The Leech @ St. Edmonds Secondary School, Dover

'I learned more about working in a team, and also how to use my acting skills more and better and project myself. Overall, it was a really fun time.'

• Phoebe, GCSE drama student, St. Edmonds.

As part of our recent Arts Council England grant, we had the privilege of sharing an extract of The Leech to a group of drama students from St. Edmonds School. We also facilitated a devising workshop that started with a poem from Anne Sexton's 'Transformations' and turned it into a short play. The students really embraced the poems and seemed to enjoy the devising process.

It's been so valuable having the company come in today. It's brilliant for the students to be able to see how you can take a stimulus, start workshopping it. The most important thing I hope they take away from this is when they told us that actually they did a lot of playing around with it. Not all ideas were selected, but through playing and through trying and experimenting, they were able to come up with lots of different ideas in a very creative way. I think that the show itself is very, very creative, and it's brilliant, especially for GCSE and A level students to watch because of the different types of devices, different genres, how it's so creatively put together, but could be easily replicated within a school performance. It's been really valuable, and we've been really lucky to have them come visit us today.

• Jodie Conley. I teach drama at St Edmund school.

We ended the session with a Q & A between the ensemble and the students. They were quite interested in hearing about the life of an actor and what it takes to work in the theatre.

'I learn so much. I feel like my my confidence is going to improve, and my acting skills in groups of people that I don't know very well is getting better.'

• Erin