Enter the space in a different role

The transition – transformation, perhaps – from drama student to drama teacher involves negotiating a different sense of performance. Drama teachers move from their roles as student actors, directors, dramaturges, scenographers and managers. They take on additional roles as curriculum designers, curriculum constructors and teaching and learning managers. They bring with them their deeply interpersonal capacities, creativity and innovation and re-shape themselves to the immediate task of creating spaces of interaction and learning in the context of drama. They draw together their drama content knowledge and their developing understanding of drama pedagogy. \n \nIn that sense drama teaching is stepping into performance in a new space. They are playing in the space “betwixt and between”. \n \nIn this paper I explore structuring learning experiences for drama teachers in the processes of becoming, as they step into these new spaces of interaction and learn to make the drama class room their own space. I share the drama education program developed at Murdoch University since it was established in 2002 (when I reported on its beginnings to the last national conference held in Perth). \n \nIn sharing “our space” I seek to open the space between participants to share their stories about drama teacher education and to critique and progress future directions for the field.