Children can either benefit educationally or have their confidence destroyed by being in a play!

Being in a school play can sometimes be a horrific experience for children if the wrong people are managing the show! And this in turn can lead to long term damage for public speaking and overall confidence.

Teachers endlessly screaming at children and the school spending hours and hours of valuable education time on boring rehearsals can lead to a child just loathing the whole experience.

The idea of giving children the opportunity to perform on the stage is to build their confidence for communication and not break it down. I have seen teachers scaring children so much that they actually wet themselves from the fear when they arrive on the stage. What are we actually teaching the children?

The Helen O'Grady Drama Academy turns this on its head by making the stage experience a fun and exciting one so that children really relish performing for their parents and friends. Negative words such as 'you must be scared or frightened' are not part of the Helen O'Grady vocabulary because the children love stepping on to the stage because the build up is caring and kind. We want each and every child to be so excited about being in the theatre, that they can't wait until the day comes.

By teaching the plays in a constructive and enjoyable way, the children learn some valuable skills from their performance: Confidence in communication, collaboration with other children and good strong presentation and interpersonal skills. The Helen O'Grady plays are short and manageable with lots of songs and group lines. Children learn through our teaching methods, which have been developed over nearly 40 years, to give of their all because they just love the experience.

The plays are rehearsed in an hour lesson, or sometimes half hour lessons in our schools' programmes. They only work for approximately 8 weeks on a show. Boring and repetition is not what we do. The plays are so written that every child has a main part to play and the children are on the stage all the time. It is amazing how the children rise to this occasion with minimal disruption to school time tables or taking their time away in the private studios.

Here you can see our fantastic Goodwood drama students rehearsing their plays for their end of year show with Dana. Our classes run at the Scout Hall, opposite the Edge Church, and Edgemead Pre-Primary School on Monday afternoons after school. Dana is a brilliant director and we are going to have the most amazing production at the Magnet Theatre in Cape Town.