Character names and alternative titles for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by The Annex, Lyon Park Junior
Question: What do you get if you take 28 children from at least 6 different countries, all with English as an Additional Language, and present them with a Shakespeare play to follow?
Answer: A brilliant day of fun, confidence building and lots of laughs!
Who would have guessed that children from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, India, Algeria and Syria could have such a good time with William Shakespeare? I’ll be honest with you, we wondered how they would cope and if it might all be too much for them. We needn’t have worried. Even the complex plot of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ didn’t defeat them – they laughed, they gasped, they performed, and relished the story just as much as the 480 children from Lyon Park Junior in Wembley with whom we worked over the course of the previous four days. Check out the tweet! https://twitter.com/FINDINGTHEWILL1/status/820399594890817537
One Dream Week in Wembley was good but then, would you give it credence, we had a second Dream Week in Wigan! To be fair it was just outside Wigan – Sacred Heart Primary School, Hindley Green to be exact. Unlike Lyon Park with whom we’ve worked twice before, and who therefore knew what to expect, Sacred Heart was a new school to us and so we had to get to know everyone and vice versa. We worked with approximately 120 children in KS2 who, as requested, knew nothing about ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ until we arrived. Two workshops later and all the twists and turns of the plot were out of the bag. The girls were queueing up to play Hermia, Helena and Titania and the boys were vying for the chance to play Lysander, Demetrius, Oberon and Puck. Yes you did read that correctly – the boys were desperate to play lovers and fairies! That’s Will power! (Do you see what I did there?) It was a great week culminating in some cracking individual performances and an overall production that knocked the socks off at least one governor! Thanks Mrs Ellison and Sacred Heart Twitter Account! https://twitter.com/HindleyGrSacred/status/823179371854888961
The opening scene of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Sacred Heart Primary, Hindley Green
Puck transforms Bottom before Titania awakes -‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Sacred Heart Primary, Hindley Green
Now, apart from two more days of Dreaming in Weston super Mare and London, FINDNG THE WILL is looking forward to Tempestuous times in Coventry, Bristol, Peterborough and Yorkshire, some Macbeth machinations in Bracknell and Bristol, a bit of Hamlet horror in London and full on Romeo & Juliet tragedy in Swindon and Cambridgeshire.
And if all that wasn’t enough our show for grown ups ‘Bard Heads’ will be playing at The Bear Pit, Stratford on Avon on Thursday 30 March http://www.thebearpit.org.uk/whats-on/bards-heads/ and at The Old Red Lion, Islington on Sunday 2 April – watch this space for information on that!
Finally for now congratulations to our very own Richard Curnow who, as I write, is doing a read through for two episodes of Homefront, the epic Radio 4 drama series about World War One. He records in the middle of February so I’ll keep you all informed as to when his episodes will air.
Thanks again to Lyon Park and Sacred Heart Schools for kicking off our year so well. Till the next time we speak, keep dreaming………….
