In December 2020, Donmar theatre-makers Thomas Bailey, Amari Harris, Sean Linnen, Jordana Golbourn and Toby Peach met to begin planning an exciting return to in-school workshops and rehearsals. By the end of the month, a further lockdown and school closures had been announced and what followed was an incredible display of creativity and resilience as we adapted the project to deliver the work with our schools online.
Our theatre makers joined the virtual classrooms of six schools and have collaborated with the students to create audio and visual responses to BLINDNESS. This is the first time our Take The Stage programme has been created, rehearsed, delivered and shared online, with each school creating a powerful digital response which you can experience here.
Each of the responses have been collected in this blog post, which also includes reflections from the students, teachers and theatre makers on their experience of taking Donmar Discover work online. Scroll down for a taster of what to expect with A Whole New World by Ricards Lodge High School for Girls and head to our blog post to experience all of the final pieces.
Transcripts for each of the pieces are available to download below.
A Whole New World was created by Sean Linnen and students from Ricards Lodge High School for Girls
TAKE THE STAGE: BLINDNESS has been delivered as part of our Donmar Discover Local Programme, supported by John Lyon’s Charity.
With generous thanks to the following supporters of our Discover programme who have enabled our work with young people and the local community despite our closure:
Adam and Victoria Freudenheim
Anonymous
Chapman Charitable Trust
Clore Duffield Foundation
John Lyon’s Charity
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Oak Foundation
The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust
The Emmanuel Kaye Foundation
The Thompson Family Charitable Trust
Universal Consolidated Group