Book reviews: Ultimate Drama Activities for the Classroom

Books of drama games are always useful when you need to refresh your repertoire for class warmups, drama clubs and activities that lead into devised work. I have a few on my shelf, but I'm always looking for more!

Joanne Watkinson has a wealth of experience in drama, as a writer and teacher, having founded her own theatre school, so I was really looking forward to reading this book.

It's split into four sections: Warm up games; Improvisation and devising; Improvisation for large groups and Working with script. What I would say having read the book, is that three of these sections are excellent and you'll get a huge amount of use and value out of them.

However, I really wish the warmup games section (which is the first 17 pages) was more original, fresher and newer. I was really disappointed that I knew every game. Now maybe that's because I've been teaching drama for over 15 years, but if I see another drama games book explain how to play wink murder I might have to scream! Surely everyone who teaches drama, or indeed most people who have ever played a group game knows how to play this?

What is great in this book, however, in the other sections, is the range of ideas for improvisation and devising, new approaches and the amount of script that is provided for use. Some of the text work is short sentence starters, or interesting dilemmas, some are longer pieces of text. All will be useful.

I'm really looking forward to trying the improvisation exercises, dialogue starters and ways into devising. It will freshen up my approach and provide more structure than I am probably using at the moment, which in turn will makes students feel more secure in approaching improvisations. I think it will also save a huge amount of time in terms of preparation as it's a really good ‘go to’ section of the book.

Watkinson clearly knows what she is doing and how to get the most out of her theatre school students as there's detail and variety here, and I really feel like I will use this book a lot in the upcoming term. I just wish she'd cut the first chapter, as the rest of the book is excellent. Pick up this text if you are looking for fresh approaches to devising and improvisation in class.