Education Officer Lily Ellis tells us about her role on this year's European Theatre Group's touring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The education side of ETG runs alongside the show itself, and is part of the tradition of the theatre group as the production tours to multiple venues in schools and colleges, performing a play by Shakespeare in English to young audiences in various European countries. The Education Officer’s role is therefore to work to make the performances as accessible as possible to the students watching, and to get the students to relate to the play not only as a work of literature but through theatre practice.
As with a lot of the production roles on the ETG team, my duties as Education Officer started at the beginning of the summer, months before the tour itself in December. My first task was to create an education pack that would be sent out to the schools we were visiting to aid their teaching about the play before the students watched the show. This included background about Shakespeare himself, historical social context, and content about the plot and themes of the play, along with lots of activities. I learned a lot in making it, and it ended up longer than my final year dissertation will be! It was then artistically formatted by our amazing publicity designer Amenie Groves, who made it look beautiful.
My next job was running workshops, which sat alongside the performances, for students at the schools and colleges we visited. Thankfully for me and my shamefully low levels of French, Flemish and Swiss German, we were often linked with the schools’ English language departments and curriculum, so the workshops I ran were entirely in English. As an Education student in my academic life, I really enjoyed the variety of schools we got a glimpse of, from a Belgian Steiner school to Swiss Gymnasiums to a Bilingual International school in France. Although I found it nerve wracking to begin with, I soon got into the swing of leading workshops, and ended up loving my side quest while we were on tour. I had a small rotating group of members of the cast, production and tech team, who’s invaluable support helped to keep the energy and attention levels high. The workshops included drama games (countless explanations of Zip, Zap, Boing), discussions about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, some physical theatre exercises along with other theatre activities relating to the play - I saw many a creative freeze frame! As the tour went on, the workshops evolved based on different situations in different places, ensuring that there was room for deeper discussion where the students were really engaged, and that there were more games of Splat when it was the last day before the Christmas holidays. Overall, I learned huge amounts, and it was a fascinating and rewarding experience to see hundreds of young people engaging with both the literature and theatre practice in different ways.
This year's tour isn't quite over yet, as the cast and crew are busy preparing for our home run at the ADC theatre in Cambridge on the 21st-25th of January. We are continuing to prioritise ETG's focus on education by offering educational discounts to school groups who want to see the show. We can also offer workshops for students to accompany the performance, and can provide a free digital copy of the education pack to educational groups on request! Please contact education@cuetg.co.uk if you are interested.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare
Tuesday 21st - Saturday 25th January, 7.45PM
ADC Theatre
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