We recently celebrated World Theatre Week at BISP with performances happening during every break and lunchtime in the MTB and the drama studio. We kick-started the week with a performance of Skellig performed by the Drama Club. The group was made up of KS3 and KS4 students who rehearsed the piece during their activity time and at lunchtimes.
On Tuesday, we had our IB students perform a piece of physical theatre inspired by Gecko, a contemporary UK theatre company who tell stories through movement. This performance from our IB students was a fantastic example of how IB Theatre asks the students to move away from commercial theatre and to think more creatively about ways to tell stories.
Wednesday saw the Year 11 IG students perform sections from this year’s coursework. The pieces performed were from their devised performance; each group was given a stimulus and then created 15 minute performances based around a story of their choice, but had to link to the original stimulus. These performances were completely different to what we had seen previously in the week and was a great opportunity for the Year 11s to show their peers just how hard they have worked over the last two years.
On Thursday we saw the Year 10s create a piece of work inspired by Frantic Assembly. Frantic are another UK theatre company who incorporate the process of “flying” and trust work in lots of their performances. The Year 10s had taken a look at the work of the company earlier in the year and were inspired by what they had learnt.
We ended the week with KS3 performances in the MTB showing what they had been working on this term. This included Year 7 performances around the theme of Matilda the Musical and Year 8s showing us some of their Silent Movie performances.
It was a fantastic week, we would like to thank everyone who came to see any of the performances, we were thrilled with how people engaged with the week and felt inspired by what they saw. We have already seen this influence in the work created for the end of term assessments in the run up to Songkran break.
– Emily Norman, Head of Drama