Year 8 Shakespeare Incursion

Bell Shakespeare incursion on A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

On Monday the 27th and Tuesday the 28th of July the Year 8 Ace classes partook in a workshop with Bell Shakespeare, where we were able to develop our understanding of Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and expanding our idea of the key themes throughout the play. 

During the workshop we took part in a series of games and activities. We began with fun warm-ups: one taught us about the Shakespearian language by making us do certain actions that were associated with specific words from Shakespearian plays and poems and another that challenged our brains as we had to create images with our bodies in our group but without communicating verbally.  

We then focused on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The activity started by challenging our acting skills as we created a Shakespearian insult as if we were battling groups from the play - this helped us understand the vibe that’s seen in the play. Afterwards we each put on different props like wigs, hats, scarves, shawls and robes so we could better get into character. The instructor Josh ran through a condensed version of the play while we acted out the roles. To finish off we split into small groups of three to five and made a handful of freeze frames for the main parts that happen throughout all of the different acts in the play, these two activities helped us to build our thinking and ideas about the play, as the play is written in Shakespearian language it’s useful to have a run through about what’s going on and what the characters are feeling during the conversations and scenes throughout the play. 

We are so lucky for this opportunity to help us understand the play that we are studying and are so fortunate for this wonderful workshop with the Bell Shakespeare company. 

- Alice McKenna, 8F