RSC launches Shine - a national celebration of talent in young people
29 June 2008
174 young people from nine primary and secondary schools across the country are bringing their own devised performances inspired by Shakespeare's plays to the Royal Shakespeare Company's Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on Monday 30 June.
Hosting the celebration is comedian and television presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli. Joining him throughout the day will be the RSC's Artistic Director Michael Boyd and members of the RSC's acting ensemble including Michelle Gomez.
Jacqui O'Hanlon, the RSC's Acting Director of Education said:
‘We are delighted that our Regional Schools Celebration is helping to launch Shine - a national celebration of all the talent in all young people. Shine week celebrates a wide range of activities that are happening all year round in schools around the country but which often go unnoticed.
'Today we are welcoming schools from nine different regions to perform on The Courtyard Theatre stage. We have worked with these teachers and students for the last two years, and I know that they are both thrilled and scared in equal measure at the prospect of performing their work on a professional stage. However, Shine week isn't just about performance. There are a host of activities happening around the country from drama and dance to filmmaking and cooking - and everything in between. It's great to be part of a week long event that shines a light on a whole range of talents of that young people have.'
The schools performing in the celebration on 30 June are:
Queens Park Primary School, West Kilburn, London
Performing Julius Caesar (10.15am - 10.45am).
Fred Longworth School, Atherton, Manchester
Performing Henry V - In Love and War (10.45am - 11.15am)
Churchill Gardens, Primary School, Westminster, London
Performing Romeo and Juliet - Friendship Never Dies (11.15am - 11.45am)
Milton Abbot Primary School, Devon
Performing Mr Mac and the Ruler Army (11.45am - 12.15pm)
Fred Nicholson School, Norfolk
Performing Supernatural in Shakespeare (12.15pm - 12.45pm)
Hoyland Primary School, Barnsley
Performing Macbeth (2pm - 2.30pm)
St Robert of Newminster Comprehensive School, Washington, Tyne & Wear
Performing King Lear (2.30pm - 3pm)
Abbotsfield Boys School, Hillingdon, Middlesex
Performing Is it Really Worth it? Based on Romeo and Juliet (3pm - 3.30pm)
Icknield Community College, Oxfordshire
Performing Shakespeare's Fools (3.30pm - 4pm).
All nine schools are part of the RSC's Learning and Performance Network which promotes and supports creative approaches to the teaching, learning and performance of Shakespeare's plays through a network of primary and secondary schools across England.
The Network currently consists of 157 Primary Schools, 87 Secondary Schools, 6 Special Schools and 2 Pupils Reintegration Units. The RSC estimates that 65,000 students have benefitted from the Learning and Performance Network to date and that by August 2010 approximately 150,000 students and over 7,000 teachers will have benefited from the scheme.
The RSC has recently launched Stand up for Shakespeare, a manifesto for Shakespeare in schools. We believe that children and young people have the best possible experience of Shakespeare when they: do it on their feet, see it live and start it earlier. The Learning and Performance Network schools are the manifesto in action.
Stratford-upon-Avon based NFU Mutual is supporting the RSC's Learning and Performance Network in the role of Rural Communities Partner, specifically supporting Milton Abbot Primary School, Devon, Fred Nicolson Special School in Norfolk and Icknield Secondary School in Oxfordshire.
If you would like to attend the celebration or need further information or photographs please contact Nada Zakula on 01789 412622 or nada.zakula@rsc.org.uk
Notes to Editors:
More information on productions and partipating schools:
Queen's Park Primary School - Julius Caesar
At Queen's Park we have now been working closely with the RSC for two years, which has been exciting and inspiring throughout, yet the performance project this year has undoubtedly been the highlight. It has taken the children and staff to new heights by demanding perseverance, creativity and discipline alike, supported by excellent drama and direction from RSC practitioners Rebecca Gould and Gemma Fairlie.
It was clear from the beginning of our work on Julius Caesar that the crowd plays a pivotal part in the play as it is easily swayed by the returning hero, Caesar, as well as Brutus and finally Marc Antony. The crowd's reactions had to be developed and choreographed, which meant very close teamwork. Children almost inevitably want a main part, so it was a steep learning curve to accept that the effect of the whole is more important than the individual.
The children themselves played a big part in developing the performance, working on it for nearly three months, giving time for a completely different level of experimentation. This was a new experience for them as they could see just how much you could do with Shakespeare's plays, how varied and exciting they could be. The children are very clear that they have learned a great deal from the experience. Almost all say that they have grown in confidence. Jin says she has learned to, ‘Get in the mind of a character.' They all agree that they have learned to work well together.
Fred Longworth Performing Arts College - Henry V - In Love and War
Our brief was to create a piece of drama based on a Shakespeare play dealing with the theme of arranged marriage. Romeo and Juliet? A Midsummer Night's Dream? The Taming of the Shrew? We considered these and many more before deciding to take a different slant and look at an arranged royal marriage, using Henry V.
Our first step was to cut out all characters and scenes with no bearing on the theme of Henry's marriage to Katharine. Next, we added some parent-child dialogue and some symbolism to try to highlight Katharine's predicament and tried to modernise the "wooing scene" a little.
The best thing about this whole enterprise for me has been to see the students' appreciation of Shakespeare's language growing and to see them beginning to relish the sounds and the sense of the words, and then to watch them discover within themselves the ability to communicate this verbal magic through their own voices and movements. The highlights for the students would, I guess, be: a) being chosen to perform at Stratford, and b) working with tall, handsome, erudite Chris White from the RSC.
It has been a wonderful project to work on and we're all terrifically proud of what we've achieved. This is something very special that none of us will ever forget. Ask these teenagers in forty years' time what was the highlight of their school career and I bet I know what the answer will be.
Churchill Gardens Community Primary School - Friendship Never Dies
Churchill Gardens is a mainstream primary school with provision for children with speech and language difficulties. The children who worked on the Shakespeare project are a mixed group of children from one of our mainstream year 6 classes and children from our year 5/6 Language Class. Fourteen of the children have statements of special educational need and 79% of the group are on the school's special educational needs profile.
Our aims when planning the project were to introduce the children to the story and themes of Romeo & Juliet in a way which would be accessible and relevant to all children. To facilitate this, the project has been approached exclusively from a practical context.
The final performance was created by interspersing simplified scenes from the original play with additional scenes improvised by the children to explain in their own words the contrasting relationships and emotions of Benvolio and Tybalt. With direction from RSC practitioners, teachers and the children themselves, we fine-tuned the movement and structure of our performance to create a piece which mingles Shakespeare with the children's own ideas and words in a way which we hope is familiar and yet also unique and new.
‘I learnt how to act in front of people. I got the guts to do it and it made me feel happy and pleased.' Karima Oulihem, Year 5 Language Class
Milton Abbot Primary School - Mr Mac and the Ruler Army.
We studied three supernatural plays Midsummer's Night Dream, the Tempest and Macbeth. We split into groups to come up with different ideas for different plays. We decided to choose Macbeth, set in a school, changing the main character into teachers. We adapted the play and wrote the script combining modern language with original Shakespearean text. We practised with a member of the RSC, Chris White, who came and helped us polish our performance
After weeks of practise we performed it at The Wharf in Tavistock with our parents watching. After a tense wait we found out that we had been chosen to take part in the Regional Schools Celebration in Stratford Upon Avon. This was a great surprise because we weren't sure if we had performed well enough to perform again in Stratford. We were very happy when we got the phone. We are looking forward very much to seeing the other schools` performances as we know they have worked on different plays to us. We are sure they will be excellent. We hope you enjoy our play!
By Katie Stephens, Jasmine Cherrington, Hope Clarkson and Georgia Cousins, Year 6
Working with the RSC on this project has been tremendously exciting, although a little daunting. The children have gained enormously in confidence from performing at such a high level and working with professional directors. They have very much enjoyed exploring the characters and plots of the plays and the Shakespearean language has never been an issue for them. Needless to say, the plot of our play in no way reflects educational practice in our school!!!
Fred Nicholson School - Supernatural in Shakespeare.
Our cast, made up of Year 9 and Year 10 boys, experience a wide range of complex learning needs. The overarching theme within our network of schools was the ‘Supernatural in Shakespeare'; our starting point came from a seed of an idea concerned with issues of bullying, a pertinent topic in any school. The boys wanted an upbeat, contemporary take on the story and came up with the idea of staging their play within the context of a morning chat show; from this point their ideas took off.
As a complete novice to drama I am indebted to Chris White of the RSC for the skills, enthusiasm, support and patience he brought along to the workshops we enjoyed so much. He taught me how to move ideas from the ridiculous to the manageable, with tact! He gave the boys courage to try, to have a go, which produced confident young men who recognise, perhaps for the first time in their school career, that they have something to offer, that they can achieve as well as the next man.
This has been a highly enriching experience for us all. Whilst we may well have got their eventually ourselves, working with the RSC has given us a very real focus, a context to work with, which has both inspired and supported us to reach new and dizzying heights.
Hoyland Common Primary School - Macbeth
Through the use of various drama techniques including role play, hot seating and conscience alley the children explored character and the relationships within the play. From this the children created their own very personal view of Macbeth and so developed the play which they are going to perform today.
The children chose four major points during the play which they thought examined the supernatural. These were the witches meeting Macbeth on the heath, Macbeth seeing the invisible dagger, the ghosts predicting the future and finally the fateful prophesies coming true.
Everything you see has been devised, created and moulded by a mixed Y5/6 class of primary school children. Their ideas and words have joined those of Shakespeare to create a very dark thought provoking version of the play. This production is not for the faint hearted. It is loud and in your face. It grabs your attention and wants you to be part of the rollercoaster ride that Macbeth experiences.
"I think it is fantastic when the ghosts circle Macbeth and tell him the future. I also enjoyed when Steve came from the RSC and played lots of games with us and helped us work on our characters". - Aron Sanger
As the Y6 children move onto secondary school they take with them a love of the bard and performance in general. The Y5 children can't wait to do it all over again next year! Cross fingers!
St Robert of Newminster School RC Comprehensive School - King Lear
King Lear is a darkly disturbing tragedy which deals with complex, taboo and challenging issues - rendering it a perfect basis for an original work. Using these themes, we endeavoured to produce a piece which would highlight how the contemporary issues faced by Shakespeare's sixteenth-century characters transcend time and are relevant to an audience today.
Collectively we decided to concentrate on Edmund as a character, and the chain of events which leads him to horrific action in. Edmund's monologue in Act one provided an excellent basis for the study of his deteriorating psychological state and a starting point for the reasons behind his actions. Edmund - young and rebellious - slotted into place in an Urban Punk setting, the format of which gave us a social context for our play.
We dissected Edmund's soliloquy, choosing particularly powerful phrases to construct short scenes. In workshop with Steve Marmion we developed these into more concise and effective scenes which - we felt - showed the evolvement of Edmund's jealousy and hostility
In the final stages of rehearsal, we revised the transitions between each scene, accounting for the passage in time in Edmund's life. We also made a conscious effort not to rehearse the final climactic party scene too much, to keep an air of spontaneity. As a group we found this method of devising allowed us to find an underlying meaning and provided us with a brilliant foundation on which to build our piece.
Abbotsfield School for Boys - Is it really worth it?
As we enter a city called Uxbridge, we meet two stereotypical teenage groups: Montague's and the Capulet's? Emo's and Chav's? Does it really matter who they are?
Eleven boys from Abbotsfield School bring to you a battle that many teenagers go through; a battle of social groups, a battle of love, a battle of territory. Tears will be shed, Blood will be drawn. Lives will be lost.
We are in a city called Uxbridge where we find out if division because of identity is really worth it.
The boys wanted to produce a performance that young people could relate to. They thought about aspects of the plays that reflect on their own lives and that is where the idea for "Is it really worth it?" came from.
They explored their idea further with the help of RSC practitioner, Gemma Fairlie. She helped the boys to grasp their idea, believe in it and work with it. She highlighted specific scenes for them to interpret and gave them good background knowledge of the characters.
As an NQT teacher at the school she helped me to explore our ideas in various ways; she encouraged me to step out of the teacher's box and into the director's box. I had the ideas and she helped me to tap into them adding a creative flair to the piece.
All of the workshops I have attended through this programme have enabled the boys and I to embrace more of Shakespeare's talents. After seeing the performance, it is an experience that many of the other boys within our school now want: - "We want to study Shakespeare in drama"……. "We want to go to Stratford"…….."How come they get to do it?"
Icknield Community College - Shakespeare's Fools.
In mid February, my drama class-mates and I started to devise our performance for the RSC's Regional Schools Festival; we had been given the title ‘Shakespeare's fools' as a starting point for our piece. We divided ourselves into two groups of seven and started to get to work. One group decided to set there play in Shakespearian times and the plot is about Shakespeare's own life, and how fools influenced him in writing his plays.
During our time working towards our performance we have had many days of working with some of the extremely talented actors and directors from the company. The RSC helped us with our presentation, projection and overall performance. They did several exercises with us to help our confidence, and just gave us general tips; they taught us some exercises about status and the use of props. On another occasion they went over our whole play, giving us advice and helping us with spatial awareness, and checking our entrances and exits. I believe that working with Royal Shakespeare Company has been massively beneficial to us as performers.
By Alex Perkins, Year 10
It has been a twelve month journey to get to this point and I have been very fortunate to work with some extremely talented people along the way. The RSC staff, colleagues from other schools, but most importantly a very dedicated, creative and exciting group of students. I would like to thank all of these people for making this such a fantastic experience.
