Teaching Drama With, Without and About Gender Resources, Ideas and Lesson Plans for Students 11–18

This exciting new book offers practical resources and lesson plans for exploring gender in the drama curriculum. It looks at how theatre performances throughout history have played with the concept of identity and gender and explains why drama lessons can provide a safe and considerate space for thinking about gender. Drawing on theatre history, world theatre, theatre forms and theatre theory, each chapter focuses on key topics that will challenge students to play and explore gender roles as they choose. Introducing a new drama vocabulary drawn from archaeology and cartography, this book includes a wide range of materials for excavation from traditional stories, contemporary children’s literature, Greek mythology, Elizabethan and Restoration theatre, Japanese and Chinese theatre, mask, and physical theatre. Providing new insight into how existing drama units can be redefined to create a space where the exploration of gender identity is not only allowed but something exciting and joyful to focus on, this is an essential resource for all drama teachers.

Introduction Glossary 1. Tools and Equipment of Discovery 2. About Gender – Seeking Identity 3. Without Gender - Mask 4. With Gender - Theatre History 5. With Gender - World Theatre 6. Without Gender - The Body

Jo Riley, a graduate of Cambridge University, learnt Mandarin to study at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. With over 20 years’ international experience she has led workshops, published, translated and edited extensively on Chinese theatre, European theatre history and intercultural theatre. Her special focus is the kinetic language of bodies in space, and bodies as pictograms of an idea.