Pupils' plays take theatre by storm

The show ends, the world-famous Swan Theatre erupts with applause and little Gabriel McAllister has decided on his career.

"That was amazing." says the excited 11-year-old. "I'm going to be a playwright."

He's had the best of starts. Gabriel is one of 300 Black Country youngsters invited to write and perform short plays at the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the next-door Swan which were opened in a global blaze of publicity last month.

Four of the plays, written by year six pupils and performed by secondary-school students, were shown at the Swan yesterday. Gabriel was one of a team of young writers from

Perryfields primary school, Oldbury, who saw their piece, Left for Dead, the Dead End, performed by actors from Sandwell College.

"We did the bit where the body was lifted up," he says with a grin. "It feels really good, seeing it on stage."

His mother, Debby, says: "We're all very proud. As soon as he saw Hamlet he came home saying he wanted to be a playwright."

"I worked on that bit where Amber got killed with the gun and the swords," 11-year-old Sophie Travell, also of Perryfields primary, says sweetly.

In fine Shakespearean style, the year six writers worked plenty of blood and guts into their plays. Throats were cut, ex-lovers stabbed.

Perryfields teaching assistant Abigail Phillis says: "We couldn't believe some of the ideas the children were coming out with. It was definitely a case of the bloodier, the better. But to see it on stage was excellent, overwhelming."

As for the quality of the lines, how about this from a villainous vampire created by the young writers from Salisbury primary school, Walsall : "Infected air will wrap you up in reeking vomit."

Tomorrow sees more children stepping the boards at the RST itself to play to an audience of proud teachers and parents.

The project began in September when 10 primary schools in the Black Country were invited to a special children's performance of Hamlet at Stratford. Next, working with the RSC, they were asked to create 15-minute plays inspired by Shakespeare's ghost scenes.

Ellen Taylor, head teacher of Little Bloxwich primary, says it was a transforming moment: "They have been doing a lot of work about how words can create different moods."

And Emma Dykes, drama teacher at Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall, says: "To have an opportunity like this is just fantastic."

Her teenagers will be performing the play they have written at the RST tomorrow.

The project was developed by the RSC to inspire young people and funded by the Black Country Creative Partnerships and the Arts Council. It is also a reminder that Shakespeare was a Midlander with a regional accent.

It has been claimed that if Shakespeare would now be more at home in the Black Country than anywhere else in England.

The RSC's voice director Cicely Berry says : " I think it is great that now we are hearing new plays in this theatre in the Black Country dialect."

Yesterday's young writers were delighted to see their words come to life, even if not everyone was impressed. Was it a great show?

"I've seen better," said one 11-year-old with the blistering honesty of year six.

It was a reminder that if Gabriel and some his schoolmates live the dream and become scriptwriters, they'll have put up with the critics.