ORIGINS

The Role That Dice system used at the Black Box Drama School was created by our director, Niyazi Unugur. It originated from his early years of improvised drama teaching via the 'Mantle of the Expert' method, that he studied whilst training at Goldsmiths University. As his pedagogy developed, he began practising immersive theatre styles and attending masterclasses at the Punchdrunk Theatre group, adding various aspects of these principles to his day-to-day teaching. Finally, through playing Dungeons and Dragons, and other tabletop role-play games, a mechanic of dice rolling was added to enhance the improvised creative process even further. Together, these three elements combine to create the Role That Dice system.

MANTLE OF THE EXPERT

The 'Mantle of the Expert' is an approach that uses imaginary contexts to generate purposeful and engaging activities for learning.

The teacher plans a fictional context where the students take on the responsibilities of an expert team. For example, a class of students are cast as a team of archaeologists excavating an Egyptian tomb for the Cairo Museum. To complete the commission the students will need to research ancient Egyptian history – finding out about tombs, artefacts, and rituals – and, in the process, will study wide areas of the curriculum.

Mantle of the Expert is not designed to teach the entire curriculum, all the time, but is rather an approach to be used selectively by the teacher along with a range of other methods.

From the beginning the students are aware they are involved in a fiction and Mantle of the Expert is not a simulation invented by the teacher to trick them into thinking what is going on is real. Consciously going in and coming out of the fiction is an important dimension of the Mantle of the Expert approach. And much like imaginative play, the participants are always aware that the fiction is something that can stop and start as a when they or the teacher decides.

In this way the teacher can introduce a task to the students ‘as if’ they are the expert team – such as writing a report to the museum or planning how to create an exhibition – and then stop the story and come out of the fiction in order to teach them directly the knowledge and skills they need to complete the tasks. Once the tasks are complete, the teacher can restart the story and the students can see how their work has an effect inside the context. It is this process of going in and coming out of the fiction that defines Mantle of the Expert as a teaching and learning approach.

IMMERSIVE THEATRE

Immersive Theatre describes a genre of live performance that blurs the line between audience and performer.

In the Role That Dice system taught at Black Box Drama School, the pupils are both audience members and performers. Placed within the action of the play, pupils always have a strong element of participation in the creative process. They are invited to make choices that will affect the course of the narrative, the world, the characters and the script.

This type of immersive theatre can be a very intimate, engaging and personal experience. Through this process, pupils are supported in experiencing and creating their own plays, rather than simply recreating a pre-written one.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

Dungeons and Dragons, often referred to a D&D, is a popular roleplaying game that has been around for decades. It is one of the most widely played tabletop games in the world.

The core of Dungeons and Dragons is storytelling, where players take on the roles of characters who adventure together in different worlds.

Using their collective imaginations to navigate the world and led by their Dungeon Master, together they tell a story, guiding their characters through quests for treasures, mysterious encounters, daring rescues, courtly intrigue, and much more. D&D can be set in any world. Everything is your decision, from what you look like, to how you act, to what happens next.

Any thing else is left to the dice to decide.

Most of all though, D&D is about spending time with your nearest and dearest, having fun together and making memories.