YIWEI MIAO 3035449487

Academic Essay
CCHU9059: Making and Appreciating
Drama

Yiwei Miao

UID: 3035449487

Faculty of Business and Economics (Year 2)

Word count: 1595

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Drama ‘can open up what has been called an ‘affective space’, in which students
become engaged emotionally with the thrill, tension or straightforward enjoyment
of a developing story’ Winston 2012: 3 Discuss this statement, with reference to
your final performance in session 12 where appropriate.

1. Introduction: (270)
With the emergence of soaps, hospital and science fictions displayed in TV journals
(Winston& Tandy, 1998), as well as the evolvement of live-based dramas, numerous
researches on the relationship between drama education and affect are recently
conducted. Based on their results, this essay agrees on the statement that drama helps to
build up ‘affective space’, where performers are emotionally engaged (Winston, 2012)
both in performing and practical level. While it will be argued that this process involves
but are not limited to thrill, tension and direct enjoyment since the emotional context of
drama is rather dynamic and various (Intrator, 2006). Moreover, as dramas are performed
by actors on a stage before the audience and are dependent on collaborative production
modes and collective reception forms, the author claims that the formation of ‘affective
space’ requires a thorough understanding of each objective’s cognition as well as an
organised planning of drama’s normal operations. It is also noticeable that such effect is
bipolar (Russell & James, 1979), namely engaging participants, especially drama-learners
as the majority, will get improvement on their engagement and learning abilities (Bolton
& Heathcote, 1999; Craig & Bloomfield, 2006; Harris & Daley, 2008).

This essay will first briefly introduce the crucial concepts of affect, affective and
emotion, followed by the illustration of their necessities in dramas. Greater emphasis will
be placed on the creation of ‘affective space’ through students’ engagement as well as the
enhancement of their learning ability. Lastly, potential problems that threaten the

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maintenance of ‘affective space’ in drama classes will be mentioned, while role-play as

an effective strategy will be recommended. As a student who obtains academic drama
knowledge only from a common core course, the author will thus hire some previous
experience of drama-making to support the above arguments.

2. Importance of Affect and Emotion in Drama: (206)

Affect is a commonly applied psycho-physiological term to describe the experience of
feeling or emotion, and is primarily indicated by facial, vocal and gestural behaviour
(APA, 2006). Affective represents a division of modern psychology which directly
interacts with the other two divisions, the behavioural and cognitive (Duncan & Barret,
2008). Emotion highly relates to these two concepts since it includes various components
in unique physiological, behavioral and cognitive domains and produces changes of them
(Pinker, 1997).

As rightly stated by Alderson (2019), performers who dwell more in their subconscious
minds than in their emotions tend to build a gap between the story and the audience since
emotions are humanising and distinctive while thoughts and dialogue can be bogus
sometimes. When scenes are written with diversified characters’ emotions, the audience
will then viscerally participate in the story and connect with the performance. It is also
supported by Louchar, Aylett and Enz (2006) that presentations which contain strong
human engagement will lower the difficulty of audience identification upon the drama
story. In return, performers gain more motivation and attention and are likely to learn
more under this circumstance. To conclude, the development of characters’ emotion is
the major attraction of drama performance for both audience and performers regardless of
their physical movements, and thus requiring a great emphasis in drama classes.

3. Formation of ‘affective space’ in Drama: (866)

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The relationship between affect and emotion as well as their essences to dramas have
been established, but under what conditions, and more importantly, how ‘affective space’
and students’ engagement interact with each other?

3.1 Influential Factors

Drama as an emotive activity is determined by the human potential for play, while
normal operations of space, time, identity and action were suspended and educed
symbolic meanings by the participants’ understanding (Winston& Tandy, 1998).
Therefore, the ‘affective space’ is to be effectively formatted when involvers’ cognitions
and operations of physical elements are appropriately considered.

3.1.1 Understanding of Cognition:

As examined by Duncan and Barrett (2008), affect is highly related to an individual’s
cognitive ability in term of his language fluency, attention, and memory. In terms of the
language, well-rounded assessment should be conducted on students especially those who
have to utilise second-language in drama learning. This is because although drama can
motivate students to learn due to the interest and release of pressure it provides
(Thornbury, 2005; Hedge, 2000; Thornbury, 1999), students can be disengaged when
language barriers exist such as they may find it challenging to switch into characters
without scripts or to share ideas in front of the class. When students turn into performers,
they are supposed to assess their audiences’ cognitive ability and style to manage the
exposition of their dramas. Exposition is vital for bringing clarity to a script (Morrell,
2006). The audience can get confused or upset without it, while too much of it can offer
disturbance and result in loss of audiences' focus on the performance. Less engagement
of the performers is likely to present as a consequence. Furthermore, understanding of not
only the cultural backgrounds of teachers’, mates’ but also those of the audiences’ is also
necessary for students since individuals apply cognitive methods to bring their emotions
in line with certain cultural standards (Raymond, 2012). Also indicated by Neelands
(2004), the drama both reflects the social health and shapes the community.

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3.1.2 Normal Operations of Physical Elements:

Winston and Tandy (1998) rightly suggest that active movement and focus on sequences
of tasks are vital for motivating students emotionally engaged in classroom dramas while
Neelands (2004) further indicates that performance is also made out of actions consisting
of space changes, sounds and lights. Hence, it is needed to address the effect that physical
elements have on the students’ engagement. Firstly, the use of physical theatre is crucial
since it helps to stretch students’ imagination (Orti, 2014). A richer imaginative space
determines a broader emotions space (Morton, 2013). Secondly, the use of space presents
a remarkable role since it implies communicating to the audience where the action is
taking place and helps to break the fourth wall. Moreover, sound assists because it is
useful in creating a specific environment, atmosphere or mood (Arnado, 2010). Based on
the previous experience, the author will argue that students tend to lose the audiences’
attention when the available space is not effectively utilised, or a sudden silence occurs
during a performance. Consequently, they find it challenging to keep emotionally
engaged in their current work. The same situation happens in drama classes if students
have to stand still in a small place or stop talking for a long time.

3.2 Construction through Performers’ Engagement:

According to the statement by Winston and Tandy (1998) that the beginning of drama is
an equilibrium with timidity and courageousness while tensions appear to push the story
plot until reaching the highest level and will be released at the end, the author will
demonstrate how ‘affective space’ is constructed in a performing level mainly following
these three procedures.

3.2.1 Starting with Tension:

Tension builds when the audience anticipates specific outcomes in the story plot, and it is
pivotal to keep people hooked (Arnado, 2010). As the drama begins, performers start to
plant questions in the audience's mind to create tensions such as where the story happens

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and why the characters act in this way. Also, tension can be raised during a mystery or
whodunit of drama (Young, 2007). Such processes allow students not only physically but
also emotionally engaged as they have to manage their movements and expressions to
maintain and promote tensions. Some of them become thrilled since they don’t know how
their audience will react to the drama at this point, while others show courageousness of
gaining appreciations.

3.2.2 Conflict and Climax:

Conflict is defined as a fixed part of the drama playing of enhancing tension by adding
antagonists with mutually exclusive goals, and climax will present when the conflict
reaches its highest point (KMWeiland, 2019). Despite there might be more than one
climax in a drama, it is generally observed that performers’ engagement level experience
peaks at climaxes. This is because they integrate more into their characters and their
emotions become more dependent on the story plot to address the contradictions at
climaxes and to inspire the audience. Additionally, conflicts sometimes appear on a
practical level when students work as an ensemble (Orti, 2014). Refer to the author’s
experience, such conflicts also enhance students’ emotional engagement since they are
supposed to express their ideas to other group members with certain emotions, and they
need to consider others’ attitudes by observing their emotions as well.

3.2.3 Ending with Senses of Enjoyment or Loss:

Drama typically ends with the resolutions of tensions (Winston & Tandy, 1998) while
KMWeiland (2019) argues that sometimes the audience may not notice or understand
them. From the previous experience, the author agrees that performers can obtain senses
of achievement and enjoyment from self-satisfaction and others’ appreciation, while they
can also suffer frustration if their audiences fail to comprehend their drama.

4. Learning Enhancement: (105)

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Numerous practitioners have found that drama as a learning activity will improve
learners’ understanding through their engagement (Rabinowitz, 1997; Van Ments, 1999).
Courtney (1988) further states that drama will become a more useful educative act when
various emotions are involved. The reason is that participants can have the chance to
safely adapt their feelings in a fictional world rather than reality. Moreover, students also
experience an enhancement of their long-lasting learning ability (Heyward& Hansen,
2001). The author agrees on this because of her development of language,
communication and performance skills through drama classes. The author’s evaluative
skill has also improved by analysing the audiences’, teachers’ and peers’ evaluations and
conducting self-evaluations.

5. Conclusions: (148)
To summarise, drama can build up ‘affective space’ in a performing level where students
as performers emotionally engage, and it can lead to the same outcome in a practical level
when performances take place in the classrooms or during the rehearsals. However, this
essay argues that the above processes are affected by the understanding of cognition from
different subjects’ perspectives as well as the normal operations of drama. Students will
in return experience a dynamic feeling change with an enhancement of their learning
abilities. Last but not least, despite drama can assist with learning through emotional
engagement, some scholars point out the difficulty for teachers to hire this pedagogical
tool (Bolton, 1992; Somers, 1994) such that the resulting drama will be superficial if
emotions are externally exposed. Therefore, role-play as an approach to solve such a
problem is recommended to provide students with more exploratory motivations rather
than explanations in classes (Heyward& Hansen, 2001).

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