised that to generate, mediate, and reflect on dramaturgical data, we must use our voices and our bodies. I invited international drama educators to share stories of the battles and barricades we encounter in our praxis using ‘Embodied Reflections’ a dyadic, embodied, and imaginative interview process. Together we imagined a Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre [MEDAT]. I then devised and performed a ‘data-drama’ to re-embody our stories for a public audience. Using the elements and technologies of theatre, I crawled, climbed, and cavorted across the stage, coming to understand myself, a middle-aged mother, both as a drama educator and artist.
Auckland: March 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic. I am disembodied in the remote space-in the digital world of an online learning platform. I desperately coax my students to emerge from their desktop icons. This challenges me to re-consider the battles and barricades we encounter in a new disembodied world. I place new artefacts into the imagined space of MEDAT.
I performatively reflect on the praxis of being a drama teacher, juxtaposing the battles and barricades of the pre-and intra-pandemic era.
During my creative practice doctoral research, I became embodied by serendipitous necessity. I recognised that to generate, mediate, and reflect on dramaturgical data, we must use our voices and our bodies. I invited international drama educators to share stories of the battles and barricades we encounter in our praxis using ‘Embodied Reflections’ a dyadic, embodied, and imaginative interview process. Together we imagined a Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre [MEDAT]. I then devised and performed a ‘data-drama’ to re-embody our stories for a public audience. Using the elements and technologies of theatre, I crawled, climbed, and cavorted across the stage, coming to understand myself, a middle-aged mother, both as a drama educator and artist.
Auckland: March 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic. I am disembodied in the remote space-in the digital world of an online learning platform. I desperately coax my students to emerge from their desktop icons. This challenges me to re-consider the battles and barricades we encounter in a new disembodied world. I place new artefacts into the imagined space of MEDAT.
I performatively reflect on the praxis of being a drama teacher, juxtaposing the battles and barricades of the pre-and intra-pandemic era.
Although intending to script the performance arising from the data, I found that I began to play like my participants. By embodying the stories, I could connect and respond to them. During the mediation, I became an actor, director, designer, dramaturg and audience. Saldaña’s ‘golden moments’ resonated through laughter and tears. Using Brechtian conventions, I played multiple roles crossing time and space to educate and entertain the audience; to engage them interactively. The language of drama education gives insights into its practitioners and opens up a space to return the stories to the wider drama education community.
I asked six published international drama educators, who have inspired me, to share their stories about what sustains them in their practice. I developed a new research method ‘embodied reflections’ to generate data. This methodology and thesis is constructed like a ‘well-made play’ and uses a framing device to invite my participants to perform their stories and reflect on them through dramatic conventions. I became the ‘researcher-in-role’ as I facilitated each dyadic drama workshop. These stories were captured on video and subsequently mediated by me using theatrical processes resulting in the public performance of the research. I became a researcher, actor, director, designer and dramaturg. This research is informed by arts-based research and by my own immersion in theatre and the work of Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski.
I come to embrace serendipity as I frequently made unplanned, unexpected and surprising discoveries – including the important role Motherhood plays in my experiences. During the devising, rehearsing and performing of my play I begin to renew my passion for drama education. I re-engage with drama as art form and pedagogy. I re-discover how to play, to imagine and to perform. I suggest other drama educators could reignite their passion through playful engagement with their own artform. I finally celebrate my melancholia and accept that – in being a drama educator – I am an artist.
A DVD of the doctoral performance accompanies this thesis.
I asked six published international drama educators, who have inspired me, to share their stories about what sustains them in their practice. I developed a new research method ‘embodied reflections’ to generate data. This methodology and thesis is constructed like a ‘well-made play’ and uses a framing device to invite my participants to perform their stories and reflect on them through dramatic conventions. I became the ‘researcher-in-role’ as I facilitated each dyadic drama workshop. These stories were captured on video and subsequently mediated by me using theatrical processes resulting in the public performance of the research. I became a researcher, actor, director, designer and dramaturg. This research is informed by arts-based research and by my own immersion in theatre and the work of Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski.
I come to embrace serendipity as I frequently made unplanned, unexpected and surprising discoveries – including the important role Motherhood plays in my experiences. During the devising, rehearsing and performing of my play I begin to renew my passion for drama education. I re-engage with drama as art form and pedagogy. I re-discover how to play, to imagine and to perform. I suggest other drama educators could reignite their passion through playful engagement with their own artform. I finally celebrate my melancholia and accept that – in being a drama educator – I am an artist.
A DVD of the doctoral performance accompanies this thesis.
This thesis considers the nature of drama and theatre in and for schools and references the nature of theatre in contemporary New Zealand. Drama in schools in New Zealand has developed from the earliest School productions in the 1800's, through its perceived role to enrich lives, to becoming a discrete Arts subject within the New Zealand educational curriculum in 1999. During this development, theatre companies began to tour schools and arguments ensued regarding drama’s role in education as a process or performance. This development is charted through a range of historical and current curriculum documents. The thesis references the importance of the Australian UNESCO Seminar on drama in education in 1958 which explored the relationship between the educational aspects of Drama and Drama as an art form and which inspired New Zealand Drama teachers. The research contains interviews conducted during 2009, with drama teachers, students and theatre practitioners, as well as examples of performances by schools and professional theatre since the advent of the new curriculum. The thesis investigates some of the many kinds of Drama work taking place in contemporary New Zealand schools, including co-curricula and curricula productions on a wide range of issues and utilising a range of dramatic styles. These included, an Intermediate school’s collaboration and contribution to capital E’s production of Kia Ora Khalid and examples of devised and scripted projects undertaken at Secondary Colleges in New Zealand. The research explores the relationship which exists between schools and professional theatre practitioners, and establishes some of the ways in which the relationship is beneficial for the development of high quality Drama programmes in schools. The contribution of the Auckland Theatre Company’s Educational Unit to schools is investigated, as is an example of the Artist in Schools programme at Pakuranga College in Auckland. The introduction of the National certificate in Educational drama in 2001 has undoubtedly contributed to the range and quality of work being undertaken in schools, which raises the possibility that their Drama performance work can, and often does, contribute to local communities and to a New Zealand theatre identity.
Working with methodologies that are emerging and which challenge established notions of empirical research can present particular opportunities and challenges for postgraduate researchers. We present the critical moments from our research journeys, our ‘lost moments’, 'aha moments’ and affirming ‘found moments’. We invite the audience to engage with this performed presentation as part of our attempt to take methodological theory into practice. We use narrative, metaphor, symbol, poetry and dramatic conventions in many different ways in our research projects. We make use of them in this presentation to invite your critical and felt responses to our work.
This collective presentation demonstrates that although the Ph.D. journey is an individual one it can still involve and benefit from collaboration, synergy and the cross pollination of ideas.
Working with methodologies that are emerging and which challenge established notions of empirical research can present particular opportunities and challenges for postgraduate researchers. We present the critical moments from our research journeys, our ‘lost moments’, 'aha moments’ and affirming ‘found moments’. We invite the audience to engage with this performed presentation as part of our attempt to take methodological theory into practice. We use narrative, metaphor, symbol, poetry and dramatic conventions in many different ways in our research projects. We make use of them in this presentation to invite your critical and felt responses to our work.
This collective presentation demonstrates that although the Ph.D. journey is an individual one it can still involve and benefit from collaboration, synergy and the cross pollination of ideas.
My Museum of Educational Drama was an entirely imagined construct to bring together the voices of my research participants who were based across the Globe. It allowed me and my participants the space to imagine exciting possibilities without limitations. Today actors and directors cannot meet in person and are having to find ways to connect and continue the powerful work of theatre. Here, using just a few extracts, I re-tell key moments of creating an imagined space weaving stories together to interrogate and elucidate the struggles of being a drama educator.
In the invitation at the end perhaps you may want to imagine your own contribution to the Museum of Educational Drama; a symbol, re-enactment or speech to celebrate, challenge or inspire drama educators and theatre makers.