Shakespeare 4 Kidz News

Macbeth Is Wicked Fun               

FROM THE SPRING 2010 ISSUE OF TEACHING DRAMA

17 Teaching Drama spring term 1 2009/10 www.rhinegold.co.uk/teachingdrama

SHAKESPEARE 4 KIDZ

BEN ROBBINS gives a round-up of the history of Shakespeare 4 Kidz and finds out about their latest innovative projects

Past …
The Shakespeare 4 Kidz (S4K) project began in 1996 when Julian Chenery, the chief executive, director and co-writer of S4K productions, staged his two-hour version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, aimed specifi cally at engaging young people with Shakespeare’s work. When finding a way to get primaryage children to engage with Shakespeare, language is always a huge barrier. Chenery believes that if you can fi nd a way to simplify the language, without undermining the content of Shakespeare’s words, you can lower the age of access, so his versions of the bard’s work fuse well-known Shakesperean quotes with modern language, music, songs and dance, while maintaining the main characters and thrust of the plot.

Chenery says that ‘the key is to keep the essence of the play, while maintaining pace, so 30-line monologues need to be replaced with action.’ The songs in Chenery’s versions of Shakespeare’s plays are close to musical theatre in style. As far as knowing where it is appropriate to insert a song in the plays, Chenery believes that ‘it is fairly easy to spot where the action could be framed with song, such as at the beginning and ends of acts, or when the internal monologues of characters could be glossed with music to heighten drama.’

The task of adapting Shakespeare’s words is not always an easy one. When approaching the complexity of a work like Hamlet, Chenery ensures that he ‘comes at the plays not as an academic but an audience member, teasing out the storyline, characters and an awareness of context. Hamlet was both the biggest challenge and the biggest success as I think we achieved clarity, an authentic rendering of character, dramatised the internal lives of the characters and engaged audiences along the way.’

Soon after putting on the Dream, S4K grew to tour round school audiences and the education arm of the company was set up, setting up workshops for schools and publishing resources enabling schools to perform Shakespeare 4 Kidz shows all over the world.

Present …
Currently, S4K are touring their unique production of Macbeth, which opened at the Palace Theatre in Mansfi eld and toured around the UK, reopening for a month in January and then going on an international tour in the Spring in the Gulf area, India, Singapore and the US. The show has been well received since it began touring in 2000 and this year is no exception – as Julian Chenery says, ‘the show always receives a good response from primary, junior, lower secondary and family audiences. The boys particularly like the fi ghting scenes, and the girls like the witches.’ It’s a jam-packed tour for the S4K actors, as they are doing around 10 shows a week, including morning and afternoon matinees, but the 20-strong touring company are not phased by the challenge.

Chenery explains: ‘The cast is a well-oiled machine. Of course, on an international tour like this you experience diffi culties, but any glitches have been ironed out over the years.’ The cast of the play changes annually, with roughly half the cast remaining the same. Jason Lee Scott plays Macbeth, revisiting the role for the third time; Chenery credits Lee Scott with being able to play the role to audiences of mixed ages ‘without being patronising or belittling them’. Chenery believes that the key to actors playing to such a broad audience is ‘a combination of good physical theatre skills, good communication style, a good singing voice and well-executed humour’.

This musical version of Macbeth is supported by workshops for schools, including their new play in a day Mini-Macbeth workshop. The workshop was pioneered at Wray Common Primary School in Reigate, Surrey and accommodates up to 80 children. In the all-day workshop aimed at upper-primary, lower-secondary level, different groups take on different acts of the play and come together at the end of the day for a fi nal performance in front of family and friends.

The workshop aims to put fun into Macbeth by learning S4K songs and helping students understand the language of Shakespeare’s plays, so that through learning in a practical way, the plays become accessible. S4K offer a range of workshops for different age groups and ability levels to support the other plays in the S4K repertoire and are willing to tailor a workshop according to the particular needs of the school. They also provide a wide range of teachers’ resources to complement their plays, including quizzes, plot summaries and comprehension sheets. They’re available free on the S4K website (see below) when you register.

Another interesting development in S4K’s educational work is their accreditation as a learning destination for the Children’s University in a venture supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Young people can earn a stamp for their Children’s University learning passport by participating in S4K’s Spellbinding Shakespeare module – they can do this in a number of ways, including joining in on hour-long activities such as seeing live theatre, attending a workshop or writing of review of a play, and work towards earning their Bronze Award when they complete 15 hours of modules through the Children’s University.

Future …
Next year the company will be reprising their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play with which the whole project began.
To fi nd out more about Shakespeare4Kidz, visit their website at www.shakespeare4kidz.com

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FROM THE LANCASHIRE EVENING POST

WHY I'M BRAVING THE CURSE OFMACBETH ... AGAIN!

Jason Lee Scott seems to enjoy tempting fate. The accident prone actor is playing theatre's unluckiets role for the FOURTH time. He tells JUDITH DORNAN why he believes Shakespeare's would-be kings is more henpecked husband than evil despot.

IT must be unnerving when famous actors write to congratulate you on your new role – with horror stories of the disasters which hit them while playing the character.

Yet for Jason Lee Scott, who is playing the title role in the Shakespeare 4 Kids production of English theatre’s unluckiest play,Macbeth, it’s almost a daily occurence.

Even West End star Jonathon Pryce wrote with a cautionary tale of his experiences, saying: “Beware the curse of Macbeth! “When I played him in Stratford, before the first night, Lady Macbeth had an accident and fractured her collar bone. “I fell head-first down the stairs onstage and, for the first time, forgot my lines in the middle of a soliloquy. “At the Barbican, I got stuck in the lift with the Three Witches before the England scene and was rescued just in time to make my reappearance. “My cat died and our goldfish was found floating belly up in the fish tank. Apart from that, I really enjoyed it!”

And not only is he looking forward to the part, he is conducting this interview whilst walking up a treacherous ice-bound hill in Southsea – without the aid of a net!

The Birmingham-born actor grins: “I’m literally doing some weird ice skating thing. It’s like glass! We’ve got no snow at all but we’ve got black ice and where I’m staying is on a really steep hill.” Thus far, the curse has not struck?

“Thankfully, no – and I touch wood every time I’m asked that question! “I know, tours in the past, they have had quite a lot of things happen and I tend to carry bad luck around with me so I’m just waiting for my share. “I’m not quite Mr Bean but on days like today where you’ve got an ice covered floors, I can almost guarantee I’ll be the one that slips on it. “But thankfully, it’s normally little things like that. I don’t have huge bouts of bad luck.”

Even past Shakespeare 4 Kids productions of the play have been dogged by ill fortune. “Someone got their jaw fractured, real serious
stuff. “And not only on the Shakepeare 4 Kids tours. It seems to happen too much for it to be coincidence. “But then I think everyone’s
so heightened towards the fact that something could possibly go desperately wrong that you almost pre-empt it and, I think, maybe bring it about yourself to a degree because you are so constantly looking. “Even the tiniest little thing, you put down down to the fact that it’s the show that you’re doing – no, couldn’t possibly be any other reason!”

The legend grew soon after Macbeth was written. Witches were rumoured to have cursed the play. But Jason has his own theory.“I think it was James I. I think, part of the intention was to scare people into doing what they were meant to do. “And because the play carried that kind of feeling, it just became cloaked in mystery and superstition and it’s a self made myth....Ithink. I hope!”

When he first got the call to join Shakespeare 4 Kids, he was playing a very different role – John Lennon in a show called Rock Legends
which was touring South Africa.

“I don’t quite know why but Lennon and McCartney’s music is absolutely massive over there. It was anything between 2,500 to 15,000 audiences in some cases.

“But, as luck would have it, when I got backfrom the job I was doing, a space on the cast had become available.” He played Prospero in The Tempest and found himself hooked on the Shakespeare 4 Kids experience.

“When you get huge numbers of kids reacting almost in the way they would at a football match, it’s rare that you get that kind of response.
It’s quite incredible really. “This time round, we’ve had a few new guys that haven’t worked for the company before and you can’t quite prepare yourself for what it actually is like.“All actors complain at some point about the state of theatre and audiences falling away and you see fantastic theatres becoming Wetherspoons pubs and what have you.

“And this is really where that starts, you know? If you can get kids interested at this age and give them reason to think they’d like to go back sometime in the future, you are almost paying into the pension of theatre of the future.” He feels genuine sympathy for his current
character, the man who would be King.

“I think a lot of men can associate with that character.

“I don’t think he started out as an evil character and I think the downfall leads from thekilling of the King who he sees as a father figure.

“Even though he’s killed a lot in the past, that particular murder is the one that completely unhinges him. It changes something in the way he thinks and, from that point on, it’s all or nothing.”

● The Shakespeare 4 Kids production of Macbeth comes to the Charter Theatre, Preston, next Thursday and Friday January
21 and 22.

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FROM THE KENT ON SUNDAY

YOUNG people are presented with a different slant on Macbeth with Shakespeare 4Kidz’s accessible show.

Following a tour of Kent venues last year, there is another chance to see this thrilling and well-presented production when it visits Folkestone later this month.

The famously unlucky play has been transformed into a show that young children can relate to, weaving famous lines from the original texts into modern language which even primary school children can understand.

Songs and dances are also used to keep the action moving along, while the creepy witches and their spells will fire up the audiences’ imaginations.

With bloody battles and gruesome ghosts to look forward to, the show is sure to captivate audiences of all ages.

Macbeth tells the story of an aspiring king driven to murder by the prophecies of witches, and his wife’s ambition. But can Macbeth really live with the crimes he has committed or will justice prevail?

The show can be seen at the Leas Cliff Hall at 10.30am and 1.30pm on Monday, January 18. To book tickets call the box office on 0844 847 1776 or visit ww.leascliffhall.org.uk.

For more information visit www.shakespeare4kidz.com

THE ARTICLE APPEARS ON PAGE 34 OF THIS EDITION