Review of Dramatic Shorts by President of Drama NZ

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by Emma Bishop, President – Drama New Zealand

There’s nothing like receiving a package in the mail that’s not a bill or a reminder! Opening my package from User Friendly Resources was a little bit like Christmas, as out dropped four shiny new books: Dramatic Shorts 1 and Dramatic Shorts 2 along with their accompanying resource books.

My first thoughts were that I loved the size of the Anthology of Plays books.  Perfect for holding to read from and act with without being bulky or too big, with the layout of the scripts, including font size, being superb for the page to stage! I appreciated the way in which each play is introduced with a brief outline and description of themes and content.

The scripts themselves are a perfect mix of relevant, topical and humorous, which I feel are best suited to senior primary, intermediate and junior secondary. I could see these used in a number of ways, including being short scripts to use when focusing on applying drama techniques or understanding drama elements, as they are easy to read whilst having some depth of content good for crosscurricular teaching with social studies or health.

The accompanying resource books are also fabulous with content that would be extremely helpful for new teachers or for those quick six- to ten-week taster programmes we often see in middle schools. They are again well laid out and user friendly. My only comment would be that I would have liked to have seen a bit more new content in the second resource book. 

Well done Susan and User Friendly for creating this new pack.  I would highly recommend these for teachers of drama to have in their toolbox of resources!