Lucy Lill Hosts Storytelling Workshops

Tuesday 28th January saw the visit of performance storyteller, Lucy Lill, to one of our Divisions’ Latin sets, where boys were treated to a workshop preparing them for their Verse GCSE set text: Book 1 of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Virgil tells a tale outlining the Trojan exodus from the city after it was destroyed during the Trojan War, and the session allowed boys to zoom in on episodes of the narrative more closely and apply their own narrative spin to them. Drawing upon the senses, the group embellished the words written on the page with their own extrapolations: What might one of our characters be seeing in this moment? What might they be hearing? Feeling? Anticipating? Smelling? Through broadening their understanding of the text, and adding epithets (repeated words or phrases used to describe a character, like “swift-footed Achilles”), everyone agreed that the scenes the boys had created were much more lucid than what Virgil himself had described. No doubt this introduction will have prepared the boys nicely for their upcoming study of the text in its original Latin, and we are grateful to Lucy for letting the boys’ first delve into the world of Virgil be such an immersive one.

Lucy Lill also celebrated National Storytelling Week with the Thirds and Upper Thirds, alongside the Year 7 and 8 cohort from the Prep School. Lucy delved into the myths and legends of gods and goddesses, enthralling her audience with tales of Hera, Zeus and a weasel. She explained how storytelling is a powerful tool that nurtures our minds, enriches our emotions, and connects us to the human experience.

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