FOREWORD
Drama is an integral part of education in prisons. Its huge appeal is that it involves the whole person. Educational drama offers opportunities for social and self-development, confidence-building and language development. Performances, of which there have been many over the years, are also great for confidence and team-work and are great fun. One of the earlier productions, "Fancy Footwork" by Miriam Gallagher, was produced in the Project Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. But the much less 'professional' plays and scenes put on in the various prisons for 'inside' audiences have also been of great benefit to those involved. Some of these have been devised by the students themselves. These productions involved integration of subject areas such as Art for set design, Woodwork for set construction, Video for recording the performance and Music. While attention is given to productions, drama is an on-going part of the prison curriculum and used on a daily basis as a teaching medium.
Play writing, like all areas of creative writing, is very popular in prison. Many plays have been entered for the P.J. O'Connor radio drama awards and there have been a few winners. The plays in this book are only a selection of those written over the years by students in prisons. Five of the six were written in Dublin prisons and one, "Private Abuse" by students in Loughan House, County Cavan. All were chosen for publication for two reasons.
Firstly, they were considered interesting for reading as scripts in their own right. Also, they were thought to offer possibilities for further drama work within classes. For this reason, each play comes with suggestions for improvisations and further development. Perhaps some of these texts will even stimulate the writing of more scripts, but I hope that at least they will be enjoyed by those who use them.
I would like to thank all the authors and the teachers who forwarded the scripts for publication. Many thanks also to Phyl Herbert and Helen Hunt for the work they did for this publication. They were the creative side of the enterprise, helping to choose the texts and writing the very important introductions and suggestions for further work.

Editor	Sproule, Bernadette