Affected by Dorothy Heathcote
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Dorothy Heathcote - A celebration of life
Derby, UK
Derby, UK
Derby, UK
Singapore
Dorothy was a friend who could see things in me that even I was not aware of.
Spondon, Derby, UK
In 1985 at the end of her official work The Theaterschool of Amsterdam discovered Dorothy and realized that I was not the only one who did coached from the sidelines. My way of drama work: playing together with children was no longer forbidden. Five drama teachers went to a course in Durham, I was one of them. Dorothy’s way of work needs still more attention in my country. In 2008 drama teachers and students listened to her and respected Dorothy live work at the theaterschool in Leeuwarden.
Budapest, Hungary
Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Dorothy worked with teachers and children at The Kingstone School where we used Mantle of the Expert as a way of offering a relevant curriculum to our Y7 and Y8 children. Massive impact.
One of the last things Dorothy wrote to me was about the Inuktitut word for storyteller: isumataq… and its definition – “the person who creates the atmosphere in which wisdom reveals itself.” Somebody had referred to her as this, how right they were…Thank You Dear Dorothy…..
Dorothy was a world leading teacher in drama in education indeed. I have been involved in her workshops some years ago.
I am inspired by her approach -Mantle of the Experts-in my MA dissertation.
Thank you for every contribution you did. You will be much missed…
Dorothy changed my personal and professional life and if that seems an exaggeration it most certainly is not.It was what I learned from Dorothy that led to an expansion in my own career that I would never have dreamed possible and has led me to so many of the fascinating things I do now. It was what I learned from her that led directly to my developing my own expertise in using drama with preschool children I wouldn’t have written my books nor would I have done a doctorate I am sure and as for for the work I now do with The Wiggles,the Autralian chldren’s entertainers for whom I am early childhod advisor that would have been unlikely to have developed as it has done. Furthermore I wouldn’t have been invited to speak and teach in so many interesting places! I owe her a lot.
Thank you
A teacher from Japan, currently teaching students with Autism Spectrum Disorders at Bridgeway School in Eugene, Oregon, the U.S.A.
I met Dorothy when I spent a summer in London when I was doing my MA at NYU. I found her inspirational and a wonderful teacher and human being. A lady that give her time, energy and love to us, her students! We will miss her.
Pietro
Suffolk, UK
Coventry, UK
I have worked with the most challenging learners and watched the “Mantle of the Expert” give them the confidence to reform and change their lives.
Essex,UK
Dorothy was an incredible person – a generous teacher, guide and mentor and I like to think of her as my friend. I was fortunate enough to have worked with her over the last few years and found her funny, inspiring, full of wisdom and rigorous in her practice. I will miss her a great deal, but feel comforted in the knowledge that her teachings and legacies will live on. Thank you Dorothy, you are missed but never forgotten xx
In 1971 Dorothy turned on a light in me which still shines. Since then I often think about her impact on my life. It all started at Prudhoe…
In 1971 Dorothy turned on a light that still shines today. Since then I often think about about her impact on my life. It all started a very long time ago at Prudhoe…
Norwich, UK
I met Dorothy in England, but I’m Brazilian, from Belo Horizonte city, Minas Gerais. What a glorious person, what a marvelous mind. I can only thank her for being by inspiration.
I met Dorothy in 1984 as a student observer at a workshop at Porirua Hospital (NZ). She took an interest in a young confused man and encouraged me so much with the simplest of words. Here I am over 25 years later seeking her wise words to frame a way of working in the theatre as part of my Masters thesis. I am saddened by her passing but enriched by her presence in my life.
I was first introduced to Dorothy’s work about 5 or 6 years ago through Luke Abott and Tim Taylor, whilst attending a residential course run by them. I had been encouraged to attend this by my head teacher as she thought I would be interested – I had no idea what to expect and having been ‘put off’ drama in my own education I was slightly overwhelmed to say the least! However, I soon came to realise the impact that Mantle of the Expert has on the way children learn and what a genius Dorothy was; her work has totally transformed my views on education and my practice. Having just returned from another MOE course I feel hopeful for the future generations of children exposed to the opportunities Dorothy’s work presents – to explore (and question) the world in which they are growing up, as well as themselves as individuals and how actions affect others. I was priveleged to meet with Dorothy on a couple of memorable occasions and I am committed to continuing to study and develop my understanding of her work further. She has left a lasting legacy for the children of the future and I hope this brings comfort to her family.
I first encountered Dorothy when I was an undergraduate at York, I think it must have been through the Three Looms film, and was so immediately hooked that I decided to transfer to Newcastle instead of staying at York to do my PGCE in English and Drama (1980-81) so that I could have her as my tutor. I was a bit disappointed when I got there to find I had only a 2 hour a week session with her, but by sheer coincidence, I shared a house that year with two of Dorothy’s students who were doing the B.Phil. I got into trouble with my course leader for not attending my own PGCE lectures so that I could work with Dorothy and her group instead, and just in time found a post-rationalising pretext that because I had done education at York I did not have to do it all again. So phew, they let me off and gave me permission to trail around after Dorothy whenever I could, which she typically so generously let me do. I spent a week at Queen Margaret’s College in Edinburgh with them, and several days in Otterburn, and several days in a hospital in Durham somewhere, as well as loads of other sessions. Dorothy was SO, so kind to have let me do that.
When I got my first teaching post in West Cumbria, and had the courage of youth and lack of caution, I asked her if she would come to our school with her group (1983 I think) – and she/they/we organised the most brilliant week of drama – Dorthy and 17 of her students came to stay in Egremont, and several departments at Wyndham School trusted me but more importantly Dorothy and suspended the normal timetable for a week – Maths, English, Humanities, Science, amongst others – whilst we did a rolling drama – and we had a staff and 6th form session and other sessions too. It was just fantastic, and blew me out the water. And when she so kindly contacted me in 1984 to ask me if I wanted to do her final M.Ed part time ( 1984-86) – well, the word wasn’t invented then, but a ‘no-brainer’ it certainly was. Hugh Benjamin was asked too, and the pair of us would set off from Egremoont on a Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 3.30 after school and drive across the wild A66 to Newcastle, eating our sandwiches in the car. We would work with Dorothy and the rest of our lovely group from 6.00 – 9.00, where she bent our minds and somersaulted our thinking, and then we drive home again, getting back about 11.30, brains racing. (The very first session we never even got there, cos Hugh’s car blew up in Haltwhistle and we had to be ferried back home again!) And then I had to try and teach the next day, when she had so blown my thinking in each session that my paltry pre-planned drama sessions felt like they should be torn up and binned. We did that crazy mental and physical journey for two whole years – what one can do in one’s twenties!! There was no one else I could or would have done that for – but I would not have missed it for the world. There is nothing I have done since that has matched that richness and depth and joy and scariness. I quite simply adored Dorothy – she was so kind and so searching and so challenging and so comforting – how did any single person do all of that, and seemingly simultaneously.
I have carried the learning I gained through her, and her teaching, through all my own teaching and my being since then, in schools and university settings, and in life. Whilst what I teach now doesn’t look much like drama, what she taught me underpins everything I believe in and value, and informs all of how I work and think, and I count myself to have been very, very lucky to have worked with her and known her. I won’t really miss her passing, even though it makes me really sad to know she is not in this world anymore, because I will continue to carry her with me everywhere I go. And I am sure that all those equally lucky enough to have been touched by her feel a bit the same as I do, so she will live on through all of us.
Thank you so very much Big Dot.
The year that changed our lives
Howard and Joan Cassidy
In 1970 I did a short summer course with Dorothy at University of Toronto—I knew I had met an extraordinary educator and that I had to learn more from her. Joan participated in a one-day workshop with her in Sydney in 1975 and was inspired and awed by her “Mantle of the Expert” strategy, which she used to engage and empower secondary students. We got together as a couple in 1976 and found we were both absolutely determined to do Dorothy’s post-graduate course at University of Newcastle -upon -Tyne. We were accepted, and in 1977/78 we began the journey with Dorothy that has never ended.
What a motley crew we were, from all over the world. Ensconced with this down- to -earth, tireless, wise Yorkshire woman in our den, an old house at “Number 42”.
It was the most intense, rewarding year of our lives. Every minute was packed with new experiences as we worked with DH on diverse projects all over England. Our year was filled with excited and sometimes nervous expectations of the next drama project on our calendar.
At Earl’s House Dorothy worked with intellectually challenged and mentally ill children, with me in role as The Minotaur. Over three days, clad in a goatskin, I did battle with The Hero, a large, aggressive adolescent. His primitive determination to wipe me out and rescue the princess ended with him taming me! And leading me out of the labyrinth. Together, he and Dorothy provided me with professional, artistic and personal challenges which have shaped my teaching. I cannot convey the pleasure of my 5am planning sessions with Dorothy, strolling together in the cold, misty grounds. For Joan it was being engaged in lunchtime personal tutorials while, as always, Dorothy stitched her tapestry, listening intently and asking the most insightful and helpful questions.
For a week Dorothy had us all in role as pets for physically and intellectually disabled adults. I was a dog on a lead, covered in my self- made “fur” of black plastic garbage bag strips, cared for by Richard who groomed, fed, trained and defended me with such sweet pleasure and total commitment to the fantasy. Joan recalls her experiences as a woolly black and white sheep, draped in long strands of curly wallpaper and protected by Alan with his whimsical smile. At Prudhoe Hospital we shared “elevenses” with the patients who were in role as expert gardeners, all sipping tea from imaginary cups balanced delicately on real saucers. Dorothy certainly knew how to give us opportunities to learn humility, selflessness and resourcefulness.
Gilbert from Lesotho and I planned and taught a series of lessons with young, very sick children in Kent. He was in role as an exotic, injured and fearful animal who literally arrived at the hospital in a box from “Africa”. The children, who knew all about illness, homesickness and fear, befriended, nurtured and expertly taught him English in exchange for lessons in African dance and how to survive in the jungle! Facilitating those interactions and then reflecting on the process with Dorothy taught me how to question delicately and how to hand over the power of knowing to the children.
My personal goal was to overcome my fear of creating drama with infants! To this end, Dorothy worked with me in role as a train driver whose wife was in hospital and who needed help in running the household and caring for the new baby!! I’ll never forget DH suggesting I turn up dishevelled with green and red flags sticking out of my back overall pockets and an enormous, crudely made sandwich dripping with jam and wrapped in newspaper, for my lunch. And struggling to hold a blanket tied up with string that was the “baby”. Twenty three tiny Geordie experts took me in charge and over a few days got me sorted! They patiently taught me how to cook for, feed and change the baby who was suddenly found to be “poorly” and zoomed off to hospital where a very big team of medicos fixed everything and comforted me. As always Dorothy was there, guiding, supporting and giving me space to stumble and recover.
Joan’s future specialisation in Drama and Language Education began when Dorothy enrolled her as the Letter Witch in a “Code Cracking “ drama about spelling and sentence making. Joan’s witch was a walking pincushion bedecked with cardboard letters, the possessive guardian of the alphabet, from which the infants, in role as her apprentices, needed to make their words and create their spells. Under Dorothy’s guidance this witch was no stereotype. While she had some witch-like attributes, she behaved unpredictably when asked to release her letters, challenging the children to use their power to problem solve and to apply their literacy skills.
Dorothy put us in touch with so many other experts in and beyond her field: Veronica Sherbourne (Dance Education); Geoffrey Sommerfield (Poetry); and her dear friend, colleague and biographer, Gavin Bolton to name a few. This list also included the wonderful teachers and principals who invited us into their schools. She was always enlivening her pedagogy with new ideas such as Irving Goffman’s, Frame Analysis and Oliver Fiala’s thesis on Brecht and Heathcote. DH focussed our attention on the layers of protection and engagement in the “as if” world of the drama. These ideas later evolved into the work of Dorothy’s first PhD. Student, John Carroll and his influential article Framing Classroom Drama.
Dorothy taught us to work as teacher-artists, to function as playwrights, actors, directors and designers. We were always encouraged to deepen our understanding of character, situation and symbol by “dropping to the universal”, to practise the “homespun of tension- making” and to use “provocations”. Indeed we delved into all the Arts during the course of our amazing year. Very recently Joan unearthed a letter she wrote while returning to Australia in 1978, “35,000 feet above Mid Western America.”
Much of the course is spent being trained to look very, very closely at people’s behaviour, particularly children. At art, photographs, dance and movement, at how we signal with our own bodies to gain an effect and at how others signal to us, and each other. I feel now after the course that all my senses have been reawakened and trained to view the world with so much more attention to detail – at times it is very difficult to cope with all the inputs.
On our last day at Number 42, before Joan and I left to teach drama in the Lakes District, Dorothy hugged us and simply smiled farewell. At the door I turned and called out,
“Will you be there?”
She replied with a grin,
“No, but I’ll be watching.”
And she still is!
Joan and Howard are founding members of Drama Queensland and Drama Australia. They are both Life Members of Drama Queensland.
Evolution of the drama teacher: Add Dorothy Heathcote to the mix
This is 5 pages long!
I became a secondary school drama teacher in 1972. It was a very different world. Brian Way was “it” – Peter Slade was the “other”. Heroes jumped out of the woodwork. Drama was ‘melted down theatre’. Theatre in Education was cool. Shake it up and see what falls out. We were taught to expect to feed back what we found and a major strategy to our groups, and then to make up new work sheets to stem tides of boredom and lack of student investment in lessons. Actually no one said that outright, it was just understood. (So many changes?) We ‘new Drama teachers’ were all keen to find different strategies. One or two or our lecturers were outstanding and had broad minds and wonderful knowledge of how improvisatory drama worked for them and elements of theatre, which helped in teaching. Our instructors allowed us to imagine what we could do. We were expected to behave as if we were teachers AND artists. Teacher-artists. Teacher-Instructors are more useful I suppose, teacher-guides; this felt like a new brand of teacher. Combining all kinds of teacher in one body is the most difficult journey. Such a move relies upon friendly contexts to work in. No one told the Lecturers in college and I didn’t realise the long list of roles we play until I met Dorothy Heathcote. Playing them with deliberation and foresight was a way to allow me to be an ‘authentic teacher’. I felt I would be proud to be one of them whatever it turned out to be.
Anna Scher’s work was a book in the bookshop on campus. We all favoured excellence. We used music, art, improvisation, inventing roles to play with, Scher. We were all supposed to tick exam boxes even without the National Curriculum then. Steering around that, we were unsure of what they meant as an end. My year was full of excellent probationary teachers. Frankly, no one knew where we were going. “Am Dram Drama on Ice”
We knew that drama was more powerful, more useful, and full of implication which no one yet had got to grips with.
I was never at home being a teacher in a school, and spent one year in Rydens School in Walton On Thames being an Assistant Mistress of English/ drama. Working in Brent was on offer and the Director of Education offered teachers new to the Borough the possibilities of moving into squats. I loved working in Harlesden. It was such a tatty place. By the end of my 3rd teaching year, I was a Head of Department, a Head of Faculty of Arts, and I had started the Alternative Learning Unit where we did everything through Drama. Other schools had ‘sinbins’. We used drama. Oh, the energy of it all.
I remember Dorothy Heathcote and how and when we met. Cockpit Theatre 1977. Some things I remember:
o Being gobsmacked. She inspired total concentration. I got face-ache.
o “People”, and Dorothy’s hand in the air being a call to attention.
o The particular and the universal
o 42 North Road. Her domain, our classroom.
o Mantle of the Expert – so deep it runs and focuses thinking differently and challenges the structure of our National Curriculum.
o Authentic teaching
o Writing a letter to ask if I could go and do a Dorothy Heathcote course and being quite determined that I could and would.
o Loving Newcastle on Tyne & Gateshead.
o Meeting teachers from all over the world and being at home with it all – especially the promised challenges.
o Roger who taught Philosophy, a variety of superb tutors brought in to extend our thinking and teaching planning and practice. Veronica Sherborne, Gavin Bolton. So many more. Phew!
o Rehearsal sessions understanding her vocabulary.
o Laban. Dorothy’s feet are still a part of my learning I loved and was inspired by her feet. Who would have thought she could dance?! Inspirational.
o Erving Goffman: Sociologist extraordinaire – Frame Analysis
o I still have the list of ‘provocations’ – I have used them ever since 1977
o I still use the list of paradigms. So very useful on every level in every context.
o Used another of her lists to construct a map to remind me of the layers of re-cognition – a dynamic line between the feeling/prejudice layer to the central material understanding, via layers of concern, involvement, significance, and re-cognition.
o The list beginning, ‘Genuine’ interest leads to – genuine investment, leading to genuine concern, leading to genuine involvement, significance, and genuine material understanding, and ends up saying that ‘the government would ban it’ – to recall that learners need to know that they are safe and that their teacher is listening and taking note of what is said. Whatever anyone else said. Respect was expected – a given.
o The little boy who answered a question about a geographical destination. He said it was ‘in Sansanfrisco.’ Dorothy repeated his answer respectfully. She heard him visibly. She carried on with the session and took him to the next level, not hit by her tutee pronouncing the famous city. Her listening skills and focus never ever left her. What a lesson! One of these days I will learn it. Context is all and sometimes I can be ahead of myself and follow the planned focus.
o The people who thought Dorothy had “no politics and was not left wing enough; she who know nothing about politics. She wasn’t even a trained teacher.” She didn’t appear hurt, focused on what mattered. Was not going to be distracted from teaching into being a switched-on-politician. She didn’t have time for sidetracking the purpose of the exercise. She needed to teach students how to think and to develop the self-spectator. To enable choice, but not what to choose. Different processes indeed. Working in the atmosphere of a highly politicised London Borough this was a great and wonderful discovery for me, which enabled new thinking. I thank her for this too. Being bullied by the WRP reps that encouraged me to develop the party line and to enable the storming of the Winter Palace was too reminiscent of narrow thinking from early life. I learned about Dialectical Materialism though.
o Being asked, “as a teacher, are you a traveller or an arriver” resonates still.
o Being the recipient of an annual Dorothy Message: Theodore Roethke, “The Waking”. The statement: “Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns to each small piece of her fabric reveals the organisation of the entire Tapestry”. And the odd statement that dug itself into my brain, “We are born to choose, to renew and review choice”. All of the above and more are the ‘writing on the wall’ in my present life, and have been since I received them. All of them resonate her philosophy and supportive thinking.
o Recalling the face-ache I got when I listened to her talking. Physical pain in my face. I was enthralled (the word enthral was for me, coined to describe my being) in 1977 when I had talked my way out of my drama world in Harlesden, NW London to Newcastle. In no time at all I had said goodbye to familiar infrastructure of friends, classes I loved and systems I was part of inventing and I had gone. The nuns were lovely about it, the Borough of Brent, paid for it; I was ‘away’ gone – homeless, but ‘away’. I couldn’t wait another year. Dorothy Heathcote put me up in her house. Her daughter, her husband, her cat, her kitchen, her gardening, her neighbours. I was welcomed. There was no hidden agenda in her life. I loved the open door. I grew.
Beginning to understand how she worked, beginning to emulate it, to own it from the outside in and inside out – ‘to help someone else know something and to own it.’ To see myself – become a self-spectator. This drama genius was accepting and inclusive of odd balls. Wow!! Even now I cannot objectify it analytically. Right now there is too much grief. And anyway, I get lost in the wiring of it all. Theatre – Catharsis, Anagnorisis, Perepeteia – the processes of it all – ‘YOU CAN’T MARK THAT!!!’ YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS! Use it. Mark the results of it by all means. We did. All of us in so many ways. I love the work that Dorothy’s students do and how they have always been my dearest colleagues, even when I do not see them for over 30 years. I don’t care about time in that sense. There is too rich a time to put into a box and forget it.
Julianna, Wendy, Kate, Howard and Joan from Queensland, Gerry from Gateshead, the Robsons from Canada, Gilbert from Lesotho, Linda, oh, all the other folk from the UK, America, NZ, Oz will always be part of my teaching family.
We share a genuinely wonderful experience. Every result was and is, a starting point.
1978, Back home into Brent, continued to work in advisory Drama work and took what I had learned understood to 70-odd Primary Schools and some of the 18 Secondary Schools there were then. Selected a few and invited others to the Moonshine Community Arts Workshop which used to be Theatre Centre – Brian Way’s old gaff. He moved to a calmer area where his business could and did thrive. A couple of years later, Dorothy and her students came to visit. I was busy looking after students who were on the fringe of the work that the DH visit engendered. A year or two later, the Tricycle Theatre was born. That is still in action. (Moonshine died a death with later cuts.) We taught there with my new comrade Jimmy Buchanan (he met Dorothy and reluctantly accepted that she was wonderful) trying to understand processes and how learning works in the chaos of Kensal Green during the strikes and the riots of 80’s London – the Mrs Thatcher politics which hung over the arts like a rationalising, numbing blanket. Community Arts were under attack and likely to be cut. We were on a shaky ground and had to get on with it. We began to provide sessions through drama/theatre on racism and sexism to the Borough linked to the curriculum. Such issues had become the social and political zeitgeist. Using drama as the medium to work within we worked flat out and was really good as a teaching inspirational service to help our children and teachers.
The population shifts in London provided a series of different teaching challenges & exciting experiences for a lot of the visiting teachers teaching for the duration of their Brent Experience from places like Wembley, Harrow, Stonebridge Estate Willesden, Kilburn, Cricklewood, Neasden. Some deeply struck by urban poverty and racial tensions. During one week they all came to Moonshine and Dorothy took over the teaching. It was hard, fantastic work. The work the students began, she made a real sense of it all.
When they went, time was running out and we knew that there was only a little time left – the DH bug took a real hold of our teaching and we operated differently. We were re-deployed almost at once. Jimmy and I were moved to different teaching places. I went to the Learning support Department; he went to Willesden High School, and thence to Queens Park Community School.
In the LSD, we were asked to deal with a nursery child who had been (they thought from making notes of her behaviour) very sexualised understandings. Cleveland had just happened. Child abuse became a national headline. This was the start of Brent’s response to Child Abuse. Could we help with drama strategies to help unpack it all? Make plans for lessons, training & awareness sessions.
It took a year to establish groups, intelligence, research the issue. Working alongside the Director of Education we were granted the authority to lead the training on behalf of the Education Department. Eva Harding, The Principal Child Psychologist and myself spoke to Dorothy and the three of us hatched a plan to enable the large varied group of people we were asked to involve to attend the first school-based course for social workers, health professionals, police officers of all ranks, education representatives, dinner ladies, school governors, head teachers and deputies, classroom teachers, teaching assistants. That it was school-centred with children’s work on display. That we all shared the process together and in mixed groups looked at the massive emotions that professional had to deal with – and to rehearse them together. We ran the courses about 4 times in different Primary Schools, basing ourselves in the School Halls. We used so many of the ways to use role to engage our learners. I will never forget it; the outcomes changed my perceptions forever. Awakening the reality of the roles in the head, we depicted them and introduced sex abusers in a usable understandable and rehearsable context. We had about 70 people on each course. Feedback was moving and thoughtful and sometimes cynical. We had no plan but followed the course we were led on. It took two years in all. We managed to unpack so much denial about child abuse; the variety of its meanings. We re-wrote the guidelines for the Borough, re-ordered how to run a course, but most of all, how to use drama in ways to enable all the people of different ranks and abilities to know things and own them. Thanks to Dorothy we planned and executed a piece of theatre to educate. I will always be grateful.
My chosen job went to the cuts in 1990’s I was re-deployed from the advisory service, and in a genuine Full circle became again a Head of Faculty of Arts, Head of Department of Drama and started a special unit to enable children from war zones to join in and learn in a Secondary Modern Comprehensive School in North West London – Wembley. .
My partner and I now live in Worthing! Very theatrical. Handbags and all. How theatre stimulates learning processes – helping people to know something and to own it. It is still my quest. How learning works, how language grows, how it starts, how it develops. I loved the journey since we met. Absolutely committed to it; I am recently retired from a part time job at the Littlehampton Academy.
I didn’t realise that I had been keeping an eye on the Obituaries in the Guardian for some time. If we believe what we read it could be thought that women tend not to die – they are rarely in the papers. Didn’t realise that I was hoping that Dorothy would never die.
On my walls at home there are many reminders of Dorothy’s chat. “Excellence exist; aspirations to excellence exist. Conditions helpful to excellence rarely exist.” I still stand and stare at that one.
I got a call from Marianne to say about the MBE stuff and we got talking. I found myself driving to Derby. I had no idea how unwell Dorothy was, but I had the honour of being there to help Marianne and her family – with Jane and Gerry. An experience I will never forget and will bit by bit unpack itself in my lifetime. Like everything else she has communicated to me; I do not know yet what I know. She gave space in that small bed she was occupying to the others experiences – to share knowledge of events she lived through. To describe what it was as clearly as she could and to say what she knew was happening to her.
From her home to the hospital and thence to the MacMillan ward. Her journey was over there. I got a real feeling that she thought it was possibly beginning differently. To the last breath she was a unique teacher. Making her own choices within the context of her life and supporting the choices of others.
Thank you my friend. My teacher. Lots of love, Liz x
I had been using Drama in my teaching for some time when, as a member of the committee of Herts. Drama Teachers’Association, in 1982 I decided to put forward to the committee that we invite this important teacher, whom I knew most from “Drama as Learning Medium” by B. J. Wagner (that I had read more than once and found really thought provoking) down to Hertfordshire to run a week-end course for us.
We organised such courses for teachers once a year. I was pleased that I was then tasked to organise the course and invite Dorothy Heathcote.
I contacted Dorothy by letter and was first of all surprised to get her reply as my letter returned annotated. She clearly was a one off and special person.
Much to my delight and contrary to my expectation she agreed to come and duly on 8th – 10 February 1983 at Theobalds Park College we had the privilege of her wisdom and ideas at the course, “Sign & Significance in Drama”.
I knew it would be good but I did not realise how much it would mean to me.
As it progressed over the week-end I had what can only describe as an epiphany. I was reasonably successful in drama teaching as part of my English teaching. However, I began to realise that, however much I was influenced by Dorothy, through Betty Jane Wagner, and Gavin Bolton, since “Towards a Theory of Drama in Education” was published, I really had not grasped the key ideas. I remember vividly saying to myself, “You are going to have to take a long hard look at what you do and reshape it all!”
Some course attenders found the sort of challenge to their traditional style too demanding and were resistant, but others had a similar response to me and knew there was a huge challenge ahead; so we sought Dorothy’s advice. She suggested we form a self-help group and work together to develop our skills.
The result was powerful. This gave us all a real boost and so over the next months a group of about 8 of us met regularly to plan work, to share ideas and to take into our schools. We also even had a session at a week-end where I supplied a class of volunteers in my drama studio and we all taught them together. We were that keen.
Other courses subsequent to that helped, including work from Jonothan Neelands and Pam Bowell.
All of this was very influential in my career, leading me out of teaching English altogether and much more into drama so that I had a secondment in 1985-6 working for a qualification at Homerton College by carrying out 10 drama based special projects in schools across Herts. with ages from 7 to 17 and writing them up in a thesis.
Luckily this all led to working with Kathy Joyce at Charlotte Mason College teaching trainee teachers to use drama.
Since then I have had the privilege to have as colleagues other devotees of her method, Francis Prendiville and Denise Evans.
So I have a lot to thank Dorothy for as I know so many other people do.