DAVID HORNBROOK has usefully helped us to ‘look back to the future’. He ends with a claim that drama teaching should be about ‘the making of meanings’ and ‘providing satisfactory interpretive structures’. That it should! And David H. leads by example, for he has ‘satisfactorily’ interpreted the short history of drama in education to support his argument. Nothing wrong with that, and he is more honest than most drama teachers. However, I fear they will ‘interpret’ much of his piece to suit their own ends – namely the continued development of drama syllabuses for examination.

If theatre-in-education achieved its impact by taking theatre to the young in the 'seventies, then the developing youth theatre movement might be seen as part of the reaction to that initiative in the 'eighties. Here Keith Gallasch, artistic director of the State Theatre Company in South Australia, himself a writer, recalls his first involvement with youth theatre, and goes on to sketch some of its dilemmas and prospects.

DAVID HORNBROOK'S intelligent and lucid account of the problems which have beset the drama in education community during the last thirty years has a compelling look to it. In Part One of ‘Drama, Education and the Politics of Change’ (NTQ 4), the historical analysis is astute and the questions posed at the end are important and pressing ones. I should lik, however, to confine my own obsrevations to the issues raised in Part Two of the paper (NTQ 5), where of offers specific proposals for future developments, because it is here that the argument falters.

Despite the successful production of Ödön von Horvath's Tales from the Vienna Woods, in the translation by Christopher Hampton at the National Theatre in 1977. the work of this inter-war contemporary of Brecht's remains little known in the English-speaking theatre. James L. Rosenberg. Professor of Drama at Carnegie-Mellon University. Pittsburgh, is himself a professional playwright who has translated some of Horvath's work previously unavailable in English. In an illuminating biographical and critical introduction to this checklist, he both outlines the reasons for our ignorance of Horvath, and suggests aspects of his undervalued importance. The subsequent checklist provides a succinct outline of the original productions of Horvath's plays and of the publication of his novels, plus a selective guide to available critical writing in English and German.

As in most English-speaking nations, the success or otherwise of a production in Australia is heavily dependent upon its critical reception: yet, argues Michael Morley, much Australian reviewing is both ill-equipped and ill-informed for such a responsibility. Michael Morley is himself currently theatre critic of The National Times, and has also written for The Advertiser, Theatre Australia, and the Sydney Morning Herald. A Brecht-Weill scholar, who has worked as musical director on a number of productions in Sydney and Adelaide, Michael Morley is Professor of Drama at Flinders University in South Australia.

DAVID HORNBROOK'S articles in New Theatre Quarterly are a timely and significant contribution to the debate on drama in schools. They articulate a persuasive critique of the ‘progressive’ roots of educational drama, raise important questions about where drama should be placed in the curriculum, and rightly stress the need for teachers to define clearly the content of their discipline.

BASED ON A critique of the progressive North-East orthodoxy, David Hornbrook has made an excellent contribution to the debate on the future of schools' drama. His is an eloquent and lucid case for an alternative direction that should be read by all drama teachers and advisers. Yet there are problems with his proposals, which need to be rescored in the light of the very worrying trends in state education that he correctly identifies.