‘I really enjoyed it’: New RSC curriculum brings Shakespeare’s works to life in UK classrooms | William Shakespeare

Act 1. Scene 1. A classroom at a high school in Peterborough. It is a dreary and damp age. Pupils enter the room, sit in their seats, facing the front.

Year 10 English students at Ormiston Bushveld Academy are taking part in a workshop on Macbeth, part of a new curriculum devised by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to bring the Bard’s works to life in slightly crowded classrooms in the UK.

The students are quiet. They slump back in their seats. Then the “click pass” game. [of fingers]“He warms them up, and after a few minutes they are on their feet, enthusiastically performing some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines.

This session focuses on Act 1, Scene 7, a pivotal moment in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy in which Macbeth has doubts but is persuaded to kill King Duncan by his wife, Lady Macbeth, who taunts him and urges him to action.

“Are you afraid…?” It rings through the offices. “I sucked,” someone else shouts, without laughing, as “I got my nipples snatched” and “boneless gums” (some of Lady Macbeth’s many memorable phrases) echo through the classroom.

Paul Ainsworth, RSC’s Young Theater Maker Developer, who is running the session, is delighted. “In general, we’re all terrified of Shakespeare,” he says. “But once we start actively working on the text, exploring it as a play and not as a piece of literature, it opens up the space for young people.”

The RSC Shakespeare curriculum, funded by the Foyle Foundation, will be launched on Wednesday. It is an online platform for teachers and pupils that uses the RSC’s training-based teaching approaches – honed in classrooms around the world – to transform the study of Shakespeare in schools. It provides access to over 2,000 resources including video extracts from RSC rehearsals and previous productions, as well as activity-packed lesson plans, and is free for all UK state schools.

Instead of pupils sitting at their desks taking turns reading the play aloud, the RSC curriculum treats Shakespeare’s works as living, breathing texts for performance. Romeo and Juliet will debut with Macbeth this year, and will follow in early 2026, with two additional plays each academic year.

“The School Support Center can’t get actors into every school in the country,” says Adjoa Andoh, who plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton and is a standout at the Refugee Support Centre. “So this is a way to get Shakespeare – a living, breathing organism – into schools to excite kids.”

The RSC’s approach works well for 15-year-old Charlie, who generally prefers rap to Shakespeare. “I’m not usually a performer,” he says. “But it was a nice break, doing something different.”

Kieran, 14, is also excited. “I really enjoyed it. I think some people don’t like Shakespeare because they don’t immediately understand what a lot of it means, but if you listen to it a little bit, even if you don’t get it all, you can understand what’s going on.”

David Tennant, better known as Doctor Who but a Shakespeare veteran whose recent performance as Macbeth received a five-star review in The Guardian, is enthusiastic about the new approach. “Many young people’s first experience with Shakespeare is in the classroom.

“The lucky ones may have a brilliant teacher who can bring it to life, but many find themselves spouting incomprehensible words that make no sense to you at the age of 14. Shakespeare must be experienced, interacted with and performed, not just read from a page.”

“All I wanted to do was play Shakespeare, nothing else,” Judi Dench, who played most of Shakespeare’s major female roles, told The Guardian in 2023 that his plays are timeless and can still resonate with young people today.

“In the rehearsal room, we don’t get all the answers on day one, instead we explore the play and its language, peel back its layers and play with different interpretations to find a way to tell the story for the day,” Dench said.

“The Shakespeare Curriculum will bring the spirit of collaboration, investigation and discovery from the training room to classrooms across the country, inspiring and engaging young minds.”