A brand-new schools event celebrating poetry

We believe that poetry should be performed and spoken out loud. In this one-off event, your students will experience GCSE anthology poems - spoken and performed aloud – by cast from our Festival 2025 season and local actors. Directed by Becca Chadder and Nathanael Campbell our Associate Directors.

Whether students are commencing their journey in Year 10 or on their lead up to exams, we want to deepen their engagement with the text, understanding of poetic form, language, tone, and context, supporting their curriculum goals. This performance-based approach enhances analytical and interpretive skills benefiting both the Literature and Spoken Language components of the GCSE English qualification. 

And by offering a closer insight through live performance, we aim to inspire and challenge their responses to the poems, build comprehension and cultural capital whilst enriching their personal and academic development.

This event will explore 'Power & Conflict’ with poems from exam board anthologies (including AQA, Pearson Edexcel, CCEA, Eduqas) including: 

• Storm on the Island by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
• War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955)
• Poppies by Jane Weir (b. 1963)
• My Last Duchess by Robert Browning  (1812 – 1889)
• The Emigree by Carol Rumens(b. 1944)
• Extract from, The Prelude by William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
• London by William Blake (1757 – 1827)
• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
• Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland (b. 1938)
• Remains by Simon Armitage (b. 1963) 
• Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker (b. 1954)
• Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes (b.1939-1998)

Price: £150 per school. For more information or to book, please email schools@cft.org.uk

Mia Rose Finnigan

Theatre credits include Belonging and Miss Sherlock Holmes (UK tour), The Polar Express (Warner Bros), Wren – Ornament for Eternity (site specific), Ryde Boy (Department Theatre), Don’t Shoot the Meistersinger, Ghostie and A Dave with Destiny (New Wimbledon Theatre).

Television includes Magna Carta Unlocked.

Film includes Misbehaviour and the short This Is My Mask

Her voiceover work includes the audiobook Walk A Mile, radio drama Penny for Your Thoughts, and international apps and campaigns.

Mia is co-director of theatre company Not Today Satan, where she debuted new writing Life’s a Drag at Edinburgh Fringe 2025, and is a practitioner and Lecturer at ArtsEd,

Trained at East 15 Acting School.

Luke Osborne

Luke has appeared in many Shakespearean productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, Richard III, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Winter’s Tale, and is an experienced theatre practitioner with over 25 years of working with Chichester Festival Theatre and 14 years as a LAMDA examinations tutor.

Trained at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama (First Class BA Hons Acting).

Ozzy Aigbomian

Hamlet is Ozzy’s professional theatre debut. Theatre while training includes Lt Osborne in Journey’s End, Dr Ivan Chebutykin in Three Sisters, Riley in Is God Is, Oberon/Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sir Lucius O’Trigger in The Rivals, Pentheus in The Bakkhai, Macbeth in Macbeth, Lebedev in Ivanov (RADA); Gerry Evans in Dancing at Lughnasa, Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, Martin McAuliffe in Taking Care of Baby (Rose Bruford).

Film includes the short Dwalm.

Trained at RADA.

David Angland

Theatre includes Joey in The Homecoming (Young Vic); The Pillowman (Duke of York’s Theatre); Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus (Lazarus Theatre Company/Southwark Playhouse: Offie Awards finalist); Michael in My Life as a Cowboy (Park Theatre); Aaron in The Nobodies (Chalkline Theatre).