The Glebe

Before I went to Lecoq I was teaching drama regularly at a school where the students have a range of reasons for not being in the mainstream school system. Part of my reason in going to study at Lecoq was to learn new ideas and exercises to put into practice with these children and teenagers. While there, though having a brilliant time myself, I did wonder whether the stuff we were doing would be far too complicated to ever be of any use to them and in our teaching.
So I was delighted last week to really see what I learned in France being put into practice teaching autistic children King Lear. We design our games and sections of text very carefully, of course. We talked a lot about how we would present Gloucester having his eyes gouged out. Not exactly the thing to show them or have them acting out. In the end we used the chorus in reaction idea. We had the scene 'happening' behind a screen and the kids watched and reacted to it. We started off with reacting to something happening behind the screen, but they could choose whatever they wanted and the others had to guess what it was, so for example seeing a puppy and Harry, brilliantly, seeing a girl naked in the shower.
With a different,non autistic group I did the 'emotional chairs' exercise that we did at the end of the first year with Paola. Very structured, works really nicely. And countless other of the things I learned, both specifically and more generally are finding their way from the 10eme to West Wickham near Croydon. As some of the students would say, 'nice'.