CONTRIBUTORS Getting a play on its feet
Our regular contributor and education journalist Sal McKeown shares how the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Associate Schools Programme is transforming the way children experience Shakespeare.
For most adults, their memory of studying Shakespeare at school consists of sitting in a classroom, discussing characters, dissecting metaphors and similes, trying to second guess what the Bard meant and why some passages, full of incomprehensible words, had the groundlings roaring with laughter. Compare this with the experience in schools that are part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Associate Schools Programme. Here children from the nursery upwards develop a physical understanding of the play. They reenact
the exciting stories: the shipwreck in Twelfth Night, the war in Julius Caesar, a dispute in the fairy kingdom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They start with the action, emotions and atmosphere. The words become part of a process, instead of being the beginning and the end.
Not just taking a play to the provinces
Current figures show that only 12% of children attended a musical or performing arts event with their school last year. 1 in 4 children don’t participate in any enrichment outside of school and that rises to more than 1 in 3 in the poorest households. Over the last 20 years, the Royal Shakespeare Company has been redressing the balance. Back in 2006, they developed the first long term partnerships with schools around the country. This was known as The Learning Performance Network. Their members went into schools and worked alongside teachers, seeing at first hand the constraints in education. They brought many rehearsal room techniques into classrooms, lifting the plays off the page and turning them into something approaching a performance.
In 2016, this evolved into the Associate Schools Programme, a nationwide scheme bringing together primary, secondary, SEND schools, and further education colleges. Every cluster works with the RSC and half of the schools are now linked to a regional theatre. The schools get training, education materials, artists in residence and the chance to take part in Playmaker festivals, both regional and national. In fact, schools get a whole lot more. They get learners with a more expansive vocabulary, higher level writing skills, more confidence and a sense that they matter. They produce young people who can see that the arts have something to offer, and are for everyone, not just an elite.
At the recent RSC Symposium ‘Building Partnerships: A 20-Year Story’, we heard from Sayana Backer, currently a student in Manchester. She was a pupil at a primary school in Northampton when she had her first taste of Shakespeare. ‘Using the RSC techniques, taking the text from something that was archaic, which was on a piece of paper to something that was staged helped me to understand the context and properly engage with it.’ Sayana went on to join Silhouette Youth Theatre in Northampton and is now a member of the RSC Youth Advisory Board. Just as importantly, the RSC experience changed her. ‘I had recently moved to the school. It turned me from a person who was quiet in the classroom but loud at home, to a person who could put myself forward for experiences like that and flourish. I came out of my shell.’
The rehearsal room techniques
Fiona Ingram, Head of Creative Learning and Engagement at the RSC, explained some of the details of the rehearsal room approach. ‘Actors understand that it’s a play to be performed and interpreted, not recited.’ For Macbeth, they might look at the dagger speech for just a few seconds
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and see the words that jump off the page. Every actor will respond differently. Some might see ‘Heat oppressed’ and ‘sleep’; others ‘wolf’ and ‘ravishing strides’. Their choices will influence their movements. Try whispering the words and it feels conspiratorial, try shouting them and it feels angry. Choices are the basis of creating a performance. There is no one correct interpretation.
Punctuation can help actors interpret a text. Fiona recommended reading a text aloud while walking but stopping for each comma and turning for each full stop. Let the movement reflect the pace of the text.
Using the approach in schools
Jill Rezzano is Head of Education at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle- under-Lyme and has worked with staff at Springhead Primary School. The whole school might do the same play but the approach will be appropriate for each group. Perhaps classes focus on different scenes or go for a novel approach. Children in nursery experienced Twelfth Night through songs; higher up the school, a group might create a musical. A Midsummer Night’s Dream provides a focus on fairies in nursery but it also lent itself to a forest school activity. ‘We sat around the campfire,’ said Jill. ‘We had someone playing Helena, someone playing Hermia and they were arguing. It was as if we were spying on them but we were also singing at the campfire.’ Inside the school they brought out the physicality of the play: ‘We had children playing with gym equipment but saying the lines as they skipped in their hoops or walked along their balance beams.’ The school rounded off the year by staging a themed Midsummer Fayre for parents and their families. This featured Topple the Fairies (skittles), Help Bottom Find His Ears (Pin the Tail on the Donkey), Hook a Heart (a variation on Hook a Duck) while Hoopla became Puck’s Potion Toss. Children will remember A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the rest of their lives because they experienced it, instead of just reading a text.
To find out more, visit: u
rsc.org.uk/learn/building-partnerships
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