The Drama of Boys

This paper examines boys’ participation in drama at two secondary schools in Melbourne, Victoria – a coeducational government school in the inner-city and a single-sex boys’ school in suburban Melbourne. The findings come from two educational ethnographies conducted by the researcher which focused on the involvement of male students in the Drama programme at the schools. The research project in the single-sex boys’ school focused on how the male students expressed a range of ‘multiple masculinities’ (Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998) in the drama classes. At the coeducational government school the researcher investigated boys’ participation in the drama classes and how this affected, and was affected by, the drama teachers, the female students and other male students. The sources of data were observation of the drama classes, interviews with staff and students and analysis of school documentation and other relevant artefacts. In both studies there appeared to be a causal link between the participation of the male students in the drama classes and the expression of their multifaceted masculinities. The Drama classrooms were found to be sites where the male students consciously and subconsciously negotiated and contested a complex range of private and public personas and roles associated with their masculinity both individually and as a group. The students and their drama teachers asserted that the masculinities the boys ‘performed’ in drama appeared to be broader than those they expressed and experienced in other aspects of their school life and included ones that had a positive impact on their schooling. The data revealed that at both schools the pedagogical approach of the drama teachers was ‘boy- friendly’ (Weaver-Hightower, 2003) and this enhanced the boys’ participation in the subject. Associatively, some of the male student participants recognised, and were able to identify, what they deemed to be the positive attributes of the teaching and learning inherent within their drama classes. Their assertions were borne out in the data collected from the classroom observations. The characteristics of the boy-friendly teaching and learning environment that were found to be operating in the Drama classes are as follows: Drama enhances relationships; Drama enhances social connectivity; Drama promotes learning with and through the body; Drama utilises varied approaches to learning, and Drama fosters the performance of multiple masculinities.

Key Phrase: drama; boys’ education; gender; participation/engagement; arts education