5 Reasons Why Drama in Schools Should Matter
Why does drama in schools, especially Primary Schools, matter?
When you start to list the immediate benefits (never mind the long term ones), you quickly find that luxury turns into necessity.
600 Manchester children love Shakespeare
600 children in Manchester have fallen in love with Shakespeare. And another 170 in Peterborough have also got the bug. What’s going on?
You Create What You Will
Will has helped FINDING THE WILL encourage tens of thousands of children to create what you will over the last 17 years.
Time and again we hear from teachers that they have seen a side to a child they had not been aware of prior to our workshop.
Flaming June – well WE were cooking!
A sparky group of children with interesting ideas of how Hermia and Lysander could be together, despite the law of Athens!
You are now official Shakespeare Ambassadors!
“Naming The View was a really special night. Quality writing and performances came together and we were all invested in your every word. We haven’t stopped talking about it.”
Clowns To The Left Of Me…….
Clowns have certainly been to the Left of me this month, and Jokers to the right too! I’ve had a day of THE TEMPEST, (Trinculo being the Clown); a magnificent array of poems from Year 4 at St Miichael’s Junior, Chelmsford, (favourite line being ‘Tortured Clown In A Crown’), then a delightful Shakespearean evening with my old friend, Tweedy the Clown! Oakmeadow Primary School, Shrewsbury Shropshire is a county that has eluded FINDING THE WILL up to now. However, the day before Shakepeare’s 460th birthday, we cracked it with a visit to Oakmeadow Primary School in Shrewsbury. This is a thoroughly modern, light and bright school which invited us in to be part of a ‘Theatre Day’. All 8 classes in KS2 took part in 4 hour-long Interactive Workshops on THE TEMPEST led by Nick and me. So, 4 times on Monday we boarded The King’s Vessel, bound for Naples, each time seemingly struck by a devastating storm at sea. The 4 vessels in question were named ‘THE DYLOPHOSAURUS’; ‘THE LEVIATHAN’; ‘THE DONUT‘ and ‘THE WATERMELON UNICORN’ by Years 3-6 respectively. In our limited time, we met all the characters including Trinculo the Jester or the clown. Sadly we didn’t have time to gather new material for Trinculo as we often do, so it looks like he’ll be trotting out the Knock Knock jokes for a few more years to come! Vocabulary One thing that really struck both Nick and me was the remarkable vocabulary that some of the children (across all the classes) came out with. Words like ‘Betrayal’ and ‘reneged’ in relation to the breaking of a promise; ‘Distraught’ and ‘vexed’ regarding Caliban’s feelings about his unfair treatment. Equality and Respect are two of the values promoted by Oakmeadow Primary, so it was interesting to present a play that often demonstrates the opposite. Sometimes you only appreciate the true worth of values when they are challenged. Many thanks to Miss Gill for arranging our visit and our first foray into Shropshire! St Michael’s Junior, Chelmsford “A Tortured Clown In A Crown” Title by Hannah – Year 4, St Michael’s Junior, Chelmsford What a thrill to receive a veritable anthology of Lyric Poems from Year 4 at St Michael’s Junior inspired by our recent MACBETH Interactive Workshops. The poems are all amazing and so it was incredibly hard to pick a handful to share with you. To celebrate Shakespeare’s 460th birthday, here goes – I think he would have been impressed! Thank you Mrs Orton for sharing this impressive work with us! Clowns and Shakespeare If you have ever had the joy of watching Tweedy the Clown at work, either in the circus (notably Gifford’s) or in pantomime (Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham in recent years), you will know what a phenomenal talent he is. When I heard he was cast as Bottom in the Everyman Theatre’s production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, it seemed like a match made in heaven. A clown playing a clown! Personally I have performed in The Dream more times than I can remember (playing nearly every character except Helena, the tall one!). I’ve seen some ropy productions and some average ones, but Tweedy playing Bottom the Weaver, now this was intriguing. And he was superb! His comic timing and clowning skills were off the chart, but that wasn’t a surprise. His handling of the original Shakespearean text however…….now that was a revelation! Indeed the whole production was a delight from start to finish – a laugh out loud comedy, just as it was meant to be when it was written, 430 years ago. Tweedy will shortly be touring his own show Tweedy’s Massive Circus throughout the summer. It opens on 24 May at……..drum roll………The Royal Shakespeare Company. Fancy, a Clown at the RSC! It just goes to prove that clowns really can speak truth to power! And Finally….. FINDING THE WILL is thrilled to have two new actors joining our talented pool of practitioners – Izzy Kersley and Karen Payne. I’ll introduce them to you properly next month, suffice to say they are definitely not clowns! ‘Til next time……
Merry Christmas from the FTW Family!
Merry Christmas! As the temperature outside plummets, I’m sitting here (wearing 4 layers) and hoping that you are all warm, safe and, somehow, surviving. It’s been a funny old year for FINDING THE WILL, We’ve worked in a mixture of old and new schools countrywide. Our performing work has been seen on screens in the UK and Ukraine, and live on stage in Canada and in the South West of England. Whilst the academic year 22/23 has got off to an inevitably slow start, thanks to the cost of living crisis in all walks of life, we remain optimistic for the coming year. We finished 2022 with a cracking morning at St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Hornchurch – read about it in our last blog. Now, with the Christmas holidays in touching distance, we are looking forward to the new year. 2023 We’ll be back with a bang in January at one of our old favourites – Great Leighs Primary School, Essex. Nick and I will spend a week with KS2 working on A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. In previous years we’ve tackled Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night and Hamlet, so this magical mayhem of a comedy promises to be great fun. And at Great Leighs everyone, even the Kitchen, gets completely involved! Following on we will revisit Whitehall Primary, Bristol for more of THE TEMPEST with Year 3, Castleview Primary, Slough for more of MACBETH and St Catherine of Siena, Lee Bank, Birmingham for both A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and MACBETH. In April, we are thrilled to be part of the Merthyr Tydfil Children’s Literature Festival providing, amidst other things, MACBETH Interactive Workshops in Welsh! Catch us on screen! If you find yourself at a loose end over the Christmas holidays, or just feel like watching something a little different, can I encourage you to go to www.scenesaver.co.uk. Here, you will find all kinds of theatre productions – Christmas shows, children’s shows, drama, dance, comedy – which you can enjoy free of charge. You can make a donation, which will go directly to the production company if you wish, but there is no obligation. Type in NAMING THE VIEW and you will find our Arts Council England funded film which is available also in BSL, Signed or Audio Described versions. Scenesaver is a wonderful resource and, for us, is a direct result of working with ProEnglish Theatre’s ProAct Fest in Ukraine in the summer of 2022. Thanks Huge thanks to Jack, the talented artist who, unbeknownst to him, designed our Christmas card this year! Jack is 9 (maybe 10 now, not sure, sorry Jack!) and worked with us at BARKSTON & SYSTON CE PRIMARY near Grantham in June this year. We’d also like to thank all the Schools, Teachers, Head Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Support Staff, Office Staff, Governors, Parents, Patrons and, of course, Children that we have worked with and been in contact with throughout this year. It’s been tough, it will undoubtedly get tougher, but we cling on and, together, we will get through it! So all that’s left to say is: MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM JULES AND THE FINDING THE WILL FAMILY!
Inspiring Summer in Canada and Ukraine!
August has been an inspiring month for FINDING THE WILL and seen us go global! Our intrepid co-founder, Richard, has been in Canada, performing in the Edmonton Fringe Festival and I (Jules) have been streaming our recording of NAMING THE VIEW for Ukraine. Richard in Canada Jules in Ukraine Well of course I’ve not actually been IN Ukraine, but FINDING THE WILL has been part of an extraordinary Theatre Festival – Pro.Act Fest 2022.. Along with theatre companies from Australia, the USA, and Europe, we were invited to show our work online. Thrilling enough you would have thought but then, as well as screening NAMING THE VIEW, I was asked to interview some of the Ukraine team, The result is conversations with the most inspirational Ukrainian artists (who also just happen to be women). Inspiring Ukrainian Women Anabell First of all I was interviewed by Anabell Sotelo Ramirez about FINDING THE WILL, the work we do in schools, our performing work and the shows we have written inspired by Shakespeare. Of course we talked a lot about NAMING THE VIEW which is still available to view online on SceneSaver incidentally until the end of the Festival on 31 Aug (free of charge unless you wish to make a donation to Ukraine). It is also available in BSL, with subtitles and audio-description. I said to Anabell how impressed I was that an International Theatre Festival is being held in Ukraine right now. Her philosophical answer? “Sometimes you just need to do what you have to do. That’s all.” I remain truly humbled. Tanya Next I had the privilege of talking with Tanya Shelepko – a young dynamic Theatre Director, full of life and enthusiasm against all the odds. She talked to me about her show ‘L_UKR_ECE’ (based on Shakespeare’s poem ‘The Rape Of Lucrece’) and the extraordinary ‘New World Order‘, which was rehearsed and performed in a bomb shelter in Kyiv during the early part of the war. When I asked her “How are you?”, her simple heartbreaking answer was “I’m alive.” Natalia Finally I got to speak with Natalia Ponomarova, the President of the Pro.ActFest. She told me a bit about the history of the Festival – This is its 5th year – and about this year’s theme ‘Unbreakable’. If there was ever an unbreakable nation, it’s Ukraine! She also told me about the live element of the Festival in Kyiv itself, where the contingency plans were for bomb alerts ( as opposed to simply bad weather). Her message to the world “From this little thing we can create our victory.” Looking Ahead So with the inspiring words of these fantastic creative women ringing in our ears, we are looking ahead to the Autumn months of 2022. Fresh from his Canadian triumph, Richard will be performing CALL ME OZ as part of the St Ives Festival in Cornwall on the 13th and 20th September. On 19th November I will be performing both THE DUST BEHIND THE DOOR and THE THIRD WITCH FROM THE LEFT as part of the Valley Arts Festival. More about this nearer the time. And Finally…… It was with deep sorrow that we had to say goodbye to our original Patron Bernard Cribbins OBE at the end of last month. Bernard was also inspiring. He was a true champion of children’s theatre and TV and was known to millions across all ages. We were thrilled when he agreed to become our very first Patron in 2010. Having lost two of our Patrons – the wonderful Sue Pritchard exited this stage early in 2021 – we are on the look out for more. Any suggestions or nominations would be gratefully received! For now though there is only one way to end – with the verse that is so special to Richard and me. It is also incredibly pertinent. For Bernard, For Sue, For the people of Ukraine: “If it must be so, let’s not weep or complain. If I have failed, or you, or life turned sullen, we have these things, they do not come again. But the flag still flies and the city has not fallen.” Humbert Wolfe