Editorial: Autumn Term 1 2022-23

Welcome back to another new academic year: sometimes daunting, always exciting; as we move another milestone further from the worst of the pandemic, it is a positive prospect to be getting back in a room with students. This is a time of beginnings, but it's also a time of endings – the theatre world recently lost the great 20th Century director Peter Brook, and in his honour we have an extra-special double-length practitioner focus page this issue, suggesting practical exercises for introducing students to his work (page 36), as well as a review of his seminal work The Empty Space, now recorded as an audiobook in the dulcet tones of actor Adrian Lester and published by Nick Hern Books.

It's also a time of endings for me. This will be my last issue as Editor of Drama & Theatre, my sixty-second issue of the magazine since I began on what was then called Teaching Drama in the summer of 2012. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the team behind the magazine, in editorial, design, sales, marketing; with our extraordinary and indefatigable crop of expert contributors – all teachers, directors, playwrights as well as writers for the magazine; and with you, our readers. Thank you for the contact you have made with me directly – for writing in, or tweeting, for introducing yourselves at the Music & Drama Education Expos and Awards over the years and sharing your thoughts on the magazine.

I'm glad to be able to launch you into the new academic year with some good ideas before I go. This issue contains the first of a series of six articles by one of our longest-standing contributors, and drama education expert of experts, Patrice Baldwin. The series will provide a step-by-step approach to building a Drama into a Primary curriculum so that the benefits of the subject and its approaches can be felt by young people from the earliest stages of their education.

For readers with older students, we look at new initiatives to diversify set-texts for exam board syllabuses in Drama and English, including some suggested reading for new texts to consider. And if your KS₅ students are contemplating training pathways into theatre careers, please share with them the Student Guide to Drama Education – either in its physical form, supplement to this magazine, or online where they can read it free at www.dramaandtheatre.co.uk/student-guide-to-drama-education

As term starts, we will also be announcing the full programme for the Music & Drama Education Expo 2023. There is a hint at some of the content, but lots more detail to come.

For now, though, this is goodbye from me, and all the very best of wishes, for your teaching and your students, this year and beyond.

Sarah Lambie - editor