Prodigal’s first client was the Education Action Zone in East Brighton where Henderson & O’Loughlin cut their teeth working with some of the most underprivileged children in the region. Delivering Shakespeare to raise literacy standards, we quickly understood the need to invent and import games and physical tasks which brought texts alive in a meaningful way. Teaching has been embedded in our work ever since, through a huge variety of contexts and projects. We’ve taught gender politics in primary schools, worked on Shakespeare and the Jacobean Tragedians for everyone from GSCE students through to professional actors in the UK and abroad. For those actors and acting students we’ve taught technique classes and directed projects at a range of universities and colleges.
We’ve taught performance-parkour as we’ve developed it. Malik Diouf’s presence in the company since 2006 brought a unique insight in to the development of Parkour, and together we’ve sought to create an accessible, choreographic language that remains true to the core values and original aims of ‘L’art du deplacement’. A fun, non-competitive approach to the work of moving on and around obstacles, then extending that in to a language of dance which communicates way beyond its own ability. Often this has been through the creation of participant-performances. Currently our participant age range extends from 3 to 95 years old. We’ve taught disabled and inclusive groups. We’ve taught boys dance and all girls ensembles. We’ve taught on the streets of five continents.