In 2016 we were asked by Saltley Academy to help them stage a Shakespeare production with all 240 members of Year 8 as its cast. We agreed to the challenge and suggested the students perform twin productions over two days in Stratford-upon-Avon. This premise has evolved into an annual project, part of the school’s guarantee to new students which ran until 2024.
As you will see below we started staging The Tempest outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Then moved to Shakespeare’s New Place where we performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant Of Venice and Othello. In 2020 things had to change radically for a version of Macbeth. We have been back to Stratford since then with Romeo and Juliet three years in a row.
Romeo & Juliet (2022, 2023 & 2024)
Timetable changes have meant we couldn’t be present in as many English lessons as before, to compensate we have been going into lots more Drama lessons to work on basic acting skills, while putting more directorial responsiblity onto the English Teachers and classes themselves. This has been a very positive change. In 2024 we got a lot more collaborative with the Education Dept at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the students undertook an exciting range of activities in Startford-Upon-Avon after their performances.
Credits
Performed by Year 8
Edited by Craig Stephens
2022 Directed by: English Teachers & Year 8 with help from Lucy Bird & Elexi Walker
2023 Directed by: English Teachers & Year 8 with help from Lucy Bird & Amy Ann Haigh
Re-Edited by Lucy Bird
2024 Directed by: English Teachers & Year 8 with help from Lucy Bird & Craig Stephens
Macbeth (2021)
Class ‘bubbles’ and social distancing required a radical rethink of our format for this year. We flipped the formula by performing Macbeth ourselves, with a cast of four, rehearsed in two weeks. We visited school early in the first week for directorial guidance from the students on different scenes, then we rehearsed in our space and the students made props and scenary for us to use when we got back to school.
Credits
Performed by Graeme Rose, Carys Jones, Jack Trow & Elexi Walker
Edited by Craig Stephens
Directed by: Year 8 & James Yarker
Recorded Music: Christine Cornwall & Luke Deane
Photographs: Dave Howard
Set and prop design and making: Year 8
Special Thanks to Mr. Shezhad Mohammed
Othello (2019)
There were no major changes for Othello, Chrissie and Luke were back with live sound, students were pushed to speak boldly without amplification and teachers encouraged to take a more active role in directing, plus we freshened up the vinyl on the proscenium arch, switching from red to green. For this year’s scripts we used a print-on-demand service, consequently they are available in our shop.
Credits
Performed by Year 8, Saltley Academy
Edited by James Yarker
Directed by: Craig Stephens & James Yarker
Dramaturgical advice and extra rehearsals: the English Department
Music: Christine Cornwall & Luke Deane
Photographs: Graeme Braidwood
With help from lots of teachers, Craig Stephens, Laura Killeen and Roisin Caffrey
with an enormous amount of help from the English Department and entirely impossible without Ms. Parker.
With thanks to New Place (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) for hosting us and to The Guild Chapel for being on standby in case of rain.
The Merchant Of Venice (2018)
There were significant changes this year. The puppets were gone, they added too much complication. Costumes were in, thanks to Kay Wilton who sold us a job lot being released by The REP. We also solved the problem of photocopied and stapled scripts shedding pages throughout rehearsals by getting our compressed script printed and perfect bound. In prepraration for this production we arranged for English teachers to receive training from University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education.
This production contained one of our favourite moments. A talented student performed Shylock’s ‘quality of mercy’ speech wonderfully – being on the site of Shakespeare’s house hearing a young British Asian, muslim girl delivering these powerful words of an old Jewish man was stunning.
Credits
Performed by Year 8, Saltley Academy
Edited and directed by James Yarker
Assistant director: Lucy Bird
Dramaturgical advice and extra rehearsals: the English Department
Costume help from Kay Wilton
Music: Joanna Karselis
Photographs: Graeme Braidwood
With help from lots of teachers, Craig Stephens, Laura Killeen and Roisin Caffrey
with an enormous amount of help from the English Department and entirely impossible without Ms. Parker.
With thanks to New Place (Shakespeare Birth Place Trust) for hosting us and to The Guild Chapel for being on standby in case of rain.
Special Thanks to: University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Studies.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2017)
Saltley Academy and New Place Stratford-upon-Avon.
July 2016
Although The Tempest was deemed a success the previous year the school requested that we use more of Shakespeare’s original text. In response to this we performed our own edit, compressing the script so it could be performed in under an hour. The text was prepared before the Easter holidays so classes were able to start learning the play from this edit directly after the holidays with rehearsals starting directly after half term.
In contrast to last year classes were all moved around to become mixed ability and each included students just starting to learn English as an additional language. In order to spread the workload and mitigate for illness within the cast all the main roles were shared between two students, with only smaller roles the responsibility of individual students.
Much more emphasis was placed on learning lines this year with a great deal of success. With an assistant director throughout rehearsals this year we were able to timetable each class with five lessons of rehearsals. In English lessons between rehearsals teachers working mostly on comprehension.
As the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves around a lot of love interest, which can be embarrassing to act out, we decided that this should be a puppet show with The Mechanicals the only characters played directly by the students.
In our version The Mechanicals are good actors staging a puppet play within which they act themselves as if they are bad actors. This metafiction was quite subtle, only really revealing itself at the close when the Puck puppet has its eyes and fern taken off and reverts to being just a coil of rope while, in the background a bucket, mop and broom reappear without eyes or costume for the curtain call.
Other advances on last year included incidental music and a boom microphone to help amplify those with quiet voices. The school performances were performed in one of the school’s courtyards, which lent them a great atmosphere and prepared the actors for taking their productions to the beautiful surroundings of Shakespeare’s New Place, hosted by Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. After this the cast (people not puppets) explored Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare’s Birthplace.
The students and teachers all committed admirably to the production and made huge strides in their performances and understanding of Shakespeare. At the close of the production they were justifiably proud of themselves and such was their progress that a new production or another Shakespeare was immediately booked in for 2018.
Credits
Performed by Year 8, Saltley Academy
Edited and directed by James Yarker
Assistant director: Lucy Bird
Dramaturgical advice and extra rehearsals: the English Department
Puppets cobbled together by Lucy Bird & James Yarker
Music: Christine Cornwall and Luke Deane
Photographs: Graeme Braidwood
With help from lots of teachers, Craig Stephens, Lucy Nicholls, Laura Killeen and Roisin Caffrey
with an enormous amount of help from the English Department and entirely impossible without Ms. Parker.
With thanks to New Place (Shakespeare Birth Place Trust) for hosting us and to The Guild Chapel for being on standby in case of rain.
The Tempest (2016)
Saltley Academy and the R.S.C.
July 2016
The challenge to make a production of The Tempest with all 240 of their Year 8 students was a good opportunity to use the slot together stage built in collaboration with Billesley Primary School last year. As the stage was to spend the summer outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon it made sense to stage The Tempest at school and then down there.
The challenges of staging the show were considerable. Director Lucy Nicholls wrote/edited a massively cut down version of the play with a chorus of narrators helping explain the action. A consistency of costumes helped the audience keep on top of who was who when the actors changed.
A quick show of hands during rehearsal suggested that only three of the cast had ever acted on a stage before, so the project was mostly about EVERYONE getting the experience of standing up, being seen, acting and speaking in public. In his motivation speech to Year 8 at the start of the project Headteacher Mr. Weir explained how he had decided to ask us to lead this project as taking part in a Shakespeare production whilst in 6th Form had changed his life, given him confidence he had previously lacked and giving a love of Shakespeare that had inspired thim to go to University to read English. Without that production he would not have been a Headteacher. Now he felt it was his duty to give ALL his students that experience and at a younger age so they would feel the benefits earlier. There were some great performances and the improvement in very many students was impressive.
Staging twin productions each with a cast of 120 amateur, inexperienced and often acutely self-conscious actors was hugely challenging but the school bent over backwards to absorb rehearsals into school life, teachers were hugely flexible about what we were asking of them and eventually X-Band and Y-Band performed their shows once in the school hall and once at the R.S.C., where they then had a tour of The Other Place, a trip up the tower, a packed lunch and an exploration of Shakespeare Steps.
Credits:
Performed by Year 8, Saltley Academy
Adapted and directed by Lucy Nicholls
Assistant director, Jack Trow
With help from Sipho Eric Dube
Costumes by Kay Wilton
Photographs by Graeme Braidwood
Advice James Yarker
With lots of help from lots of teachers and entirely impossible without Ms. Parker.
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Macbeth: An Edit£7.00
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Romeo & Juliet: An Edit£7.00
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Othello: an edit£7.00