Ali Warren gets a sneak peak at 200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance by Jason Hanlan.
There are many challenges to being a Drama teacher. And many rewards. And both of those things are tied up in creating performance with young people. The joy of students rising to the challenge of a piece of text, the frustration of finding exactly the right play for that group of tricky girls who always want to work together or the boys who are enthusiastic not very able.
It’s why you find the teacher Facebook pages full of random requests for plays for “2 boys, three girls and the boys are quite weak performers” or “something new for my A-Level all-girl group”. Drama teachers are generally very interested in their area and are reading plays all the time but it is hard to find the right ones; I personally have a number of great plays on my shelves which are no use for school, but sounded like they might be the very thing, And then there are the schools who stick to the tried and tested year after year…
Jason Hanlan has taken all the hard work out of this process for us. In this book, he lists 200 plays – including Shakespeare – all suitable for use as examination pieces. And he goes beyond that. He gives breakdowns for each play, indicates the potential pitfalls, which includes those sensitive areas you might not always think of, things that may distress your students from personal experience, and also suggests the exact places that extracts may be taken from for your groups. In short Jason Hanlan has very kindly done the hard work for us – and in a clear, simple format that is easy to follow. All you have to do is buy the plays!
And that’s not all. Whilst the title of the book will send you leaping for the back section the first half of the book is a collection of chapters of useful advice on both how to select from these plays for the students in front of you and also what their knowledge and vocabulary should be before they start to rehearse. Personally, I found the list of practitioners with the plays that they can be associated with extremely useful although I’m sure that others will find the lists and definitions of theatrical terms of equal value.
All in all, this is a book that we have all been waiting for. In telling people about it I think I’ve already sold about four copies for Mr Hanlan, and I would be unhappy to part with mine now. This book is an asset to both those who are new to the profession (mentors, buy your colleagues this book!) and those who have been involved in it for a long time (heads of department, buy your colleagues this book!) And hopefully, fewer people will feel the need to put despairing requests for play selections on Facebook at midnight!
