Abstract
An experimental event was held at a university festival, in which participants were asked to perform the role of the main character of a story drama " A Dog of Flanders." The drama was composed of 8 scenes dramatized by the present writer and her seminar students. The purposes of this research were to investigate to what extent the participants could express themselves freely and flexibly, and cope with and overcome the hardships encounterd in the drama. As a result, 19 students participated in the event, answering the Self-monitoring Scale, performing in the drama, and filling questionnaires. The statements of the participants were analysed qualitatively. Similar statements were grouped together and labelled according to the concept they represented, thus looking like an idea-tree. A quantitative analysis of the Self-monitoring Scale and the questionnaires showed a tendency that the scores of the amount of tension of the high group of extravert traits were lower than the low group of extravert traits. In each scene the participants expressed diverse statements; many students grasped the situation positively when faced with hardship, coped with it through active behavior, and expressed their thoughts and feelings against an unreasonable treatment. Some students even expressed the words of self-examination reflecting on the standpoints of the other person. In the original story the leading character died at the end, but 5 out of 19 students played the drama in which they were able to survive by satisfying the conditions the researcher had set beforehand. The descriptive responses in the questionnaires showed many students enjoyed participating in the event, but many also felt tension. Insufficient preparatory training of the actors might have affected the performance of the participants.
