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Shakespeare 4 KidzDateline: 6th September, 1998 With remarkably little fanfare, the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) has introduced the National Literacy Progamme (NLP) into primary schools. The main effect is the introduction of the "literacy hour". If the general public have heard of the NLP at all, it's the Literacy Hour that will have claimed their attention. What is not so well known - even many teachers in the secondary sector haven't heard this - is the fact that the content of the new programme is very prescriptive. Amongst the prescriptions - and causing a lot of worry to many primary teachers - is the inclusion of Shakespeare in Year 6. In other words, ten year olds have to read at least a substantial proportion of a Shakespeare play. Primary teachers all over the country are worrying about this and looking for help. In fact, I shall be running an in-service training course for primary teachers on just this topic, and no doubt there are lots of other courses being developed all over the country. One company, however, is way ahead of the field. Shakespeare 4 Kidz has already established a reputation for approaches to Shakespeare which are very accessible to primary children. Set up specifically to bring Shakespeare to kids of primary age, the company takes a four-pronged approach. Performances As a theatre company, Shakespeare 4 Kidz obviously performs Shakespeare. Unlike the English Shakespeare Company's approach to education, they do not use the words of the original. But then they are aiming their work at children who are considerably younger than the Year 9 and above kids for whom the ESC's "Shakespeare Experience" is devised. What Shakespeare 4 Kidz does is add songs and adapt the words, whilst keeping the plots, sub-plots and characterisation of the original, thus providing a "way in" for the teacher who can move onto the difficulties of the language with ease, as the children have already been enthused by the production they have seen. Notice, by the way, that I said "adapt". They do keep quite a lot of the original - at least, they do in Dream, which I saw. This year they are touring productions of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream. They took Dream to the Edinburgh Fringe and now have a version of Romeo and Juliet on the stocks. It's a great idea and it works well. The kids in the audience at the performance I saw (from 5 to 14, I would guess, although the majority were of primary age) loved it, as did their mums and dads (and grandmothers!). I did too. School Performances But what about the idea of a junior school doing Dream or one of the others as a school production? Silly? Shakespeare 4 Kidz don't think so, and they've got production records of a couple of hundred schools across the country to prove it! The scripts of their touring shows are available to junior schools, together with a piano score (with guitar chords) and a CD of all the music, plus some good advice on the staging of the show. The Teacher's Support Pack contains a photocopying licence (that's excellent! - it means schools don't have to buy loads of copies that they couldn't really afford anyway), a synopsis, a list of the musical numbers, notes on the characters (basic but useful to the inexperienced director), suggestions for production (including doubling characters for small performances or the use of a huge cast, if the school so wishes), ideas for the set, money-making ideas (and why not!), and, of course, the CD. Incidentally, the CD can be used, karaoke-like, as accompaniment for the show where a schools does not, as not a few don't, have a pianist. They'll also do workshops in the school. They actually have three:
These workshops - especially the first and third - don't need to be done alongside a production of their shows, and so this constitutes the third prong! INSET Since the days of Kenneth Baker, the word INSET has struck boredom into the hearts of teachers across the country! It means In-service Training, and most INSET sessions are crashingly dull (to say the least). Shakespeare 4 Kidz, however, offers INSET for teachers which, being practical, looks to be fun rather than the usual sit-and-be-preached-at-then-discuss-and-report-back sessions which mainly pass for in-service training! No doubt there will be more companies jumping on the Shakespeare bandwagon now that primary schools have to include him in their work, but Shakespeare 4 Kidz is way ahead of the game and have the advantage that they start from a theatrical viewpoint rather than being education based, and kids and staff will find that considerably more enjoyable than any text-based work. Their shows aren't pure Shakespeare, of course, but they open up an enjoyable and effective approach which both teachers and pupils will appreciate. Shakespeare 4 Kidz, in its own way, is doing what Baz Luhrman did for Shakespeare with his Romeo and Juliet film: opening his work to a new audience in a way that the "Shakespeare establishment" has singularly failed to do. Articles Indices: |
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