GCSE & A Level Drama Complicité Workshop

“It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

Bring Complicité to life in your drama studio. In this 5-lesson practical workshop, pupils learn Complicité’s playful, physical approach through games and Lecoq-style exercises. They then devise Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling short story The Tell-Tale Heart as a Complicité-style ensemble.

It’s perfect for teaching a practitioner for devising, and pupils come away with a finished, performable piece.

10 games and ensemble exercises, including:
Balance the Stage: the classic Lecoq exercise
The Rhythm Ball: builds rhythm, focus and ensemble
Books Into Birds: object transformation inspired by The Street of Crocodiles
One Room, Four Chairs: four chairs become five different things
The Heartbeat: a whole-class soundscape that builds to a deafening silence
Midnight: The Eye Game: a torch-lit tension game with “Who’s there?”

Then pupils devise the story using chorus narration, levels of tension, object transformation, light and sound. The devising is built around three key sequences: The Lantern, The Floorboards and The Police.

What’s included:
5 × 60-minute lessons: 46 fully timed PowerPoint slides with teacher notes
A teacher guide with a full plan for every lesson and background on Complicité
An ORIGINAL ensemble script: the narrator split across six voices
The story in 8 beats, plus key quotations
Lecoq’s seven levels of tension sheet
A sequence planner, evaluation frames and a glossary

The Tell-Tale Heart is out of copyright, so you can print it freely for your class. There’s nothing extra to buy.

Suitable for GCSE and A Level. It works brilliantly as preparation for the devising component.