Juilliard Drama Curriculum Visit

Juilliard Drama Curriculum Visit

On Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th November we welcomed our Juilliard Drama Curriculum Specialist, Nick Mahmat, to work with our students and teachers in Performing Arts. We started our visit with Ms Carty’s Year 10 IGCSE class, observing Nick deliver a Juilliard Creative Classroom lesson which allowed our students to explore ways in which they could communicate their character's intended meaning through subtext. The students found the lesson to be very active and engaging and enjoyed viewing and reflecting on a 2017 Broadway production of Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau, to see how the actors communicated their subtext. Following on from our Year 10 students, Nick delivered a lesson to our Year 12 IB Theatre students that used the lens of a production of Sophocles’ Oedipus from the American Players Theatre to showcase different ways to divide and speak choral text. The students worked collaboratively to discover a range of strategies for dividing and delivering text as a Greek chorus, which will support them in their upcoming performance of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. Our Performing Ars teachers also delivered a range of Juilliard lessons with Year 7, Year 9, Year 10 and Year 11 Drama students to support these students in their knowledge and understanding of their current units of work. Nick supported students both inside and outside the classroom, when he attended a rehearsal with our Stage Stars to support them with their skills as individual actors and how as artists, we aim to cultivate these skills to create pieces as part of an ensemble. Personalized professional development opportunities with the teaching team provided the chance for teachers to refine their teaching, whilst gaining insight into their own teaching methods. We look forward to continuing to work with Nick over the course of the academic and build on the work we have done this week to foster student success within Performing Arts.  

Sarah James 

Director of Performing Arts