This is the ultimate activity book for star-struck kids who love singing, dancing and show business! Ideal for the superstars of tomorrow, this book is bursting with fun activities based on a stage school theme. With drawing, colouring and doodling activities, plus games, puzzles and things to make and do, there's something creative and fun to do on every page.

Drama games are not staged plays but a dynamic form in which children explore their minds and the world around them. They can use their play-acting in sensory games, pantomimes, story games with puppets, in creating masks and costumes, and much more.

Drama games allow children to get more in touch with themselves and what they want to be, and are a delightful way to discover the freedom, creativity, and expression of acting- and living.

The "SmartFun"Activity series encourage imagination, social interaction, and self-expression in children. To make the books easy to use, games are marked according to appropriate age levels, length of play time, and group size, using helpful icons. Most games are non-competitive and none require special skills or training. The series is widely used in homes, schools, daycare centers, clubs, and summer camp.

When Kay Harker meets a mysterious Punch and Judy man on his way home for Christmas, he little realizes that he is about to be plunged into adventure. The old man entrusts Kay with a strange puzzle box - the Box of Delights - before suddenly disappearing. Kay soon discovers two things: the box can transport him through time and space, and there is a plot to steal it. He must battle heroically against terrifying forces of evil in order to win the day... This thrilling BBC Radio adaptation boasts a stellar cast, including Donald Sinden, Lionel Jeffries, Spike Milligan and Celia Imrie. 3 CDs. 3 hrs.

In illustrations and rhyme describes the dancing of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, one of the most famous tap dancers of all time.

The school show must go on, in the fourth hilarious mystery in the award-winning Anisha, Accidental Detective series! JUST ONE WEEK UNTIL SHOWTIME! I'm SO busy - our class is putting on a musical, and we only have ONE WEEK before curtain up. And, as it's nearly DIWALI, Granny Jas is cooking non-stop, and Auntie Bindi is determined to BRING THE BLING. I'm leaving the theatrics to Milo, but as the director's assistant I have LOADS to do...especially now everything is going WRONG. Even Molly the cat is forgetting her cues! Miss Jive believes the show is CURSED, but I think someone is trying to STOP THE SHOW! Time for me, ANISHA, ACCIDENTAL DETECTIVE, to step into the spotlight! Praise for the Anisha, Accidental Detective series: Winner of the Sainsbury's Children's Book Prize and of the Crimefest Best Crime Novel for Children Shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award, the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, and the Laugh Out Loud Book Award "DELIGHTFUL! Perfect for younger detectives - so funny and clever and sweet" Robin Stevens, author of the Murder Most Unladylike series "An absolute joy" Jennifer Killick, author of Crater Lake "Super funny and packed with lovable characters" Swapna Haddow, author of Dave Pigeon

An excitingly different approach to sharing Bible stories with children What is a Whoosh? It's a drama strategy developed by the Royal Shakespeare Company's education unit and popularised in schools, involving every child in physical interaction with the story. Why Whoosh? It enables children to retain details of the narrative more effectively and to discuss the meaning of a story with greater understanding and insight. And it's lots of fun! What's in this book? 50 Bible stories for use with 7-11 year olds, follow-up activities, discussion starters and prayers, and tips for leaders on how to use the whooshing technique. How do I use this book? It can be used with minimal preparation to provide a full Bible story teaching programme or to supplement an existing one, and is suitable for a range of contexts: Sunday school, midweek group, family service, holiday club, Messy Church celebration, or primary school.

When she first became interested in using puppets in library programs, Jean Pollock discovered there were few interesting scripts suitable for amateur puppeteers that were appropriate for performance in library and school settings. She decided to write plays taking into account the puppet collection available, the time available for rehearsal and performance, and limited puppeteering skills. The plays acknowledge that children know what is funny and what is not, appreciate and use witticisms, and have the sophistication to follow a plot and participate in the joy of creating an illusion. Playful and fast-paced, the scripts are simple enough to be suitable for young audiences, while the humor and interaction between puppets and the audience will extend the appeal to older children as well. Each play is supported with useful production notes, program building notes to adapt the plays for classroom and library use, and a bibliography listing books and media that can be used to develop a study unit or program around the play.

What does it mean to teach Shakespeare with purpose? It means freeing teachers from the notion that teaching Shakespeare means teaching everything, or teaching "Western Civilisation" and universal themes. Instead, this invigorating new book equips teachers to enable student-centred discovery of these complex texts. Because Shakespeare's plays are excellent vehicles for many topics -history, socio-cultural norms and mores, vocabulary, rhetoric, literary tropes and terminology, performance history, performance strategies - it is tempting to teach his plays as though they are good for teaching everything. This lens-free approach, however, often centres the classroom on the teacher as the expert and renders Shakespeare's plays as fixed, determined, and dead. Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeare's works as vehicles for collaborative exploration, to develop intentional frames for discovery, and to release the texts from over-determined interpretations. In other words, this book presents how to teach Shakespeare's plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.

Discover the fascinating stories of the bold and brave women in Shakespeare's plays. Stories of twelve of Shakespeare's courageous, strong-willed and determined characters are brought to life with Becca Stadtlander's rich and evocative illustrations. Celebrate these incredible women with this beautiful gift book, the perfect way to get children fascinated by Shakespeare and inspired by his work. Featuring: Titania, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Margaret of Anjou, Cordelia, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Juliet, Portia, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, Miranda, Viola.

In his thirteenth year, Will Sparrow, liar and thief, becomes a runaway. On the road, he encounters a series of con artists--a pickpocket, a tooth puller, a pig trainer, a conjurer--and learns that others are more adept than he at lying and thieving. Then he reluctantly joins a traveling troupe of "oddities," including a dwarf and a cat-faced girl, holding himself apart from the "monsters" and resolving to be on guard against further deceptions. At last Will is forced to understand that appearances are misleading and that he has been his own worst deceiver. The rowdy world of market fairs in Elizabethan England is the colorful backdrop for Newbery medalist Cushman's new comic masterpiece.

Aimed at a generation of short attention spans and a taste for razor-sharp comedy, the rapid-fire ZAP is a smart, farcical new play for high-school students that's ready to bring the house down.
When they're not dusting off the old classics -- over and over -- high-school drama departments are constantly in search of new material. But what play could possibly suit the point-and-click attention spans of kids born with remote controls in their cribs? Cue the lights for ZAP, a nonstop farce that juxtaposes seven different plays -- performed simultaneously -- with a comic genius reminiscent of masters from Monty Python to the Marx Brothers. Combining spot-on parodies of Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Neil Simon and performance art and throwing in scenes from RICHARD III for good measure, ZAP flicks rapidly back and forth from play to play, with hilarious results. As characters from one play end up on the set of another, their befuddlement, exasperation, and brave attempts at improvisation are truly priceless. A hoot to read, ZAP is a dream to perform -- as high schools in California, New York, and Florida have already discovered.

Although a classmate says that she cannot play Peter Pan in the school play because she is black, Grace discovers that she can do anything she sets her mind to do.

Intended for students and children taking part in speech and drama competitions and exams, this book contains a range of audition speeches. It includes female, male and unisex speeches selected from both plays and children's books. Where relevant the author has indicated how a speech could be shortened for younger children. There is also an introductory section with contributions from Alan Ayckbourn, Carol Schroder (teacher and examiner for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), Richard Carpenter (TV writer) and Ed Wilson (Director of the National Youth Theatre) and senior casting directors for the RSC, TV and film. This edition has been freshly revised to include 10 new speeches from well known recent productions as well as children's books including Harry Potter. 'A superb compilation' Amateur Stage

The tragedy of love thwarted by fate has always intrigued writers.  In the sixteenth century, William Shakespeare took this theme and fashioned one of the world's great plays: Romeo And Juliet.  In our own time, Shakespeare's drama has been used as a basis for the overwhelmingly successful musical play West Side Story.  Though one of these works is set among the nobility of Verona, and the other among immigrant families of New York's West Side, both tell the story of the plight of young star-crossed" lovers.



As Norris Houghton writes in his introduction: "What we see is that all four young people strive to consummate the happiness at the threshold on which they stand and which they have tasted so briefly.  All four are deprived of the opportunity to do so, the Renaissance couple by the caprice of fate, today's youngsters by the prejudice and hatred engendered around them....



"Poets and playwrights will continue to write of youthful lovers whom fate drives into and out of each other's lives.  The spectacle will always trouble and move us, even as the two dramas in this volume do today."