As part of our commitment to education we regularly create a workshop for an individual school. Here is a list of just a few of the theatrical texts for which we have offered workshops in the last few years.
All plays on the VCE LITERATURE list can be offered as tailormade workshops. This service is also available for any other play, literary text, short story, poetry collection etc. If you need a text brought to life and analysed, that is exactly what our Tailor-Made program is here to do.
Tailor Made Workshops
To give students the best dramatic experience possible we usually employ 4 – 5 actors in our Tailor Made Workshops.
We can deliver workshops for most texts with only 2 actors for as little $900 for a group of 40 or less.
Witness the text come to life in powerful, dramatic rehearsed readings of key scenes. Students are invited to participate in discussions about plot, characters and key themes.
In most workshops we provide alternative readings, supported by the text, of at least some scenes. Physical collaborative experimentation with text and discussion is how artists discover meaning. Seeing this process can help students construct powerful responses about what they see in a text and how to express their own ideas about literature.
To aide student comprehension, some schools prefer to focus on the “author’s intention” or a clearly defined reading of the text.
12th Night
Riotous tomfoolery, chaotic disguise and deceitful machinations abound in Twelfth Night. Shenanigans that start out foolish resolve in serious consequences, highlighting the reality of the manipulation of human beings. As the key scenes of the play unfold, we discuss the effective impact of comedy on an audience, and its use as a vessel for serious themes and ideas.
Shakespeare’s exploration of gender is perhaps more relevant now than it ever has been. Through the device of Viola assuming the role of Cesario, gender presentation is explored more as costume rather than birthright. Through Orsino’s subsequent attraction and confusion, sexuality is explored in its uncertainty and fluidity. Twelfth Night presents a fascinating early depiction of the gender and attraction conversations we are having today.
This play, partially based on the historical witch trials in Salam Massachusetts in 1692-93, is well known for being an allegory for the US government’s action against “subversives” during the McCarthy era. Proctor’s journey, at least in part, foretold Miller later being called before The House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities. Miller, like Proctor, refused to name others to avoid punishment.
However, the play also is worthy of study more broadly. 0ur workshop investigates and critiques the question of, if John Proctor, both in the play and historically really is a hero, and the portrayal of female characters in the text.
When a single juror stands up against peer pressure and votes “Not Guilty” in a seemingly open and shut case it becomes clear why jurors need to deliberate and discuss the case before them. The defendant is the faceless other; all we know is that they are poor and yet the process reveals how both the jurors and the audience project their prejudices onto that person.
In addition to unpacking the narrative, the workshop investigates the construction of characters and other dramatic elements, to present a reading of the play as a study in the power of language and one’s ability to create persuasive arguments.
A woman in crisis is given an impossible choice, a god is insulted on earth and their vengeance shall be terrible to behold. If ancient Greek gods are reflections of human nature, then what do we learn about ourselves in viewing Medea and her story?
The revenge killing of her children strikes at symbols deeply rooted in our culture. Medea is a feminist hero – cutting off patriarchal power at its source; Jason’s heirs? She is a demon witch and personification of the havoc wreaked by uncontrolled emotions? Only you can decide!
The standard delivery of these programs is a 120 minute session consisting of a 70 minute short performance and a 50 minute workshop in which key scenes are revisited for further analysis and interpretation.
When booking these programs let us know your needs in detail. We want to work with you and you can choose the type of experience you would like to explore.
Do you want a powerful emotional performance or something that just helps students to follow the narrative?
In the workshop would you like us to explore a range of interpretations supported by the text or focus on a specific approach that you are teaching? If you would like us to focus on a specific interpretation, we need to know this in advance and know the details of what you want conveyed.
Oedipus The King
Oedipus is the story of a man in power and his quest for truth. He hears the truth from different angles but in an attempt to avoid his fate, he descends into madness and self-destruction. The chorus, represents a narrative voice and/or citizens who witness and convey the key messages, from which we are to learn.
In 2025 we have an exciting new offering. We begin the session by first workshopping two versions of the chorus. One is intended to represent traditional Greek theatre, the other is a more contemporary interpretation where phones and social media symbolise a modern chorus.
Unless the school wishes us to stay focused on one or the other style of reading, we will ask students to choose which style they want for the performance. Post show, the workshop examines key characters and the themes: fate, guilt, blindness, prophecy and the quest for truth and enlightenment.
“I saw Shakespeare, it wasn’t hard, and don’t tell anyone but I may have even liked it.” This is a verbatim quote from a student post show but the type of comment we often hear. Truely we couldn’t hope for more. This performance starts out as a comic, romantic journey where we draw audiences into laughter, love and frivolity. As the tragedy unfolds, we give you the chance to feel deeply and have cause and reason to “go hence and have more talk of these sad things”.
Unless guided by the school, toward specific goals, in the workshop we explore iconic readings of the play as well as how it’s often perceived by young audiences. We also like to probe, how different perceptions of the play give different answers to, common essay questions like “Who is to blame?” and “Does love or hate win in this play?”
A tale of envy and jealousy, greed, ambition and an echo chamber of regret and the forces of manipulation that surround us. This performance brings the role of the witches into the foreground, as an almost ever-present force playing with their human puppets. The struggle of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are still at the centre of the performance but one gets the sense that it’s the supernatural and the witches’ awareness of human frailty that drives the tragedy.
Unless otherwise requested by the school, our workshop focuses on different possible readings of the lead characters. Is Macbeth a good man, who is not strong enough to stand up to his wife’s emasculating ambition?
If Lady Macbeth does manipulate him, given that he is a general, does it make sense if she does it with outright force? Is it possible the two are deeply in love and desperately want the other to get what they see is rightfully due?
Shakespeare definitely called Much Ado About Nothing a comedy. The play certainly reveals the folly of being in love and in the ways we run from it. It also explores word play and darker uses of language.
Gender roles, and the behaviours of, not just Don John but also Don Pedro may, or may not, just be part of the fun. The latter of the two characters is, perhaps, a symbol of the two sides of meddling in the affairs of others. Our performance entices audiences to laugh along at seemly harmless jokes, before bringing it to our awareness that toxic humour is not as banal as it may seem.
The workshop, unless otherwise guided by schools, offers the chance to explore the idea of a period court drama, word play and the power of language. We also like to unpack the question of, if Beatrice is in fact one of Shakespeare’s empowered female roles.
Shiralee is a Noongar/Gunaikerai woman. She wrote the book on helping indigenous actors tell their stories. She created the Indigenous actors’ programs at both WAPPA and VCA. She has provided countless hours of cultural education for non Indigenous audiences. When developing this program she proposed that the best way, for non-indigenous audiences, to access it, was to get inside it. Eagles Nest Artistic Direct, James Adler immediately saw the value of supporting this culturally informed pedagogic angle.
Getting Inside Rainbow’s End
Together with cultural educator, Shiralee Hood, we have created an exciting and new style of program for students studying Jane Harrison’s Rainbows End. It uses immersion to help English students understand the text and support them to express themselves in written assessment tasks.
Together, Shiralee and James will guide students as key scenes are read out loud. Being in the play, exploring the characters and talking openly, in a supportive environment, will help students enormously to empathize with a narrative that might otherwise seem foreign.
Eagles Nest Is very excited to be trialing this new approach and that the idea comes from an educator familiar with the challenges of teaching Indigenous narratives.
Shiralee is a proud indigenous Noongar/Gunaikernai woman. James’ family is of migrant and refugee origin. Both have lived in city and rural Australia. Their combined heritage enables them to offer unique insight into the theme, the mentor texts, and the ways suggested by the VCAA that students could write about country.
Short writing exercises in this workshop focus on, pre and post-colonial “Australia”, city and country, migration, resettlement, identity (and losing one’s home/country) as well as discrimination.
Given that Split was written by a Noongar woman, Shiralee’s people, we strongly suggest that schools choose this as one of the two mentor texts we explore on the day. Her knowledge could be what opens the door to writing about country with reference to indigenous Australia.
In each session, material from the 4 different workshops is used. The ideas and activities are transferable for any theme. There is also time for group discussion of the pedagogic intentions behind activities.
We want teachers to be able to implement what they learn in a variety of different school environments. The discussions may be particularly helpful as our approach may differ from how you are teaching this syllabus thus far.
The other highlight of this seminar is that you will have access to all 5 facilitators of the student workshops. Each of them has different skills and approaches to teaching and writing and this seminar is the only way you can access them all in one day.
These programs give students access to writing tools used by real life artists. This is probably different to what you are doing in the classroom but focused on enhancing and complimenting the work you do as teachers. Together we can get students exciting about writing and equipped to succeed.
Our facilitators have a variety of professional experience creating texts; writing prose and song lyrics, writing for stage and film, writing from physically devised material and oral storytelling. They also have life experiences that directly relates to the workshops they are facilitating.
Our facilitators have a variety of professional experience creating texts; writing prose and song lyrics, writing for stage and film, writing from physically devised material and oral storytelling. They also have life experiences that directly relates to the workshops they are facilitating.
The core concept is, to help them find their unique inner creative voices and give them the confidence to succeed at creative writing.
Writing About Personal Journey
The beginning of the workshop focuses on energies and feelings. By identifying this first, one can then learn how to transform the different moods into performance and written pieces. For example, in one of the games we will look at chaos, stillness, noise and silence and in which energy you feel more at home? Have you felt any of these in your own personal journey?
Exercises go on to explore how word association can turn into sentences. The students will also get the chance to work with the actors, getting to discover how different feelings can also be transformed into difference movements on stage.
Drawing on the training of the key facilitator Paul Robertson, the short writing exercises focus on responding to embodied elements of protest. Somatic exercises give students a way feel what its like to; voice your “NO”, take a stance either with or against the majority, strive for a collective goal and fail, and imagine what its like to have the names of loved ones disrespected.
As we move on to the mentor texts chosen by the school, we have exciting material on all sides. The humour and satire of Vonnegut could be the prompt to write about, banning a loved activity as a “postive”. The Friday essay, if performed, will emphasise chants and singing as a binding force in protest. The suffragette piece would be delivered, focusing on particular phrases and how they grow in significance with repetition.
Play is our foundation for social connection as human beings.
When we participate in play in the form of games, sports and improvisation, we strengthen our communication, and interpersonal and personal awareness. When we view play – we bond and create shared experiences through attending sports games, exhibitions and live performance.
We also agree to play by society’s rules or not and our choices, our willingness to play along or not, often effects change. The rules of society and play are not universal, they change within different contexts, time periods and countries.
