Course: Creative Drama
Age: 3½ to 12 years
Location: Portsdown & East Coast
Teachers: Vicky Letchemanan, Clara Janssen, Aaron Cheang
See Full Timetable Here  

Creative Drama is at the heart and soul of the Centre Stage ethos. It is process driven, rather than performance-based drama – the emphasis and the value is in the journey rather than the outcome.

We bring to life situations, stories and characters by ‘playing out’ the narrative – using structured play in a highly fun and interactive way. Skills applied and gained from these classes are broad and immense: confidence, communication, quick thinking, problem-solving, flexibility, teamwork, an ability to improvise, apply creativity and imagination, as well as develop social and emotional skills! 

Suitability: These classes are suitable for all children from the under-confident to build self-esteem to the real drama enthusiast.

Creative Drama is broken down into the following stages: 

Course: Creative Drama Introductory Stage
Age: 3½ to 4 years

The classes are meant as an introduction to drama and often contain children who have moved up from Play Stage 2. The introductory stage was devised and written to make the transition from our morning play stage classes to Stage One as smooth as possible and to help students settle into the idea of drama.

Aims of the class

The main focus is exploring drama by taking a book or story as the stimulus. We read or tell the story in class, discuss it and either dramatise it or take a theme from the book and explore it using the student’s thoughts and ideas. We look at movement, encouraging the children to be aware of their physicality, the way in which they move their bodies, and begin to help them develop physical control and awareness. Music is often included, using familiar songs and routines. As well as building confidence we are trying to create an atmosphere free from pressure where the child has a chance to develop their imagination and a forum in which they can begin to express their ideas.

The introductory stage is an opportunity for the children to learn to lead, take turns, work as a team, explore different emotions and develop social skills as they begin to understand and put in to practice the very important skills necessary for drama.

The classes are 1 hour long and are unaccompanied.

Course: Creative Drama Stages 1 – 3
Age: 4 to 7 years
Here, using games and group improvisations the students work towards developing good listening skills, turn-taking and the need to work together as a team. We gently introduce the preliminary skills of drama and encourage an appreciation and love of literature.

The children learn through improvised drama, music, mime and movement drawn from favourite books, poems, and stories. They start within the safety net of the group and as self-confidence develops, begin to take on individual roles.

Here the students start to acquire the basic skills of drama, the need for clear speech and an expressive voice and body

Aims of the class: To develop self-confidence, sociability, expression, creativity and imaginative skills.

Course: Creative Drama Stages 4 – 6
Age: 8 to 12 years

With these intermediate drama classes, we build on the skills learned in the earlier stages but give greater attention to acting skills. We introduce theatre styles and use play scripts, scenes, monologues, duologues and improvisation to develop the students’ physical, vocal and mental skills.

As the students develop they can choose to audition for our performance-based – On Stage! Course to put the acquired skills into action.

Aims of the class

To develop acting skills, self-confidence, sociability, expression, creativity and imaginative skills.