Theatre #1

I thought I should start writing about my London theatre experience today because, even though I haven't actually gone out to see anything yet, I saw two performances at school yesterday.

The first was a group called Orange Tree who bring Shakespeare into schools. The year 9s are doing Macbeth so that's what the actors looked at. They did quite well, especially considering some of our kids would rather do anything other than watch a Shakespeare performance. They started with a quick performance of the important bits and then went on to disect a couple of specific scenes. The nice thing about the waythey did it though was that they gave the students ownership by allowing them to make directorial choices. Eg. Where should we set this scene? In a car? Ok, let's do it in a car! or How do you think Macbeth is feeling right now? Drunk? Ok, he's drunk! It made for some interesting interpretations and certainly got the kids thinking beyond the story and about the emotions.

The second group were called Synergy and they consisted mainly of prisoners from a local jail. The other members were former prisoners. The piece thatthey showed was about choices and the consequences of your actions. It was quite powerful, used multi-media and came across as being very real because it was being told by the people who have lived it. The group were also happy to answer questions honestly during a quick forum and then they ran a workshop.

It was a really busy day, even though I didn't do all that much. I did learn a lot though.