Abstract

Writings on drama education are strewn with assertions that the aesthetic must be central to drama education, even where drama is used as a means of teaching nonaesthetic material.1 Indeed, it is impossible to understand what drama is without one definition or another of the aesthetic. If students read dialogues out loud without concern for expression or for the literary qualities of the dialogue, then they are not doing drama. If students are obliged to invent sentences but with no concern for dramatic tension or development, they are not doing drama. Students may be placed in the roles of waiters and customers in a restaurant and only do language practice, not drama. Yet the identity of the aesthetic, so crucial...