Learners were visited by Amy and Lewis from Box Theatre House for an exciting workshop on Macbeth. This workshop supported learners with Literature Paper 1, section A of the GCSE exam as they explored key analysis and gained further insight of the play through drama.
Box House Theatre uses interactive theatre to deliver educational workshops, offering a hands on and visual approach to topics found on the curriculum.
To begin the session, learners found a space in the hall and partook in drama warm up exercises and stretches led by our two visitors. This warmup exercise set the tone for the rest of the day, as learners were challenged to step out of their comfort zone and engage with the Shakespearean play in an exciting and unfamiliar way.
Learners were put into groups and given summary passages from different key moments in the play. They were tasked to work together and improvise a scene based on their summaries. Learners were given creative freedom to interpret the scene how they felt it should be portrayed and made some interesting dramatic choices such as drawing out the comedic elements of the passages and incorporating physical theatre into their scenes.
| Did you know... Macbeth was performed at London’s Globe Theatre in 1606. Richard Burbage, a well-known popular actor of the day was probably the first person to play Macbeth on stage. |
Our visitors also led another group exercise challenging learners to embody a character at a key point in the play. While they embodied this character, Amy called out different questions and encouraged learners to respond in the voice of the character they had chosen. Some of the questions asked included ‘who am I’ ‘who am I speaking to in the scene’ ‘what is my relationship to this character’ ‘who else is in the room with me’ ‘where am I’ ‘what do I want’ ‘why do I want it.’ Though seemingly simple questions at first glance, these questions helped learners to delve into key scenes in the play from the perspectives of the characters who shape them.
Through this workshop, learners gained the opportunity to interact with Macbeth as it was intended- as a performance. The activities Lewis and Amy led our learners through offered learners a deeper layer of perspective that can only be achieved by stepping out of the classroom and onto the stage. Thank you to our visitors from Box House Theatre for such an interactive and insightful workshop!
