Social contact through informal speech, a basic adolescent need, can be most effectively developed in secondary schools through the learning, working, and creating situations of drama activities. Since drama is conflict and living language is action, the process of making a play is as important as the play. Thus, drama creation within a small group provides the basis for eventual development toward individual dramatic involvement in writing and in major dramatic roles. Subject matter should be related to the student's development, with first year drama exploring fantasy and nonrealistic events, and second year drama moving more toward realism. In the third year, the drama should be related to the student's emotional growth by his working in original open-ended incidents, sketches, old theater styles, symbolic drama, or experimental approaches using tape-recordings, chants and choruses, masks, paintings, basic movement and spectacular lighting effects. The fourth year drama activity may focus on current events and contemporary problems, and original work should be supported by material from all genres of literature, especially extracts from modern plays. (JM)