Westminster welcomes London school students to Regent Street Cinema for inclusive theatre workshop

The project, which was made possible by a grant of £88,300 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, has enabled Westminster to develop and deliver outreach activities to build new audiences and increase engagement around the restoration of the historic Soho Poly Theatre, located in the basement of Westminster’s Riding House Street building. The regeneration of the venue has now entered its final stages following a successful two-year long fundraising effort.

The main focus of the National Lottery Heritage Fund-sponsored project has been the production of an Education Resources Pack, which has been a two-year long collaboration with London schools led by Dr Matthew Morrison, playwright and Head of Creative Writing at the University, and Guy Osborn, Co-Creative Producer and Professor in the Westminster Law School. It is aimed at building a more inclusive theatre for the future, and is freely available on the University’s website. Readers are welcome to offer feedback to help refine the pack further over the next few weeks.

Following on from the gala screening of the 2010 film Sus and an audience with lead actor and Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre, Clint Dyer, to celebrate the project on 7 March, Dr Morrison welcomed English and Drama students from the partner schools to Regent Street Cinema to talk to them about the aims of the Education Resources Pack in sharing best practice on how to make theatre inclusive and accessible to all audiences.

The students then watched some extracts from Sus and were asked to reflect on how the film’s themes and artistic choices relate to the central question of the workshop Can Theatre Change the World, and Dr Morrison shared Clint Dyer’s reflections from the Q&A on how playing the part on stage brought feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness.

This was followed by the drama workshop led by Simon Muller of the Globe Theatre, along with actors Tatty Macleod and Bryan Dick, which explored how power and status manifests in theatre. A key part of the session was that, having watched Macleod and Dick perform two different interpretations of a scene from Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, the students were given the opportunity to act it out themselves and demonstrate how methods such as changing your tone of voice and taking up space on stage can feed into an audience’s perception of power.

Speaking about the workshop, Jules Attanayake, Development Officer for Trusts and Foundations at the University of Westminster, said: “We were very impressed by the 40 students from Featherstone High School and the Loxford School, and how engaged they were in the workshops. This event launched our Education Resources Pack with schools, which will be rolled out to a further 100 partner schools across London in the coming days.

“Students were engaged on the importance of EDI and accessibility in the theatre and were encouraged to work through the exercises in the Resource Pack. Teachers from participating schools will feedback to us on the outcomes of this which forms part of the remit of our National Lottery Heritage Fund grant. The day went incredibly smoothly and will form a template for our partner work with schools in the Soho Poly and Regent Street Cinema.”

Find out more about restoring the Soho Poly.