Welcome back and a Happy New Year to you!

So where to begin? 

Playwrighting - Internationally

2014 is going to be a very big year! We have our International Festival of Playwriting and Performance, which is even bigger and longer than our previous years. This is happening at St James Theatre in London from May 6th to May 10th. Find out more here. 

 The plays that are due to be performed are currently being read by our judging  panel and the winner will be announced at the beginning of February. I will of  course update you too in next months blog post!

Playwrongs?

So many students and even adults find the teaching of Shakespeare 'dull and difficult.' I often wonder why? I think back to my own schooling and feel fortunate that my English teacher was passion about Macbeth and The Tempest and all it left me thinking was why did this William man have such few words to choose from? Not, 'this is so boring and I don't understand.' I soon came to realise during my own teacher training (Secondary) that encouraging my teenagers to engage with Shakespeare was a real challenge due to the preconceived ideas they had!

It wasn't until I went to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's launch of Shakespeare Week that I appreciated just how crucial primary Shakespeare education is. I am delighted that Trinity College London are cultural supporters of the 2014 Shakespeare Week. 

With this year being William Shakespeare's 450th Birthday here at Trinity College London we are also running several events in celebration of him as well as supporting other cultural organisations! Currently we are reviewing our Shakespeare qualifications, finalising our Shakespeare specific workshops for our International Festival, shadowing projects with The Globe (see more below...) and working to support the 1,500 schools engaging in the Shakespeare Schools Festival this year to gain certification for their work.  

Education at the Globe

The team at The Globe Education Department are facilitating several projects with schools & teachers. Myself and the Head of Drama & Performance here at Trinity have been out and about observing these projects. During this month's blog I am going to talk about this one...

'Our Theatre'

The  project is a celebration of the creativity and achievements of Southwark students and teachers  and is free to all participating schools. Each school works with a Globe Education Practitioner over fifteen weeks  across two school terms to devise and rehearse a scene selected in  consultation with their class teacher.

To celebrate the life and work of Shakespeare the schools  are  doing this though an  exploration of the ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech from ‘As You Like It’:

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

The 6 schools and the Globe's youth theatre will perform on the Globe stage at the end of February. As an observer of this project I have been to two of the schools that are taking part. Before Christmas I travelled to St. Saviours & St. Olave's Girls school to watch them working on the 'Childhood' stage of man, they were exploring this through the princesses theme in Richard III. It was really nice for me to observe young people engaged in their work and not having to do a teacher or student lesson observation like the last time I observed a lesson - looking at learning in a different way is quite liberating! It was pleasing to find out that these girls had 'applied' to their teacher to take part this project and were doing so after school in their own time. Even more pleasing, some of these girls were engaging in this project out of pure enjoyment and love for Drama beyond the classroom.

Just this week I went to observe at Tuke School. This exceptional SEN school was being led by an inspiring practioner and their dedicated teacher and specialist support assistants. They were working on Henry VIII Act V. Scene IV exploring infancy as their stage of man. The work that these students were doing was quite mesmerising! They were clapping out the syllables of the lines, certainly there was no 'playwrong' in Shakespeare creation of Iambicpentameter here it was helping these students, there was no boredom or confusion within this class, they were breaking down dialogue using the very rhythmical pattern Shakespeare had created. The still images they created representing the archetypes within the story was quite magical to watch unfold. The students in this group were breaking down the so-called 'barriers' of Shakespeare's language with severe disabilities ranging from Global delay to ODD and Autism. This project just showed me that there is no 'Playwrong' in Shakespeare's playwriting - simply a lack of wanting to 'play more.' I can't wait to see these students perform again at the "Our Theatre" performance next month.

Until next month,

Holly