With some of the finest arts facilities in the country and experienced professionals in support, it is no surprise that drama is a key part of Warwick School life.
CONFIDENT COMMUNICATORS
Our dynamic and popular curriculum for all age groups is backed up by a diverse programme of workshops, trips and performance opportunities ensuring the performing arts are experienced, celebrated and enjoyed by all. From their earliest days in school, pupils develop their core skills developing creativity, fostering collaboration, and building positive self-esteem. Performance and presentational techniques are taught alongside this, ensuring the pupils become sensitive, disciplined and confident communicators with ideas they wish to express about the world around them and creative ways to do so.
We take pride in our extensive co-curricular programme. With support from our dedicated Graduate Assistants, we offer a wide range of opportunities. Productions provide an outstanding vehicle for the pupils to work constructively together throughout the year. Many enjoy providing production support through technical, set design and crew or costume/make-up roles.
Furthermore, pupils can work towards LAMDA examinations and gain valuable qualifications across the LAMDA disciplines.
Pleasingly, many Warwickians go onto the creative industries as actors, theatre makers or technicians, but all enjoy lifelong benefits including a deep appreciation of the arts brought about by direct and positive first-hand experience.
Our curriculum builds strong foundations in Years 7–9 and prepares pupils for success at GCSE and beyond. Through an engaging programme of study, boys develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to enjoy the subject and achieve their potential.
Year 7 – 9
Our KS3 curriculum (years 7-9) provides a broad and engaging first experience of drama for our youngest pupils. Taught by a specialist team with a wealth of experience, pupils can complete half-termly schemes each with core content, rehearsal and assessed performance elements. Schemes have been created and developed in-house with our boys in mind and reflect a challenging, contemporary approach to drama education whilst embracing theatre traditions and history. Schemes are reviewed regularly and in development, ensuring the curriculum is dynamic and responsive.
Boys enjoy 150mins of drama per fortnight in Year 7, 100 mins in Year 8 and 200 mins in Year 9 (as an optional subject choice). Our schemes link directly to the skills required at GCSE.
GCSE
As the next part of a Warwick School drama career, our GCSE course builds on the foundation skills developed at KS3 and offers exceptional opportunities for pupils to specialise as either performer or theatre designer (costume, lighting, sound or set) This is a two-year course (EDUQAS GCSE Drama) which is examined in the following ways:
Component 1: Devising Theatre (40%) – including 1.5 hour evaluative report
Component 2: Performing from a Text (20%) – marked by a visiting examiner
Component 3: Interpreting Theatre (40%) – analysing a set text and evaluating live theatre
Following a course in GCSE Drama will enable pupils to:
actively engage in the process of dramatic study to develop as effective and independent learners and critical and reflective thinkers with enquiring minds;
- work imaginatively and creatively in collaborative contexts, generating, developing and communicating ideas;
- reflect on and evaluate their own work and the work of others;
- develop and demonstrate competence in a range of practical, creative and performance skills;
- develop a basis for their future role as active citizens in employment and society in general as well as for the possible further study of drama;
- consider and explore the impact of social, historical and cultural influences on drama texts and activities.
Although the emphasis is primarily on performance, pupils interested in developing design skills (set, costume and lighting/sound) are welcomed on the course. The wider drama team consists of an experienced range of professional theatre practitioners including design and technical staff. All pupils will have access to the department’s outstanding resources, both in studio and ancillary spaces and through those provided by the school’s own Bridge House Theatre and Warwick Hall. The course is supplemented with a first-class range of co-curricular performance opportunities including those for national festivals, which though optional have clear benefit to participants as they provide further means of applying taught skills in a live performance context.
Similarly, as avid theatre-goers ourselves, staff frequently lead theatre trips to supplement the curriculum at all levels, but especially for those in exam groups, for whom live theatre experience is compulsory. Having The RSC and Warwick Arts Centre, Belgrade Theatre and Birmingham theatres all within easy reach, ensures we can provide an outstanding range of theatre trips throughout the year.
Alongside providing a solid foundation for anyone wishing to follow an arts-based career, the course develops ‘transferable’ skills which are useful in a wide range of careers requiring confident communications and presentation. Many choose the subject for the way it enhances their self-confidence, initiative, problem-solving capabilities, and creativity.
