Starting with Macbeth, online platform using rehearsal-based teaching methods aims to transform study of the Bard
Act 1. Scene 1. A classroom in a secondary school in Peterborough. It is a dreary, wet afternoon. Pupils file into the room, take their seats and face the front.
These year 10 English students at Ormiston Bushfield academy are taking part in a workshop about Macbeth, part of a new curriculum devised by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to bring the Bard’s works to life in the UK’s slightly stuffy classrooms.
The pupils are quiet. They slump in their seats. Then a rehearsal-style game of “pass the click [of fingers]” warms them up, and a few minutes later they are up on their feet, paired up and performing some of Shakespeare’s best-known lines with gusto.
The focus of this session is on Act 1, scene 7, a pivotal moment in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy where Macbeth is having doubts but is persuaded to kill King Duncan by his wife, Lady Macbeth, who taunts and goads him into action.
