Theatre-In-Education

Theatre-In-Education

The theatre education industry/movement has seen some rapid changes

since its initial developments and establishment in the 1960’s.

However its origins mainly lie in the early years of the last century.

It was the initial establishment of companies such as Bertha Waddell’s

in Scotland and Esme Church’s in the north of England that thoroughly

established the main roots of TIE. Mainly the initial aims of these

companies was to stimulate, educate and inform young people through

encouraging them to participate in enjoyable and imaginary based

theatre programmes.

Despite early attempts in Britain in the mid 1930’s, where a Glasgow

Director of education allowed the Bertha Waddell’s company to perform

in junior schools within school time, the majority of the advances

within the movement came after World War Two. Due to the nature and

after-effects of the time, many post war Education Authorities felt

the need to sponsor drama and live theatre companies to aid in their

areas learning processes. One could perhaps say that due to the sheer

devastation of the war many education authorities felt that through

the use of drama therapy and role play style interaction that students

would be able to address their true anxieties and would therefore have

a more rewarding time in post war school. Around this time parallel

groups were beginning to form in Birmingham and London. One of the

pioneers of these types of groups was Brian Way. Having established

his own theatre-in-education company in the late 1940’s, Brain

established his companies aims as being, to assist teachers in all

types of schools with methods of approach to drama in education. This

company began to be at the forefront of schools early experiments,

linking children, their education and theatre.

This expanded further and as it progressed throughout England was

mainly made up of amateur theatre groups consisting of largely

teachers who aimed to introduce theatre to children. However, the main

expansion of TIE came when a number of professional theatre companies

began the notion of creating these experiences and took them into

schools.

Towards the end of the 1960’s the TIE movement was given a dynamic

push in the right direction. This was largely due to the new style of

teaching and curriculum delivery that was being implemented across

Britain. The ‘Plowden Report’ gave numerous advice on the delivery of

the school curriculum and a new style of “problem-solving” to teach

the syllabus was adopted throughout many primary schools. This new

“problem-solving” style of teaching allowed TIE to flourish, as

theatre could be used within schools to give examples of how to

successfully problem solve. This largely was done in the style of role

play situations and stemmed mainly from the teaching of alternative