Assembling platforms in education: Frantic Assembly

On Saturday 25 September, teachers attending the Music & Drama Education Expo at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London, will have the opportunity to attend a workshop with Frantic Assembly. Hosted by associate director Sophie Shaw, and actor and director Marc Puoani, the practical, on-the-feet workshop will introduce teachers to some of the key principles of devising the ‘Frantic’ way – an invaluable and, crucially, free insight which will leave attendees with tools to take back to their drama studios and use to inspire their students.

In the morning, at 11:45, Shaw will also be taking part in a ‘fireside chat’ on the performance stage at the heart of the exhibition, with the opportunity for questions from the floor and a chance for those unable to attend the 3 o’clock session to benefit from her wisdom on the company, in conversation.

Ahead of the show, I spoke to Marilyn Rice, former teacher and now head of learning and participation at Frantic Assembly, about what the company does for teachers and students, why they are coming to meet teachers at the show, and what exciting plans they have on the horizon for their education arm.

Teaching Frantic Assembly with accuracy

‘We are featured on five different GCSE and A Level specifications, in the UK and Australia, so teachers look to us to use as a named practitioner, but also within devising units. A big thing for us is about how we can support teachers to fully understand our practice and methodology. We find that people have a version of Frantic Assembly but it's not necessarily what we really do, or it shows just one small element of our method…

‘Sometimes we see students put together a movement piece and then say ‘great, we've used Frantic’, but actually, what does it do to the piece? Does it enhance it? What's it saying? What's its purpose? We're branded a “physical theatre company” but what we're actually about is collaborative theatre-making: we're also a new writing company, and generate text within devising or work with a writer on a piece.’

A common challenge in the teaching of Frantic Assembly's work is that people can become bogged down in their desire to achieve a particular end product. ‘People have gone to watch Curious [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a long-standing and hugely successful collaboration between the National Theatre and Frantic Assembly], they've seen Things I Know to be True, and they've already decided in their head what our work looks like, so instead of devising in its truest form, they've already mapped their journey,’ Rice says.

‘In our devising book by Scott Graham, he explains what we do in terms of the “crooked path”: it's about never having preconceptions and never knowing where it's going. Students tend to want to have the answers – but we don't do that, it's about discovery. A huge thing we talk about is getting it wrong: we're about the mistakes, sometimes the mistakes are what lead you to that creative moment or take you off on a tangent – and that's when it's really exciting and really creative.’

©Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly's free talent development programme for young people, Ignition (2019)

‘Seeing a teacher as an artist in their own right’

The session at the MDEE will be a 1.5-hour taster version of teacher training that Frantic does once a term, regionally, over a full-day workshop, but Rice is clear that this isn't where teacher training stops for the company: ‘We run three in-person teacher training courses as well as an intro, intermediate and advanced course, and throughout the pandemic we've put that teacher-training online and that's been wonderful because we've had international teachers being able to join as well. Teachers are creative, so it's about seeing a teacher as an artist in their own right, and giving teachers the tools that they can take back into the classroom and work with their students on.’

With a view to understanding what teachers really want and need, Rice has set up a 15-member UK teachers' panel, representing a variety of schools in different locations, both state and independent. ‘We are really keen to have more direct conversations with teachers, to find out what's happening on the ground, because there can be that massive disconnect between industry and education and we're really keen to bridge that,’ she says.

This ongoing conversation has helped the company to curate the most useful material they can into their online offering – an offering which necessarily exploded over the course of 2020 while in-person theatre work was put on hold. As an unusual positive outcome of the pandemic, there is now a real wealth of online material provided directly by Frantic Assembly itself, which should serve as encouragement to those teachers nervous about leaving behind their familiar set practitioners of Stanislavski and Brecht, and the trusty books from which they've taught those practitioners' work for years, and striking out into an exploration of the work of a living, breathing theatre company.

‘We're not dead,’ says Rice, ‘That's the most important thing, we're still making work. It's current, relevant, responsive to what's actually happening in the industry.’

©Helen Murray 

Virtual resources

‘I know as a teacher it's really scary picking something up if there's no information about this company or this person: you want a short cut to your planning. With Frantic if you look on our website, all of our Frantic Digital resources that we made over lockdown are free, every show has a free education pack, there are loads of videos about what we do on YouTube, and loads of clips of our shows, so it's literally there at your fingertips,’ says Rice. The company also offers 2, 4 or 6-hour in-school workshops to students, as well as bespoke residencies, to give them a kickstart.

But even with all of that already available, the company has more big plans in the offing. In January 2022, Frantic STUDIO [working title] will launch an online, digital subscription platform for teachers and students.

‘It will be all about Frantic Assembly but also about the wider theatre industry, collaborative theatre making, and how we make theatre. A direct resource for teachers and students with films, how-to on everything: warm-ups, tasks, how we generate physical works, approaching text…taking a teacher or student through all of that process: a practical, open approach to what we do.’ Subscriptions will last a year and through a school's subscription, students can access all the material – so a teacher can play a 5-minute video in class and then ask students to build work on what they've watched, or set a video for homework ahead of a lesson.

A network for educators

‘There will also be a teacher-only area, a staffroom. One of our biggest findings is that teachers want to connect and have networks with other schools, whether that be in the same country or internationally, so we're working on how we can bring people together to be part of a community as well. That could be about webinars, festivals, it could be about setting a task that we put out to schools all around the world and say “right, see what you can make.” It really is about bringing everything that we've done in the past together and having a succinct platform that actually explains who we are, what we do, and how you can access it in the classroom.’

At this point, Rice turns to Scott Graham, the company's founder and artistic director, to sum up the essence and the aim of Frantic Studio: ‘It's a really exciting opportunity to bring the drama studio and the realities of the professional rehearsal room closer together,’ he says, ‘It is vital that our worlds stay relevant to each other and can continue to inspire each other. So, as well as providing an unparalleled insight into the Frantic Method, I want to give teachers access to the convictions and doubts in the minds of contemporary theatre makers. This is all a crucial part of the creative process, and it is seldom shared. Our ambition is that Frantic STUDIO encourages and empowers creativity for both teachers and students.’

To sign up to attend the Music & Drama Education Expo, and to register for (strictly limited) places on Frantic Assembly's workshop, go to www.mdexpo.co.uk