My privileged opportunity to work with renowned Drama theorist, Dorothy Heathcote, in Melbourne in the 1970s, set a foundation for what I now call Theatre as Education research. Formerly a teacher of Secondary Drama, I became very experienced at creating plays with my students, based on their own ideas, or inspired by the stories of the community.…

In spite of the importance of the one-act play as an art form and as a tool for teaching playwriting, authors of playwriting texts have devoted little space to the study of the form. Because of this neglect, there is no definition of the form that is simple and specific enough to undergrid efforts to teach or write it. In the absence of a solid…

Clara Tree Major, the first producer to provide professional touring plays exclusively for children's audiences (from 1925 until 1954), not only produced these plays but also wrote the scripts by adapting children's stories for the theatre. This paper investigates Major's playwriting principles and techniques, examines Major's philosophy in play…

The ideas and techniques of post-modernist art and the imagist theatre represent an important preparatory stage in the revival of poetic drama. During the 1960s and early 1970s, a number of experimental companies rebelled against the realism of the American theatre and began to produce works that stressed emotional authenticity in acting, active…

To provide both an enriching theatre experience for students and faculty and new opportunities for women artists, the Department of Theatre Arts and Speech at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey at Newark held a competition for new plays by New Jersey women playwrights. The winning play, Leni Hamilton's "The Fortress," a story of…

The playwrights-directors workshop at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) allows students of directing and playwriting to meet jointly to explore and solve problems in the creation and production of original one-act scripts. At the heart of the program is the belief that both playwriting and directing students profit from producing their efforts…

This comment on Roger D. Gross's definition of "style" explores the ramifications of that definition for the theatre teacher. It is noted that Gross's definition may help with two common pedagogic difficulties: (1) convincing students that theatre and drama of the past were regarded by their audiences and practitioners as entirely…

There is a great need for bilingual/bicultural education, especially for Spanish-speaking students, who now number approximately three million in United States elementary and secondary schools. One educational experience for such students has been the presentation of bilingual plays in several of the New York City schools. Beginning with a play in…

One problem confronting theater directors is how to revive a play in such a way as to give it new relevance to a contemporary audience, and there many unhappy examples of this dilemma. Each director is concerned with exploring the text, and in some cases, manipulating the content, in order to bring out new meanings. Whether controversial or…

This paper traces the historical development of melodrama in the theatre and discusses its influence on twentieth century drama. Melodrama is a responsible literary mode based on romance and allegory, and its deliberate exaggeration of external actions represents figuratively the interior or psychological dimensions of imagination. Good melodrama…

The Grips Theatre, founded in 1969 by Volker Ludwig, performs plays intended to provoke clearheaded imaginative thinking on the part of the children, adolescents, and adults who see their productions. Grips does this by creating and producing original plays that retain the idealistic moment of hope that social relations and people themselves can…

Educators today may find a historical review of the Howard Players at Howard University (Washington, D.C.) in the 1920s important because of its implicit commentary on what constitutes community. While the Howard Players are generally written about in terms of the development of an African-American theater, historians ought also to think of their…

Athol Fugard, a white South African playwright/actor/director of international renown, has worked toward the establishment of an integrated, multiracial theater not associated with the white South African establishment. In his plays, Fugard has made racism and the ravaging effects of racial tension come alive as he presents aspects of these…

The skills of playwriting are correctable, the craft of playwriting is teachable, and the art of playwriting is encourageable. In the area of craft, students can learn through models how accomplished playwrights deal with plot, characterization, dialogue, and theme. For the first element, plot development, students can look at written models to…

Addresses the problem of writing and producing plays that do not meet the needs of a multicultural audience with varied backgrounds and values. (JC)