A visiting drama teacher treated Paly’s theater classes for the first time to the workshop “Suit the Action to the Word” on Tuesday.

Sarah Pritchard, a theater teacher from Manchester, England, instructed students on how to interpret and act out challenging and confusing scripts. Throughout the day she offered tips and drills to the entire day’s classes of theater students, who also received various exercises aimed at helping them better understand complex passages from plays such as works by Shakespeare.

Pritchard was introduced to Paly through a chance meeting with theater teacher Kathleen Woods last May. Woods invited Pritchard back to campus and showed her around the facilities.

“I brought her over to Paly and toured her around,” Woods said. “We struck up a conversation and a friendship. I found out she was coming back to this area and she offered to come in and do a workshop.”

Based in England, Pritchard has been teaching theater for 24 years and has been in a theater company for 12 years.

“Today I was trying to teach students how to use their body skills and their voice skills to investigate text,” Pritchard said. “Most people think the most challenging text is Shakespeare and being from England I though that was something I could happily bring along to share the things that I have done with various students that have worked successfully. Today was teaching them basically about being confident about using their movements and voice skills to be adventurous with script and text.”

The students acted out the actions of words such as break and bend, using their voices and bodies as props. Pritchard assigned lines from Romeo and Juliet, and the class read the lines while acting out images like the sun and the moon. Students also contorted their bodies to play roles such as a train or an elephant.

Pritchard said she enjoyed working with the students and the overall theater environment in the area.

“I am planning on doing a career break in California next year,” Pritchard said, “to learn from the people and share the things I can do. It would be a wonderful cultural exchange.”