The English Department’s Globe Players Visit
Year 10 and 11 enjoyed a fantastic morning of live theatre this week as The Globe Players transformed our Sports Hall into an intimate, in-the-round performance space. Students were treated to energetic, one-hour abridged productions of Macbeth and An Inspector Calls – two of the core GCSE Literature texts.
Seeing the plays brought to life at such close quarters was a brilliant experience for our students. The actors’ pace, clarity and characterisation really helped deepen understanding of plot, themes and key moments, and supported the work students are and are going to be doing in class as they prepare for their GCSEs.
A huge thank you to The Globe Players for an engaging, high-impact morning of theatre, and to our English Department for organising an experience that will genuinely strengthen students’ confidence with these texts.
Here’s what Y11 student, Ektoras had to say about it:
On Tuesday 25th, our GCSE texts finally stepped off the page and onto the stage, with two performances of our literature texts, J.B. Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’ and William Shakespeare’s classic ‘Macbeth’, from The Globe Players. The performances took place in-the-round, with every student able to view the action as it unfurled, and plenty of opportunity for interaction between the actors and us, including a call-and-response style ‘knock knock, who’s there’ segment with Macbeth’s porter; the staging was perfect for the environment and transformed our Sports Hall into a theatre like never imagined before! Beyond consolidating our knowledge (or preparing for future learning in the case of the Year 10s), watching the plays allowed us to enjoy hearing our favourite lines – with the largest cheer by far going to Inspector Goole’s sharp, witty “I don’t play golf” – understand the key concepts, themes, quotes and moments through the cast’s seamlessly woven in analysis, and, of course, have a break from our day-to-day lessons. The cast themselves did a fantastic job, with just four actors playing a total of well above ten roles over the two plays, so much so that, at first, I didn’t even realise that the third Witch from ‘Macbeth’ had changed outfit and was now on stage as King Duncan! Without a doubt, the most useful segment for our studies was the Q&A after the plays, with our burning questions posed to the actors, with sophisticated, analytical answers in relation to the motivation of the characters and playwrights. Grade 9s all around!