We offer play-making and poetry workshops that help to develop literacy and oracy skills through a physical and collaborative process.
We also create plays-in-day with whole classes (sometimes the year-group) to reinforce particular curriculum areas.
A one or two hour-long workshop that helps pupils find and sustain the drama in a situation; develops their understanding of the physical and visual aspects of theatre-making and leaves them with a model for creating their own scripts.
For older children this will be reinforcing their understanding of dramatic elements, developing character and narrative and using cliff-hangers.
We also provide customised workshops that respond to a particular brief - given time to prepare!
This hour-long workshop explores a variety of ways of playing with words and bringing poetry alive in front of an audience in order to develops an understanding of why certain kinds of poetic writing particularly lend themselves to performance.
We help children to develop their enjoyment of words and their confidence in delivering them as we play with rhyme, rhythm, repetition and sound.
A custom built play-making workshop day around a topic/theme of your choice that helps knit together a number of learning objectives in a dynamic and memorable way.
We start with three simple questions:
examples and feedback...
We have worked regularly with a number of different year groups at New Bradwell (from years 2–6) making up a play together around their current topic/theme eg water, Easter, dinosaurs, dark and light, the Titanic and The Greeks – to name but a few! At the end of the day parents/grown-ups are invited along to see what we’ve created. The work we do also sometimes acts as a stimulus for further creative writing for the classes.
“The purpose of the workshop was to provide opportunities for the children to improve their confidence in speaking, listening and performing in front of an audience. All the activities were excellent – involving all the children and pitched at exactly the right level. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience – it absolutely fulfilled our expectations.”
The headteacher asked us to work with a challenging group of year 5 children who had not ‘gelled’ as a class and had low self -esteem issues. Over the course of 2 days we worked through a number of team-building exercises around the subject area of the Greek myth Theseus and the Minotaur. Working as a whole group we shared ways of re-telling the story trying to capture both its drama and the viewpoints of other characters in the story. In this way we established a way of looking at issues from all sides and, in sharing our finished version with the rest of school at the end of the two days, the class were hugely and rightly proud of their joint achievement.
“The structure of the workshop was such that all children and their ideas were used in the performance. The children felt valued and were able to take ownership of the piece. In addition, there were activities that allowed the children to enhance their levels of speaking and listening and extend their use of imagery. An emphasis was placed on working collaboratively; allowing children to discuss ideas, respond to each other and in some instances use controlled movement to construct stage props such as a tunnel, and a ship. Activities were used in the initial stages which were then built upon and fed into the performance. A great two days!”
The head-teacher asked us to use the environment around the school to explore stories about Giants with their children. Over the course of a day we used different environments to tell a number of Giant stories to 4 different classes. The classes then found ways within that environment to animate that story. At the end of the day the school came to together and the stories were shared.
Skills used: listening, sharing ideas, imaginative response to the environment, re-telling of a story though participating with other.
“The workshops were tailor made to fit with our curriculum. The sessions provided fantastic opportunities for whole class collaborative participation which teachers can now develop and extend. Each session was appropriately challenging and enjoyable for the different age ranges and produced an outcome that was shared with an audience. Using the outside environment allowed children to be creative, uninhibited and use space in a different way. The stories captivated the children and Bill and Gill facilitated great outcomes with the children in a short time.”
We offer a range of theatre-skills workshops for secondary schools and colleges that include physical theatre, devising, vocal work and approaches to acting centred around Stanislavski, Brecht and Artaud.
Stanislavski, Brecht, Artaud, Creating a Character
Physical theatre, Greek theatre, Writing and Devising
We deliver tailor-made projects ranging from play-in-a-day sessions in Primary Schools to week long residencies in Secondary Schools, Colleges and Universities with a mix of performance and workshops.
We created five re-workings of Shakespeare plays with 90 young people aged between 10 and 21 in association with North Devon Theatres.
We worked with Warwick Arts Centre (WAC) over a number of years on a variety of drama projects in Primary Schools in Coventry.
For the last twelve years we've run a week-long summer school for 10-15 year olds at the Queen's Hall Arts Centre in Hexham.