Teaching & Community Work

Residencies

 

Girls from Mulberry School aged 14-17 accepting their 2009 Scotsman Fringe First Award for The Unravelling

I am currently playwright-in-residence at Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets, E1.

Since 2006, Mulberry has Specialist Arts status and has pioneered an exciting programme of extra-curricular arts activities, of which I am one part. Due to its catchment area Mulberry is largely made up of Bangladeshi Muslim girls aged 11-19. 2009 was my third consecutive year as their writer-in-residence.

Mulberry School is leading the way in founding its own in-house theatre company run by theatre professionals and school staff.

Mulberry Theatre Company (MTC) offers students 'arts apprenticeships', shadowing professionals in disciplines as diverse as theatre design, assistant directing, stage management, sound design and recording, and film production.

Courses I have been running at Mulberry include:

Introduction to Playwrighting - course for students
A 10 week course introducing the craft, with one 1-hour session per week. Looks at the basic building blocks of playmaking including Character, Setting, Status & Territory, Structure, Dialogue and Re-writing, using modern exemplar texts from London ’s new writing theatres.

The course combined regular theatre trips and visits from guest speakers including playwright Tanika Gupta.

Students each write their own 10 minute script, which is read by professional actors brought in for a final staged reading.


Introduction to Playwrighting - course for staff
The first course of its kind in a UK school - open to staff across all departments, this is a course for adult beginners looking to develop their own creative writing skills and also pick up some tips and insights for their own teaching.

Each staff playwright writes a 10-15 minute script which is staged in a rehearsed reading by professional actors at Half Moon Theatre.

The Edinburgh Festival Project

Each year I work with a group of students on developing a new play for MUlberry Theatre Company to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The latest of these, The Unravelling, was awarded a Scotsman Fringe First. MTC's work is widelyt recognised within both the education sector, and increasingly the theatre industry, as raising the bar for what can be achieved with a school production.

THE UNRAVELLING
2009'S award-winning show about a dying mother passing on the art of storytelling to her three daughters using nothing but cloth and other found objects in the fabric shop where they work.

STOLEN SECRETS
2008's critically-acclaimed show looking at the hidden side of East London's residents.

MEHNDI NIGHT
2007's sell-out smash hit, the first all-female play about Bengali culture in East London.


Ongoing
I am working regularly with Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 to help develop their ideas for their own devised drama work for GCSE and A-level.

I also run regular lunchtime advice surgeries for any students seeking guidance on any aspect of script writing or the theatre industry in general.