On 6 October, 2016, Dr Jeannette Baxter, Professor Eugene Giddens and Dr Mick Gowar took part in a Pericles-themed workshop with colleagues from New International Encounter theatre group and Year 6 pupils from The Spinney Primary School in Cambridge. The NIE team had performed three key scenes from Shakespeare’s play for the children on the previous afternoon, so the workshop created space for the children to re-tell parts of the story and to develop their understanding of the play’s language and key themes through song, movement and the spoken word. Working with the NIE actors and ARU academics, the children took it in turns to explore the shapes, patterns and sounds of Shakespearean language by performing a few lines to each other and then to the large group, which led to an incredibly lively and energetic exchange between Pericles and Lychorida! Other workshop exercises encouraged the children to empathise with Pericles as a man in exile, and to consider how a refugee might, or might not, be welcomed in a new country. The workshop ended with a large group exercise in which the children listened to the stories of modern-day child migrants and discussed some of the similarities between Shakespeare’s imagined story of exile and real, modern-day events. Thanks to NIE and Year 6 children at the Spinney School for making this such a fantastic afternoon. We hope to continue our work on Pericles in the form of a digital comic book project. Watch this space…

Image: 2015 Penguin edition of Pericles edited by Eugene Giddens