Freelance theatre voice practitioner

We are seeking an experienced voice practitioner to support the Marlowe Theatre’s Learning and Participation Education strand. You would work with 20 schools (specialist provision, primary and secondary) as part of the Associate Schools Programme, a partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Associate Schools Programme in association with the RSC

Our Associate Schools work in a creative network to transform the teaching of Shakespeare within their schools. This culminates in a performance of Shakespeare at the end of the academic year. This year the performance will be a site-specific piece and will be performed outside. The location is chosen to reflect the chosen Shakespeare pieces and this year the location will be coastal. Each school is given a section of play to perform. These have mostly been selected from Shakespeare plays where the characters are ship-wrecked or where the sea has a significant hand in the fate of the characters. The scenes can be seen by the audience in any order and are not performed in a linear narrative but are held together by a prologue and an epilogue. The epilogue will be split across the schools performing with each school performing one part of the epilogue speech.

As part of the programme, each school is given a two-hour theatre skills workshop which aims to develop young people’s wider experience of the arts and to help enhance the final performance.

This year we would like to focus on ‘Voice’.

Workshop brief

The aim of the workshop would be to:

• Excite and inspire young people about performance, theatre and Shakespeare.
• Give young people the voice skills needed to perform confidently outside.
• Provide young people and their teachers with a palette of voice exercises which can be used to prepare them for the outside performance.
• Help prepare the school for their part of the epilogue speech looking at how their voices can be used chorally to enhance the words of their section.

In addition, sometimes schools work with several actors playing the same part. Therefore, we would like you to consider ways in which they can use voices or choral speaking to aid the audiences understanding of multiple people playing one part.

Because we are based by the sea for this year’s performance, the sites we are working with this year pose several environmental challenges for young people to overcome to ensure they are heard. We have scheduled the voice workshops for the beginning of the summer term with the hope that these could be held outside so that young people get experience of how to use these voice techniques in the same environment in which they will be performing. We would like the voice practitioner to leave teachers and young people with the skills to enable them to be heard in the challenging outdoor environment.

The workshop should use the school’s section of Shakespeare to inspire the voice activities.

Dates of the workshop: Tuesday 22 April – Wednesday 7 May, 10 days in total with two workshops a day (excluding bank holidays when schools are shut).

Location of the workshops: Schools across Kent. Travel costs will be covered (up to £20 a day. Driving may be necessary due to the location of some schools).

Age of the students: 7-18 years including groups with SLD (Severe Learning Difficulties), MD (Mid Learning Difficulties) and ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition).

Fee: £175 per day

If you are a voice practitioner who is a great team player and communicator, with a passion for inclusive theatre making, then we would love to hear from you. Please send your up-to-date CV and a brief break down of how you might approach this brief to Jack Finch-Harding via email, by 10am on Friday 6 December. We will review all expressions of interest in this role and will be in touch with applicants by Thursday 12 December.

The Marlowe Theatre is an inclusive employer. We value difference and recruit by merit based on fair and open competition. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, neurodiversity, disability status, citizenship, or any other aspect which makes them unique.

We are a Creative Green organisation and are committed to taking action on climate change and environmental sustainability.