Engaging Shakespeare for Y1-8 PD...

Today Kiri and I attended the Engaging Shakespeare for Y1-8 PD at the Pop Up Globe theatre. The course was run by Rita Stone who took us through a variety of ways we can introduce Shakespeare to a younger audience.

We began with a behind the scenes tour of the theatre which was really interesting. We walked through the 'rat run' and made our way to the stage. This was a perfect opportunity for us to learn about the 4th wall, a theatrical term for the imaginary “wall” that exists between actors on stage and the audience. From there we moved up the stairs to the 'Romeo and Juliet' balcony, and yes we all tried to find Romeo! We then climbed another set of stairs to find out how the sound effects are created. This was a lot of fun as this was very much a hands on experience.

                                      

                                   Thunder                                    Rain                                              Wind      

After exploring the space we would be working in the practical sessions began. Using the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream we learnt how to move and speak in ways they would have. The challenge was to not only stay in character, incorporate dialogue and use gestures, but also to remember to make use of the whole stage. Easier said than done when you are completely out of your comfort zone! This activity taught us about freeze frames and travelling. We then moved onto an activity called 'Silent Movies'. This required us to choose five words from a scene, create a frozen image for each word, select a move genre and add music. Once these performances had been shared they were all put together using the entire section of the scene. 

After lunch we were introduced to Romeo and Juliet, through my favourite activity of the day. Our challenge was to write a five sentence story that tells the story of two families who loathe each other and the two children who fall in love. This was a fantastic activity to practise summarising and could be used across all curriculum areas. After sharing our stories we were challenged to turn each of our five sentences into ten syllable sentences. I loved this! I noticed that I was collaborating and negotiating as my partner and I trialed, tested, adapted and changed our sentence structure and vocabulary choices. 

                                                5 sentences                             10 syllable sentences

We were then introduced to the 'Shaboom' rhythm. This helped us to understand how Shakespeare used iambs, trochees, spondees and pyrrich feet to show the actors which syllables to emphasise when delivering their dialogues. Using the symbols / - helped us make sense of this before we moved onto reading a sonnet and unpacking the rhyming structure within it.

We then explored the tactics of demanding, pleading and rejecting in pairs using only the words 'yes' and 'no' as our dialogue. Again we were challenged to stay in character, incorporate dialogue, use gestures and make use of the whole stage. This was a great introduction to our final performance of reading and acting out a scene from Romeo and Juliet on stage at the Pop Up Globe!