For two days Amy, along with the crew from the Bell Shakespeare Company, was in town bringing the words of the Great Bard himself to the community.

Amy, who plays psychiatric doctor Rachel Armstrong in Home and Away, cut her acting teeth with the Sydney-based Bell Shakespeare Company several years ago, performing with the company’s Actors At Work touring program.

This month she swapped her counselling couch for a battered old copy of Macbeth to work with Matthew Edgerton, the Bell Shakespeare Company’s Resident Artist in Education, and the Actors At Work team - Fiona Pepper, Scott Marcus, Sam Smith and Miranda Tapsell.

“It was great to be on the road again working in theatre,” said 29-year-old Amy. “In a TV studio you’re surrounded by other actors and a film crew. But when you’re working live you know exactly how the audience is responding to your performance – that feedback is awesome.

“Working with the kids was incredible, too. I thought they’d be a bit reticent because it’s Shakespeare but everyone got involved, volunteering to read text or play a character, bringing the language, imagery and theatricality of Shakespeare alive.”

Established in 1991, Actors At Work is the Bell Shakespeare Company’s education flagship program which tours remote communities and is specifically designed for students to help them understand and enjoy some of Shakespeare’s most famous works.

Both the Tennant Creek High School and Primary School chose Macbeth for the workshops and the Actors at Work Team performed scenes from Romeo and Juliet, culminating in a performance of this romantic tragedy at the Civic Hall last Friday night.

“Our aim is to bring Shakespeare to the everyday,” said Actor At Work Sam Smith. “It helps kids see old text in relation to things that are happening today. For example, Romeo and Juliet shows what happens to two young lovers whose parents don’t want them to be together and Macbeth highlights what happens when ambition goes too far.”

As Amy summed up: “A great story is a great story, and children respond to that no matter what language it is written in.”