Robin Hood Drama Club

I first developed a relationship with Robin Hood School through my work on CBSO educational projects and through the schools arts week in 2007. The fantastic support and atmosphere both from the children and staff made me really want to find new ways of working in collaboration with the school. This Summer the opportunity to set up and run an after school drama club arose through arts co-ordinator Baseema Mills.

From the start of the Summer term I worked with a group of year 6 pupils to explore a range of improvisational and devising techniques partly inspired by a recent John Wright workshop I had taken part in and partly by the format of my regular in school drama club at Rookery Primary school.

For the first half of the term each weekly session was self contained and centered on exploration, ensemble work, acquiring skills and developing a group. The children enjoyed themselves so much they requested the sessions to last longer, which i obviously appreciated and which also showed an incredible amount of commitment and interest by the children.

Although the sessions were after school I did have connections with the two year six teachers and would often grab a few moments to discuss the work we were doing. I discovered that the children had also been reporting back to the teachers and incorporating some of the expressive work into the class room.

As a visiting artist, I find these connections with staff members to be really important in terms of achieving the best possible results with a group and it always really nice when staff take time out of their busy schedule to liaise and share their experience and skills.

In the second half of the Summer Term the focus shifted to applying the skills participants had developed in order to produce a structured improvisation based on the groups collective ideas. Entitled ‘A Fantasy Fairy Tale’ it was based on different fairy tale characters, which the children interpreted with a modern slant,

They were all put together in the scenario of Sleeping Beauty except the basic premise was not that she had fallen asleep, but that she had run away and the King wanted to get to get to the bottom of it. The only thing to do was for “Ninja Hood” to face her fears and seek out ‘The Hansel and Gretel Detective Agency’!

The group decided that their performance not only had to have a modern slant but that it had to be funny, and aside from coming up with ideas for most of the content through practical sessions, all the children worked to a very high standard, keeping the work alive by drawing on improvisational techniques they had learned, and demonstrating great confidence and timing in the comic scenes!

The performance, was well received by staff, children and parents, as was the dance piece that provided the other half of the bill. I was delighted to be part of the sharing and very proud of all the performers