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By Fiona Banks: Head of Learning, Globe Education on March 6, 2008

2 Weeks to go......

It's simultaneously an exciting and nerve racking time in the process of creating a scene. Of course it's different for everyone but it's probably the point where you can see the potential of student's ideas, their interpretation of character and the ways in which they can physicalise their scene to tell its story of the play - but are not yet sure how this will work for an audience in the Globe. This is, I know, what the Globe Education Practitioners (GEPs) will talk about when we meet this afternoon. The prospect of performance can focusing for some groups, not yet a tangible concern for others.

It's the first time we've had a blog during this period - please, if you have time, share how things are going and what has worked for you. Please also raise issues that I, fellow 'Our Theatre' teachers or others members of the Globe Education 'Our Theatre' team here might be able comment on.

We'll all work together when your students come to the Globe for their dress rehearsal to make sure your scenes work in the best way possible on the Globe stage. To help this in these two weeks it is often useful to keep working on physicalisation of scenes - what are the key moments that tell the story of the scene?...How will these be clear to the audience? Scenes that tend to communicate very clearly to the audience in performance are those in which the group really own their work. These are not always the scenes that might appear the most 'polished' in the coventional fourth wall dark box theatre sense - but those in which the students energy, indivduality and commitment to sharing their ideas reach out from the Globe stage to grab the attention of the audience. I'll be reminding all the GEPs this afternoon (they will probably groan at my need for repetition) that at the Globe the audience are all around you and that scenes should play to all sides - not just to the audience at the front of the stage. I'll also remind them to not just direct scenes that play within the pillars but to remember to use the whole stage. They should be highlighting these areas with your group in the coming sessions.

I hope all is going well and to meeting you all soon.

By Paul Willcocks on February 25, 2008

This is an inspiring project and gives a great opportunity to the children to work with a variety of practitioners. I also really appreciate the workshop element for teachers.
Paul

By sarah nunn on February 14, 2008

Our Theatre...memory book
While working on Richard III Our Theatre, to enrich the experience we extended the work into the classroom, the pupils loved it - we kept a class journal/memory book of the process which included photos, drawings, comments about the characters, lines from the scene, observations about every workshop and their feelings and reflections about each stage leading up to the performance. Every week, every pupil made an informal contribution to the book. It was a perfect way of capturing the spirit of the project. The book was a great creative record of their personal achievements and was always read with pride for the rest of the year. An Our Theatre 'working' display also developed where individuals added writing, newspaper articles etc that they felt were linked to the work. Eventually I planned a 2 week Literacy unit on report writing. We set up the classroom as an incident room and interviewed key characters before writing our reports - it was great fun!