Let’s foster a love of Shakespeare for all learners
Our bespoke workshops are carefully curated to support learners in their English Literature or Drama studies at GSCE and A-Level.
GCSE English Literature
We aim to support GSCE students in understanding and analysing Shakespeare’s plays ahead of their exams. Our main objectives are:
- To give learners a clear experience of reading the plays and performing the characters as Shakespeare’s actors would have done.
- To help learners recognise their full potential by giving them research tools and confidence in their research skills.
- To outline characters’ personalities and motivations with clues from the text and context.
- To provide additional historical context around the writing and staging of the plays and the impact on the audience of the day.
- To get to grips with finding literacy clues and evidence within the text to back up exam answers and support arguments.
- To ensure that all learners feel an ownership of the plays and encourage new perspectives on staging and reading Shakespeare’s works.
GSCE Drama and Performing Arts
Our workshops for GCSE students can focus on a Shakespeare, Classical or Modern playscript, depending on your learners’ needs or preferences. Our workshops aim:
- To introduce learners to professional play rehearsals and practices including warm ups, text analysis, direction and performance.
- To build confidence in performing and taking ownership of their acting and devising choices.
- To encourage creative decisions to stage scenes in new ways and bringing a new perspective to more traditional stagings of scenes.
- To support both performance and design learners in finding clues and evidence in the text to use in their artistic intention outline.
- To explore how performances create meaning through analysis and performance of the text, cultural context, use of performance space, performance conventions, technical design and an actor’s interpretation of character.
A Level English Literature
Our workshops for A-Level learners focus on supporting the skills needed to analyse and interpret texts as well as building knowledge of historical and social context. Our workshop aims are:
- To support understanding and evaluation of Shakespeare’s use of language, structure and form.
- To explore how meaning is shaped through verse and prose.
- To explore historical and cultural contexts for Shakespeare’s audience and today’s theatregoers.
- To practice forming creative and personal opinions on the text while identifying appropriate extracts to back up their arguments and ideas.
- To ensure that learners feel ownership over the plays and encourage new perspectives on staging and interpreting Shakespeare’s works.
- To excite learners and inspire them to explore new ways of thinking about Shakespeare and his plays ahead of their final exams.
A Level Drama and Performing Arts
Introducing learners to professional theatre rehearsal room techniques and practices. We can offer two workshops for AS and A Level Drama or Performing Arts.
Option One
A full professional level rehearsal of a text of your choice, with the following aims:
- To introduce learners to a professional rehearsal room and the techniques used by actors, directors and designers to make a show come together.
- To lead a useful and insightful warm up that views the voice and body as tools for performance.
- To support individual creative choices when performing a character or designing a show, even when incorporating notes from a director.
- To hold a Q&A session on everything from Drama School and training choices to audition technique to producing a full scale show.
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Option Two
A workshop focussing on interpretation and evaluation of texts, which aims to:
- Explore contemporary theatre practices and the interpretation of texts onstage.
- Clarify roles in theatre and theatre production and how they collaborate when creating and staging new theatre shows.
- Support learners in examining texts and finding evidence within the text to justify their creative choices.
- Consolidate learning on form, structure and language and showcase how to incorporate these in performance and design decisions.
- Emphasise the importance of research and advise on how to select areas of interest and include relevant information in design and performance.