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Free
Play
Southwark Playhouse is offering free tickets for previews for new shows to schools, old people's homes, tenants associations, youth clubs, in fact any local community groups based in the borough of Southwark. Tickets are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis and we can offer up to twenty-five free tickets per community group per preview performance. If you can't get a ticket for one show then please try again for another!
The Honk Project presents: To Have and to Honk
February 22nd 2009 (at St.Joseph's Primary School)
To have and to Honk is a musical clown project, performed for free at one of our partner primary schools, St. Joseph’s RC primary School in Bermondsey. It was performed for 60 children, who gave feedback on the show to the theatre company.
Shakespeare for Schools: A Midsummer Nights Dream
February 4-24 2009 (at Southwark Playhouse)
Every year, we present a Shakespeare play in the theatre and offer free tickets to all Southwark and Lambeth schools. We also offer an education pack and workshops in school as part of the package. In the schoolyear 2008-2009, the annual Shakespeare for Schools production was directed by the innovative British Chinese Jonathan Man, winner of the Better Bankside Award. Set in Samurai Japan, A Midsummer Nights Dream enchanted primary and secondary school students from 33 schools in Southwark and Lambeth, who were invited to come and watch the play for free.
This Child
November 2008 (at Southwark Playhouse)
This Child was a production of a French play by Joel Pommerat. It
was part of Theatre Café Festival, brought to Southwark Playhouse by
Company of Angels in November 2008. Theatre Café celebrates and explores
innovative work for younger audiences from all over Europe. Reading, symposia
and productions were staged at the Unicorn and Southwark Playhouse. This Child
was co-directed by CofA’s artistic director John Retallack and Southwark
Playhouse's Education Director Ellen Hughes. She cast a young company of 5
local teenagers who worked alongside a professional cast to rehearse the play,
and in doing so developed their performance skills very considerably. Southwark
Playhouse was able to offer free tickets for the production to 2 local secondary
schools/colleges.
The Butterfly Club
September-October 2008 (at Southwark Playhouse)
Biting tragedy and dark humour combine as a cast of cocaine-taking, marriage-flunking
parents and lovesick, world-weary children try to work out what it means to
choose to die and what it means to choose to live... The Mayhem Company are
a young, local theatre company. They brought a play about teenage suicide
to the playhouse for a one-week run. It was well attended by local young people.
Street Genius/Rewrite Film Festival
May - September 2008
This media
project and internship program was in collaboration with B3 Media.
Creative people between 16 and 19 years of age from Southwark or
Lambeth were invited to try out for the role of Street Genius. The two elected
Street Geniuses were to set up and run a mobile-phone film festival called
Rewrite, all the way from the first idea to the final gala event. This paid
work placement not only taught them to organize and manage an event, but also
gave the Street Geniuses valuable learning experience with filmmaking and
editing. The Rewrite mobile-phone film festival finale was held in August.
HMS Belfast
August 2008
Southwark
Playhouse ran open workshops on the decks of the ship, for visitors in the
summer holidays. These were funded by London Bridge Bid and included playwriting,
ship aerobics, sea shanties. This was over 2 weeks.
The Best Team Since the A-Team
June 2008 (at Southwark Playhouse)
Two secondary
schools, Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College and Harris Academy Bermondsey,
worked with Southwark Playhouse to develop and rehearse a full-length play
on the theme of transition. Students have worked with a young playwright,
Molly Davis, to create a script that reflects their experience of moving up
from primary school. Students acted in the production, recruited a technical
team from amongst their peers, and have produced their own marketing strategy.
The play was performed at Southwark Playhouse in June 2008 and toured to feeder
primary schools, where the young actors led an after-show question and answer
session with Year 6 audiences.
Price-Waterhouse Coopers Annual Pantomime
December 2007
Southwark
Playhouse carried out props workshops in schools on behalf of Price Waterhouse
Coopers, in the run up to their annual pantomime. The schools were Evelina
Hospital School and Charlotte Sharman Primary School. All in all, about 70
children benefitted. Price-Waterhouse Coopers staff volunteered to assist
at these workshops. Large-scale props were created for their production, and
the children later went to see the show and saw what they had created in action.
A
Golden Thread: A Celebration of William Blake
with music and performance by St Jude's Primary School and Borough
Music School; and an exhibition by Art Adventures at Cathedral Primary School
(November 2007)
A celebration of the 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth, this
performance combined music, poetry and visual art created by over 80 local
children from Southwark and Lambeth, where Blake himself had his home. A Golden
Thread is the result of an ambitious collaboration between Borough Music School,
Southwark Playhouse, St Jude’s Primary School, and Art Adventures at
Cathedral School. The performance, a result of two term's work, was held at
St John's Church Waterloo. Over a six-week period Year 5 students from St.
Jude’s Primary School devised and rehearsed their own dramatic scenes
using Blake’s poetry as inspiration. The full forces of Borough Music
School performed a specially composed setting of the poem The Tyger
and used the poetry as inspiration for improvisation.
I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball:
It will lead you in at Heavens gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall
Shakespeare for Schools: Richard III
October 2007
Every
year, we present a Shakespeare play in the theatre and offer free tickets
to all Southwark and Lambeth schools. We also offer an education pack and
workshops in school as part of the package. In the schoolyear 2007-2008, we
ran the Better Bankside Award for young theatre-makers for the first time.
The winners, Daniel Goldman and Donnacaidh O'Brain, directed Richard III for
our 2007-2008 production. 22 schools from Southwark and Lambeth attended performances
for free.
A Bloodless Field: Medical Dramas
April 2007 (with The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret)
Year 10 students from Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College explore the history of medicine through theatre. The group attends a double-bill of site-specific plays at the Old Operating Theatre Museum: an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's thriller, The Bodysnatcher and a new play about organ transplants, The Gift. A demonstration of Victorian surgery at the OOT and a trip to St. Mary's Hospital to see the medical robots of the future introduce participants to surgery through the ages. Visits are supported by two workshops in school, processing information and igniting debate through drama and play.
This is genuinely one of the best History related projects I have been part of. It made History relevant and created a genuine link with both the present and student's future ambitions.
- Mari Williams, Year 10 teacher from Geoffrey Chaucer Technology College
Visit the Old Operating Theatre website
Everything Must Go
August 2006 (at Southwark Playhouse)
The final show at our previous home on Southwark Bridge Road was a newly commissioned musical play designed to celebrate the best of the theatre's work - both in its community and on the Artistic Programme. A cast of professional actors worked alongside members of our older people's group from Blackfriar's Settlement and four local young people aged between 9 and 15. The community cast played a pivotal role in the production.
Talent Unearthed at Mint Street Park
August 2006 (with Bankside Open Spaces Trust)
A real demonstration of our multi-talented community, Talent Unearthed was a free family festival including music and performance, competitions, horticulture, cookery and sports. Activities included circus skills and carnival workshops, BOST's window-box planting and giveaway, vegetable sculpting and cake decorating, bike surgery, graffiti, face-painting, bouncy castle and a carnival parade around the park. Performers on the main stage included partners from Harris Academy Bermondsey, 5 - 7 year-olds on the annual summer school at Southwark Playhouse, and older people from Blackfriar's Settlement.
The festival attracted around 450 people from the local community.
Visit the Bankside Open Spaces Trust website
Home Front Recall
September 2005 - July 2006 (with the HMS Belfast)
40 students from St Joseph's RC Primary School (George Row) and Harris Academy Bermondsey work with Southwark Playhouse, the HMS Belfast and Veterans of the Korean War to explore notions of homecoming. The project spans two full school terms. Participants spend the night on the ship, produce a booklet of original poems and plays, and perform an original play by Stephen Sharkey, The Happy Ship, on the decks of the Belfast in July 2006.
Click here to download the booklet (PDF 6.62mb)
Visit the HMS Belfast website
Over the Bridge and Through the Streets
March 2006 (with Borough Music School)
This new musical play involved 30 children from Cathedral School and 15 young musicians from Borough Music School in rehearsal and performance. In the production, staged at Waterloo's Network Theatre, the children told the story of Elizabeth I's visit to Southwark where she is welcomed and given a present: a fine hat made by the hatters of Hatfields. The play was inspired by a portrait of Elizabeth I with Bermondsey Abbey in the background. It was attended by a large audience of parents, friends and supporters.
Visit the Borough Music School website