Having spent a couple of days learning about William Shakespeare, today we explored the opening to his tragedy – Macbeth.
We began our morning imagining we were on a bleak and barren Scottish heath, observing a battle between the Scots and Norwegians. As Shakespearian language can be quite difficult for the modern day reader to understand, we spent some time exploring Shakespeare’s phrases. In groups of three, we then channelled our inner witches and performed the opening scene where the three witches linger on the edge of the battle field.
New terminology we addressed was ‘corpsing’; this is where the impact of a performance is ruined by breaking out of character perhaps through a smile or giggle – some of us found this very tricky!
To finish the morning, we played a few games where, on the beat of a drum, we had to use contrasting dynamics to our partner to create a tableaux. We then used these skills to depict the famous battle scene. Please enjoy the video at the end!
