Education and workshops (see below for "Tell your own stories")

HEY GRINGO! has been adapted for performance in Schools and Universities and can be accompanied by workshops and discussion groups. Peter has taken HEY GRINGO! to the following:

Cambridge University
Bristol University *
City Guildhall Universty
Trinity College , Dublin
Dublin City University *
University College , Dublin
University College , Cork
University of Limerick
The London Academy Of Music & Dramatic Art
Numerous Schools

* Testimonials

Bristol University testimonial
I am writing this at the request of Peter Searles . We invited peter to this Department to perform a play or monologue in English, A Chile Christmas, written by himself, on the subject of a journey he made through Chile during the Pinochet years. We were very impressed both by the content of the work and by his really electrifying performance. The content raises many issues relevant to the concerns of students studying Latin America : particularly, politics, culture, and ecology, the last item relating to the issue of illegal logging in southern Chile . Our audience was composed of our own students, students in the university in general, a general public ubterested in Latin America and a number of Chileans resident in Bristol . The audience was uniformly very enthusiastic in its response, again both to the content and to the performance. It is very funny at times, at others very serious and moving. Peter was extremely professional in all his dealings with us; he has a wide experience of playing this piece in all sorts of venues, and requested very little in the way of facilities - basically, a place to act as a stage, and a place for the audience to sit, with very simple lighting arrangements. I have no hesitation in recommending the performance very highly to colleagues or student societies thinking of taking it their universities.

A McDermott, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, University of Bristol (original available on request)

Park High School testimonial, September 1999
It was our school's third annual Book Week in 1999 and we were in need of a storyteller as one of our guests to entertain the kids. I phoned the National Theatre - with which we were working on an education project at the time - and asked for suggestions from its pool of talent. Peter Searles was recommended and I made immediate contact, boy, am I glad I did! ( As it turned out, he'd been to our school before, conducting drama workshops as part of the Said NT scheme).

On the day of his visit, he performed three enormously energetic sessions of about an hour each…and he went down a bomb with potentially tricky audiences of 13 and 14 year old boys and girls on hot summer's day in a stuffy library!. Oh yes - and we teachers thought he was great too!

He extracted parts of his well-travelled and highly successful one man show, 'Hey Gringo', for us, toning it down slightly for his audience - but there still plenty of guts, bravado and downright rudeness in his adventures in South America (dangerous animals, wild rapids, crazy people) and in his performance; enough to earn him hysterical laughter and a standing ovation! Not this it was fun and frolics all the way'; there were also pathos and poignancy in some of Peter's encounters with the world of illegal drugs and - especially - in his experience of the conditions at a dreadful Bolivian jail. But whatever his theme he literally threw himself into these shows and the kids appreciated every drop of sweat.

I am sure he can adapt his presentations for any age group and I would not hesitate to book him again. Indeed, I will be on the phone any day now to secure his services for the millennium. What a luck accident it was fur us that we met. Thank you Peter.

Peter Devine, Head of English, Park High School, Middlesex, UK

WORKSHOPS, MASTERCLASSES AND COURSES:
Storytelling (cick here for more information on 'Tell your own stories', a practical workshop in contemporary storytelling), Shakespeare, Improvisation, Creative Writing, Creating a Character, Physical Theatre, Surrealism In Theatre, Voice, Movement, Tumbling & Stage Fight for:

Royal National Theatre (15 years)
English Shakespeare Company (5 years)
Guildhall City University (4 years)
Bristol University
Cambridge University
National Youth Theatre (5 years)
Central School of Speech & Drama
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (3 years)
Rose Bruford College
Welsh College of Music and Drama
Academy of Live & Recorded Arts
Actors Institute
Santa Monica Playhouse ( USA )
British Cultural Institute ( Santiago - Chile )