We invited our partner school The East Manchester Academy to devise a piece of theatre to perform before the start of Great Expectations
Over 2 weeks we worked with The East Manchester Academy to work towards performing their own short piece of theatre before a show of Great Expectations.
A mixture of year 9 & 10 students were welcomed into the building to do a workshop and watch the show, for most it was their first time watching a live piece of theatre. After attending, they were told to go away and think of the themes and how the show made them feel.
A few days later we went into the school and ran 3 workshops all around the themes of the show, how to devise and start playing with ideas.
The week of the show came around and we did 3 full days in The Exchange to devise, rehearse and perform. On the first day we put a mic & an amp in the middle of the room and got them all the free style rap on their chosen theme of equality. This sparked the most wonderful burst of creativity. We then split off into 4 groups, we had a dance group, rap group, poetry group and a theatre group.
We then pulled all the art forms together which created a beautiful piece of theatre which was performed on a custom built stage in The Great Hall before the show. Each performance pulled on different forms of inequality they wanted to highlight. They covered misogyny, racism, bullying, mental health, women’s rights and more. The most important thing was it all came from their voices and were so appreciative to be given a platform to be heard.
They performed it again this week in assembly. Honestly, they still keep talking about it. Helen Bamber – Deputy Head at The East Manchester Academy
