Opinion with Clea Wilcher

In the summer of 2020, while the UK was ‘eating out to help out’, I was one of a lucky team of people at Pearson staying in and reading what seemed like hundreds of plays.

While this was a project undertaken to improve the diversity of our offer, our prime concern was to select texts that met the demands of the GCSE specifications, while engaging and exciting young people, not just in drama but in the world we all inhabit.

Our pre-1954 additions are Roy Williams’ Antigone and Tanika Gupta's A Doll's House, both adaptations of familiar plays to which teachers would bring a wealth of knowledge. Equally exciting were the post-2000 plays: the grittily urban Gone Too Far by Bola Agbaje and The Free9 by In-Sook Chappell: a poetic tale of young North Koreans escaping to freedom – or not.

Ultimately, we couldn't choose between these plays: each one had something special to offer in terms of character, creativity, and accessibility. Each one was also a play that we could easily envision exploring with a group of GCSE students.

We were aware that tired, busy teachers, struggling to meet the demands of the pandemic curriculum, might lack the time or energy to complete the research needed to teach a new text, prompting a range of bespoke resources. These include new bespoke set text guides as well as 14 films by Representation in Drama.

We worked collaboratively with the playwrights, who all supported their plays being used with groups of students regardless of their cultural background, and with Methuen who issued new editions of the plays, including supportive notes for teachers and students.

These informative resources also address potential and understandable concerns. In-Sook Chappell, for example, gives young people ‘permission to inhabit and play these characters’, also providing a vital opportunity for drama students to discuss cultural appropriation and the issue of authentic casting in the theatre.

You may still be asking, why should I or any exhausted drama teacher, even think of teaching a new text in this incredibly difficult time in education?

Precisely because the world is now so challenging for young people. This makes it more important than ever that the texts we study, explore and perform as part of our qualifications provide opportunities beyond examinations, supporting citizens of the future in shaping the world into a place where we'd all be proud to live.

Clea Wilcher is the chief examiner at Pearson Edexcel GCSE Drama. 

Find out more about the new set texts here.

For more information from Pearson, visit their website.