Introducing drama to the learning experience is guaranteed to enrich a child's development, and is an especially effective approach for children with special educational needs, including those with autism spectrum disorders. This practical handbook offers teachers an array of simple and easy-to-implement theatrical techniques that will enhance students' learning and encourage artistic expression. The author demonstrates how dramatic play doesn't have to be restricted to drama lessons and can be applied to a diverse range of school subjects and recreational settings. 'The Little Red Hen', for example, covers themes that are relevant to literacy (rhyming and rhythm), maths (counting seeds), science (discussing farming), and art lessons (designing costumes). Step-by-step lesson plans take teachers through every aspect of running fun and engaging story dramas, including warm ups, movement, songs and props. Handy tips throughout suggest ideas for developing the plays further and ways to adapt them according to the needs of the group. This book will be an essential and comprehensive guide for anyone interested in drama as an educational tool in inclusive or special needs settings.

Peter Buse illuminates the relationship between modern British drama and contemporary critical and cultural theory. He demonstrates how theory allows fresh insights into familiar drama, pairing well-known plays with classic theory texts. The theoretical text is more than applied to the dramatic text, instead Buse shows how they reflect on each other. Drama + Theory provides not only provides new interpretations of popular plays, but of the theoretical texts as well.

This book, a critical edition of a previously unpublished 1935 manuscript, makes A Drama of the Southwest available to readers for the first time.

The Methuen Drama Book of Suffrage Plays is an anthology of eight exciting pieces written for and by members of the Actresses Franchise League from 1909-13. Immediately playable, they offer strong, varied roles for female casts, while also providing invaluable source material to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Featuring 'How The Vote Was Won' which remains one of the most popular and well known suffrage plays, the volume also includes seven shorter works: 'Lady Geraldine's Speech' (1909), a fantastic, fun piece for actresses. Lady Geraldine hasn't thought through the Suffrage cause and, on a visit to an old school friend meets some charismatic, successful and intelligent women who soon enlighten and encourage her on to the right path! 'Pot and Kettle' (1909), a comic piece in which a young woman returns to her family in great distress having assaulted a suffragette who was sitting near her at a Anti-Suffragist meeting. 'Miss Appleyard's Awakening' about an anti-suffrage campaigner who finds herself in the home of a sympathizer but ends up inadvertently drawing her hostesses' attention to the contradictions in her arguments 'Her Vote' by the actor and playwright Henry Esmond which provides an interesting male viewpoint on the movement, criticizing the young suffragist for wanting to be part of a movement about which she seems to understand little. 'The Anti-Suffragist or The Other Side', a charming, clever monologue about a sheltered young woman who finds herself increasingly involved with her local Anti-Suffrage society and increasingly puzzled by what she learns there. 'The Mother's Meeting', an entertaining monologue that uses a working class character to expose the inconsistencies in the Anti-Suffrage arguments. 'Tradition' was first performed at a matinee for the Woman Suffrage Party held at the Berkeley Theatre in New York City on Saturday 24 January 1913. The plays featured articulate the arguments of the Suffrage Movement through a variety of styles, both comic and serious, and perfectly illustrate the use of drama as a medium for social change and entertainment. Together with illustrations and an introduction charting the history of the Actresses Franchise League and exploring the context and provenance of the plays, this is an excellent resource for both study and performance.

Post-Colonial English Drama is the first critical survey of contemporary Commonwealth drama. Besides essays on such individual dramatists as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, David Williamson, Louis Nowra, Athol Fugard, George Walker, Sharon Pollock and Judith Thompson there are surveys of the dramatic literature and developments in the theatre in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica and Trinidad. Canadian woman dramatists and the new radical South African theatre are also among the topics.

What were the causes of Restoration drama's licentiousness? How did the elegantly-turned comedy of Congreve become the pointed satire of Fielding? And how did Sheridan and Goldsmith reshape the materials they inherited? In the first account of the entire period for more than a decade, Richard Bevis argues that none of these questions can be answered without an understanding of Augustan and Georgian history. The years between 1660 and 1789 saw considerable political and social upheaval, which is reflected in the eclectic array of dramatic forms that is Georgian theatre's essential characteristic.

In 1642 an ordinance closed the theatres of England. Critics and historians have assumed that the edict was to be firm and inviolate. Susan Wiseman challenges this assumption and argues that the period 1640 to 1660 was not a gap in the production and performance of drama nor a blank space between 'Renaissance drama' and the 'Restoration stage'. Rather, throughout the period, writers focused instead on a range of dramas with political perspectives, from republican to royalist. This group included the short pamphlet dramas of the 1640s and the texts produced by the writers of the 1650s, such as William Davenant, Margaret Cavendish and James Shirley. In analysing the diverse forms of dramatic production of the 1640s and 1650s, Wiseman reveals the political and generic diversity produced by the changes in dramatic production, and offers insights into the theatre of the Civil War.

This is the first volume to focus specifically on Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adaptations of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. As Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Tagore’s highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape. Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encounters, romantic idealism, and universality. Tagore’s drama plays a generous host to experimentations with new performance modes, like the writing and staging of an all-women play on stage for the first time, or the use of cross-cultural styles such as Manipuri dance, Thai craft in stage design, or the Baul singing styles. This book is an exciting re-exploration of Tagore’s plays, visiting issues such as his contribution to Indian drama, drama and environment, feminist readings, postcolonial engagements, cross-cultural encounters, drama as performance, translational and adaptation modes, the non-translated or the non-translatable Tagore drama, Tagore drama in the 21st century, and Indian film. The volume serves as a wide-ranging and up-to-date resource on the criticism of Tagore drama, and will appeal to a range of Theatre and Performance scholars as well as those interested in Indian theatre, literature, and film.

This new book provides a clear and accessible guide on best practice to support teachers when using process drama in establishing creative learning partnerships with their students. It offers a detailed analysis and explores the roles of actor, director and playwright that the teacher must adopt in order to develop the ‘thinking on your feet’ skills and knowledge necessary to deliver a complete process drama experience. Addressing the dynamic nature of process drama, it provides a clear and rigorous explanation of the theory of process drama and links it to practice. Drawing on a wide range of detailed examples from the authors’ international and cross-cultural practice, it demonstrates how an effective process drama operates in action. Written to help practitioners and students produce powerful, artistic and educative experiences, chapters cover: pedagogy and the improvised nature of the art form; the structural framework and making shifts in the drama; the role of actor, director, playwright and teacher; monitoring emotional range; progression and the importance of reflection; the spiral of creative exchange and the complexities of co-creativity. Putting Process Drama into Action will be an essential guide for students undertaking initial teacher training at primary level, in addition to those studying both Drama and English at secondary level. It will also prove to be essential reading for specialist and non-specialist teachers in the primary and secondary sectors who teach, or wish to teach, process drama.