In this paper, I describe a collaborative process in which a class of grade 6 & 7 students made and performed two plays, and also transformed their learning. In this process, a reconfiguring of the spaces of learning, the students and I adapted a variety of literacy and drama practices; a key change in practice was the shift away from an instrumental mode of dialogue in which the teacher occupies the superior position of knower and evaluator, towards a Bakhtinian mode in which dialogue, as heteroglossic, moves between all the participants, and becomes the main purpose of learning. In a dynamic combination of linguistic, theatrical, and relational meaning making, the students moved clear of the outcomes-based learning that had hitherto stultified their interactions and language. As a result, they developed a new creative agency, both singly and as a collective, and an authoritative discourse. They left this discourse open for me to join, and also continue afterwards, as I have done here, by presenting and interpreting their voices, and including new ones.