Context

Hallgarth School is a comprehensive secondary school in Middlesbrough.

Aims & principles

• To teach students how to write for the stage
• To encourage students to explore their feelings and opinions through drama and writing
• To teach students about narrative writing, dialogue, characterisation and stylisation

In Practice

The playwright Kathleen McCreery led a joint project within two schools, focusing on writing for performance. She spent three half days in each school, and the project culminated in a staged event at which pupils from both schools came together to share their work.

Kathleen began her sessions with warm up exercises. These helped to get the students thinking about the physical nature of drama, and provided them with a springboard for their writing ideas. She wanted the students to write about things that moved them or engaged them in a powerful way, so they were encouraged to spend some time thinking individually about possible subjects.

Having essentially decided against the one-act, whole-group play, Kathleen steered the students towards the idea of montage, a loose set of scenes with an overall theme. The scenes might all be different in length and have different settings, characters, times and styles, but together they would add up to more than the sum of their parts in exploring an issue or question of concern to the students.

The students settled on the theme of conflicts in families and between friends, and the importance of these relationships.

This was followed by discussions about the nature of drama and the difference between writing for the stage and for other media. Kathleen took the students through the essential aspects of a script, the tools that would enable their ideas to be communicated onstage to an audience, with particular focus on the importance of stage directions.

The performance took place in front of a small audience made up of teachers, governors, and other visitors, and was followed by a discussion with the students about what they felt they had gained from the project and which aspects they had most enjoyed.

Attitudes and attainment after the project

The students’ comments on what they most enjoyed included ‘improvising, expressing yourself’, ‘sharing people’s problems’, ‘working together’, ‘performing’ and ‘getting rid of the rubbish you had at first and making it better’- this last comment being a good indicator that the students had taken on board the importance of re-drafting.

Final thought

‘The project was successful in that the young people were engaged from the ouset, prepared to commit themselves, and displayed great maturity and responsibility at the final sharing. Their scripts dealt with emotionally complex situations and issues, and they did not shy away from the challenges. From their responses in the discussion afterwards, it was clear that they had learned a lot, enjoyed the process and were aware that they had achieved something.’ — Class Teacher

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