Playwright and Fair City scriptwriter Clare Dowling and theatre producer and editor Caroline Williams knew there was a need for Class Acts, their book of 30 original Irish playlets for teenagers aged 13 to 17, which will be published next week.

"I was at a drama in education conference in Cork recently," says Williams, "and I met all sorts of teachers who very much wanted to use drama in their classes. There's a particularly strong demand from teachers who've been assigned Transition Year classes. But up until now, there's only been a few American, some Australian books."

And so Class Acts was born: it is a collection of 30 short monologues for boys and girls intended to spark classroom discussion and creative improvisation. It is both serious and fun, covering subjects like a parent's alcoholism, bullying and eating disorders to topics like holiday romance and "Er, Um, Sex" (the title of one monologue). At the end of each monologue, the authors provide points for discussion, and suggestions for improvisation, so a class can explore issues further.

Dowling and Williams expect it will appeal to teachers in both junior and senior cycles, and agree it could be used by RSE teachers, English teachers and more - but expect that those in charge of Transition Year will find it particularly useful.

For using drama in education - both in classrooms and youth groups - is an idea whose time seems certainly to have come in Ireland. The potency and immediacy of drama to bring issues alive makes it a powerful way of helping teenagers explore issues that concern them.

Testing their monologues on teenagers as they were writing them, Dowling and Williams discovered that teenagers liked the strong stuff best. "It reflected the intensity of their lives," thinks Caroline. Indeed, the book carries a warning from its authors about using tact when raising issues that some teens in the group might actually be living through.

The book could also, of course, be useful for youth drama groups, but that is a side-effect - the authors want a very wide audience. Playwright Dermot Bolger, in his introduction to the book, salutes the authors for "burrowing so deeply and perceptively into the joys, anxieties and confusions of modern teenage life . . . these 30 sharp, short and punchy playlets do just that."

Class Acts is published by New Island Books at £6.99. It will be in bookshops from May 18th.