Brett is one of only 30 teachers from regional, rural and remote Australian schools to take part in the Bell Shakespeare Regional Teacher Mentorship program, a fully-funded one year mentorship with Australia’s premier Shakespeare theatre company.

“I had to write a big letter as to why I should be involved in this and I mentioned how Wingham is an agricultural town and there’s a lot of disengagement with Shakespeare,” Brett said.

“And everyone’s stories in the group were pretty much the same. They were either from country towns or low socio-economic towns where Shakespeare is just deemed irrelevant. It was good to meet like-minded teachers.”

Each year the chosen teachers converge on Bell Shakespeare headquarters for a four-day intensive workshop. The culmination of the trip is a visit to the Opera House where they are privileged to attend a Bell Shakespeare production, which this year was Richard III starring Kate Mulvaney as the hideous scheming king.

“It was a woman playing Richard III,” Brett said. “So it was ABSOLUTELY amazing. It was probably the best play I’ve ever seen.”

After the workshops, and a visit to the State Library of NSW to the Shakespeare Room to see an awe-inspiring original First Folio of Shakespeare’s works dated 1605, the teachers return to their schools to write a Shakespeare unit to be taught at the school.

“The whole purpose of it is to re-energise and get the kids re-engaged with Shakespeare, because they’ve found that a lot of regional schools - their kids are disengaged and they’re not relating.”

Little wonder, as the language of Shakespeare is hard enough for adults, even English majors, to understand.

“Yeah, that’s right, it’s difficult for me!” Brett agreed. “It’s really difficult and they [Bell Shakespeare] know that.”

“The four days that we were there they gave us all these games and access to all these resources they’ve got, so we incorporate those into our unit,” Brett said.

“In the workshops it was basically how to get kids re-involved with the script. So it was a lot of drama games and a lot of breaking it down. We’ve got an insult sheet and a compliment sheet and all that type of stuff,” Brett said, explaining that it made learning Shakespeare a lot more fun for the students. 

Brett has chosen to write his unit around the comedy As You Like It and has plans for it to be taught to his year 11 advanced English class this year. 

Unfortunately for Brett, he won’t get to teach it himself, this year at least, as he will be on long service leave.

“I’ll teach it next year or the year after, and it’ll be a resource that other teachers can share,” Brett said.

“It’s all about sharing it. But I’ve already implemented the drama games in my English and drama classes.”

For now, Brett is still buzzing from the experience.

“It was amazing. They treated us so well. We were a bunch of jaded teachers when we got there and after four days everyone was so invigorated, and everyone went back and they’re so happy,” he said.