Embodied learning and drama education

Advocacy for drama education has generally taken the form of an argument for dramatic literacy. But through a focus on the 'embodied learning' of the drama participant, the experience of drama can be understood differently. It can be seen as a process designed to generate rather than analyse a social environment. Augusto Boal makes the body central to the process of learning contained in drama. Boal's work can be situated within a broader discussion of how bodies interact, drawn from research in cognitive biology. This paper looks at the body from a systemic perspective by focusing on the nest of relationships within which the body exists. Performance theory has long worked with such analyses. If the body of the performer has been serious subject matter since Stanislavsky, why has drama education had difficulties in appreciating it as a learning system? This paper looks at the body in the context of drama education and seeks to promote a methodology for more effectively understanding and incorporating it