Teach Berkoff

We Teach Drama has maintained an impressive level of output since its founding at the beginning of 2021, with a constant stream of free and paid-for resources which have been extremely well executed. This ‘Teach Berkoff’ webinar, aimed at teachers with students at KS4-5, was a 90-minute Zoom session costing £30, and is likely to be repeated later in the year.

In many ways, this webinar was really a supporting feature to accompany an extremely thorough resource pack sent out in advance. Brighton-based teacher Natasha Higdon has been teaching Berkoff as a set practitioner for many years, and had written up a 43-page document divided into three sections: Theory and Context – a selection of handouts for students on background information for the study of Berkoff; Practical Exploration – 8 lesson plans designed to cover 12 hours of teaching; and finally Script Extracts and Further Reading – with useful links for both teachers and students.

In the webinar, which took place at 10am on a Saturday morning – with a recording available on YouTube for 30 days afterwards to those who weren't able to make the session live – Higdon worked through the pack, introducing the ideas live and allowing time for teacher participants to ask questions and also to take part practically in a couple of the exercises.

Higdon touched on techniques including isolation of body parts; free and body association; the role of the observer; Mie (from Kabuki theatre); personified mime; and heightened language. She also covered themes explored in the pack: Surrealism; Expressionism and Physical Theatre; and highlighted the influence on Berkoff of Artaud; Brecht; Lecoq; Kabuki; Peter Brook and Jean-Louis Barrault. She also touched on ways to cover Social, Cultural and Historical context – in line particularly with the requirements of the AQA syllabus.

She then took participants through a number of the lesson plans in the PDF pack which had been sent out in advance. The lessons focus on different elements of Berkoff's approach to theatre-making, culminating in an exercises which was very well received by participants, building a Total Theatre exploration around a real character from Berkoff's own life – a London street trader known as the ‘Pen King’.

I have one small criticism relating to spelling and grammatical errors in the handouts for students – only because students have a tendency to repeat sentences from handouts verbatim in written work! Overall, however, I highly recommend signing up when next this excellent and thorough CPD is run.

www.weteachdrama.com