Since we started working on Lit in Colour, and before, I’d been deliberately reading around to update and diversify my reading of novels and poetry. But I wasn’t reading plays, and small children have kept me from going to the theatre as much as I once did (although I am going to get to see Six! by hook or by crook at some point!).

So over the last year, I set out on a deliberate project to read plays written in the last 20 years. And in doing so, I completely revitalised my understanding of what contemporary drama can do in the classroom for the teaching of English. Reading modern plays that I didn’t know, without the back up of extensive internet plot summaries, made me think about how the performance would shape the meaning, how the characters would interact, how a class could get up on their feet and literally play-make. It turns out there’s a wealth of brilliant contemporary plays, many of them written specifically for young people, which offer so much to the English classroom. When we read a modern play not only are we engaging students with material that opens up discussion of contemporary issues, we are also giving them much more accessible opportunities to understand the way that drama actually works. And that understanding is something which is key to their future study at Key Stage 4, whether that’s in An Inspector Calls or Leave Taking or ‘only’ in the form of Shakespeare.

By divorcing the dramatic form from the complications of language or from a play which is secured in agreed interpretations or debates, using a modern play at Key Stage 3 offers the opportunity to really explore how plays. Let’s take Cape by Inua Ellams as an example. The play deals with the question ‘who did it?’ and is set in the aftermath of Ama’s mugging. Her children Bruce and Tanya frame the play with a conversation during which, it becomes gradually apparent, the same incident is being retold, with different outcomes – and each time one of the other three characters breaks the fourth wall to object, until we come to the final, shocking truth. The ways in which time and point of view are used to structure the play throughout are highlighted (in ways that bear fruitful comparison to An Inspector Calls.) The clearly constructed nature of the drama helps young people to think of all plays as being created in the performance. The relationship between the repeated incident and the framing conversation takes us so far from realism – while the dialogue remains real – that it makes it much easier to discuss how the play is achieving its effects. That idea of the construction of the play – the artifice, if you like – can then be carried over into study of older plays which sometimes seem less open to having their engine thoroughly looked over.

As well as Cape some of my other favourites from the last year are Tanika Gupta’s The Last Empress (which is on Edexcel’s GCSE spec but would work really well in Year 9 if you aren’t an Edexcel school) and Tonderai Munyevu’s The Moors. The Moors needs a mature class but it would work exceptionally well if you are already teaching Othello in Year 9, as it riffs and plays with Shakespearean convention.

So if I’ve convinced you, think about some deliberate summer reading. Plays are quick to read but they make you think. Ideal for the busy English teacher on the move!

Diversify your curriculum with our Lit in Colour (In)Complete List of Recommended Plays to explore in the classroom.