Remembering your lines is one of the most challenging parts of performing in stage – but what if you had to recite them in a new language?

Students from the Fisher Youth Theatre Group in Bungay were not daunted by this challenge as they joined forces with 16 teenagers from Voronezh in Russia for a bilingual performance.

The group was coached by a team of theatre professionals to devise their own pieces of physical, verbatim and musical theatre on a week-long course. It culminated in a performance at the Fisher Theatre, Connection, which included extracts from Romeo and Juliet, performed in Russian by the Suffolk students and Shakespearian English by their Voronezh counterparts.

The course was coordinated by Abbie Moore from Hello Drama, which runs drama based workshops in schools around Europe. She said: 'Performing in Russian was certainly a challenge for the young people, but a challenge that they all grabbed with both hands and incredible determination.'