Drama Makes Meaning Drama Australia – The National Association for Drama Education What is Drama? Drama is an artform highly accessible to young people. In education, it is a mode of learning that challenges and supports students to make meaning of their world and enables them to express and communicate ideas in the artform. ΅ Drama is the enactment of real and imagined events through roles and situations. ΅ Drama enables individuals and groups to explore, shape and symbolically represent ideas and feelings and their consequences. ΅ Drama has the capacity to move and transform participants and audiences. It can airm and challenge values, cultures and identities. ΅ Drama includes a wide range of experiences, such as dramatic play, improvisation, role-play, text interpretation, theatrical performance and multi-modal/hybrid texts. It includes the processes of making, presenting and responding. ΅ Drama draws on many diferent contexts, from past and present societies and cultures. Drama is one of the ive arts subjects that make up the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. View website » Drama Australia uses the term drama broadly to represent related ields of artistic activity including theatre and performance. Drama encompasses a range of activities that both share conceptual similarities as well as speciic diferences relating to form and purpose. Drama is recognised and celebrated as a relevant and signiicant art form that both relects and contributes to culture. An Education in Drama Drama in the school curriculum can develop students’ artistic skills and creative dispositions. It can also enable students to generate new knowledge and skills that are transferable to a variety of artistic, social and work-related contexts. An education in drama can: ΅ Humanise learning by providing lifelike learning contexts in which students can actively participate in non-threatening, safe and supportive ways. ΅ Empower students to understand and inluence their world through exploring roles, situations and modes of symbolic expression and communication. ΅ Develop students’ non-verbal and verbal, individual and group communication skills. ΅ Develop students’ intellectual, social, physical, emotional and moral domains through learning that engages their thoughts, feelings, bodies and actions. ΅ Develop students’ capacity to work collaboratively with others. ΅ Encourage students to critically relect and become active members of the Australian community through their engagement in dramatic contexts relating to societies, cultures and ideologies. ΅ Develop students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in drama to participate in one of the oldest yet most dynamic art forms, as part of their rich and diverse cultural heritages. ΅ Promote students’ experience in and understanding of other artforms. 1 © 2015