Vice Chairman of Governors Visits Drama
Twelve months have raced by, and the time has come round once again for the AS and A2 Showcase evenings during which the students perform the pieces they have prepared for their forthcoming Practical Exams in front of an audience of parents, family, friends and fellow students. Again this year, Mrs Cook, Head of Drama, invited Di Stubbs, the Link Governor, and me to attend these two evenings. I explained the practical purpose behind these Showcase evenings, which are a course requirement, in the article I wrote for the Governors’ Blog last January (see 16th January 2014).
On Thursday, 15th January, we saw three pieces produced by the A2 groups. They have the option to research, write, direct, stage-manage and act in their own prepared ‘docudrama’ or creative adaptation of a work of fiction. Two chose to go down the adaptation route, and one went for a ‘docudrama’. The first group presented a very physically challenging, movement-packed reworking of the children’s classic “Peter Pan”, but their version was far from a twee Christmas-style family show – much darker and more thought-provoking. The second group chose to present a docudrama focusing on the Shannon Matthews case combining dramatised re-enactment with a backdrop of TV newsreel footage. You might recall this happened in Dewsbury in 2008 when a mother and her boyfriend’s uncle colluded to kidnap, in the hope of pocketing ‘reward’ money, the woman’s nine-year-old daughter. Shannon was eventually found some four weeks later, unharmed and concealed in the man’s flat. The third and final group presented a very harrowing and decidedly disturbing take on one of the Brothers Grimm’s lesser known tales, “The Juniper Tree” – I’m still having nightmares after that one, very unsettling and living up to the Grimm name. All three pieces were carefully constructed, thoughtfully presented and skilfully executed, and it was clear from the Q&A sessions after the performances that the students were keen to take on board any constructive criticism and feedback to hone their pieces for showing to the external examiner.
On Monday, 26th January, there were four pieces to watch. At AS level, students take a segment or segments from a play, then produce their performance in keeping with the precepts of the chosen practitioner – in this instance, Katie Mitchell. As last year, the pieces could not have been more varied: once again, the lively parody of ‘jolly-hockeysticks’ adventures in “Daisy Pulls It Off” set in a 1920s girls’ boarding school performed by a group of six students; two students performing almost claustrophobic scenes from the gritty, Thatcher-era play “Road”, by John Cartwright, set in recession-hit Lancashire; an emotionally fraught scene between John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” set at the time of the Salem witch trials in the late 17th century; and three selected scenes performed by two students taken from the Gothic-horror “The Woman in Black”. A hallmark of chosen practitioner Katie Mitchell’s approach to theatre is to deliver productions in which emotions are intense, the acting is grounded in realism and a very distinctive world is created during the performance. All four groups went some considerable way towards ticking those boxes, and I’m sure they will make good use of the feedback and the time that remains before they perform the pieces again for the examiner.
I can only really repeat what I wrote last year that these Showcase evenings exemplified many of the things we are rightly proud of at Prince Henry’s: the talented, hard-working and accomplished students at the school who constantly aspire to improve themselves; the dedicated, tireless, professional and skilled teachers, ably backed up by non-teaching technical staff; supportive and community-minded parents – on these Showcase evenings, the parents, family and friends did not just flit in and out to see their own children perform, but stayed on to watch the other performances, encouraging these students as well with the all-important feedback they need ahead of their Practical Exams in a few weeks’ time. One final thought: the high standards of performance on show on these two evenings have really whetted the appetite for the forthcoming school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” after the half-term holiday.
Keith Watson
Vice Chairman of Governors