Hartlepool primary school welcomes first visit of Royal Shakespeare Company with Romeo and Juliet performance

A group of professional actors from the RSC performed a version of Romeo and Juliet to an audience of parents, children and the wider community at St Cuthbert’s Catholic Primary School on Monday evening.

It was part of the RSC’s First Encounters national tour of schools and regional theatres to introduce the Bard to younger and first-time audiences.

St Cuthbert’s has also recently become a Lead Associate School for the RSC’s long-term programme to bring William Shakespeare’s work into schools, with a specific focus on those in socio-economic disadvantaged areas.

Headteacher Joanne Wilson said: “We believe that everyone can benefit from arts and culture and more specifically that an arts-rich education is the best way to prepare young people for life beyond school: unlocking potential and fostering vital skills for life and work.”

St Cuthbert’s hosted two performances of the 90-minute take on Shakespeare’s classic tale of love and loss – one for pupils and another for the wider community.

Mrs Wilson added: “I was just so proud to have the Royal Shakespeare Company come to our school.

"The actors were very young and vibrant and interacted with the audience a lot. It was just done in the hall, no auditorium, just as Shakespeare would have done it.

"The feedback from the audience was just great. People were captivated. Some of them hadn’t ever seen Shakespeare before so it was their first experience of it. We’re hoping this will be the first of many performances.”

Around 100 people attended including local families and parents and the Ceremonial Mayor of Hartlepool, Councillor Shane Moore.

Ten local children also got to perform as members of a peace council alongside the professional RSC actors.

It also gave them an opportunity to see how the whole show was put together from the props to directing. Pupils as young as five and six enjoyed the earlier performance.

Mrs Wilson added: “Although they couldn’t follow all the language, they knew when the happy and sad scenes were. Some cried when Juliet died.”

St Cuthbert’s is no stranger to Shakespeare and it is fully embedded in its Key Stage 2 curriculum with its benefits to reading, writing and drama.