Book excerpt: Nelson Drama for Secondary Schools is a complete guide to acting for all Year 9 and 10 students of Drama in Australia. The vibrant and lively text will demonstrate to students how they can excel, while revealing how rewarding and fun Drama is to study. It takes students through important skill of building, performing and evaluation and looks at the process for developing playbuilding from stimulus and various forms of acting skills and styles. It introduces students to analysis techniques in approaching a script or improvised performance and covers the rehearsal process from various view points a that of an actor, a director, and an individual. It covers all key theatre production skills and offers practical examples, like how to combine these production skills to a finished, final performance. The text also analyses the need for evaluation of performance and the skills required to evaluate successfully.