200 Themes for Devising Theatre with 11-18 Year Olds - by Jason Hanlan (Hardcover)

About the Book

A unique resource for drama teachers providing 200 stimuli and age-appropriate individual topics to help inspire and guide young people in devising performance.

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for Outstanding Drama Education Resource at the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards

A unique resource for drama teachers providing 200 stimuli and age-appropriate individual topics within those to help inspire and guide young people in devising performance. It contains useful information on devising techniques, workshops, schemes and lesson ideas for introducing devising and guidance on how to analyse the work and give feedback.

Following on from his successful book 200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance, author Jason Hanlan has once again solved one of drama teachers' most frequently encountered problems: how to unlock the best devised performance with their students.

Devising as a group requires a level of collaboration, which - without a strong framework - often descends into wild flights of fancy and a myriad of dead ends. Excellent ideas can be lost or diluted in an often-awkward attempt to tie it all together to fit a narrative.

The main body of this book is a unique numbered listing of 200 stimuli, designed to both inspire and focus the mind, with an example of a possible topic and 'ways in' that would be suitable for each level:

"Civil rights"

> "Votes for women" (11 - 14 year olds)
> "Rosa Parks" (14-16 year olds)
> "The Disappeared" (16 - 18 year olds)

Each stimuli is given its own page dedicated to exploring its possibilities as a piece of devised theatre for different age groups, and offering suggestions for plays, films and books to look at; artefacts and images to examine; ideas to consider; and further research you can draw on.

Review Quotes

"This is a book that we have all been waiting for ... This book is an asset to both those who are new to the profession (mentors, buy your colleagues this book!) and those who have been involved in it for a long time (heads of department, buy your colleagues this book!). And hopefully, fewer people will feel the need to put despairing requests for play selections on Facebook at midnight!" --Ali Warren on "200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance A Drama's Teacher's Guide", Open Drama UK

About the Author

Jason Hanlan has built and led a drama department in a secondary school in Surrey, UK, and has been Head of a Performing Arts faculty in a large 11-18 state school in Royal Berkshire. During this time, he was also LEA advisor for Surrey secondary drama and Lead Teacher for Drama in Berkshire. He has worked for AQA drama GCSE as a moderator and senior moderator for 12 years. As part of this role he has been Coursework Advisor for teachers of GCSE Drama throughout the UK. He has been a senior moderator for AQA Performing Arts for four years and run teacher inset and training for Keynote Education, Lighthouse and Surrey county council. He is currently Profesor De Teatro at Colegio Las Candelas in Mendoza, Argentina. He also runs teacher training courses in Drama and English Literature in universities and foundations in Mendoza. Jason Hanlan is a member of National Drama, the UK's leading subject association for drama teachers and theatre educators. He is author of 200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance: A Drama Teacher's Guide (Methuen Drama, 2021).