Encounters with Otherness in the Work of Dorothy Heathcote

Abstract

"Dorothy Heathcote observed that three things dominate in using drama in the classroom: the concept of “frame”; the deliberate infusion of “the other”; and “conventions” to keep the “human face” at the centre (n.d. a). Her praxis may, indeed, be seen as a form of encounter with alterity, or the “face” of the “Other”. Levinas has been described as the “philosopher of the Other”. He defined ethics in terms of the relationship to alterity: he posited a “face-to-face” encounter with otherness, which leads to a shift from the “for-itself” to the “for the other” (2006, p. 174). He made it clear that what he called the “face” of the Other is not the literal (physical) face, but rather, the responsibility we feel for the other person. In recent years, there has been a significant turn to Levinas among educational theorists. Gert Biesta suggests that Levinas “opens up a dialogical space where pedagogy becomes—or can remain—an event rather than being a pre-programmed process”; creating opportunities for students to respond, not as “the modern rational cogito, but as the Levinasian responsible and ‘response-able’ subject” (2003, p. 67). This article—based largely on unpublished materials from the Dorothy Heathcote Archive—focuses on a drama which she led in Alberta, Canada, in 1982, which may be seen as creating a space for “response-ability”, through a series of “focussed encounters with 'otherness'” (Heathcote, 2010, p. 19). The participants had asked to do a drama about a plane crash; the article outlines the steps which led them, not only to recognise the horror of the event, but to bear witness and take responsibility for the plight of the “Other.”