Editorial
https://doi.org/10.64741/091434hqpusx
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.
This edition welcomes researchers from England, Scotland, Greece, Malta and China and a wide range of areas of exploration.
In the introduction to her article, From Dérive to Drama: Using Futurist Performance to Deconstruct the Modern Metropolis in the High School Drama Classroom, Mary Baillie asks: Why don’t we know about Futurist Theatre? In response to her own question, her article argues for reclaiming Futurist theatrical techniques as
powerful, contemporary tools in the secondary drama classroom.
But there’s a problem: Fascism. The founding manifesto of one of the Futurist movement’s leading lights, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, states:
We wish to glorify war – the sole cleanser of the world.. and scorn for women. We wish to fight against moralism, feminism, and every kind of materialistic, self-serving cowardice (Marinetti F. T. 1909; 2009: 15).
The author acknowledges that this is an obstacle, but one that can be mediated against:
While acknowledging Futurism’s fascist, misogynistic origins, the study adopts a framework of critical recontextualisation, focusing on adapting its performance strategies…for ethical, reflective, and critical exploration of students’ own urban environments.
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.
So what are these ‘highly effective’ techniques and strategies? Baillie’s article provides an outline of some of the principles of Futuristic theatre and examples of texts and techniques that can be employed by students, especially the type of play that Marinetti called sintesi: synthetic plays that were ‘very brief’, often lasting no more than two minutes. The author observes:
This is an extremely relevant tool for young people today. Social media – particularly TikTok- has transformed the short video into a prevailing form of teenage entertainment. Teens are consistently digesting digital theatre that, like sintesi, are short, immediate, ‘rapid and concise’.
The author argues:
If students are already embracing short-form nonsense as a form of widespread entertainment, why not translate it to the stage?
The author provides a number of examples of these authentic scripts and describes other Futuristic techniques like Debord’s ‘dérive’, an unplanned walk or ‘drift’ through an urban environment that is
guided by the landscape and emotions it provokes rather than following pre-set routes or practical goals (Debord 1958)
which seems harmless enough if not an entirely original concept, which the author argues could be employed to shape a theatre experience.
This article is a courageous attempt to draw our attention to a neglected artform in our repertoires, one that may be very accessible and enjoyable for the young people we teach.
Furthermore, with the continuous rise of short-span entertainment, this equips students with important skills for entering the media or performance industry in the future.
Tyrone Grima’s article Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina: Neo-colonialism and the oppression of women is a manifestation of how far we have come from the ideological position of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His article describes the creation and performance of the play Borma Tbaqbaq – Il-Lingwa tal-Kċina (The Pot Bubbles – the Language of the Kitchen), an original theatrical production staged in Malta in November-December 2025. The play was written, produced and performed by three female creatives, Valerie Buhagiar, Angele Galea and Pauline Fenech. The author, ‘as a queer/LGBTIQ+ cisgender male’, was invited by the group to direct the play, a role he had reservations about as a male engaging with an essentially female space: reservations which are clearly outlined in the article. However, proceeding with utmost integrity, he received full approval from the performers, who have also reviewed and approved this article.
Two themes of the play were intertwined and reflected on one another productively:
Buhagiar suggested creating an original theatre piece about colonialism and its effects on a nation, whereas Galea was interested in exploring gender-based violence.
The resultant central plot
follows Josie, a Canadian-Maltese lawyer, who travels to Malta to defend a man accused of murdering a young girl and attend the funeral of her Aunt Doris…. Josie’s story is juxtaposed against the monologues of the Fertility Goddess, who exposes the island’s colonial history and its lingering postcolonial mentality.
The dilemma for Josie is clear:
Is she perpetuating androcentric violence? As a member of the Maltese migrant diaspora, how have her roots shaped her sense of identity? To what extent is this sense of identity influenced by patriarchal systems and structures? How can she navigate through a male-dominated society which paradoxically feels alien and yet so familiar?
Grima’s article narrates the challenges and discoveries of the performers as, through the play, they engage with issues of patriarchy and colonialism and the relationship between these concepts:
This article contests that the hegemonic matrices of suppression used to silence and violate women resemble those used to subjugate colonial subjects.
The Case Study at the heart of the article draws largely on individual interviews by the author with the performers following rehearsals, from which the author derived several key themes: Patriarchal violence, Colonial language and shame, Rage and Feminist Refusal, Spatial displacement, The Politics of Representation: Empowerment. These themes are expressed and explored through the challenges and discoveries by the performers in different scenes of the play and make for fascinating and insightful reading in the article and were converted into facilitated workshops, conducted between and after the performance weekends.
This article makes a significant contribution to the discussion of these issues and how the art of drama and theatre
can function as a space where hegemonic power is not only represented but challenged through a practice-based methodology.
Dorothy Heathcote: From ‘living through’ to ‘living with’ by David Allen and Agata Handley is an article of some complexity whose ultimate character is a defence of Dorothy Heathcote’s work, particularly of her ‘Mantle of the Expert’ approach. Its opening sentence introduces the article’s main focus of challenge:
Dorothy Heathcote’s work has sometimes been divided into two distinct phases: an early period, referred to as ‘living through drama’ or ‘Man [sic passim] in a Mess’; and later work, associated in particular with Mantle of the Expert.
This characterisation of division in Heathcote’s work has been expressed most prominently by David Davis and Adam Bethlenfalvy in various of their writings, but most clearly by Davis in an interview he conducted with Heathcote in 1985. The authors set out to challenge that notion.
To do so, the early sections of the article contain a close examination of the Davis/Heathcote interview and a refutation of the assertions made by both Davis and, elsewhere, by Bethlenfalvy. It goes on by referencing several key drama sessions led by Heathcote: the POW drama featured in the film Three Looms Waiting; and two sessions with a group of children in Canada in 1982: one with the context of a plane crash and the other, with the same group, of assassination attempt on President Trudeau at a banquet. On the way, they reference the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, to unpack the notion of ‘thickness’ which she refers to in the Davis interview, and which is key to an understanding of her work.
For Geertz, as an anthropologist, ‘thick description’ was not exhaustive reporting, psychological depth, or emotional intensity. It was about meaning as layered; understanding as interpretive rather than experiential; and action as readable within a web of significance.
In applying these concepts to the practical drama sessions referred to in the article the authors assert that:
In this way, seen through an anthropological lens, Mantle appears, not as a turn away from ‘living through,’ but as a method for producing thick, situated accounts of human life that can then be entered, exited, and re-entered.
In making the title of their article, Dorothy Heathcote: From ‘living through’ to ‘living with’, the authors have summarised the journey of greater understanding about Heathcote’s work that they take us on in their article:
What she later understood (and argued) more clearly is that drama operates in a thickened, refracted temporality: moments are paused, replayed, examined, and telescoped. This is living with the event, rather than through it.
This article is a densely woven, brilliant argument for the sense of continuity of, rather than division in, the work of Dorothy Heathcote. It is a powerful defence of Mantle of the Expert and is a very important contribution to the field of drama education.
Maria Koltsida’s article, Forum Theatre with Disabled and Non-Disabled Participants: Role-Playing, Embodiment, and Reflection, is a description of a study, undertaken by the author, of the use of Forum Theatre (FT) in a ‘mixed ability’ context in Greece:
In the Greek context, research on disability and theatre remains limited, focusing primarily on representation, accessibility, and inclusion across theatre and other art forms. While contributing to the mapping of disability and mixed theatre groups, empirical research examining embodied and participatory processes in inclusive theatre settings remains scarce (Koltsida 2024).
The study set out to explore two key questions:
The first research question of this study concerns how the FT technique was implemented and how participants embodied and experienced their roles throughout the process.
The second research question explores the relationship between participants’ real-life experiences and their theatrical enactments as reflected in their interactions, embodiments, and reflections during the workshop.
The study involved a total of 15 participants, including disabled and non-disabled secondary school students, young people, and university students. Two of the disabled participants provided a ‘real life’ story for the group to focus on: ‘The Coffee Shop Story’:
1. The entrance of two disabled women into a coffee shop
2. Their waiting time
3. The waiter’s refusal to serve them
4. The involvement of the coffee shop manager
5. The abusive behaviour of the coffee shop manager
6. The disappointment of the women
7. Their departure from the premises
The study developed eight ‘Trials’ of the Forum Theatre process to record the behaviours and responses of the participants with regard to the key questions above, and to explore the content of the scenario in relation to attitudes towards disability that it revealed.
However, the study revealed a tendency in some participants to engage in ‘magical’ solutions:
‘A spect-actor can sometimes replace an actor and modify the character in such a way that the solution becomes completely magic. The spect-actor must respect the ‘givens’ of the problem’ (Boal 2022: 267).
Despite the hazards encountered by the group in managing the forum theatre format, the process had a great impact:
P7: But it generated a sense of activation in us. That’s a success… wanting to claim/stand up for your rights.
(Reflection from Trial VIII)
The author concludes:
Future research could build on the present study by examining the structural, political, and socio-economic conditions that contribute to disablement and reinforce disablism, and by extending applied theatre and FT interventions to different institutional and cultural contexts (such as education, vocational education and training, and community settings).
You Lyu’s article, From Label to Method: Questionnaire-led Devising and DV8’s Performer as Thinker in Drama Training, is an attempt by the author to correct a misrepresentation in mainland China of the work of DV8, which is largely perceived as being
under the umbrella of ‘dance theatre’ and, in some discourse, absorbed into broader framings of ‘modern dance’
and, in doing so, provide a more authentic approach to training in physical theatre through a greater understanding the work of the iconic company.
The author structures his article in four semantically appropriate ‘movements’.The first movement, ‘From modern dance to DV8: individuality, risk, and the performer as thinker’ traces the development of the ‘performer as thinker’ as being derived from German Tanztheater, particularly from the approach of Pina Bausch:
Throughout rehearsals, Bausch watches and takes notes. She asks her performers to write down what they do so that they can remember it and do it again when asked. Moreover, she does ask repeatedly. Moments are tried, expanded upon, linked to other moments, thrown away, and gradually a structure emerges. Each response is tied to the underlying question that motivated the piece (Climenhaga 2009: 21).
This movement identifies the dangers of performers being passive ‘instruments of choreography’ and the need for risk in performance as well as rehearsal. As Lloyd Newson, founder of DV8, declared:
I am very frustrated by the lack of individuality and character that is being presented in dance. I am so bored with work where everybody has to be the same – like the same person, which is often the choreographer. I want to see individuality, I want to see characters on stage, and I want to see people experience things (Newson 1993: 10).
The second movement, ‘DV8’s reception in mainland China’ outlines the implications for drama training in that country if DV8 is taught primarily as dance theatre or modern dance; while the third movement, ‘Questionnaire-led devising as rehearsal score’ reaffirms the need for an approach similar to that of Bausch. Hence, the author outlines the use, with examples, of questionnaires whereby the performers can combine both originality and repeatability in physical theatre in their training and, by implication, in their performances.
The fourth movement, ‘From questionnaire to score: operationalising performer authorship in drama training’ brings his argument to a conclusion:
Finally, it discusses what this model produces in drama training: the conditions under which novice performers begin to operate as thinking makers, generating, editing and owning embodied decisions, while the work remains repeatable and open to revision. This argument is shaped by my position between Chinese reception contexts and UK rehearsal-based training environments.
These four movements provide a convincing argument for a re-evaluation, not only of the work of DV8, but also of how physical theatre should be approached in all drama training, whether in rehearsal rooms or drama classrooms.
In this issue, there are two articles whose context is education in Scotland: William D. Barlow has teamed up with two sets of colleagues to reflect on two distinctly different research projects, each of which is, apparently, unique in its field.
In their article, Moving Beyond Change: Utilising Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions theory and Drama to devise and reflect on Primary-Secondary School Transitions, William D. Barlow, Tony Goode and Elizabeth F. S. Hannah give a record of the study they conducted into the effects of the process of pupils’ transitioning from primary school to secondary school, including the changes to their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. The study was conducted within one Scottish local authority and involved two primary schools, one in an urban setting and on in a rural setting, and a secondary school to which the pupils of both primary schools transitioned.
It is not the first study of its kind to examine the role of drama in this process: the authors refer to several other such studies; but this study, in considering the experience of pupils in both settings, primary and secondary, and in discussing how drama conventions were used in practice during pre- and post -transfer, is, therefore,
unique and significant as it is the first one to adopt MMT theory (Jindal-Snape 2023) to underpin, devise, facilitate and reflect on drama conventions workshops.
Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions (MMT) theory, developed by Jindal-Snape (2016), posits that the process of transitions is not a simple linear process but is
an ongoing and dynamic psychological process that requires multiple social and educational adaptations.
The authors, therefore, in adopting the MMT framework, caution drama practitioners to likewise understand transition from primary to secondary school as a complex, dynamic process rather than a simple linear one.
The question at the heart of the research is:
How might Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions theory and drama conventions be adopted as a framework to develop drama workshops on the phenomenon of primary-secondary school transitions?
The drama conventions developed by Neelands and Goode, we are told, are not only derived from drama-in-education but also
from Moreno’s psychodrama techniques, Agit-Prop and other forms of political theatre and the rehearsal techniques of Brecht, Meyerhold. MacColl, Littlewood and other socially committed theatre practitioners. (Neelands and O’Connor 2012: xviii)
The study engaged pupils in all three schools with various dama conventions, creating a fictional character, Sam, to focus some of the issues about transitions. At one point, with groups of four, a researcher assumed the role of Sam, using the role signifier of a school bag, and entered each group in turn, providing a concrete focus of the groups’ interests and concerns.
This article is an important record of a challenging process and how drama can facilitate this process. As the authors conclude:
In sum, MMT theory and drama conventions offers a potent model for supporting the multi-faceted journey from primary to secondary school, fostering pupil agency and voice as they step into their new educational futures.
The other article with a Scottish context is Theatre Arts Technology in the Scottish Primary Drama Classroom: The Sum of Unequal P‘arts’ by William D. Barlow, with colleagues, Nikki Doig and Michael Kimm.
Drama teachers in England may look with jealous eyes towards Scotland where Drama has been part of the Scottish national curriculum since 1989 and where a Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) was legislated in 2010 of which drama is a part. However, Barlow notes that
There are still some schools in Scotland that have little or no drama provision,
and makes suggestions as to why this might be the case. The authors also note that
To date, there is a paucity of research, and wider literature, on the use of theatre arts technology within the drama classroom, either to support a final performance or to engage in process drama approaches (Anderson 2012; Kimm 2024).
The research project devised by the authors is
unique and significant as it is the first to focus on teachers’ views about, and confidence in, utilising theatre arts technology in Scottish primary schools.
The study made the following enquiries:
How do Scottish primary teachers view theatre arts technology as a set of tools and processes for accessing and teaching drama at the primary level?
What are Scottish primary teachers’ views and opinions relating to their access to and experience with theatre arts technological equipment and conventions?
A key component of the research was a questionnaire, adapted from Moscardini and Japp’s (2021) Music report and engaged a total of 83 primary teachers, the results of which were convincingly consistent, albeit depressing. The authors assert:
When 91.6% of educators report negative experiences with technology usage, the technical components of the art form are no longer just sidelined – they are effectively invisible.
To improve the Curriculum for Excellence, the study makes some key recommendations:
Theatre arts technology should be given greater status, time, and funding within the primary curriculum, with its contribution to the wider curriculum and personal development recognised in school planning and resource allocation.
This should be accompanied by a programme of professional development which would
empower teachers to use theatre art technologies, not as an add-on, but as a language for learning. Doing so helps bridge the gap between, ‘…theatre and the more poetic conventions of performance craft…’ (Neelands and Goode 2015: 4).
It also calls for longitudinal research into the issue. I suspect that if such research were to be carried out in English Primary schools it would produce a similar depressing picture, with similar recommendations. As the authors assert:
This study not only offers a unique, significant and original contribution to Scotland’s drama curriculum, but it also offers international readers insights into the pedagogical tensions and possibilities inherent in formalising theatre arts within a global educational landscape.
With the current fast development of technologies and their increasing accessibility to young people, this article is an important contribution to the conversation about their use – and their neglect – in relation to enhancing the experiences of young people in drama. It also rounds off this edition by echoing the first article I have described here: Mary Baillie’s appeal to equip students with important skills for entering the media or performance industry in the future.
Chris Lawrence
