Relax and watch the TV
Why does Eastenders have more appeal to a broader audience than Horizon or Panorama? The answer is – you don’t need to use your intellect to engage with drama. And it’s easier to get emotionally involved than it is to get intellectually involved. It’s easier to eat comfort food than it is to eat celery. But unlike a righteous diet regime, with drama you can have your cake and eat it! Drama can deliver messages that have intellectual concepts bound up in them. And while we can’t do that with the sort of detail you’d get from a documentary style treatment, the impact, the engagement and the retention of the message will be much better.
Write a story
Drama is a form of storytelling. Storytelling is a learning buzzword, but why is it so important in learning? Story takes facts, events or ideas and shapes them to create meaning.
St. Paul has been called a spin doctor. It’s meant as a compliment. Paul had extraordinary literary skill which he used to reshape the disparate and sometimes contradictory records of Jesus’ life. He also had the political skill to get his interpretation of the gospels accepted by the church. Paul and his followers wrote vast tracts of the bible post-Jesus, ensuring that a coherent and engaging story was told. This work played a major part in ensuring that Christianity became such a compelling and powerful force in the world. Here, story was the vehicle to spread ideas. Ideas with a spiritual, social and political impact. *
From the sublime to the ridiculous – Keeping up with the Kardashians is another example of the power of story. In this worldwide franchise, the jolly antics of this A-list family look spontaneous and genuine on the surface, but are in fact coordinated and staged by a team of story specialists. “Real” events are framed with staged activities to form stories. Stories that project values, have archetypal characters, plot points, acts and all the rest.
People want stories and want to believe in stories. It’s the principle way that hearts and minds are won and how political change is affected.
Dramatize it!
Most mornings I listen to the Today show on Radio 4 in which John Humphries interviews politicians. The core of his technique is to rhetorically question the position of his interviewee – testing the strength of an argument by trying to demolish it. This format brings out the best in the speaker as they are forced to defend their position. We get the passion and we get to the nub of their argument.
If the BBC let politicians simply tell us what they want us to hear without cross-examination it’d be like listening to a party-political broadcast, and as such, ironically, a lot less engaging and believable.
The latter is what we have seen many a time in a corporate learning drama – characters speaking the company line, showing no passion, and not getting into arguments over the issues. It gets the message across, but it’s not engaging and not convincing either. Of course, most large organisations are understandably wary of depicting their staff as being in conflict with one another, less still argumentative and they’re probably a bit wary of showing passion.
So, it’s our job to carefully guide them past these concerns, to bring in depictions of conflict so their messages can be convincingly delivered. An understanding of the principles of drama can give us the confidence to do this. To sell the client’s idea in a drama you need a champion of that idea (protagonist) and someone who tries to shoot it down (the antagonist). Together, their dialogue allows you to deliver a corporate message with passion and credibility.
Real Drama for Learning
The result of this approach is Real Drama for Learning. Dramatic content that’s as relaxing as watching your favourite TV show. A treat for the learner, a boon for the L&D manager.
Real Drama for Learning – we need it!
* Thanks to the Rev. Ruth Thomas for her Christian review of this paragraph.
Real Drama for Learning
Script consultancy: we work with your team to turn workaday content into something truly dramatic.
Training: Using our conceptual toolkit, we work with your team to give an understanding of the basics of dramatic construction.
Agency support: working with you at the bid stage, we provide creative support to elevate your video-oriented eLearning idea into a winning pitch.
Production: From idea to final film we work with you throughout the journey.
Real Drama for Learning – using emotion to communicate ideas.
Read moreWhy Drama for Learning?
