Showing a play as a school screening – is that a good idea?

Why not help them discover the theatre through a school screening?

Thanks to the scheme “The Comédie Française at the cinema” and other similar live broadcasts, cinema complexes like Kinepolis in Luxembourg are enabling the theatre to get inside movie theatres and become part of school film screenings.

Give them a unique experience that brings the theatre to the cinema!

In its initiative ‘Theatre at the Cinema’, Kinepolis is combining the programmes of the National Theatre Live (NTLive) and the Comédie Française. Thanks to this measure, it is now possible for cinema-goers to discover Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin the Schemer), Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and Racine’s Britannicus on the big screen.

While the delights of the classics can be enjoyed by all visitors to the complex, they can also form the subject of special school screenings. To arrange this, all you need to do is hire the screening room andorganise an event around it – either beforehand, in the classroom, and/or immediately after viewing the play.

It is already standard practice for the classic works of the stage to be studied at school: great dramatic works can add to and inform an array of themes and subjects for discussion, such as power, in Britannicus, or the uncertainty conveyed by Hamlet, with the character’s famous line, “To be or not to be…”.

Why not book a school screening of Hamlet?

In July 2019, Kinepolis will be showing live screenings of the productions created by National Theatre Live, which include Hamlet, with the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead role in Shakespeare’s great tragedy.

This play, one of the most famous and oft-performed plays in the world, contains various themes that are ripe for further discussion in the classroom, such as filial piety, madness, uncertainty, but also loneliness and death…

Depending on the levels of the pupils involved, you could have a lesson focusing on William Shakespeare, in which you name some of his other plays and put them into their respective categories (tragedies, histories, comedies, etc.).

Needless to say, a school screening like this can also serve to illustrate Elizabethan theatre or lead to a study of one of the 13 characters in the play (Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Gertrude, Horatio, Claudius…), with pupils trying to find the right adjectives to describe their chosen character…

Organise an event for your pupils with theatre at the cinema!

Here at Kinepolis we are fully committed to the ”Theatre at the cinema” initiative; the Kinepolis team can help you organise an event designed to suit your pupils’ needs. The team are often given similar requests, and, based on their experience, they can give you their opinion on which programme to choose, depending on how old the audience members are…

Together, you could then design the perfect cinema-trip for your class, so that the kids can enjoy a one-of-a-kind experience, while also stimulating their capacity for learning at the same time! To say nothing of the fact that teaching materials are often available to support the teacher in these kinds of initiative…

To do so, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to request a quote and/or some advice for your next school screening project!