Reading Plays
An important feature of any Drama or English class the reading of plays. It cannot be assumed that senior students will come to class with a wide experience of working with plays. Reading and Writing Plays aims to provide students with an approach to entering the world of contemporary Western plays and to encourage them to embark on writing their own plays, with some guidelines. With this in mind, the suggested reading list at the end is by no means exhaustive nor totally comprehensive but it might signal some gaps in a school library that could be filled. As a classroom teacher, your role in the play selection process will be crucial. By making each student become individually responsible for introducing a play to their peers, you are signaling that this is a process which actors and directors have to do for themselves with little support. It is up to each student to make use of reading resources available and to become familiar with the social context of the plays. In doing so they will hopefully find something of interest in the genre or dramatic conventions used in the plays to emulate in their own writing. This is not beyond the capabilities of most older students in my experience. Encouraging the students to read the whole play and reflect on their understanding will also be of great benefit.

Writing Plays
Offering students the opportunity to write their own plays is a way of giving them a ‘voice’. Any teacher who has tried to find suitable written material for a class production will know how hard it is to fill the particular needs of a social group. A successful script which is admired by others in the class will make the point of the drama class suddenly become more relevant. It is up to you to encourage each class community to focus on its strengths. For example, if your students are particularly strong in song and dance then encourage them to write lyrics for songs and to find ways of describing the form of their dances on the page. By objectifying their experience through the ‘art’ of the play they will come to see new things in their own cultures and most of all to be able to laugh at themselves in a healthy way. Writing playscripts presents some of the same challenges as writing film or television scripts, and many of our students are increasingly seeing the benefits of trying out script writing within a relatively safe environment before they hit the big world of copy writing, advertising and screen writing. By taking students’ work through to performance you will give them the taste of what it means to be part of a production process.

Portfolios And Photocopying
References are made in the text to students’ portfolios. It is assumed that students will maintain portfolios as a vehicle for reflection and planning. It may prove convenient to photocopy parts of this text and paste sections into the portfolios as a permanent record. Obviously a budget is required for photocopying plays produced by the class so that they may read each other’s work.

Outcomes
It is hoped that by the end of this work, students will have achieved the following outcomes:
• produced a play script.
• workshopped parts of the text with class members.
• created a play which gives expression to their feelings on a topic close to their hearts.
• created a play suitable for class production.
• developed skills related to language use and editing.

Also by the end of this work students should have been alerted to the vast array of Western playwriting that is on offer and to the huge history of theatre and drama which underpins the traditions hinted at in the texts. They will be keen to visit the theatre and a timed visit to a local production could fit in well.

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Grades 5–8.