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Stagework

The National Theatre's award-winning on-line resource has been designed to make the innovative theatre practice at the National Theatre and its regional partners much more widely available to potential new audiences.

Visit the site at www.stagework.org 

Since its launch in March 2004, Stagework has become a massive and growing archive of performance-related material including film of rehearsals, performance, auditions and interviews with actors, directors, designers and administrative personnel.

Stagework unpacks the process behind key productions for students and for general life-long learners; it offers rich media content and teacher support for the National Curriculum in English, Drama, Citizenship, RE and History; it enhances the understanding of theatre as one of the creative industries and points out new career possibilities to young people.

Stagework looks at how performances are made, who makes them, and why. Importantly for teachers, it is also a repository for debate, analysis and discussion framed by the issues raised in the staging of plays such as the National’s production of Henry V at the time of the last invasion of Iraq, and its adaptation in 2003-04 of Philip Pullman’s epic anti-clerical trilogy His Dark Materials. Stagework meets the needs of curricular audiences by covering widely-studied plays in production, such as Shakespeare’s Richard III and Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, while also appealing to all audiences with entertaining interactive material which enhances the theatregoing experience.

Productions covered to date:

National Theatre

Henry V by William Shakespeare
His Dark Materials based on the novels by Philip Pullman adapted by Nicholas Wright
The UN Inspector Freely adapted from Gogol's The Government Inspector by David Farr
Coram Boy adapted by Helen Edmundson from a novel by Jamila Gavin
The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht in a version by David Hare
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht in a version by Frank McGuinness
Women of Troy and Much Ado About Nothing features will be launching soon.


Bristol Old Vic

Beasts and Beauties: Eight Tales from Europe retold by Carol Ann Duffy, adapted by Melly Still and Tim Supple

Birmingham Rep

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Royal Court

Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco in a new translation by Martic Crimp

West Yorkshire Playhouse and Northern Broadsides

Richard III by William Shakespeare

Stagework has won a number of prestigious awards including:
BETT 2006 winner in the English Key Stage 3 & Key Stage 4 Category
World Summit Award winner in the E-Learning category
2005 winner BAFTA Interactive awards in the Factual and Learning Categories 

Stagework is commissioned and funded by Culture Online, part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with additional support from BT.