Stage School

Extending the excellent performing arts provision into the local community and allowing all local children to benefit from our drama and perfomance opportunities

Aims

We started the project by setting up a Saturday morning Stage School, this ran for two hours and was open to children aged 4-13. We recruited young inspiring performers from the local Performing Arts college and ran sessions in Acting, Singing and Musical Theatre.

Children from both Wellington School and within the local community were now benefitting from this excellent additional provision every week, and the stage school children put on a large-scale production each year using our school facilities, Great Hall theatre space, technical expertise and professional directors and choreographers.

As Stage School continued to grow we increased staffing numbers and set about introducing projects into the offering.

 

 

We then embarked upon our first production as a company and staged Aladdin Jnr, this was a cast of over 60 students from the local community with a huge age range of 4-13. We double cast the lead roles allowing our younger students the opportunity to learn from the seniors and we gave up extra time to ensure the production was a success. Combining all these ages and ability levels was a challenge but a hugely worthwhile experience for our students. 

Background

Our Director of Drama was keen to extend the provision of performing arts into the local community and provide an opportunity for participation from children from local schools who would not usually have the opportunity

Resources

All run by our own staff using our facilities, resources and

Impact

The uptake to this was huge, our sessions sold out within days and we started to run a wait list.

We now have over 75 children form the local community taking part, benefitting from our resources and teaching staff and taking part in large scale productions.

Students age 4-13 all sat a Group Acting LAMDA examination and all passed with either a Merit or Distinction.

 

Pupil Involvement

Over 75 children aged 4-13 from the local community

Frequency

These sessions run weekly with a big annual showcase in our theatre space