Royal Shakespeare Company
We were lucky enough to be chosen as a Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) link school and we now work wonderfully with RSC colleagues to have a fully immersive Shakespeare experience each year.
Shakespeare Week
The main focus of our work with the Royal Shakespeare Company is to have a yearly Shakespeare Week in school. We had our first one last year, which saw all the children from Foundation to Year 5 engage themselves into Shakespeare’s work, who he was and focusing on his play, 'Twelfth Night'. Many children researched Shakespeare, learned about his different plays and created artwork inspired by his work or Twelfth Night.
During Shakespeare Week, each class work with a local artist from the Royal Shakespeare company focusing on either art, music or drama. Their workshops last from 45 minutes to an hour and help immerse them into the story of the play.
This academic year, our focus is the play, 'Romeo and Juliet' and Shakespeare Week will culminate in a masked ball!
Ambassadors
Our Shakespeare Ambassadors help support our Shakespeare Week and conduct a pupil voice activity, finding out what the children in Seely learn about Shakespeare and what they enjoy. The ambassadors then make a PowerPoint celebrating all the work completed during Shakespeare Week and lead a sharing assembly that they deliver to the whole school.
Twelfth Night Performance
Last academic year, all our Key Stage 2 children experienced a performance delivered by a company from 'The Playhouse, First Encounters', that was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, 'Twelfth Night'. This was thoroughly enjoyed by all children and concluded our work on Twelfth Night so well.
Wider Opportunities
Luckily, being a part of the Royal Shakespeare Company, we have many opportunities to experience theatre trips with the children.
Last Christmas (2022), our KS1 children and LKS2 children all got to have a trip to The Theatre Royal to watch the pantomime. Our UKS2 children were able to watch, 'An Unexpected Twist' at The Theatre Royal in the summer term 2023.
Playmaking Festival
Twenty of our Year 5 pupils chose to attend a drama club in the Summer Term 2023 for 7 weeks and were given two scenes from Twelfth Night to re-enact. They memorised lines and acted those scenes as a part of an ensemble with nine other schools across Nottingham. They worked alongside experts to perfect their scenes and performed on the Theatre Royal stage in front of over one thousand people. Our Year 4 pupils were lucky enough to attend and watch them too.
We can't wait for this year's Playmaking Festival!
