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"I have experienced Maggie Hulson's work at first-hand through national drama conferences and at second-hand through articles written by her about her practice. She has never shied away from examining difficult contemporary phenomena with children and she has been brave enough to share her thoughts about how to do this with other children.

I have been aware of this especially in the l... More

"I have experienced Maggie Hulson's work at first-hand through national drama conferences and at second-hand through articles written by her about her practice. She has never shied away from examining difficult contemporary phenomena with children and she has been brave enough to share her thoughts about how to do this with other children.

I have been aware of this especially in the last 15 years when there have been so many shocking challenges to our understanding of what it means to be human: war, barbarism, the violent displacement of people all around the globe, the shocking disturbances to be found in many young people in this country. It can sometimes seem as if the whole thing is out of control.

I have been particularly drawn by work where she has used Greek myths to explore contemporary events. When she does this, she always begins by creating a context where we can be aware of the material circumstances of a different place, time and people. Because she uses Greek myths, the question of the extent to which our future lies within our control is there in the background from the start. I have heard her work described as `easeful', because of her skill in finding the roles, situations and tensions which will cause us to bring the background into the foreground. In other words, whilst operating (playing) within a fiction, we are faced with the enormous questions that children face: Why do we live as we do? What does it mean? Could things be different? Facing these questions in a skilfully constructed fiction allows us as teachers - with children - to understand how to pose these questions in real life.

Maggie Hulson's work represents the best that the association has achieved in these difficult years and every school would benefit from their wider dissemination." - Tony Grady, who was on the National Executive Committee for the National Association for the Teaching of Drama (NATD) in the U.K. As a former chair of both that committee and that of "The Journal", he had a profound affect on both the policies and the direction of NATD, and a marked impact on Drama teachers and practitioners, not only across the U.K. but around the world. He was a founding member of the International Association fro Drama and Theatre, and, at the time of his death in 2003, he was a lecturer at Newman College, Birmingham, England.

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