The Drama Workshop Leader E-Book

Linden Walcott-Burton

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 444

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

This comprehensive, easy-to-use guide contains everything you need to plan and deliver effective drama sessions, get the best out of your participants, and develop an empowering leadership style that works for you. Drawing on over fifteen years' experience of running workshops – including for the National Theatre, The Old Vic, Barbican, Battersea Arts Centre and National Youth Theatre – Linden Walcott-Burton takes you through everything you need to know, with essential advice on: - Your Workshop: How to plan and structure a successful session; how to deliver it effectively, whether in-person or online; how to devise and run an entire course. - Your Group: How to motivate and get the best out of your group; how to encourage positive behaviours and manage challenging ones; how to adapt to different groups and needs; how to give and receive feedback. - Yourself as a Workshop Leader: How to empower yourself by owning the space and maintaining boundaries; how to use your voice (and not lose it); how to harness the power of humour and fun. Packed with tips and techniques that work with any setting and age group, whether you're running a short session or a longer course, the book also provides specific guidance on delivering workshops in schools, working with disabled people and those with learning disabilities, and safeguarding when working with children and young people. There's also advice on co-facilitating, working with assistants and finding work. Organised in handy, bite-sized chunks allowing you to find just what you need, the book also includes sample workshop plans and content, with additional insights and examples of best practice from many other leading practitioners in the field. Whether you're just starting out and want to learn the basics, or you're a seasoned facilitator looking for fresh ideas, The Drama Workshop Leader is the resource you need to deliver a great session in any room you walk into, no matter what's thrown your way. 'Every practitioner, no matter their level of experience, will gain so much from this book' Jackie Tait, Primary Programme Manager, National Theatre Learning

Leseprobe

Linden Walcott-Burton

Linden Walcott-Burton is an actor, director, producer and workshop facilitator.

His acting credits include work for HBO/Punchdrunk, the Royal Court Theatre, the Sherman Cymru, Shakespeare’s Globe and the BBC.

He is a regular facilitator for the National Theatre and was involved in the development of their facilitator-training programme. His facilitating credits also include The Old Vic, the Barbican, Battersea Arts Centre and Punchdrunk Enrichment, as well as corporate facilitation work for Oxford University’s Said Business School. He is also an Associate Artist for the National Youth Theatre.

He was formerly the producer of the free actor’s showcase MonologueSlamUK at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and was a councillor for Equity. He has also worked as a Culture Policy Officer for the London Mayor, as the lead officer for theatre in London and artificial intelligence in the creative industries.

A Nick Hern Book

The Drama Workshop Leader first published in Great Britain in 2023 by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP

This ebook first published 2023

Copyright © 2023 Linden Walcott-Burton Foreword copyright © 2023 Jackie Tait

Linden Walcott-Burton has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover image © vejaa/iStock Designed and typeset by Nick Hern Books

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 83904 079 5 (print edition)

Contents

Foreword by Jackie Tait

Introduction

Points to Note Before Reading

1. Your Workshop

Planning Your Workshop

Before Your Workshop

During Your Workshop

After Your Workshop

2. Your Group

Getting People into Groups

How to Get the Best Out of Your Group

How to Build a Positive Relationship with Your Group

Discussing the Work

How to Use Questions and Answers for Maximum Impact

Behaviour Management

3. Specific Workshops

Running a Course

Bonus Activities for Courses

Schools

Disabled People

Online

4. Yourself as a Workshop Leader

Empowering Yourself

How to Use Your Voice

Safeguarding for Children and Young People

Final Thoughts

Thank-yous from the Past

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Jackie Tait

Primary Programme Manager, National Theatre Learning

I first met Linden Walcott-Burton in 2018 when he achieved a place on the National Theatre Facilitator Training Course – an intense ten-day programme specifically designed for actors, directors and other theatre professionals who already have some experience of facilitation. Alongside a successful acting career, Linden had spent ten years working as a facilitator with a variety of different participant groups. His talent was, and is, obvious – he has the ability to make the most of every experience and opportunity that comes his way; to wring out every possible bit of learning – an essential quality when learning the art of facilitation. Since completing the course, Linden has been employed as a freelance facilitator by National Theatre Learning and has become a true expert in his field.

To many of us working in participatory drama, Linden’s journey will be a familiar one. He was motivated to become a drama facilitator because of the impact that being a participant had had on him as a young person. If you ask any of the staff in the learning team at the National Theatre you will find, more often than not, that this was the reason why they wanted to work in the arts in the first place. The power of participatory drama is something that, once experienced, you want to share.

It is a common misconception, however, that participation in drama exists solely to encourage people to become an actor or to work in theatre. Drama is an extremely powerful, multi-faceted tool for learning and self-development. Participation in a creative, well-facilitated drama-based process can really transform lives. In terms of practical application, it can help to develop problem-solving and decision-making skills, improve cognitive function, and increase concentration and memory retention, as well as developing the imagination. Social-skills development is another key area of impact. Time and again, I have witnessed this kind of learning process helping people to develop their speaking, listening and communication skills, their ability to cooperate and work as a team, and their empathy skills. It frequently helps to improve their social lives, due to the special connection that a drama-based process can create between people.

Furthermore, the broader impact on wellbeing is palpable. The opportunity that creative learning and drama provides for self-expression not only improves self-awareness, but can significantly boost self-esteem and confidence. It can reduce stress and anxiety, improving participants’ emotional wellbeing. I have even seen instances of it improving physical health. Particularly when the outcome is performance-focused, a drama process can create a real feeling of pride and achievement and foster a desire for lifelong learning.

Twenty years ago, I walked into the very first session of my post-graduate course in Community Theatre. We were asked to make a list of all the different roles of a drama facilitator. It took us about an hour and, as I recall, we ended up with thirty-two on the list.

All of which is to say, facilitation comprises an extremely complicated set of skills to learn and takes many years to truly master. In my role heading up the primary-school programme for National Theatre Learning, I have had the privilege of working with many of the most experienced facilitators in the UK; not one of them would say that their learning journey is complete.

Facilitation is emphatically not the same as teaching (although both are similarly challenging, multi-role pursuits). Teaching is predominantly about imparting knowledge in such a way that students are able to remember it, with that journey led largely by the teacher. Facilitation is far more about devising a creative journey for participants in order for them to discover new insight, new solutions and perhaps also new knowledge. The direction of travel on that journey is led largely by the participants and only managed or facilitated by the leader. Participants thus have ownership of what they discover and therefore it automatically becomes more memorable. The best educators are, of course, able to master both of these approaches to learning.

Learning to be a drama facilitator can be a solitary journey, offering little opportunity to observe and learn from others. You have no choice but to learn on the job. You make your mistakes, learning by trial and error over many years. This practical experience is vital to finding your own style, strengths and weaknesses as a facilitator.

But how brilliant to finally have a bit of extra help in your hands. This important book provides an extensive account of Linden’s journey into facilitation and what he has learnt along the way. Rooted in practical experience, it also offers valuable contributions and examples from some of the most experienced facilitators in the field (including the leaders of the NT’s Facilitators’ Training Programme). There are many books out there offering games and exercises to draw on when planning workshops but, to my knowledge, this is the first to showcase the art of facilitation to this level of detail and success.

Every practitioner, no matter their level of experience, will gain so much from this book. It will take you from the basics of planning a workshop and setting up the room, right through to advanced skills, such as using your voice effectively and how to frame the right questions. For some just starting out it will be entirely new and vital information, for some a useful refresher of what all-round good practice looks like, and for some simply a reassurance and reaffirmation that what they have been doing in practice for years has been on the right track!

To anyone wanting to excel as a facilitator, my advice would be to read this book. Dip into it or read it cover to cover. I so wish it had existed when I started out.

Introduction

You might be wondering why I’m qualified to teach you how to run a workshop. Or maybe you’re curious to know how this book came about. If so, then sit down, grab a cushion and get comfy, because a brief (!) story of my life will tell you all you need to know about why I’ve written this book for you.

Part one – the opening chapter (of my life)

The first part of my life was rocky, to say the least. By age thirteen, as a family we’d moved house eleven times. I’d been to three different primary schools, back to my first school again, and then three secondary schools – half of which were in London, half in the West Midlands. Six schools, with a grand total of one drama class (as part of an English lesson), which nobody took seriously. So the odds of me going into the arts weren’t great.

I’d need a separate book to explain why we moved house so much, but I was pretty unfazed by it all. It was my life; I didn’t know any different. I just took it on the chin and got on with it. I didn’t have any other upbringing to compare it to, and why stress about something you can’t control?

We ping-ponged between London and the West Midlands throughout this time, until we finally settled in a cosy little house in my mum’s hometown of Dudley, a former industrial heartland. The contrast to London couldn’t have been greater. It was a peaceful community; with an auntie five doors down the road, my nan and grandad at the top of the hill, and enough friends within a five-minute radius for a small army of us to walk to school every day. It was during this period of stability that for the first time ever, I landed in a school that did drama.

To my shock, I was good at it. Seeing as I’d spent my previous school years as the biggest geek of all time – with big glasses, braces, and a bag so big it could (and did) carry every book for the week, being good at drama didn’t make sense. How could I go from being top of the class academically but bottom of the social ladder in London, to suddenly being the cool drama kid in the Midlands? What if they found out who I really was…?

I didn’t complain. After a few years at Hillcrest School and Community College in 2004, our school was approached by a company called Leaps and Bounds, who came to pitch to us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Two hundred disadvantaged young people were to take part in an eighteen-month project to see if the arts could change their lives, with the not-so-minor task of staging Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet at the Birmingham Hippodrome alongside their professional company, as part of a Channel 4 documentary.

I can remember clear as day that I barely even listened to the sales pitch. I heard the words ‘this’ll be on TV’, and I signed right up.

Fast forward, and two years later I was on the Birmingham Hippodrome stage before a live audience of two thousand people and a TV audience of four million, playing the role of Tybalt – with all the major sword-fighting scenes alongside the Birmingham Royal Ballet dancers. And I’d only just turned seventeen. It was quite the journey, having only encountered drama quite recently, my only experience being my school plays, and my only experience of dance being the odd moves I’d bust out to some nineties Usher in my bedroom.

The whole idea of the project was insane – but it never felt that way. We had a goal and we set out to achieve it. I remember sitting in the rehearsal room two weeks before the performance, looking down at a newspaper with the headline ‘it’s impossible, it can’t be done’, in reference to the fact that there was no logical way that a bunch of street youths could stage one of Kenneth Macmillan’s most prominent ballets having just walked in off the street – only to look up at the rehearsal to see that, in fact, it was possible, because we’d just finished our first run-through. Clearly we got the memo too late.

But looking back, it was such a different experience to the culture that I’d later experience in the theatre world. This was ballet. Ballet is about perfection. The perfect dance sequence, the perfect poise, everything. In rehearsals, my head would be repositioned and lengthened if it were even a centimetre dipped out of alignment.

The project was tough love. We had to be there on time, and we had to commit. There were no excuses. It didn’t matter what was going on in our lives (and for most people, there was a lot) – we had a job to do and we had to rise to it. I think the world has a very different idea about tough love now, but certainly, nobody can deny that the project took us from being rowdy teenagers to achieving the ‘impossible’. And I don’t think any other approach would’ve worked.

Having then spent two years getting my A Levels at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge, I spent a gap year with the National Youth Theatre. As chance would have it, they’d set up a second headquarters in Brierly Hill – which happened to be a thirty-minute walk from my mum’s house. With my mum in the Midlands and my dad in London, I spent three days as an actor on their first Playing Up acting course in London during the week, and spent Saturdays as an assistant director to Paul Edwards on their Saturday community workshops in Brierly Hill. The ping-ponging between the two areas that I’d done throughout my life was now being mirrored on a weekly basis through theatre. The world works in mysterious ways.

It was there that I learnt the foundations of being a workshop facilitator. The Saturday workshops were free for the local young people, and our register soon ballooned from seven in the first week to forty-two at its peak, with three full performances across the local area – from a church, to a shopping centre, to the local high street. It was during this year that the first spark of this book happened; from one of the most throwaway comments you could imagine.

At the end a rehearsal for our show one day, our director, Daisy Douglas, recalled her time at drama school and said something along the lines of:

‘When I was at drama school, I wrote down everything I did.’

And that’s what changed everything. From that point on, every new drama exercise I saw, I typed up into a scraggly table in a Windows 98 document. That same file has made it through time, space, computer backups, hard-drive failures and a computer explosion; and ballooned from a single page with nine games on it in the mid-2000s, to a thirty-five-page document by 2021.

Part 2 – The middle chapter (of my life)

Fast forward some years and I’d graduated from drama school and was working as an actor. Like most creatives, I juggled a thousand things at once. From acting for the Royal Court, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Sherman Cymru, Soho Theatre and Punchdrunk, to producing the high-profile free actors’ showcase MonologueSlamUK in London, to being an elected Councillor for Equity – all alongside workshop-leading and the general hustle that comes with being a creative. I’d started in the arts from zero – I had to work for everything.

It was also during this time that I worked as a special needs teaching assistant in a special educational needs and disability (SEND) school. I’d had a lot of experience with young people from having a big family and from my facilitating work, and I was also a backup carer for my dad, who was a foster-carer to incredibly challenging young people. But I’d never worked with disabled young people before. It was helpful because being agency staff meant I could take time off and be relatively flexible for acting work when it came along, but it actually proved more valuable than I expected.

I had the fullest experience you could imagine. Over the seven years, I worked in seven schools plus a special needs playscheme. I worked with every year group (from nursery to post-sixteen), with the full range of special needs (from autism to Down syndrome), across the whole spectrum (from children with mild learning disabilities, to those who were four-to-one, needing four members of staff with them at all times). There was even a school where I worked with every class and almost every student, to the point that most teachers were requesting for me to be in their class. I also became the person who’d be parachuted in to work with the most challenging students.

There were challenges as well as triumphs. Over the time, I’d been punched, kicked, scratched, headbutted, spat at, I’d sprinted down hallways to stop students hitting people, sprinted down hallways to stop students hitting me, saw people go to A&E, stopped hair-pulls, dealt with epileptic fits, and barricaded doors from students on a rampage. But I also saw students who were never expected to walk, learn to. I saw selective mutes find their voice to speak. I built bonds with non-verbal students who’d run the whole school ragged, but were always responsive with me. I made connections with kids who’d break down in tears when they got to the school gates and refuse to enter, but would perk up straight away and come in with a hop and a skip as soon as I came over.

It was only by having the full range of those experiences that I learnt to handle pretty much anything that came my way. I wouldn’t be able to say the same if I’d been on the outside intellectualising about it. I started in that sphere like many things I’m faced with – having absolutely no idea what I was doing or how I got there, and feeling well out of my depth; but I rose to the challenge and I learnt so much. About people, and about myself. And so much of what I learnt didn’t just apply to young people with special needs, but to adults and facilitating as well. But it was during this period that the second stage of the making of this book began.

It was around this time that I ran my first summer course for the National Youth Theatre (NYT): a two-week junior course for fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds, with thirty talented young people from across the UK, an assistant, and the complete freedom to plan and deliver the course in whatever way I saw fit – so long as it was ensemble-based and we devised a final performance. Great if you know what you’re doing, daunting if you’re relatively new.

Having delivered my course, I’d been reflecting a lot on how it went, and brought up some of my experiences with another NYT associate, Lukas Angelini, when we were co-facilitating some NYT auditions. NYT courses for many are seen as a completely life-changing experience, with the group starting as strangers, then usually in tears at the end of their two or three weeks because they don’t want to part ways. I had a group of teenage boys who were so sad it was over that they spent the entire goodbye session with sunglasses on, trying (and failing) to cover the tears streaming down their faces.

So I had two questions. The first was: Why was this the case? What was it about the courses that made them so fulfilling and life-changing? Yes, people loved it for the theatre aspects, but they loved it just as much, if not more, for the personal and social side.

But there was a second question too. That same year, there were other courses that had really struggled with a host of mental health challenges from participants, and internal rifts within the groups. It was often said that more young people were struggling with their mental health over recent years than ever before (which mirrors the national data on the issue), and that the courses were almost expected to have pastoral challenges along those lines. But I didn’t have any of that on my courses. Why not? What was different? Was my experience a fluke? Or were there things happening that I just wasn’t aware of?

There was something else that confused me too. Towards the end of my first NYT course, one of my participants had written to me saying they’d been in a bad place before it started – to the point that they weren’t even going to attend – but for the first time in a long time they’d felt happy and part of a family. Again, I was confused. I hadn’t done anything special. I just did the theatre. I didn’t understand. Was Zip Zap Boing and some script work really all that? Surely not. Why did it have so much of an impact?

But it kept on happening. Similar things happened in every course I ran. From a disabled participant saying it was the first time they’d ever felt ‘normal’, to another who had never committed to anything in their life but turned up to every single session of mine on time (their mum was in tears with pride), to another having had nightmares every night for months but none whatsoever throughout the course, to more and more people saying in our final checkouts that they’d been in bad places before the course, but hadn’t felt any of that during it. You can see what I mean from the ‘Thank-yous from the Past’ section on page 271.

This was all great. Fantastic feedback. Absolutely brilliant to have made such an impact. But the question I kept coming back to was:

Why?

Why??

It made no sense to me. There were other directors whose whole ethos was around compassion, happiness and changing lives, yet for some of them their courses were riddled with far more conflict and unhappiness than mine, and after a few years of doing it, I realised that it couldn’t just be down to the random selection of young people we were getting.

To be clear, this wasn’t about me or about patting myself on the back. I don’t care about that. The reality was that if I couldn’t pinpoint what was effective and what wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to replicate the success, and I’d have no way of addressing any problems if I did eventually run into them. You can’t replicate luck, but you can replicate skill.

Having aired some of these thoughts with Lukas, the second spark to this book happened, when he said:

‘The facilitator has more of an impact on the room than you think.’

It wasn’t until I did a facilitation course with the National Theatre a few years later that this really hit home, and I realised just how much of my experience I’d taken for granted. For the first time ever, I was consciously taught the skills to run a room, rather than learning them on the job. I already knew a chunk of what the course covered, but it was good to reaffirm what I knew, and it was interesting to see others’ reactions to the fundamentals that I’d assumed were just common knowledge. But I realised that of all the companies I’d worked for, only two of them had ever actively trained their facilitators in how to run a room. It was always just assumed that you could. Training would happen, but it’d usually cover topics such as safeguarding or diversity and inclusion. And those won’t be of much use when you’re in a room with thirty feral young people hanging off the walls, with Jeremy and Philip more interested in making fart noises than listening.

Especially for successful actors. The assumption was always: ‘Oh great! You’re fresh from the Royal Shakespeare Company? You’d be great to run these workshops.’ Well, no. Delivering your finest Romeo or Juliet to a paying audience and delivering a theatre workshop may have some crossover, but they’re different disciplines. And in some respects, captivating thirty half-sleeping teenagers who don’t want to be there can be way harder than engaging an audience who have willingly paid to see you.

Plus, I realised there were no resources on how to facilitate, and given that most of us work alone, how could you learn from other people? There were a few accredited courses in drama schools, but those were for newcomers to the industry, not those already in it. There were certainly no books. The only things that existed were books on drama games, but knowing an exercise and knowing how to deliver it (and a workshop) are two different things. Never mind a course.

So I decided to write one. If nobody else had done it, I would. Go me.

Part 3 – The writing of this book chapter (of my life)

This book had always been on my ‘one day, I’d really like to…’ list, until the day came when I unlocked my phone and started making notes. From that point on, my life went from ‘If I had more time, I’d write a book’ to ‘I’m writing a book, I have no time.’

I already had a fair amount to say on the subject. During my NYT courses, I’d always sit down with my assistants and talk them through my workshop plans and the craftmanship of my delivery, which served as a starting point. I originally planned for the book to be about how to run a workshop and to include all of the exercises that I’d built up over the years in my Word document. But it quickly became clear that there was far more to this book than I expected, and that it should be a standalone book in itself.

And then the pandemic hit. Before Covid-19, I was fiercely political and spent far too much time on social media trying to change the world. But in the wake of the pandemic and the death of George Floyd in America, it was almost as if a circuit breaker kicked in for me. All of a sudden, the internet had become so angry, frustrated and toxic that I pulled myself off social media entirely. The fuse had blown. There was too much coming down the power lines.

It was one of the best things I could’ve done. I got my life in order, spent more time in the real world rather than the digital, and I channelled the newfound time into the things I chose rather than on endless scrolling. It also meant I had a whole year to dedicate to writing during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Perfect timing. So like most of us would do under the circumstances, I began to write this book…

…once lockdown had lifted, and I was busy with a thousand other things.

But two years later, it was complete. So what you have here is everything I’ve learnt over fifteen years of both the successes and mistakes from running hundreds of workshops, as well as the insight from having worked with many who I’d consider to be some of the finest practitioners of our time; some of whom have made contributions to this book to offer their perspective. This book isn’t a complete replacement for going out there and gaining experience, but it should serve as a guide through your journey and career.

It’s important to note that I’ve written this book while actively working in the field – scribbling down notes or key points of learning while I was delivering workshops, to share with the world in these pages. So it’s not a theoretical book that’s been written from a distance, it’s been written from me being on the ground and getting my hands dirty. I also didn’t want it to be an intellectual pursuit or self-indulgent – so I hope that it’s accessible enough that you can dive into it mid-workshop and get the guidance you need within minutes, while still being given the level of depth that you need.

All the many life experiences I’ve had have fed into who I am and the way that I work. From the tough love of Birmingham Royal Ballet and Leaps and Bounds, to my extensive experience with the National Youth Theatre, to my challenges and successes in SEND schools; as well as the wide range of acting and theatre jobs I’ve done, alongside my facilitation work in general. I don’t have a dedication to any particular worldview or perspective – I simply do whatever works to bring out the best in the people that I work with. I ditch anything that doesn’t.

I’d wager that good facilitation can prevent most of the problems you may encounter in a room and can unlock most of the things that you want to achieve. Being a good workshop leader isn’t about doing one thing well, it’s about doing lots of little things, really well. I hope this book guides you and unlocks the best in the people that you work with, as the people I worked with unlocked the best in me.

Points to Note Before Reading

•  The guidance in this book should give you the foundation to work in any workshop environment, regardless of the setting. However, some settings will require more specific adaptations. Some of the key ones are in the relevant chapter from page 151 of this book.

•  Not every technique in this book will work for every type of group. Different demographics require different approaches, so make sure that you adjust to your audience.

•  While there is some crossover between running a drama workshop and directing a production, be aware that they’re different environments. A technique you might use as a workshop facilitator won’t necessarily translate to being a director, and vice versa.

•  Some sections will have a personal reflection from me at the end. These appear in speech bubbles and will give you an insight into how I came to learn those particular points, or give my own personal take on them.

•  To give a broader perspective, several other practitioners have contributed their thoughts and reflections to sections of this book. These are practitioners whose work I know well, who are specialists in their respective areas, and are extremely successful and effective at what they do.

•  Other than the contributing practitioners and those in the introduction, all of the names in this book have been remixed to cover people’s identities.

•  At times I’ll refer to the National Youth Theatre courses that I’ve run. For reference, the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain is the UK’s most established and respected youth theatre, with alumni such as Daniel Craig, Dame Helen Mirren and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Thousands of young people audition every year for a chance to be in the company, and, if successful (at the time of writing this), do either a two-week Junior course (for ages 14–17), a three week Senior course (for ages 18–25), or a four-week Epic Stages course (ages 22–25). These are intensive, six-day-a-week, full-time courses, with the participants coming from all over the country and often staying in halls and living together. Each course has one director, one assistant and thirty course participants. The courses are planned entirely by the director, and must be ensemble-based, with a short, devised performance at the end.

Planning Your Workshop

The Basics

So you’re looking to plan a great session? Brilliant. Let’s start at the beginning.

When you’re given a blank canvas and have a workshop to plan, there are some key elements you should consider for every workshop you do. These are:

•  The workshop’s overall aim.

•  The aim of each exercise.

•  The physical transition between each exercise.

•  The impact of the exercise on the group’s energy.

•  Who the group interact with.

•  How long each exercise will take.

•  Fun!

Nothing in your workshop should be done for the sake of it, so be clear about why you’re doing each exercise and how it fits into your overall structure. Let’s break down some of those key elements.

The workshop’s overall aim

All of your exercises should stem from your workshop’s overall aim. You might be given an aim by the company you’re working for, but if not, you’ll need to set one. Here are some examples of what an overall aim could be:

•  To introduce the group to the key themes and characters of a play.

•  To explore physicality and movement in relation to acting.

•  To explore different stage configurations, e.g. end-on, thrust and traverse.

Having an overall aim will focus your session and allow you to choose exercises that support what you’re trying to achieve. It’ll also make your workshop easier to plan, because it’ll be easier to choose from the handful of exercises or topics that support your aim, rather than the hundreds of drama exercises in existence.

The aim of each exercise

Each exercise needs a purpose. Otherwise, why are you doing it? Time spent on an exercise that doesn’t have a purpose could be better spent on an exercise that does. Each exercise should support your workshop’s overall aim, so select them with that in mind.

This doesn’t mean that every exercise has to be linked to the overall aim in a literal sense, so long as it supports it. For example, if your workshop is about the history of workers’ rights in the UK, is a game of Stuck-in-the-Mud related to that? Hell no. But if you’re playing it to energise your group and to warm up their teamworking skills for the session, then go for it.

One key exception here is when you’re running a full course. The more time you have with a group, the more you can afford to break this rule. But that should be the exception, not the norm.

The physical transition between each exercise

When scene changes would take place in older plays, the play would stop, the lights would dim, and ninja-like humans dressed in black would rearrange the furniture for the next scene. The same could happen with the exercise transitions in your session (where an exercise ends, people rearrange themselves, then you start the next exercise…), but we don’t want that. We want your transitions to be silky smooth.

Getting your previous exercise to end in the formation that the next one starts in will mean your group won’t need to physically rearrange themselves. You can go straight into the next exercise with no fuss. Obviously there’ll be times where you have no choice, but reducing the amount of rearranging people need to do will speed up your workshop, make it more efficient, and keep the group’s attention.

A workshop with bad exercise transitions

A workshop with good exercise transitions

It’s not the end of the world if your exercises aren’t all seamlessly linked, but it is something to be aware of, particularly with challenging groups. The more you get people to rearrange themselves, the harder it’ll be to keep them focused. A disciplined group can rearrange themselves in ten seconds. A group of feral teenagers? In ten minutes.

Doing this will also give more weight to the exercises that aren’t so seamless. If your exercise transitions have been silky smooth throughout, breaking this style and having the group form an audience to watch each other’s work will mark a gear change in your workshop. It’ll then make them take their performances more seriously.

Lastly, it’s particularly important to bear this in mind if you’re using chairs. It’s much better to do all of your chair exercises in one go than it is to set them up, put them back, set them up, put them back, then set them up to put them back again. Do all the chair exercises together, then kiss the chairs goodbye.

The impact of the exercise on the group’s energy

You need to be aware of the impact that your exercises will have on your group’s energy. Will it energise them? Will it get them focused? Will it get them into a competitive mindset? Each exercise should build on the previous exercise’s energy or set the group up for the next one. Sharon might find it harder to stay focused on the current exercise if you’ve just played a competitive game of Tag, compared to if you do a calm, focused game beforehand.

Who the group interact with

There are two modes of interaction with a group:

•  The facilitator engaging with the group – when you’re actively leading the room.

•  The group engaging with each other – when the group are working with each other or by themselves.

There are pros and cons to each interaction style, so you need a balance of both. Here are some of the pros and cons of each:

Facilitator to participant

+

–

•  You can actively teach and share knowledge.

•  It’s easier to keep the group on task because you’re in control.

•  You can actively guide the workshop.

•  Participants can only listen for so long before they become disengaged.

•  Participants don’t get to actively explore the content themselves.

•  The loudest students can often get the most direct interaction.

Participant to participant

+

–

•  Allows the group to actively engage in the material.

•  It’s much easier to have every participant engaged.

•  ‘Mistakes’ are less exposing because they won’t be exposed to the whole group.

•  Allows you some downtime to check in with your plan, assistant, or individuals in the group.

•  It’s more difficult for the facilitator to share their knowledge to everyone.

•  Groups can easily go off-task if given too much time or they lack focus.

Bear in mind that you can sometimes alter the interaction style of exercises. This can allow you to balance a workshop more by creating more opportunities for the group to interact with each other, or with you. For example:

Task: Establishing the rules of the room

Facilitator to participant

Participant to participant and facilitator to participant

•  The facilitator asks the group for suggestions for rules for the session, which get written on the board.

•  The facilitator puts everyone into groups and asks them to come up with a list of rules.

•  The facilitator asks each group to share some of their rules, before writing them on the board.

How long each exercise will take

You need to have a rough estimate for how long each exercise will be. I say ‘rough’, because no matter how experienced you get, there’s no way you’ll be able to plan your timings accurately. And if you can, you’ve been gifted by the gods. There’s no use spending hours meticulously figuring out your timings to the minute because workshops are organic and you’ll need to be flexible to your group. All it takes is for Stella to tell you what she thought of an exercise and your timings can fly out the window.

But you do need to have an idea for how long you want each exercise to be, otherwise you run the risk of a five-minute warm-up becoming the entire hour-long session, with only a few minutes left for the core of your workshop.

Fun!

Often forgotten, your sessions need to be enjoyable and engaging. Theatre workshops shouldn’t be a chore, and certainly shouldn’t feel like punishment. You could have the best workshop plan in the world, but if it’s dull and people fall asleep, what’s the point? They may as well stay in bed.

Playing games, using a variety of exercises, and choosing engaging, relevant material are all ways to support this. But all in all, be creative. And if something’s boring, either make it unboring or take it out of your workshop and throw it as far as the eye can see.

I aim to get the best out of groups by creating an environment where people can build positive relationships. Getting people playing and listening to each other is essential for this. Here they start to develop a sense of fun and respect for one another. It’s important to have fun!

Fun is anything that brings joy. It may be joyous to make a mistake and get applauded for it, to receive praise, or to learn something new about someone.

The playing has to be safe and the listening has to be genuine: such as listening to understand rather than listening to reply.

My golden rule is to throw in lots of playful activities that require people to listen, whether it be with their bodies, eyes, ears or anything else.

Ann Ogbomo Freelance Practitioner and Trainer, National Theatre Actor (Wonder Woman, Justice League, The Sandman, Krypton)

How to Plan Your Session

There isn’t a definitive manual for ‘this is how you plan a workshop’. As with anything creative, planning can often take a mix of different approaches and will vary from workshop to workshop, so this section will give you some strategies to consider. But regardless of your approach, you need to get as much information about the group as you can in advance and be clear about your workshop’s objective.

Get as much information as you can

The more information you can get about your group before you start planning, the easier it’ll be to design a workshop that’s suited to them. You don’t need to pull together a ten-page questionnaire for people, but there are some key questions that it’s worth having answers to, such as:

•  What is the context of the workshop – e.g. is it a school group, a drama-school course, a paid adult class?

•  Will the group already know each other or will they be meeting for the first time?

•  Will there be any access needs for people in the group – e.g. wheelchair users, learning disabilities, etc.?

•  What room will the workshop take place in and what is it like – e.g. how big is it, will the space be empty?

•  If the workshop’s related to a play, will the group have read the play or have seen it on stage before? Will they be going to see it? What’s their level of knowledge?

•  How much drama have they done before?

This isn’t a complete list of questions to ask, but it’s a good place to start. The answers to these questions will inform how you plan and deliver the workshop, so they’re important to know from the very beginning. The more information you have, the better, as it’ll allow you to avoid any inconvenient surprises and to adapt accordingly.

I once found out that my workshop on the story of Anne Frank had to take place in a classroom, so movement exercises would be really limited. However, it gave me a chance to plan some drawing/writing/diary activities with the idea for some of these to take place underneath the desks, which created a really evocative cramped space for the students to work in. The teacher was very excited by the kinaesthetic experience of writing diaries in a small space, and the way it enhanced the quality of the children’s writing.

Kate Beales Senior Artist and Practitioner, National Theatre Learning Associate Artist, Project Phakama Freelance facilitator, The Drive Project and Bravo 22 Company

Working backwards from your objective

After you’ve gathered your information, the next stage of planning your workshop should be to figure out:

•  What’s the aim of your workshop?

and

•  What do you want the group to achieve by the end of the session?

Once you figure these out, you can start gathering ideas for suitable exercises to plan. Here’s an example that we’ll use throughout this next section:

Topic: Shakespeare

Aim: To teach the group how to explore a Shakespearean text and iambic pentameter

To achieve: For the group to perform a short extract of a Shakespeare scene at the end of the session

This’ll instantly give you something to focus on. Improvisation, movement and break-dancing will likely be out. Voice and Shakespearean text will be in. It’s not to say that you can’t include movement, etc., but if it doesn’t specifically support the aim, it’s a no-go. Make sure that you know what you want to cover and what you want your group to go away with. This’ll make it much easier to structure and plan.

I find it helpful to start by imagining the end of the workshop first. I try not to hold back, ignore all the logistical challenges, and ask myself ‘What would be the dream ending to this workshop?’ It’s important to start from a place of creativity, ambition and excitement. A good workshop plan should have a crescendo, something to build towards that will give participants the feeling of having really achieved something.

Euan Borland Head of Education and Community, The Old Vic

Breaking your plan into sections

So you know your workshop’s aims. Noice. Let’s look at how you put it all together.

Staring at a blank page knowing that you need a whole session on voice, movement or the complete works of Shakespeare can sometimes be daunting. How on earth do you fill the time? Well, breaking your workshop into sections can be a good place to start. Here’s an example:

Whole-day Workshop – Shakespeare 10am – 5pm (7 hours)

We know we’ll need some breaks. So let’s say we’ll have:

A 1-hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks

Spreading these evenly throughout the day will automatically give us four sections of content:

Whole-day workshop – Shakespeare 10am – 5pm (7 hours)

Section 1

10am – 11.30am

1 hour 30 minutes

Break

11.30am – 11.45am

15 minutes

Section 2

11.45am – 1.15pm

1 hour 30 minutes

Lunch

1.15pm – 2.15pm

1 hour

Section 3

2.15pm – 3.45pm

1 hour 30 minutes

Break

3.45pm – 4pm

15 minutes

Section 4

4pm – 5pm

1 hour

Broken down like that, the timings we have now are:

Breaks – 1 hour 30 minutes Work – 5 hours 30 minutes

Automatically that seven-hour workshop becomes 5 hours and 30 minutes, which makes it less intimidating straight away. Now let’s break down each section.

Whole-day workshop 10am – 5pm (7 hours)

Section

Time

Session Duration

Activity

Section 1

10am – 11.30am

1 hour 30 minutes

30 minutes – Intro to the day and ice-breakers / team-building games 1 hour – Introduction to Shakespeare

Break

11.30am – 11.45am

15 minutes

Chillin’

Section 2

11.45am – 1.15pm

1 hour 30 minutes

Shakespearean techniques to unlock the text

Lunch

1.15pm – 2.15pm

1 hour

Eatin’

Section 3

2.15pm – 3.45pm

1 hour 30 minutes

Rehearsing their Shakespeare scenes

Break

3.45pm – 4pm

15 minutes

Chillin’

Section 4

4pm – 5pm

1 hour

45 minutes – Showing the scenes 15 minutes – Debrief on the day

Sections 3 and 4 will have the group working by themselves or showing their work, which means that aside from finding their scripts, the content you’d need to plan for would be:

•  Up to thirty minutes of ice-breakers/team-building games.

•  One hour of an introduction to Shakespeare.

•  One hour thirty minutes of Shakespeare content, techniques and exercises.

This means that in a whole day’s Shakespeare workshop with a plan such as this, you actually only have to plan two hours and thirty minutes of content once you’ve found your scripts. It’s still two hours and thirty minutes, but that’s nowhere near the mammoth seven hours that you started with. And even then, it’ll be much easier to crack once you’re clear about what the objective of your workshop is.

Breaking your workshop into sections will help with workshops of any length, not just whole-day workshops. Here’s an example of a two-hour workshop without breaks.

2-hour workshop – Introduction to acting

Session

Time

Session Duration

Activity

Section 1

10am – 10.15am

15 minutes

Intro

Section 2

10.15am – 10.30am

15 minutes

Ice-breakers

Section 3

10.30am – 11a

30 minutes

General acting exercise

Section 4

11am – 11.35am

35 minutes

Devising

Section 5

11.35am – 11.50am

15 minutes

Presentation of scenes

Section 6

11.50am – 12pm

10 minutes

Debrief/closing

Starting from what you want to include

Sometimes there’ll be activities or exercises that you know you need to include in your workshop. If you do, it can be helpful to write them down and to include them in your thinking alongside your objective. They can be your starting point when it comes to designing your workshop, or even the entire workshop itself.

For example, here are some ideas that could be included in a Shakespeare workshop:

With this approach, you know what you want; you just need to build a structure around the content to make it work. You might not have time for everything that you want to include, and some things may not make the final workshop plan, but it can be a good place to start from. Here’s a step-by-step of how you might turn these ideas into a workshop:

1.  Write down the exercises or activities that you know you want to use.

2.  Decide how you want the workshop to end and what you want the group to achieve.

3.  Get a rough idea for how long you want to spend on each section. (You’ll want to spend more time on the key sections and less on the warm-up/introductory bits.)

4.  Figure out a logical order for each section.

5.  Figure out if there are any gaps or other exercises that you need to support those activities.

Giving each section a logical progression

Every story has a beginning, middle and end. And so should your workshops. You need to build up to the core of your session – you can’t just jump in and have your group performing Hamlet straight away. So make sure that your plan takes the group on a journey by warming them up with the foundations of the work first, before getting into the depths of the content.

No matter how short your workshop is, you should always have some sort of warm-up or introduction to the content that you’ll be delivering. You’ll then want to build on that work, before delivering the crux of your session. Let’s take the plan from the previous section. We can break each section down into the following:

Exercise

Outcome

Position in the workshop

Quiz: Shakespeare or Fakespeare?

5 minutes

Introduces Shakespeare in a light-hearted way

Introduction

Watch a modernday Shakespeare clip

10 minutes

Allows the group to see a modernday version of Shakespeare, to get rid of any preconceptions

Introduction

Shakespearean insults

15 minutes

Gets them playing with Shakespeare’s language in a fun way

Introduction / Middle

Exploring iambic pentameter

30 minutes

Teaches them the fundamentals of verse-speaking

Main

Performing a short scene using a text extract

30 minutes

Gets them actively using the text

Main

With this plan, we lightly introduce the Shakespeare element before getting to the main section. It then builds so that the group explore the language more and more, before setting them off to apply those skills to a scene.

Also remember that while the length of your workshop will impact what you’re able to include, as a bare minimum, you should always have an introductory exercise and a main one, with more time dedicated to the main. If you were cooking a meal, you wouldn’t bring out a massive starter first, then serve a small main course. That’d be weird. The same applies here.

Here’s how we can order those activities based on three different workshop lengths:

Workshop plan

30 minutes

1 hour

1 hour 30 minutes

Shakespearean insults

Introduction

10 minutes

Quiz: Shakespeare or Fakespeare?

Introduction

5 minutes

Quiz: Shakespeare or Fakespeare?

Introduction

5 minutes

Performing a short scene using a text extract

Main

20 minutes

Watch a modernday Shakespeare clip

Introduction

10 minutes

Watch a modernday Shakespeare clip

Introduction

10 minutes

Shakespearean insults

Middle

15 minutes

Shakespearean insults

Middle

15 minutes

Performing a short scene using a text extract

Main

30 minutes

Exploring iambic pentameter

Main

30 minutes

Performing a short scene using a text extract

Main

30 minutes

As you can see, each one builds up to the same goal and has a logical progression. The only difference is that the longer workshops have more time to explore the work than the shorter ones do.

Teach – Explore – Create

‘Okay, Linden, so what if I want to teach a group a brand-new technique. I can just teach it to them and they’ll get it, right?’

Not quite. Theatre is the art of play, so you need to let people actively explore the new techniques you teach them.

So how do you do that? One of the best ways is through the teach – explore – create strategy:

1.  Play a suitable game Warms them up for the session ahead.

2.  Teach them something new Introduces a new technique that you can actively teach.

3.  Give them time to explore Gives the group the opportunity to practise their new learning, while still having your guidance.

4.  Give them time to create Allows them to apply the new techniques creatively. This means they can explore at their own pace and take full creative control of their process, giving them a sense of autonomy.

5.  Sharing of work