Shakespeare lives in school days!

A group of drama students of Sparks: Centre for Creative Learning won a place in the final cut of a crowd-sourced video of Macbeth which was unveiled as part of Shakespeare Lives in Schools Day on December 2, 2016. The students were invited to the British Council Colombo for a screening of the video and receive their certificates on March 18.

In a discussion with the students, Tanya Warnakulasuriya, British Council’s Arts Manager commended the students for being the youngest group to be chosen for the video. While some students enjoyed playing the roles of the witches so they ‘could be mean,’ the others seemed to have relished the roles of Macbeth and Banquo; however, all of them have had great fun rehearsing a sword fight to depict the battle between Norway and Scotland.

Their drama teacher, Aroshe Ranasinghe, confirmed how much they enjoyed performing scenes from Macbeth. Aged between eight and eleven, this small drama group dived with enthusiasm to create scenes using movement, mime, makeup, costumes and even some creative writing. ‘No child’s too young to enjoy Shakespeare,’ she says. ‘His characters and plots are exciting and there’s always so much energy when children get hooked on Shakespeare.’

Schoolchildren from the United Kingdom and countries across the world including Congo, South Africa, Mexico, Colombia, Croatia and Bangladesh, entered a competition to contribute to the retelling of Macbeth. They used video, photos, audio clips, illustrations, posters, presentation slides, comic strips, cardboard puppets and even an Instagram photo feed.

The competition attracted 79 entries from 29 countries with 10 schools making the final cut of the video.

Shakespeare Lives in Schools Day encourages schoolchildren of all ages to learn about Shakespeare as a playwright for the whole world, by joining in global celebrations of his 400th anniversary this year.

Shakespeare Lives in Schools Day aims to encourage schoolchildren to address challenging questions and themes about the human experience in a fun and exciting way.