by Act 1. Scene 1. A classroom in a secondary school in Peterborough. It’s a dreary, wet afternoon. The students enter the room, take their seats and look forward.
This year, Year 10 English students at Ormiston Bushfield Academy are taking part in a workshop on Macbeth, part of a new curriculum developed by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to bring the Bard’s works to life in Britain’s somewhat stuffy classrooms.
The students are quiet. They slump in their seats. Then a rehearsal game of “Pass the Click”. [of fingers]” she warms up, and a few minutes later they are back on their feet, pairing up and performing some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines with gusto.
The focus of this session is 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 spurs him to action.
“Are you scared …?” sounds across the desks. “I sucked,” someone else shouts, without so much as a giggle, while “I pulled my nipple” and “No gum without a bone” (some of Lady Macbeth’s many memorable lines) echo through the classroom.
Paul Ainsworth, the RSC’s young theater maker developer, who is leading the session, is thrilled. “In general, we’re all afraid of Shakespeare,” he says. “But once we start actively working on the text and exploring it as a play rather than a piece of literature, it opens it up to young people.”
The RSC’s Shakespeare Curriculum, launching on Wednesday, is an online platform for teachers and students that uses the RSC’s rehearsal-based teaching approaches – honed in classrooms around the world – to transform the study of Shakespeare in schools.
Instead of students sitting somberly at their desks and taking turns reading the play aloud, the RSC curriculum treats Shakespeare’s works as living, breathing texts for performance. “Macbeth” starts this year, followed by “Romeo and Juliet” at the beginning of 2026 with two more plays per academic year.
“The RSC can’t bring actors into every school in the country,” says Adjoa Andoh, who plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton and has a leading role in the RSC. “So this is a way to bring Shakespeare – a living, breathing thing – into schools to engage children.”
The RSC approach works well for 15-year-old Charlie, who generally prefers rap to Shakespeare. “I’m not normally a performer,” he says. “But it was a nice break to do something different.”
14-year-old Kieran is also excited. “I really enjoyed it. I think some people don’t like Shakespeare because they don’t understand a lot of it straight away, but if you listen to it a little bit you can understand what’s going on even if you don’t fully understand it.”
David Tennant, best known as Dr. Who, but a Shakespeare veteran whose recent performance as Macbeth received a five-star review in the Guardian, is excited about the new curriculum. “Many young people experience Shakespeare for the first time in the classroom.
“The lucky ones may have a brilliant teacher who can bring it to life, but many inexplicably mumble words that make little sense to a 14-year-old. Shakespeare should be experienced, engaged with and performed, not just read from a page.”
Judi Dench, who has played most of Shakespeare’s major female roles and told the Guardian in 2023: “I only ever wanted to play Shakespeare, nothing else,” believes his plays are timeless and still resonate with young people today.
Dench said: “In the rehearsal room we don’t have all the answers on the first day, instead we explore the piece and its language, peeling back its layers and playing with different interpretations to find a way to tell the story for today.”
“The Shakespeare curriculum will bring the spirit of collaboration, inquiry and discovery from the rehearsal room into classrooms across the country, inspiring and engaging young minds.”
