Drama teachers to learn from the best
Budding actors and actresses from across Warwickshire are being given the chance to perform in the same event as some of the world's leading stage performers, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) Complete Works Festival.
Performing their own takes on Shakespeare’s plays, schoolchildren from Warwickshire will present their own Mini Complete Works Festival as part of a joint venture between Warwickshire County Council’s Arts Zone and the RSC.
The Mini Complete Works Festival will take place between 26 and 30 June and 10th and 11th July in The Dell – the RSC’s new open air theatre, alongside the River Avon.
‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, ‘Julius Caesar’ and ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ with Patrick Stewart and Harriet Walter, will also be playing that week as part of the main festival line-up.
To kick start the process, between 20 and 31 March, over 200 teachers will attend a Shakespeare stimulus day at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
English and drama teachers from almost every school in the county will work with professionals from the RSC Learning Department in a series of workshops looking at the themes, structure and staging of Shakespeare’s plays. The teachers will then take what they learn back to the classroom to develop their students’ own responses to some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays.
Rex Pogson, director of Arts Zone, said: “Warwickshire schools are benefitting from the partnership that we have forged with the RSC to take advantage of having one of the best theatres in the world on its doorstep.
"This is a fantastic opportunity for teachers to get training from the very best, and to use that experience to bring Shakespeare to the children of Warwickshire. We have run drama initiatives in the county before but never has there been such an enthusiastic take-up.“
Fiona Ingram, Head of Education at RSC, said: “The Complete Works Festival is a celebration of the interpretation of Shakespeare world-wide and to engage young people in this way and heighten their connection to and appreciation of Shakespeare is one of the aspirations of the RSC.
"Once the students have engaged with the language they create a performance that reflects what the play means to them so the Mini Complete Works is likely to be as illuminating as it is entertaining.”