200 Themes for Devising Theatre with 11–18 Year Olds

Shortlisted for Outstanding Drama Education Resource at the 2025 Music & Drama Education Awards

A unique resource for drama teachers providing 200 stimuli and age-appropriate individual topics within those to help inspire and guide young people in devising performance. It contains useful information on devising techniques, workshops, schemes and lesson ideas for introducing devising and guidance on how to analyse the work and give feedback.

Following on from his successful book 200 Plays for GCSE and A-Level Performance, author Jason Hanlan has once again solved one of drama teachers' most frequently encountered problems: how to unlock the best devised performance with their students.

Devising as a group requires a level of collaboration, which—without a strong framework—often descends into wild flights of fancy and a myriad of dead ends. Excellent ideas can be lost or diluted in an often-awkward attempt to tie it all together to fit a narrative.

The main body of this book is a unique numbered listing of 200 stimuli, designed to both inspire and focus the mind, with an example of a possible topic and ‘ways in’ that would be suitable for each level:

"Civil rights"

• "Votes for women" (11 - 14 year olds)
• "Rosa Parks" (14-16 year olds)
• "The Disappeared" (16 - 18 year olds)

Each stimulus is given its own page dedicated to exploring its possibilities as a piece of devised theatre for different age groups, and offering suggestions for plays, films and books to look at; artefacts and images to examine; ideas to consider; and further research you can draw on.