Workshop ideas for teachers

The workshop ideas below are not prescriptive but instead are a guide to encouraging playfulness and theatricality in both scripted and devised work. We place an emphasis on playing, on silliness and chaos, which can remove premature concerns about getting things ‘right’ or ‘perfect’. The information below is designed for teachers to deliver to students in workshop form.

We encourage you to:

  • Lead the session(s) in spaces other than your usual teaching space, in order to experience different indoor and outdoor spaces.
  • Prepare a kit of ‘stuff’ - props, costumes, instruments, colourful cloth, toys. Anything that will encourage play and improvisation.
Giles King

As soon as you start getting your group to have fun with what they're doing and play to their strengths, you’re on to a winner because they love what they're doing. What they're doing becomes really funny or engaging and so on. As a director, you can always tailor it into whatever you want. You can dial it down, dial it up… Students often ask “what's the right way of doing this?” and of course, the answer to give is that “YOU are the right way of doing this. Just engage with it and I'll give you some stepping stones to help you do what you do best”.


In the Studio 21: Imaginary Landscapes

Mark a starting point in the performance space. The first person enters and makes a physical offer, i.e open a gate, jump over a ravine, crawl down a tunnel then come back out. The next person repeats the first action then adds something then comes back out, the next person goes etc... The landscape builds, but make sure its mimed parameters stay accurate. 

Once the landscape is established two or three adventurers can inhabit it.

What are they looking for?

What happens?

Find an ending.

Those watching can make suggestions and begin to find a story.


Mike Shepherd
Improvisation is really important for storytelling.

In the Studio 22: Character traits

Emma Rice worked with Tom Morris on the adaptation of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. This task is one that Tom describes in the programme for the play. 

Once the shape of the story that you’re telling has been defined, tested and refined, compile a list of words to describe each of the characters in your piece.  From those lists, choose just three for each character. Then, choose one and ask a member of your ensemble to dress and improvise as that character, informed by those three attributes.  For example, Tom Morris describes the task when rehearsing Nights at the Circus:

“Lizzie, the adoptive mother of the winged woman in our show, is for our purposes, ‘protective’, ‘volatile’ and ‘ferret-like”. Actor Carl Grose is dressed up in an impromptu costume and required to improvise in character. He draws freely on everyone’s work and the result is an utterly implausible and strangely moving female impersonation.” 
Tom Morris, Nights at the Circus programme, 2006

In the Studio 23: The Red Shoes: Teaching Plan

This is an outline of how you might introduce students to a Kneehigh, or Kneehigh-style text. Using The Red Shoes as an example, we’ve suggested some activities to support your students in their own exploration. Remember that Kneehigh uses a palette of techniques, devices and styles, rather than approaching every play in exactly the same way.

Each rehearsal or workshop should begin with a warm-up. This could be games, a run, a dance: whatever your group finds helpful in losing inhibition and developing a strong sense of ensemble.

  • Everyone reads the play independently
  • In a workshop session, ask the ensemble to retell the story, in as few words as possible, from different characters’ points of view. Combine this with Kneehigh style physical games, chorus exercises, hot seating and clowning. Identification of key themes and characters who represent them, having brainstormed words. For example. the soldier in The Red Shoes, whose face is perhaps never seen, or always be in part-shadow: a hint of the what-might-have-been.
  • Other themes of The Red Shoes include loss, destruction, a sense of propriety: can the ensemble think of a time period where those elements were key? In Emma Rice’s version of the play, it was decided that the characters were all people who had seen things they wished they’d never seen. Ask the group to dress the Chorus in costumes from the resources in your drama studio. How can you create a sense of cohesion between the Chorus?
  • Set a task to each create a playlist to research music of the era in which they wish to set the play. This will create very good source material for improv and choreography…
  • Movement workshop: Students can be seated around the room, on a chair or near different levels and/or surfaces. Each person should come up with 5 basic movements associated with trying on a much desired pair of new shoes. Talk them through the process – “they’re patent, look at how they catch the light, what happens when you stand on tip toe?” etc. The group can then each teach their 5 moves to each other, which will create a 25 move sequence. Use music from the playlists students have created to experiment with tempo, style, mood etc. Jurassic 5’s Swing Set is a great starting point for musical exploration of this kind. Ask the group to perform this dance, as if in different conditions: dancing in their bedroom, in a talent contest, as if embarrassed, as if everything amplified 500%, as if trying to cast off their shoes etc.
  • This sequence can then be broken down into smaller motifs, which are evident throughout the piece, particularly from the girl. You can also consider how the play ends, and the way in which this dance can be incorporated.
  • Cultural references also help students get into character. For the actor playing Lydia, for example, Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Show might show the extravagance of the character.

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