Clodagh Finn: Introduction of drama, film, and theatre studies as a school subject an inspired idea

'While there is some mention of the health benefits of the arts, the idea of theatre and wellbeing has been little explored in Ireland,' says one theatre historian

Imagine the possibilities that will open up when drama, film, and theatre studies is a core Leaving Cert subject. Apart from the blood-quickening appeal of it, it has the potential to offer students so much more. File picture: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

I always find it slightly surreal to see some teachers turn into back-of-the-class hecklers at their annual conference. It has become something of a tradition to jeer and shout down the education minister of the day, although tradition is far too grand a word for it. It’s bad manners, plain and simple — and I say that as a fan of the teacher.

However, what is more disconcerting is that the heckling at last week’s Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland conference came while Norma Foley, the education minister, was talking about Leaving Cert reform.

Teachers have real and urgent concerns about the proposed introduction of teacher-based assessment. Those worries must be acknowledged and addressed, but it would be such a shame if all the discussion in the coming months on the long, long, long-awaited reform focused on ironing out those difficult issues.

That, if you will, is the wrong drama. The drama that interests me most is the introduction of drama, film, and theatre studies as a school subject. I think it is an inspired idea and has the potential to offer hope and succour to many a stressed-out pupil.

I remember being one myself, feeling utterly sunk by exam stress, which has, if anything, heightened in recent years. However, there was some relief and it came fizzing from the pages of Hamlet, the Shakespearean tragedy on the syllabus. Yes, it’s a dark play and one set in the gloom of faraway Elsinore, but how real the emotions, how enlightening the interactions, and how revelatory the gnarled complications of family life contained within its pages.

We studied JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World too and on one sunny afternoon we were asked to take turns to read it out loud. I was struck by the energy that rippled through the classroom that day as a group of 17- and 18-year-olds allowed the rich language of Synge roll around on their tongues. They became animated in a way that I had never seen in any other class or in any other subject.

Imagine the possibilities that will open up when drama, film, and theatre studies is a core Leaving Cert subject. Apart from the blood-quickening appeal of it, it has the potential to offer students so much more. At a time when it’s really difficult to know how to equip our children for the future, studying drama opens up so many possibilities.

It helps to boost confidence, strengthen concentration, develop language and communication skills, foster an understanding of the wider world, build friendships, and hone creativity — and that is only a partial list.

Imagine what those skills could do as a new generation engages in the second proposed new subject, climate action and sustainable
development.

Due to our prolonged inaction, tackling climate change will dominate their young lives. How those lives might play out is something we can only guess at.

As stressful as the Leaving Cert was in the past, at least the paths ahead were relatively clear. We knew that a certain number of points would lead to some kind of course, if we could afford it, which in turn had the possibility of a job at the end of it. Now, it’s fair to say that many children starting school today will work in jobs that have not even been thought of yet.

The least we can do is to equip them with the kind of skills that will help them to negotiate a path in an ever-changing world.

Revisiting work of Máirín Cregan

We don’t yet have a format for drama, film, and theatre studies, but let’s hope it includes some interesting and forgotten Irish film-makers and playwrights.

With the centenary of the Civil War in sight, it’s an ideal time to revisit the work of Máirín Cregan for example (even if the subject matter is weighty and dark). She wrote of the horrors of the hunger strikes of 1923, based on her own experiences. Her husband, James Ryan, later a Fianna Fáil TD and minister, went on hunger strike for 36 days.

Her play, Hunger Strike, was published in 1927 and rejected by the Abbey Theatre four years later. However, earlier this month it was revived in her hometown, Killorglin, Co Kerry.

If you’re not convinced of the benefits of drama in schools, talk to the woman behind that project, Fiona Brennan, a theatre historian and former teacher. She talks of her own heart-stopping epiphany as a Leaving Cert student in the 1980s after being introduced to Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!

At the time, she could not verbalise what it stirred in her but now the words flow. The experience awakened “emotion, wellbeing, imagination, trepidation, desire for exploration”, she says. “If I had access to practical drama at the time, what I might have explored.”

Mind you, she is exploring it now. The theatre historian, along with the Killorglin Archive Society, has brought Cregan’s Hunger Strike to a new audience — and possibly its first audience. When she came across the play, she could not find any evidence that it had ever been staged, apart from a radio adaptation in 1936.

“Why had it never been staged?” Dr Brennan asks. 

Its dialogue leapt off the page. It is a wonderful piece of writing. The play is based factually on the 1923 hunger strikes, which saw anti-Treaty supporters interned by the Free State government seeking to make their voices heard.

“What makes it more special is that it is based on Cregan’s own personal experiences.”

As a lesson in history, Hunger Strike offers a female perspective on the Civil War. It illustrates, in stark relief, how it ripped families apart and shows the torment faced by one woman as she supported her hunger-striking husband knowing the repercussions for her and her three young children if he died.

As a lesson in drama studies, it also has much to offer.

Dr Brennan says: “While the play might be a century old, what is wonderful is that it can be interpreted in today’s terms — that is the beauty of drama. It opens up a whole new world; it makes people think, wonder, question.”

Exploring it at second-level also offers lessons for English class as it reminds us of the many forgotten writers in Irish literature. Cregan was a playwright, but she was also a prolific and internationally successful children’s author who deserves to step out into the light again.

On a more general note, Dr Brennan can’t say enough about the value of putting drama on the curriculum.

“While there is some mention of the health benefits of the arts, the idea of theatre and wellbeing has been little explored in Ireland,” she says, listing the benefits in terms of the craft itself and what it might do to boost the imagination and foster innovation — and it will be fun.

So when Leaving Cert reform is mentioned, let us embrace the subject with wild cheers, not heckling.