Year 9 Work Experience at RSC

From Tuesday-Friday last week, Megan Parker, Lewis Blanks and Leo Mapp (year 9) attended the RSC’s Backstage Pass work experience programme. In December, they attended an Open Day where they toured the RSC departments and chose the area they wanted to work in for the residential. Megan chose costume, Lewis, stage management and Leo, marketing, publicity and visual communications.

They worked with 50 other pupils from across the country to do all the backstage jobs needed in order to present a short production of Act One scenes 1 and 2 of The Tempest. They were briefed by a professional designer and an RSC director and got to work with RSC actors and staff from departments across the organisation to make the experience realistic and challenging. They were all treated like professionals and worked to exacting standards.

Megan learned lots about how the costume department works, measuring the actors, choosing and altering stock costume items to realise the designer’s vision for the character of Prospero. Anyone who knows Megan will know that she is very shy and can be quite nervous. Her confidence throughout the week just blossomed and it would be great to build on this. Her passion for Shakespeare is really inspiring and you may have seen her wandering around with a manga version of The Tempest in her hands and a miniature book of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in her pocket this week.

Lewis worked maturely and independently throughout the week. His attitude was impeccable and he was appointed as a DSM (Deputy Stage Manager) for the show. His confidence and use of initiative grew every minute and he was a trustworthy, reliable member of the team, calmly managing scene changes and dealing with last minute changes. He was also very lucky to have been invited to shadow the ASM (Assistant Stage Manager) on the professional production of The Tempest in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He got to meet the actors, carry out prop checks, go under the stage and sit in the technical box as well.

Leo came on in leaps and bounds this week. He discovered an interest in graphic design and Photoshop, as well as working on a social media campaign for the production. Leo responded really well to positivity and the incredibly high expectations the staff had of the group. It was clear observing him that he is so nervous of getting a wrong answer that he’d rather say what he thinks you want to hear or defer to someone else (this might be of interest (or probably not news at all!) to anyone who teaches him). His focus and confidence have really started to improve and there are some really creative thoughts and opinions in there when he feels brave enough to share them. He even spoke articulately and confidently to the 100 members of the audience about what the marketing team had been up to in the week.

All three had once-in-a-lifetime experiences and forged firm friendships with pupils from schools across the country. Lewis & Megan are both seriously considering careers in the departments they worked in last week. All three will be using what they have learnt last week on our RSC project of The Tempest in April and next year’s production of Julius Caesar at The Marlowe.