Frankenstein

Collaboration with Creation Theatre and The Cherwell School

In August 2019 we partnered with the education team at Creation Theatre to pilot two weeklong online workshops for children attending their young people’s theatre programmes (aged 9-14). Each week a group of children attended drama workshops to co-write an adapted script of a famous story, and perform an original online play. Week one focused on The Time Machine and week two was based around Frankenstein. Our researchers interweaved their research into the workshops with broad themes exploring human enhancement and the moral responsibilities of AI, through to managing pandemics and infectious disease ethics.

This pilot led to an 8 week drama workshop initiative in June 2021 where regular sessions were run with GCSE level children studying Frankenstein at the Cherwell School in Oxford, as part of their English Literature studies. These sessions were facilitated by Creation Theatre education specialists and each week a new WEH researcher presented their work to the children in the context of various sub-themes from the original Frankenstein text. The students were encouraged to discuss and question how themes from Mary Shelley’s famous book (such as human enhancement, medical responsibility and racism in medicine) still resonate in today’s society.