“The highlight for me was the workshop. The diversity of the activities we did was brilliant.” enthused Richard Hodges of Woodroffe School after the Icon theatre workshop based on Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”  in the school’s drama studio.

On Wednesday 5 March Icon Theatre Company performed their production of “Gradgrind” at the Marine Theatre Lyme Regis. Students from Woodroffe School came to the production with their Head of Drama, Anne Cruwys-Finnigan! "Gradrind" was fantastic!” she told me afterwards “ We all really enjoyed it. It was full of excellent examples of techniques, conventions and styles, perfect for drama students. The acting was superb, characterisation, physicality, vocally and  the workshop was also very good, challenging, exciting and fun. It’s just such a lovely, friendly company.”

The following day they started their school day with a workshop with the actors from Icon theatre. The workshop provided an enjoyable and relaxed introductory session to movement led theatre. Jodie Rylance of year 13 said “I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of “Gradgrind”. The use of physical theatre was extremely effective and the way the three actors changed characters using tone of voice, gesture and body language, was fantastic.” 

The production had buckets of energy, original new music, mime, movement and puppetry, Icon Theatre brought Dickens’ classic novel to life in a fast paced, touching - and at times very funny - innovative stage adaptation. Abby Newbery, another of the A level drama students explained “I felt myself being drawn into a different, exciting world where one moment I could feel terrified and repulsed by Mr Boundaby and the next hopeful and wistful for the poor trapped Louisa”. In Hard Times by Charles Dickens the beautiful Louisa aged 18, is forced to marry a man she detests, while watching her brother descend into a gambling addiction. 

The students engaged with Icon Theatre’s distinctive, engaging style; whereby the company  introduce the idea of using the body as a vehicle to express individual feelings and ideas, and use improvisation to create the illusion of an object with the hands and portray forces against the body, such as pushing or pulling. “The workshop, for me, was really enjoyable,” added Jess Lambert. “We explored varying acting styles, from the more physical and stylised to a more  naturalistic in-depth study of specific characters and issues in the story.” 

The Marine Theatre has more drama in the coming weeks with Harold Pinter’s “The Lover , and other classic revue sketches” on Sunday 30 March at 7 pm. The production will be followed by a Q and A with members of the Creative Cow company.