{"id":955,"date":"2016-02-26T15:30:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T02:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dramamagic.com\/?page_id=955"},"modified":"2021-02-03T08:27:34","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T19:27:34","slug":"book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dramamagic.com\/?page_id=955","title":{"rendered":"Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dramatic Shorts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Emma Bishop, President \u2013 Drama New Zealand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There\u2019s nothing like receiving a package in the mail that\u2019s not a bill or a reminder! Opening my package from User Friendly Resources was a little bit like Christmas, as out dropped four shiny new books:\u00a0Dramatic Shorts 1\u00a0and\u00a0Dramatic Shorts 2\u00a0along with their accompanying resource books.<\/em>“
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Dramatic Shorts 1: An Anthology of Plays <\/em>by Susan Battye (User Friendly Resources, New Zealand 2020)<\/a>
ISBN 978-0-9951350-3-1 Paperback

Dramatic Shorts 2: An Anthology of Plays <\/em>by Susan Battye (User Friendly Resources, New Zealand 2020)
ISBN 978-0-9951350-5-5 Paperback

Dramatic Shorts 1: An Anthology of Plays: Drama Resource <\/em>by Susan Battye (User Friendly Resources, New Zealand 2020)
ISBN 978-0-9951350-4-8 Paperback

Dramatic Shorts 2: An Anthology of Plays: Drama Resource <\/em>by Susan Battye (User Friendly Resources, New Zealand 2020)
ISBN 978-0-9951350-7-9 Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first thoughts were that I loved the size of the Anthology of Plays books.\u00a0 Perfect for holding to read from and act with without being bulky or too big, with the layout of the scripts, including font size, being superb for the page to stage! I appreciated the way in which each play is introduced with a brief outline and description of themes and content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scripts themselves are a perfect mix of relevant, topical and humorous, which I feel are best suited to senior primary, intermediate and junior secondary. I could see these used in a number of ways, including being short scripts to use when focusing on applying drama techniques or understanding drama elements, as they are easy to read whilst having some depth of content good for cross-curricular teaching with social studies or health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accompanying resource books are also fabulous with content that would be extremely helpful for new teachers or for those quick six- to ten-week taster programmes we often see in middle schools. They are again well laid out and user friendly. My only comment would be that I would have liked to have seen a bit more new content in the second resource book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well done Susan and User Friendly for creating this new pack.\u00a0 I would highly recommend these for teachers of drama to have in their toolbox of resources!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dramatic Shorts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Judy Norton, Head of Speech and Drama \u2013 Saint Kentigern Girls\u2019 School and the Primary Representative for Drama New Zealand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Susan Battye states in her opening to Dramatic Shorts 1 that she wants young actors to \u2018dive in\u2019 and cast a play, to read through the text and present some preliminary work to their peers for feedback, all within an hour. This is definitely possible with these short offerings<\/em>. “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatic Shorts 1: An Anthology of Plays<\/em>
ISBN 978-0-9951350-3-1 Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatic Shorts 2: An Anthology of Plays<\/em>
ISBN 978-0-9951350-5-5 Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatic Shorts 1: An Anthology of Plays: Drama Resource<\/em>
ISBN 978-0-9951350-4-8 Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatic Shorts 2: An Anthology of Plays: Drama Resource<\/em>
ISBN 978-0-9951350-7-9 Paperback<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are of a flexible length and can be explored in a few lessons. They can be delved into more deeply when using the accompanying resources. She offers material for performance. The notes at the beginning of each play provide guidance to the students about theme, performance techniques, and considerations when rehearsing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plays are written in a New Zealand context and make use of local idioms. It has important significance in providing an available local resource for students with language and subject matter which are meaningful and familiar. The plays vary in themes and address a range of issues relevant to teenagers. These could be used not just in a drama context, but for the health curriculum, when exploring issues such as peer pressure, self-image, relationships. Students would have opportunities to discuss and reflect on the situations and tensions presented.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The accompanying resource provides excellent support for any teacher, with or without, knowledge of drama pedagogy. Intermediate teachers could easily pick these up and use them within their classroom programme. Susan includes detailed explanations of drama techniques, conventions, and dramatic terms. They are described in terms students can easily understand and implement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is written in a systematic way which shows how plays can be unpacked to probe deeper into character, themes, subtext and conventions. Students could work independently through the rehearsal process using this text. It would provide them the opportunities to provoke and stimulate thinking, collaboration, and creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a primary and Intermediate teacher I can definitely see these being useful at the Upper Primary and Intermediate school levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I commend Susan on creating an easily accessible resource that advocates for drama opportunities in the curriculum and which encourages teachers to utilise drama scripts. Thank you for creating such a wonderful resource, Susan and User-Friendly Resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

___________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dramatic Cuts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>Book Review: Drama Cuts <\/em>and Drama Cuts Teacher\u2019s Resource Book<\/em>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Edited by Susan Battye. (Putney., Australia: Phoenix Education, 2010)<\/strong> ISBN 978 1 921586 27 9<\/strong> ISBN 978 1 921586 30 9<\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By David O\u2019Donnell: Victoria University of Wellington<\/strong> \u00a0<\/p>\n

On a rainy winter\u2019s afternoon in 2006 I attended a performance of Athol Fugard\u2019s Sizwe Bansi is Dead<\/em> directed by Peter Brook at the Bouffes Du Nord Theatre in Paris. In the romantically shabby-chic auditorium of this crumbling 18th<\/sup> century theatre, two African actors on a stage bare apart from a few simple props and a costume rack held the audience in thrall with this parable on the impossibility of maintaining one\u2019s identity and dignity in the face of a racist political system. Although apartheid had been abolished nearly twenty years beforehand, Fugard\u2019s drama of oppression in a racially segregated South Africa seemed just as moving and relevant as ever, earning a standing ovation from the audience. \u00a0<\/em> Sizwe Bansi is Dead <\/em>is one of thirteen plays featured in Drama Cuts<\/em>, a new anthology of play extracts suitable for study and performance in secondary schools. Editor Susan Battye has chosen scenes from plays representing a cross-section of dramatic literature from ten Commonwealth countries, many of which deal with the legacy of European colonisation. The anthology is an efficient way for students to access a wide range of historically important plays, and the cultural diversity in the collection reflects the increasingly intercultural demographics of many 21st<\/sup> century schools. \u00a0 An accompanying Teacher\u2019s Resource Book<\/em> supports the play collection, containing a range of discussion questions on each play, notes on performance and on the playwrights.\u00a0 Clear and impressively detailed synopses of each play enable the teacher to quickly put a scene in context. The Resource Book is a substantial piece of work on its own, and I imagine will be a godsend for busy drama teachers everywhere. \u00a0 The collection in Drama Cuts<\/em> includes work by two Nobel prize-winners, Nigeria\u2019s Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott from the Caribbean. Like Sizwe Bansi<\/em>, the plays all feature strong moral and\/or political dilemmas. Read as a collection, this volume highlights the considerable political power and social relevance of great theatre, and illustrates that the canon of dramatic literature can stand alongside the greatest literary achievements (a fact not always acknowledged by English departments in schools and universities). Susan Battye is to be congratulated in raising the standards for drama education with this book. For New Zealand students, it is important to see the two New Zealand works, Bruce Mason\u2019s The Pohutukawa Tree<\/em> and Lynda Chanwai-Earle\u2019s Ka Shue: Letters Home<\/em>, in the context of playwriting internationally, and to recognise that New Zealand plays can stand up alongside the best of world drama. \u00a0 The old colonial bogey-man, Britain, is represented by two plays written sixty years apart, J.B. Priestley\u2019s An Inspector Calls<\/em> and Caryl Churchill\u2019s Top Girls<\/em>,with Priestley\u2019s critique of the inequities of the British class system reflected through a feminist lens in the scene from Churchill\u2019s play. Battye chooses an extract from the naturalistic second act of Top Girls<\/em>, and I wondered if the epoch-bending feminist allegory of Act One, with the invention of a dinner party of \u2018top girls\u2019 from throughout history, would have been a more stimulating choice. Theatricality is embraced, however, in the extract from Derek Walcott\u2019s Ti-Jean and His Brothers<\/em>, a Faustian fable set during an 18th<\/sup> century slave rebellion. In this delightful bi-lingual mix of song, dance and allegorical action, Ti-Jean out-wits the Devil, exposing the evils of colonialism and striking a symbolic blow for freedom. Walcott\u2019s work embraces performative variety, illustrating the potential for theatre to unleash the imagination, to fly beyond naturalism with the use of a more metaphoric and entertaining application of physicality. By contrast, Indian playwright Usha Ganguli\u2019s Rudali <\/em>is very naturalistic but equally delightful in its vivid depiction of poverty among village women. The feminist theme highlighted in this extract punctuates a tale of grim poverty, disease and survival, leavened by compelling humour based in dynamic characters which would be a brilliant challenge to bring to life in a classroom production. The dignity and power of Wole Soyinka\u2019s Death and the King\u2019s Horsemen<\/em> is represented perfectly in the chosen scene in which the wife of a British colonial officer displays outrageous cultural insensitivity by wearing a sacred garment and mask as a fancy dress costume \u00a0 Many of the extracts draw parallels between the politics of families and wider themes, as in Aroha\u2019s gut-wrenching disappointment in her children in The Pohutukawa Tree, <\/em>the contrasting experiences of different generations of Chinese women in Ka Shue<\/em>, and the poignant scene from Leaving Home<\/em> by Canadian David French. The extract from Ugandan playwright Mercy Mirembe Ntangaare\u2019s The Man His Son and Their Donkey<\/em> has some parallels with Rudali<\/em> in its depiction of a wife rebelling against her useless husband. In the husband\u2019s use of the Bible to justify his work-avoidance, it also contains an ironic critique of Christianity. In the extract from Sizwe Banzi<\/em>, however, the dignity of family is upheld in Sizwe\u2019s letter to his wife, expressing his agonising decision to adopt the identity of a dead man, thus giving up his name and personality, in order to find work under the apartheid passbook system. While this play also contains humour, Sizwe\u2019s realisation that his change of identity will also mean the loss of his family is heart-breaking. Battye has chosen expertly to show how in the theatre, truthful emotion and empathy are among the playwright\u2019s most powerful tools, no matter what theme they are aiming to convey. \u00a0 While the post-colonial emphasis pervades the collection, Malaysian playwright Huzir Salaiman\u2019s\u00a0 Atomic Java<\/em>also refers to latter-day American imperialism. This hilarious satire of nuclear proliferation gains much comedy from a premise that Malaysia develops its own atomic weapons, despite the inconvenience of having no deserts or isolated atolls to test them out on. The heightened parodic style of acting required to perform this play makes an effective contrast with the naturalism of many of the other extracts. \u00a0 Overall, the scenes are perceptively chosen to illustrate a diversity of world cultures, while also containing many thematic echoes between them, and a wide variety of performance possibilities. The collection serves both English and Drama curricula, by the judicious choice of extracts that are equally useful for comparative literary study and for performance. Battye rightly stresses the importance of reading the plays aloud, and encourages teachers to get the plays up on their feet to be performed in the classroom or in public. The balance of performative difficulty in the extracts is about right, with many of them being relatively easy to stage, while some, like Walcott\u2019s play, would create more challenges. The glossary at the back is a welcome aid to comprehension and access to different languages and cultural traditions. \u00a0 The accompanying guide for teachers is undoubtedly an excellent resource, clearly structured to assist the teacher through various exercises and contains a very good thematic overview of each play. There is attention to detail in both teaching and assessment, with excellent notes on how to develop a scene for performance, including templates of response sheets for both actors and audiences. However, there are a few glitches in presentation, including some typographical errors, and I would like to see the date of first production upfront in each script extract, as is the usual custom. In the \u2018Notes on the Playwrights\u2019 there is an excellent photograph of Lynda Chanwai-Earle performing Ka Shue<\/em>, which draws attention to the lack of photographs of the other playwrights and plays. For consistency of style it would have been ideal to include more photographs in this section, as theatre is a visual as well as literary art-form, and visual aids would help the students\u2019 comprehension of the effectiveness of the plays in performance. \u00a0 While the international range of plays in Drama Cuts<\/em> is impressive, it is unfortunate that in a collection edited in New Zealand and published in Australia, there is no representation of playwriting by indigenous writers of Aboriginal, M\u0101ori or Pacific Island descent.\u00a0 The two Australian plays (Summer of the Seventeenth Doll<\/em> and Cloudstreet<\/em>) are concerned with white identity and may give the misleading impression that Australia is exempt from the post-colonial issues brought up in the African, Asian and Caribbean plays. The inclusion of one of the many excellent plays by Aboriginal writers would give alternative views of Australian history. Similarly, the lack of representation of M\u0101ori playwriting seems odd given the post-colonial focus of the collection, especially as inter-cultural hybrids of Polynesian and European theatre are arguably what make New Zealand theatre unique. \u00a0 However, I realise that in any anthology hard choices need to be made, and the fact that this collection now exists at all is to be celebrated. The post-colonial emphasis gives unity and purpose to the collection, and I imagine the provocative stance of many of the playwrights will create heated class discussions as well as lively performance exercises.\u00a0 Susan Battye has undertaken a mammoth task in assembling these extracts with all of their support material, and has done a great deal towards creating a dynamic curriculum for study that will be inspiring and indispensable for many years to come. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Biographical Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 David O’Donnell<\/strong> is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Victoria University, Wellington, Aotearoa\/ New Zealand. David has directed many premieres of New Zealand plays, most recently Heat<\/em> by Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Te Karakia<\/em> by Albert Belz, and Collapsing Creation<\/em> by Arthur Meek. Other research interests include post-colonial drama, Australian and New Zealand theatre, M\u0101ori and Pacific performance, community theatre and Shakespearean performance. He co-edited Performing Aotearoa<\/em> (2007) a book on contemporary New Zealand theatre and is currently editor of the Playmarket New Zealand Play Series.<\/p>\n\n\n

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