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Dateline: 29th August, 2006
Drama Students at the Swan A group of up-and-coming actors will get a taste of life at the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of a pioneering project between the RSC and five of the UK’s leading drama schools.
An extension of the RSC Learning Department’s annual Young People’s Shakespeare project - which takes accessible versions of Shakespeare out to local schools - the drama students will perform pared-down versions of Shakespeare plays in The Swan Theatre before taking their productions on a tour of schools in the area. Students from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama; the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; Guildhall School of Music & Drama; the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama; and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, will arrive in Stratford on 4th September and will spend two weeks touring to fifteen Warwickshire and Sandwell schools. As well as watching RSC productions and taking part in workshops with RSC artists and practitioners, they will get to perform at the Swan Theatre as part of the RSC’s ongoing Complete Works Festival.
The Young People’s Shakespeare performances in The Swan are as follows:
Work on the Young People’s Shakespeare presentations began several months ago with input from practitioners from the RSC’s literary, learning, technical, stage management and voice coaching departments. As well as helping the drama students to devise, direct and perform their versions of Shakespeare’s plays, the RSC has also helped the young actors put together an ‘education package’ to take out to schools during the tour. This will involve a preliminary learning session introducing the language and themes of the play to the children; a one and a quarter hour performance of the play; and a post show talk for the schoolchildren.
Commenting on the project, Fiona Ingram, Head of Young People’s Programme of RSC Learning said, “The student and amateur thread of this year’s Complete Works Festival is really critical. As well as providing an informal space for amateur and student companies with our outdoor theatre, The Dell, we wanted to involve emerging talent in a way that gave them a unique opportunity to work in a producing theatre, perform on the main stage and get a flavour of some of our outreach and educational work.
“Extending our regular Young People’s Shakespeare format to include up-and-coming actors made perfect sense and also means that local school children will get access to a pared-down live performance of Shakespeare. And because the students will have limited sets in the schools, they will have to rely on their acting, and ability to tell the story in an engaging and meaningful way. The result should be exciting both for the audience and the actors themselves.” Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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