Directors' Charitable Foundation Workshops in Schools

A few months ago, my school was offered a free workshop with a specialist director on a topic of my choice by the Directors' Charitable Foundation. We were preparing our GCSE students to perform a devised piece for component one of the Edexcel GCSE so we asked for a devising workshop. The Directors in Schools scheme suggested a young director called Abbey Wright and we set a date.

We were working with two historical stories, one being the establishment of the first women's football league in the late 19th century and the other the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Reid – female pirates who disguised themselves as men in the 18th century. Students from this age bracket often get sucked into ‘worthy’ sentimental themes in devised work and we had wanted to stimulate them into a fun, storytelling piece, full of theatricality.