200 Themes for Devising Theatre with 11-18 Year Olds: A Drama Teacher's Resource Book

by Jason Hanlan

Overview

Shortlisted for Outstanding Drama Education Resource at the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards

A unique resource for drama teachers providing 200 stimuli and age-appropriate individual topics within those to help inspire and guide young people in devising performance. It contains useful information on devising techniques, workshops, schemes and lesson ideas for introducing devising and guidance on how to analyse the work and give feedback.

Following on from his successful book 200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance, author Jason Hanlan has once again solved one of drama teachers' most frequently encountered problems: how to unlock the best devised performance with their students.

Devising as a group requires a level of collaboration, which - without a strong framework - often descends into wild flights of fancy and a myriad of dead ends. Excellent ideas can be lost or diluted in an often-awkward attempt to tie it all together to fit a narrative.

The main body of this book is a unique numbered listing of 200 stimuli, designed to both inspire and focus the mind, with an example of a possible topic and 'ways in' that would be suitable for each level:

"Civil rights"

> "Votes for women" (11 - 14 year olds)
> "Rosa Parks" (14-16 year olds)
> "The Disappeared" (16 - 18 year olds)

Each stimuli is given its own page dedicated to exploring its possibilities as a piece of devised theatre for different age groups, and offering suggestions for plays, films and books to look at; artefacts and images to examine; ideas to consider; and further research you can draw on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350279636
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/04/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Jason Hanlan has built and led a drama department in a secondary school and been Head of Performing Arts. Over the last twenty-eight years he has directed/produced more than 40 shows, from the all singing, all dancing musicals to small intimate studio performance. He was LEA advisor for Surrey secondary drama and Lead Teacher for Drama in Berkshire. He has worked for AQA drama GCSE as a moderator and senior moderator for 12 years and, as part of this role, has been Coursework Advisor for teachers of GCSE Drama throughout the UK. He has been a senior moderator for AQA Performing Arts for four years and run teacher inset and training courses. He was previously Profesor De Teatro at Colegio Las Candelas Mendoza Argentina and is currently Asesor Académico del Programa de Arte de la Universidad Congreso. (Academic Consultant for the Arts at The Congreso University, Argentina).

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Why devise?
Chapter 3: Devising techniques
Chapter 4: 11-14 year olds: case study
Chapter 5: 14-16 year olds: case study
Chapter 6: 16-18 year old: case study
Chapter 7: Student logs
Chapter 8: Glossary of terms

Part 2
List of 200 stimulus/ideas/themes

Further reading

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

A very useful 'dip in' book for drama teachers who are looking for a new topic to explore or have a vague idea of what they want to explore but need some hooks to grab their students' interest.” —National Drama

“A playful, optimistic and dynamic resource to help unlock the imagination and creativity of your drama students.” —Teachwire

“This is a book that we have all been waiting for ... 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!” —Ali Warren on "200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance A Drama's Teacher's Guide", Open Drama UK

From the Publisher