Marco Reflects on School Visits

Primary School children are fantastic to work with in this process. They are usually very keen to get up on stage and perform, so the exhilaration at that possibility drives them through the workshops with great enthusiasm. I tell them poems, then have them acting out a poem, then launch into a series of word ‘theatre games’ I have designed myself. After having warmed them up, we then write, simple rhymes at first, and generally by that time I have no trouble spurring them on. My greatest thrill is walking to the staff room during a break and hearing children reciting marching poems and ditties they have written either by themselves or in groups, with the aim of auditioning for me in a later workshop, hoping to be selected to perform in the finale concert. It is exhausting work, but once I walk into a classroom I simply surrender, get down to their level, and before long they have swept me off into that wonderful field of dreams that I never tire of playing in