The world, their stage

DRAMA teacher Amelia George instructs in a stentorian voice: "TRY not to speak to one another but communicate only with your eyes." Her group of four teenage boys and three girls are split into pairs as they go through a few exercises devised for them.

Today, the first exercise is practising communication through the eyes, and they giggle through several exercises to reinforce this visual, non-verbal way of communication. One of the tasks is to arrange themselves in some kind of order, according to their birth months, but without speaking.

The teenage participants are in the fifth session of their 10-session acting course in the kitchen of The Little Arts Academy, where they go through their exercises in the midst of brightly painted walls and pots and pans.