Before Covid my department had regularly taken students to London to see shows, and after discovering London Theatre Tours, we took them to do workshops with cast members. After the pandemic hiatus, this is something I was eager to re-establish.
As with most music teachers, I organise trips with Year 9 to help students develop their skills towards GCSE but also to advertise why they should take Music. Many struggle to see themselves in a career in music, believing it is what the ‘lucky few’ get to do. Giving them a chance to see themselves in rehearsals and the theatre is a key careers moment, and will hopefully have a positive impact on uptake at KS4 and beyond.
Having studied musicals and ensemble performance for their first topic, students would see the obvious benefits of a trip to the theatre. They had become very good at delivering vocally but lacked an understanding of characterisation and the need to give a sense of performance. Having provided dates that fitted with the school calendar, London Theatre Tours told me they could facilitate the trip, and I then gave students the chance to vote for which show they wanted. Their decision, luckily, was Disney’s The Lion King – a real opportunity to help them grasp characterisation as well as see themselves as performers in musicals.
Having been met from our coach by our guide (so I couldn’t get lost with nearly 50 students), we went to Pineapple Studios. Students expecting glamour and sparkly surroundings were surprised at how ‘mundane’ it was (to quote one of my students). Others discussed how it was always like this behind theatre stages and that this was normal. These conversations were giving them the chance to share their expertise and discuss the opportunities they had found to perform. Students were talking about taking along their friends to a taster session at their chosen performing arts groups, and this was before they even made it into the workshop. Just being in the building was enough to start them imagining their future selves there.
The students were split into two groups for the workshops – both of which were taken by dance captains and swings from The Lion King. The students warmed up with movement-based activities and then were thrown right into characterisation, with guidance on how to be zebras. The dance captains pushed them to perform their best, getting them to repeat movements and explaining why they needed to control their bodies in certain ways. They were then taught other animal movements such as the gazelle and lionesses, each time demonstrating the distinctive movement. They performed their own mini ‘Circle of Life’ scene. Then each of the groups moved on to the fight scene between the lionesses and the hyenas, the others to ‘He Lives in You’ – both requiring a complete change of mood and movement again. The workshop leaders were eager for students to have fun and be relaxed, but also to instil in them rehearsal discipline and expectation; it was a perfect blend, and resonated with what we had been setting up in our classroom rehearsals. All the way through, they dropped into the conversation information about what it was like to be in the business, how many performances they do and what rehearsals are like. They explained how they needed to know every number from every perspective, so that they could fill in at a moment’s notice.
After a picnic at the back of the Actors Church in Covent Garden, we went to watch the matinee performance. As expected, students were entranced, and spotted all the movements they had learnt. They discussed how hard it must be to know every single one of the parts, particularly when actors have to remember similar choreography from character to character. On the way back home and during the rest of the week students were talking about career options and what they enjoy about performing. It has really reignited their enthusiasm for music.
In our own rehearsals for a forthcoming production of Matilda, the students who had been on the trip were really upping their game on the characterisation, and, as a result, so were the students from other year groups. Discussions about simple changes, such as leaning forward compared to standing upright at a key moment, or using an arm in a different way, have fed into our rehearsals from the students rather than teachers. It has also improved their singing as they get more into the mood of the scene.
In the short term it has been a very successful trip, and one I highly recommend to other music teachers who want to show students the steps beyond singing the melody line. Whether it helps with my GCSE numbers going into the next academic year, only time will tell; but I am certainly hopeful. I’m already in the planning stages for our next school trip.
