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Drama and Theatre in Education: contemporary research
JOHN SOMERS (Ed.), 1996
North York, Ontario, Captus University Publications
ISBN 1-895712-882
Drama and Theatre in Education is a very welcome compendium of the papers presented at the 1995 juried Research in Drama and Theatre in Education Conference at Exeter. It is doubtful that a decade ago a conference focusing on research in this field would have had the worldwide response that the Exeter Conference had. This is a testimony to the recent interest in research paradigms and accounts of practice that characterise drama and theatre in education at the turn of the century. The Conference papers together form a broad look at Drama and Theatre in Education. Notably absent, however, among the contributions are those by American drama educators; although Canada was well represented, only three out of the 72 contributors were from the USA.
I would have preferred a tighter focus on research for this book. Many of the papers are merely reports of drama practices rather than analytical research. For example, Richard Barr simply describes virtual theatre via linked computers. In addition, the papers and reports are uneven in quality.
At first, I found the sections of the book that reported only abstracts of papers and presentations at poster sessions too minimal to make much sense of, but when I finished...