All the classroom's a stage, as RSC helps bring Shakespeare to life

Teachers urged to drop 'chalk and talk' technique and let pupils mirror methods of actors by walking around
David Tennant
Just as David ­Tennant did not perform Hamlet sitting behind a desk, children are being encouraged to walk around. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Eleven-year-olds are to learn Shakespeare using techniques employed by RSC actors, and English teachers will be encouraged to let pupils walk around the classroom rather than reading the plays while sitting at their desks.

Exercises devised by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Globe theatre in London will see children aged 11 to 14 mirror the methods of professional actors at rehearsal. Written and oral assessments developed alongside the lessons will show how well students have understood the texts.

Following the government's announcement of the new teaching initiative, the RSC's director of education, Jacqui O'Hanlon, said focusing on how actors came to understand the playwright's language had been a vital inspiration.

She said: "Actors have the same nervousness around Shakespeare's language as young people in schools do. We looked at how they get from that to a place of utter conviction, confidence and eloquence in six to eight weeks."

Pupils must study two Shakespeare texts between the ages of 11 and 16, one of them in key stage three before the age of 14.

The schools minister, Diana Johnson, said Shakespeare should be a central part of every young person's education. "Developing a love of Shakespeare at a young age often leads to a lifelong passion for literature and theatre and helps to improve a child's reading and writing."

In one task pupils will work on creating four key physical archetypes, that of king, warrior, lover and joker, before finding which lines of their chosen character go with those traits and the acting them out. Through this they can examine how a character such as Macbeth can switch dramatically within one scene from soldier to kingly figure to trickster.

The tasks also include creating two sets for As You Like It after acting some scenes and analysing the text for inspiration.

O'Hanlon said: "It's really innovative but you're still getting a really rigorous and robust model of understanding. It's miles away from a 'chalk and talk, sit in your desks and read it' world of Shakespeare.

"Within the English curriculum you tend to look at a play text as a piece of literature rather than performance. But you can't possibly understand Shakespeare's words if you're just reading it in your head. He wrote these plays to be spoken and performed. Shakespeare is difficult; it's not a 21st-century text. You've got to use different mechanisms to access it.

"Young people get the most out of Shakespeare when they explore the plays as actors do, when they are up on their feet and confidently exploring the language and characters."

The director: from mumbles to Macbeth

Bill Buckhurst is directing a Macbeth production for teenagers at the Globe

Shakespeare's plays weren't written to be read out loud, they're written to be performed. If you're sitting mumbling the words on a Friday afternoon when you're tired, they won't really mean anything. Getting students to do exercises that mean they have to put some energy behind the words and see how they affect other people, means the text takes on a life.

Hearing the sounds also helps you understand how Shakespeare chooses words that have a real relation to the story he's telling. In Richard III, for example, the first speech is full of sibilants, which makes you think about what kind of character you're dealing with – it can almost sound like the hissing of a snake, appropriate given Richard's slippery nature.

Young people also like knowing this is the sort of work professional actors do – that we're all exploring the plays, coming to them with a certain anxiety.

Actors have to work at Shakespeare too. When I'd just left drama school and went to the RSC I was terrified before the first rehearsal. But I was relieved to find they were all as much in the dark as I was; working it out together was the fun of it.