The Royal Shakespeare Co
PROUD TO BE WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MARLOWE THEATRE AND
THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
The Canterbury High School – Lead Associate School
Background
The Canterbury High School has been selected as a Lead Associate School in partnership with The Marlowe Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company. This follows our achievements between 2013-16 as a Hub School for the Learning & Performance Network with the two organisations and local schools.
The Associate Schools Programme is a 2 year pilot, running from September 2016 to July 2018, which sees us work with local teachers and schools to embed active approaches to Shakespeare in the classroom. Following great levels of interest, our 10 Associate Schools were selected in July 2016; The Canterbury Primary School, Herne Bay Juniors, Canterbury Road Primary School, Ethelbert Road Primary School, Lynsted & Norton Primary School, Saint Gregory’s Catholic Primary School, The Orchard School, Rochester Grammar School, Folkestone Academy and Towers School & Sixth Form. Each of these schools expressed the same commitment to the programme and demonstrated significant senior leadership support and strategies to maximise the opportunities of the project for their school setting.
The Associate Schools Programme sees us lead a programme of staff training to build confidence and skill levels in the teachers of our schools; establishing teaching pedagogy to embed active approaches in lessons across all Key Stages; and provides a variety of showcase performance opportunities in the local community, at The Canterbury High School, The Marlowe Theatre and The RSC theatres.
The Learning & Performance Network saw nearly 400 children engaged with performance of Shakespeare through our performance projects, and many more than this benefitting from the implementation of active approaches to Shakespeare in their classrooms across Kent. The performance opportunities over the project were numerous – from our launch Tudor banquet to our ‘Head That Wears the Crown’ performances, which were positioned in heritage locations across Canterbury city centre, from the cathedral to the castle ruins, as well as a full production of ‘The Dream: Met by Moonlight’ at The Marlowe Theatre and a subsequent Regional Schools Festival at The RSC Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Each of these were sell-out audiences and received high acclaim.
Associate Schools Programme: Year 2 - Julius Caesar
Building on the successes of year 1, year 2 sees our schools take on a full production of Julius Caesar in a performance at The Marlowe Theatre. They will be supported by professionals from industry as well as pupils from The Canterbury High School’s Stage Door programme.
Year 2 also sees pupils from each school visiting The RSC for the Regional Schools Festival performances of their production.
Associate Schools Programme: Year 1 - The Tempest
Our year 1 project is The Tempest. Teachers learned about the themes and active approaches that could be used to bring the text to life for their pupils, through training sessions with RSC practitioners. Pupils and teachers learned lots of techniques and useful information to help inform their work on The Tempest at our launch event.
Each school received a section of the original Shakespeare Tempest text to work on and present in a shared performance in April 2017. A motif of The Canterbury High School-Marlowe Theatre-RSC partnership is site-specific performance work. The Tempest project is no different, being performed in a seaside location in Kent, bringing an added dimension to the performance experience for the pupils, their families and transporting Shakespeare out of schools and theatres and into the local community to be experienced by everyone, without barriers.
Stage Door
During the third year of the Learning & Performance Network, we worked with 4 year 10 pupils to train them as Shakespeare Ambassadors, who helped with some of the offstage roles that needed to be fulfilled to support the performance at The Marlowe Theatre. They attended training sessions with the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, where they selected their area of expertise. They assisted with the planning of the project and created the publicity, contributed to the set design and acted as Assistant Stage Manager, Front of House and Lighting operator.
Building on this pilot training initiative, we developed the Stage Door programme, a 2 year training programme running alongside the Associate Schools Programme from September 2016-July 2018. Pupils from year 8 & 9 applied to be considered for the programme, choosing which backstage role they were interested in. The pupils are learning about event management, planning and the various roles within the theatre. 3 pupils have been given the opportunity to attend Backstage Pass, a residential training week with the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. They will learn in depth what happens backstage in their chosen discipline.
All pupils will get to work alongside others in the industry, including work shadowing and interviews with staff from The Marlowe Theatre and Canterbury High School. Their first event was planning, delivering and stewarding our Tudor banquet. They will be key people in the planning and delivery of our year 1 and year 2 projects, providing them with unique training and work experience, opening up a range of careers for them within the creative industries.
Regional Schools Celebration
The Dream
