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Tension is described as a “key quality in drama” (Kao & O’Neill 1987: 28), but is it also an essential quality of drama as pedagogy? The present descriptive case study (Merriam 2009) explores the concept of tension and how and when it arose in a performance-based, service-learning course in Spanish. Student-produced documents as well as teacher-researcher observations were used to analyze the role of tension in the course. Results suggest that while the tensions students experienced evolved over the course of the semester, students remained engaged in the learning process.