ABSTRACT
Drama, to quote the words of Raymond Williams again, moves ‘beyond myth to dramatic versions of myth’. In proposing a historical relationship between drama and myth where drama interrogates, revises and renews the moral values within the myth, I analysed Wertenbaker’s play principally to illustrate how this relationship is still vigorous in contemporary theatre rather than to propound her particular feminist vision. It is evident that Wertenbaker sees that the form of drama is as crucial to its moral purpose as is its content and that this form should aim to empower rather than to indulge its audience emotionally. I will now argue that, if fairy stories are to undergo a similar process of moral exploration in the classroom, then the form of drama we use for this purpose is crucial to the project; and that this form should be dialogical in nature, harnessing the performative characterisitics of the oral tradition from which the tales originate but enhancing them to become participatory in nature. Such a form of drama, in fact, as exists within the current traditions of drama in education.
