Editorial
Volume 17 Editorial
Welcome to Volume 17 of Drama Research! It is actually the eighteenth volume we have published: in 2025 there were two volumes for volume 16, one published in April and Vol 16.2 in October 2025.
Volume 17 Editorial
Welcome to Volume 17 of Drama Research! It is actually the eighteenth volume we have published: in 2025 there were two volumes for volume 16, one published in April and Vol 16.2 in October 2025.
Articles
Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina: Neocolonialism and the Oppression of Women
Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina: Neocolonialism and the Oppression of Women is a practice-as-research project that attempts to investigate the parallels between patriarchal dynamics and the perpetuation of colonialism as manifested and portrayed in an original bilingual performance. The research question is explored from the perspective of the three female writers and performers of this theatrical piece. By interviewing these three women about the creative process of how they embodied these parallels through the rehearsals and performances, the research demonstrates and analyses how the depiction of these parallels can be conveyed powerfully and poignantly through the theatrical medium. The theoretical framework that influenced this process is rooted in feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, particularly the works of seminal authors such as Sara Ahmed, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Leela Gandhi and bell hooks. The article also foregrounds the pedagogical implications of this project and proposes a workshop that can be applied within an educational setting.
Dorothy Heathcote: From ‘living through’ to ‘living with’
Dorothy Heathcote’s work is sometimes divided into two phases: an early period characterised by ‘living through’ drama and a later phase associated with Mantle of the Expert. This article challenges that division by arguing for continuity in her ongoing concern with drama as ‘man in a mess.’ From her earliest formulations to her later Mantle work, the ‘mess’ was not merely personal crisis but the disturbance of social norms through which a community’s structures, and values become visible. Drawing on close analyses of key episodes, the article proposes that Heathcote consistently practised a drama-as-anthropology: an enacted ‘thick description’ of human action under pressure. Participants in the drama function simultaneously as artist-creators and quasi-ethnographers, shaping and interpreting signs within the evolving fiction. Moments of ‘new awareness’ emerge, not from unmediated immersion, but from disciplined attention to sign and significance in the art form.
Forum Theatre with Disabled and Non-Disabled Participants: Role-Playing, Embodiment, and Reflection
In the contemporary Greek educational context, drama and theatre in education practices involving disabled and non-disabled participants have gained increasing attention, despite limited empirical research on their implementation and participatory dynamics in mixed groups. This study examines a drama workshop at the intersection of drama in education and applied theatre, focusing on Forum Theatre as a key technique of the Theatre of the Oppressed.
From Dérive to Drama: Using Futurist Performance to Deconstruct the Modern Metropolis in the Scottish Secondary School Drama Classroom
This article argues for reclaiming Futurist theatrical techniques as powerful, contemporary tools in the secondary drama classroom. While acknowledging Futurism’s fascist, misogynistic origins, the study adopts a framework of critical recontextualisation, focusing on adapting its performance strategies—sintesi (very brief plays), illogic and simultaneity, heightened actor–spectator interaction, and scenographic experimentation—for ethical, reflective, and critical exploration of students’ own urban environments. Drawing on Guy Debord’s notion of the dérive and psychogeography, students undertake guided ‘drifts’ through their city as stimuli for performance.
This article argues that Futurist performance techniques, recontextualised through ethical critique and psychogeographic practice, offer highly effective strategies for creative urban inquiry in drama education.
From Label to Method: Questionnaire-led Devising and DV8’s Performer as Thinker in Drama Training
This article argues that a key inheritance from German Tanztheater to British physical theatre is methodological rather than stylistic: a devising logic that treats the performer as a thinking subject and uses individuality as compositional material. It re-reads DV8 Physical Theatre through this lineage, emphasising risk and performer authorship as rehearsal principles rather than reducing DV8 to a hybrid genre label. The article then addresses a persistent reception problem in mainland China, where DV8 has often been classified as ‘dance theatre’ or ‘modern dance’, encouraging work-centred interpretation of recordings while marginalising rehearsal method. In response, it proposes a practice-led model of questionnaire-led devising for drama training. Here, written prompts operate as generative constraints (not verbatim sources) and are translated into embodied tasks, improvisational material, and a repeatable rehearsal score. The article shows how scoring (fixing parameters while keeping controlled variables open) enables repetition without homogenisation, making ‘performer as thinker’ teachable and revisable.
Moving Beyond Change: Utilising Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions theory and Drama to devise and reflect on Primary-Secondary School Transitions
Primary-secondary school transitions are an ongoing process involving pupils moving from one educational establishment (primary) to another (secondary), and changes to their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. This evaluative case study discusses aspects of two sessions within a series of five drama workshops. These workshops were devised as part of a wider research project investigating the use of drama to support pupils’ primary-secondary school transitions within one Scottish local authority. Multiple and Multiple-dimensional Transitions theory alongside drama conventions were used to conceptualise, theorise and plan the workshops. As such, the paper draws upon educational drama, drama conventions and primary-secondary school transitions literature to discuss and reflect on the process of devising and implementing the drama.
Theatre Arts Technology in the Scottish Primary Drama Classroom: The Sum of Unequal P‘arts’
While the Expressive Arts curriculum aims for a holistic approach to drama, the weight given to its individual components is skewed. Since the implementation of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) this research is the first to focus on primary teachers’ perspectives on theatre arts technology (lighting, set, sound, props, make-up and hair, and costume), as both a pedagogic tool and component of performance. Exploring the unequal p‘arts’ of the drama curriculum, the study identifies a significant curricular imbalance: the single mention of theatre arts technology in the primary level drama descriptors stands in direct contrast to the nine collective mentions of performance-based skills (voice, movement, and role play). Drawing from a larger mixed-methods study the research surveyed 83 teachers across diverse primary demographics using a 32-item questionnaire which was analysed via descriptive statistics and inductive content analysis.
Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina: Neocolonialism and the Oppression of Women
Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina: Neocolonialism and the Oppression of Women is a practice-as-research project that attempts to investigate the parallels between patriarchal dynamics and the perpetuation of colonialism as manifested and portrayed in an original bilingual performance. The research question is explored from the perspective of the three female writers and performers of this theatrical piece. By interviewing these three women about the creative process of how they embodied these parallels through the rehearsals and performances, the research demonstrates and analyses how the depiction of these parallels can be conveyed powerfully and poignantly through the theatrical medium. The theoretical framework that influenced this process is rooted in feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, particularly the works of seminal authors such as Sara Ahmed, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Leela Gandhi and bell hooks. The article also foregrounds the pedagogical implications of this project and proposes a workshop that can be applied within an educational setting.
Dorothy Heathcote: From ‘living through’ to ‘living with’
Dorothy Heathcote’s work is sometimes divided into two phases: an early period characterised by ‘living through’ drama and a later phase associated with Mantle of the Expert. This article challenges that division by arguing for continuity in her ongoing concern with drama as ‘man in a mess.’ From her earliest formulations to her later Mantle work, the ‘mess’ was not merely personal crisis but the disturbance of social norms through which a community’s structures, and values become visible. Drawing on close analyses of key episodes, the article proposes that Heathcote consistently practised a drama-as-anthropology: an enacted ‘thick description’ of human action under pressure. Participants in the drama function simultaneously as artist-creators and quasi-ethnographers, shaping and interpreting signs within the evolving fiction. Moments of ‘new awareness’ emerge, not from unmediated immersion, but from disciplined attention to sign and significance in the art form.
Forum Theatre with Disabled and Non-Disabled Participants: Role-Playing, Embodiment, and Reflection
In the contemporary Greek educational context, drama and theatre in education practices involving disabled and non-disabled participants have gained increasing attention, despite limited empirical research on their implementation and participatory dynamics in mixed groups. This study examines a drama workshop at the intersection of drama in education and applied theatre, focusing on Forum Theatre as a key technique of the Theatre of the Oppressed.
From Dérive to Drama: Using Futurist Performance to Deconstruct the Modern Metropolis in the Scottish Secondary School Drama Classroom
This article argues for reclaiming Futurist theatrical techniques as powerful, contemporary tools in the secondary drama classroom. While acknowledging Futurism’s fascist, misogynistic origins, the study adopts a framework of critical recontextualisation, focusing on adapting its performance strategies—sintesi (very brief plays), illogic and simultaneity, heightened actor–spectator interaction, and scenographic experimentation—for ethical, reflective, and critical exploration of students’ own urban environments. Drawing on Guy Debord’s notion of the dérive and psychogeography, students undertake guided ‘drifts’ through their city as stimuli for performance.
This article argues that Futurist performance techniques, recontextualised through ethical critique and psychogeographic practice, offer highly effective strategies for creative urban inquiry in drama education.
From Label to Method: Questionnaire-led Devising and DV8’s Performer as Thinker in Drama Training
This article argues that a key inheritance from German Tanztheater to British physical theatre is methodological rather than stylistic: a devising logic that treats the performer as a thinking subject and uses individuality as compositional material. It re-reads DV8 Physical Theatre through this lineage, emphasising risk and performer authorship as rehearsal principles rather than reducing DV8 to a hybrid genre label. The article then addresses a persistent reception problem in mainland China, where DV8 has often been classified as ‘dance theatre’ or ‘modern dance’, encouraging work-centred interpretation of recordings while marginalising rehearsal method. In response, it proposes a practice-led model of questionnaire-led devising for drama training. Here, written prompts operate as generative constraints (not verbatim sources) and are translated into embodied tasks, improvisational material, and a repeatable rehearsal score. The article shows how scoring (fixing parameters while keeping controlled variables open) enables repetition without homogenisation, making ‘performer as thinker’ teachable and revisable.
Moving Beyond Change: Utilising Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions theory and Drama to devise and reflect on Primary-Secondary School Transitions
Primary-secondary school transitions are an ongoing process involving pupils moving from one educational establishment (primary) to another (secondary), and changes to their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. This evaluative case study discusses aspects of two sessions within a series of five drama workshops. These workshops were devised as part of a wider research project investigating the use of drama to support pupils’ primary-secondary school transitions within one Scottish local authority. Multiple and Multiple-dimensional Transitions theory alongside drama conventions were used to conceptualise, theorise and plan the workshops. As such, the paper draws upon educational drama, drama conventions and primary-secondary school transitions literature to discuss and reflect on the process of devising and implementing the drama.
Theatre Arts Technology in the Scottish Primary Drama Classroom: The Sum of Unequal P‘arts’
While the Expressive Arts curriculum aims for a holistic approach to drama, the weight given to its individual components is skewed. Since the implementation of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) this research is the first to focus on primary teachers’ perspectives on theatre arts technology (lighting, set, sound, props, make-up and hair, and costume), as both a pedagogic tool and component of performance. Exploring the unequal p‘arts’ of the drama curriculum, the study identifies a significant curricular imbalance: the single mention of theatre arts technology in the primary level drama descriptors stands in direct contrast to the nine collective mentions of performance-based skills (voice, movement, and role play). Drawing from a larger mixed-methods study the research surveyed 83 teachers across diverse primary demographics using a 32-item questionnaire which was analysed via descriptive statistics and inductive content analysis.
Book Reviews
An Alchemy of Living Culture: Collected Writing on Double Edge Theatre
This volume captures the theatrical and cultural practice to have come out of Double Edge Theatre, which Stacy Klein founded in 1982. It showcases the company’s dedication to collective artistic creativity, cultural survival and sustained, equitable organization-building, with Klein’s artistic and social vision at its centre.
Featuring interviews, artists’ statements, essays and speeches in which Klein articulates the mission of Double Edge Theatre as it evolves, the volume captures the democratic spirit and boundary-pushing theatrical work the company has championed.
Druid Theatre 1975-2025: 50 Years of New Irish Plays
Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s leading theatre companies, this book collects six of its most impactful plays together in one volume for the first time.
Druid Theatre is Ireland’s leading theatre company. Since their origin in 1975 they have surprised, delighted, and inspired audiences worldwide, touring from their home city of Galway in the west of Ireland to countless other locations nationally and internationally. Under the leadership of Garry Hynes, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing, the company has revitalised the Irish dramatic tradition by staging seminal new plays and by breathing life into neglected classics. This anthology celebrates that tradition by gathering together six key plays from Druid’s fifty-year history.
Feminist Approaches in Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is not only entertainment that dominates the prolific stages of Broadway and The West End to community and educational stages but is a distinct performing art genre that has become both a cultural and economic force within society over the last century. Despite women being Broadway’s primary ticket buyers, men still have the systemic privilege and retain most of the power, influence, and notoriety as musical theatre makers. As the predominant creators of musicals, they also control whose stories make it to the stage, and the lens through which those stories are told.
Harold Pinter, Fascism, and Outrage: Aesthetic and Moral Implications
This book locates Harold Pinter’s controversial anti-fascism, overtly political plays not as revolutionary works designed to mobilize the masses, but as cries of moral outrage against the authoritarian forces of oppression.
Displaying on stage the plight of political prisoners facing illegal detainment, brutal interrogation, and torture, Pinter employs an aggressive, graphic style seeking to shock spectators out of their apathy and denial, and encourage awareness of such documented realities of fascist rule. Russell argues that Pinter’s political plays are not propagandistic screeds, but rather reflect a level of quasi-journalistic facticity about the global rise of fascism.
Home, I’m Darling
Every couple needs a little fantasy to keep their marriage sparkling. Judy and Johnny are living the 1950s dream, but behind the gingham curtains, being a domestic goddess is not as easy as it looks
A dark comedy about sex, cake, and the quest to be the ‘perfect’ housewife, Laura Wade’s incisive study of the idealisation of gender norms remains as topical as ever as it asks how happily married are the happily married?
Home, I’m Darling is a compelling, incisive play that interrogates nostalgia, gender performance, and the seductive, yet precarious, fantasy of retreating into an idealised past.
Perspectives on Learning Assessment in the Arts in Higher Education: Supporting Transparent Assessment across Artistic Disciplines
Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from art teachers in Canada and Europe, this edited volume explores the question of how learning in the arts can be effectively and fairly assessed in the context of higher education.
The chapters consider a rich variety of assessment practices across music, visual and plastic arts, performing arts, design, fashion, dance and music and illustrate how knowledge, competencies, skills and progress can be viably and fairly assessed. Contextual challenges to assessment are also considered in depth, and particular attention is paid to the challenges of reconciling teaching in the arts, aimed at an intuitive transformation of the student, and assessing learning that takes on its meaning in subjectivity and sensitivity.
Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre
Analysing an expanding body of theatre and performance works, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre examines how the themes and images of science fiction are enabling practitioners to intervene on the most urgent social and political issues of the present moment.
By exploring the genre’s impact on the live theatrical event, the book presents an original and topical interrogation of issues that remain at the heart of the national and global political agenda, including military conflict, social injustice, economic inequality, migration, nationhood, anti-democratic populism, and climate collapse.
Staging Beckett in London
Staging Beckett in London presents the first dedicated performance history of Samuel Beckett’s drama in London theatre culture.
This open access volume argues that Samuel Beckett has held a long and varied relationship with London and its theatres. Although Dublin and Paris hold obvious connections with Beckett’s life, London is the city that has proved the most consistent home for his drama, the origin for many of his major collaborations and where his legacy continues to flourish today. By tracing these performance histories through original findings in international archives, interviews with key practitioners and framing the performances in their historical and cultural contexts, this history offers new readings and insights into productions of Beckett’s plays in London.
When Katherine Brewed: a play
When Katherine Brewed features two groups: the royal group around the boy King Richard II; and a group of rebels caught up in the tumult of the Rising. As news of the rising reaches the king and his advisors panic descends upon them as they realise the precariousness of their situation. Without an army to defend them and holed up in the Tower of London, they go into meltdown as the seriousness of what is happening sinks in. In the meantime, four rebels come together to take part in the great march to London. The central character is Katherine, a brewer (brewing being one of the few trades open to a woman at this time). The other characters are an ex-archer and experienced soldier, a recently released ex-convict, and a village girl called Elizabeth.
The rebel characters grow in confidence as they understand more and more the true purpose of the rising. Discussing the events, laughing and joking in amazement at what they are about, they enact the experience of the movement by turns with humour and seriousness. As the events unfold, we see Wat Tyler negotiating with the King, and the moment of apparent triumph. But we also learn of the trickery of the King’s advisers and the terrible betrayal that leads to the defeat of our four rebels and the movement that all-too-briefly changed their lives.
An Alchemy of Living Culture: Collected Writing on Double Edge Theatre
This volume captures the theatrical and cultural practice to have come out of Double Edge Theatre, which Stacy Klein founded in 1982. It showcases the company’s dedication to collective artistic creativity, cultural survival and sustained, equitable organization-building, with Klein’s artistic and social vision at its centre.
Featuring interviews, artists’ statements, essays and speeches in which Klein articulates the mission of Double Edge Theatre as it evolves, the volume captures the democratic spirit and boundary-pushing theatrical work the company has championed.
Druid Theatre 1975-2025: 50 Years of New Irish Plays
Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s leading theatre companies, this book collects six of its most impactful plays together in one volume for the first time.
Druid Theatre is Ireland’s leading theatre company. Since their origin in 1975 they have surprised, delighted, and inspired audiences worldwide, touring from their home city of Galway in the west of Ireland to countless other locations nationally and internationally. Under the leadership of Garry Hynes, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing, the company has revitalised the Irish dramatic tradition by staging seminal new plays and by breathing life into neglected classics. This anthology celebrates that tradition by gathering together six key plays from Druid’s fifty-year history.
Feminist Approaches in Musical Theatre
Musical theatre is not only entertainment that dominates the prolific stages of Broadway and The West End to community and educational stages but is a distinct performing art genre that has become both a cultural and economic force within society over the last century. Despite women being Broadway’s primary ticket buyers, men still have the systemic privilege and retain most of the power, influence, and notoriety as musical theatre makers. As the predominant creators of musicals, they also control whose stories make it to the stage, and the lens through which those stories are told.
Harold Pinter, Fascism, and Outrage: Aesthetic and Moral Implications
This book locates Harold Pinter’s controversial anti-fascism, overtly political plays not as revolutionary works designed to mobilize the masses, but as cries of moral outrage against the authoritarian forces of oppression.
Displaying on stage the plight of political prisoners facing illegal detainment, brutal interrogation, and torture, Pinter employs an aggressive, graphic style seeking to shock spectators out of their apathy and denial, and encourage awareness of such documented realities of fascist rule. Russell argues that Pinter’s political plays are not propagandistic screeds, but rather reflect a level of quasi-journalistic facticity about the global rise of fascism.
Home, I’m Darling
Every couple needs a little fantasy to keep their marriage sparkling. Judy and Johnny are living the 1950s dream, but behind the gingham curtains, being a domestic goddess is not as easy as it looks
A dark comedy about sex, cake, and the quest to be the ‘perfect’ housewife, Laura Wade’s incisive study of the idealisation of gender norms remains as topical as ever as it asks how happily married are the happily married?
Home, I’m Darling is a compelling, incisive play that interrogates nostalgia, gender performance, and the seductive, yet precarious, fantasy of retreating into an idealised past.
Perspectives on Learning Assessment in the Arts in Higher Education: Supporting Transparent Assessment across Artistic Disciplines
Drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from art teachers in Canada and Europe, this edited volume explores the question of how learning in the arts can be effectively and fairly assessed in the context of higher education.
The chapters consider a rich variety of assessment practices across music, visual and plastic arts, performing arts, design, fashion, dance and music and illustrate how knowledge, competencies, skills and progress can be viably and fairly assessed. Contextual challenges to assessment are also considered in depth, and particular attention is paid to the challenges of reconciling teaching in the arts, aimed at an intuitive transformation of the student, and assessing learning that takes on its meaning in subjectivity and sensitivity.
Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre
Analysing an expanding body of theatre and performance works, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre examines how the themes and images of science fiction are enabling practitioners to intervene on the most urgent social and political issues of the present moment.
By exploring the genre’s impact on the live theatrical event, the book presents an original and topical interrogation of issues that remain at the heart of the national and global political agenda, including military conflict, social injustice, economic inequality, migration, nationhood, anti-democratic populism, and climate collapse.
Staging Beckett in London
Staging Beckett in London presents the first dedicated performance history of Samuel Beckett’s drama in London theatre culture.
This open access volume argues that Samuel Beckett has held a long and varied relationship with London and its theatres. Although Dublin and Paris hold obvious connections with Beckett’s life, London is the city that has proved the most consistent home for his drama, the origin for many of his major collaborations and where his legacy continues to flourish today. By tracing these performance histories through original findings in international archives, interviews with key practitioners and framing the performances in their historical and cultural contexts, this history offers new readings and insights into productions of Beckett’s plays in London.
When Katherine Brewed: a play
When Katherine Brewed features two groups: the royal group around the boy King Richard II; and a group of rebels caught up in the tumult of the Rising. As news of the rising reaches the king and his advisors panic descends upon them as they realise the precariousness of their situation. Without an army to defend them and holed up in the Tower of London, they go into meltdown as the seriousness of what is happening sinks in. In the meantime, four rebels come together to take part in the great march to London. The central character is Katherine, a brewer (brewing being one of the few trades open to a woman at this time). The other characters are an ex-archer and experienced soldier, a recently released ex-convict, and a village girl called Elizabeth.
The rebel characters grow in confidence as they understand more and more the true purpose of the rising. Discussing the events, laughing and joking in amazement at what they are about, they enact the experience of the movement by turns with humour and seriousness. As the events unfold, we see Wat Tyler negotiating with the King, and the moment of apparent triumph. But we also learn of the trickery of the King’s advisers and the terrible betrayal that leads to the defeat of our four rebels and the movement that all-too-briefly changed their lives.
Editorial Board
Notes on Authors
Volume 17 Notes on Authors
Notes on Authors David Allen is Artistic Director of Midland Actors Theatre (UK). The company was lead partner on three Erasmus Plus projects on the work of Dorothy Heathcote. David runs the Facebook group, ‘The Commission Model of Teaching,’ and the website www.mantlenetwork.com. He is the convenor of the annual Dorothy Heathcote Now conference. He
Volume 17 Notes on Authors
Notes on Authors David Allen is Artistic Director of Midland Actors Theatre (UK). The company was lead partner on three Erasmus Plus projects on the work of Dorothy Heathcote. David runs the Facebook group, ‘The Commission Model of Teaching,’ and the website www.mantlenetwork.com. He is the convenor of the annual Dorothy Heathcote Now conference. He
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