In the space of
just one week, our drama students enjoyed three workshops with three prestigious theatre companies.
Gecko, Splendid and Rhum and Clay
companies all worked with our gifted and
talented drama students in the series of exciting workshops. Antoinette
Keylock, Head of Academic Drama, explained, “This
week has been amazing; all companies have a very distinct theatrical style and
it has been a pleasure to see the students working so creatively with the
professionals. The students have been pushed both mentally and physically.
There are very few schools that would offer such an innovative experience
for their pupils in one week!’
Talking about the Rhum and Clay workshop, Drama student Cameron Melly commented, ‘This work shop was based on the movement on hands
and the mimicking of certain scenes, to start off we did some practice on using
our hands to mimic basic human skills (climbing up stairs, for example). Once
we had finished with the hand gestures, we were divided into groups, given a
theme and had to put our skills into practice, I was in a group with some other
Fourth Form boys. We used the theme of cowboys and Indians and it went very
well, the whole group showed a vast amount of clever thinking and a good set of
skills, which was the same with all of the groups. After each performance we
analysed it and gave that group some constructive criticism which I think is a
great way to learn, we then went back and improved our pieces. You could tell
how well everyone learnt from their mistakes and the second time performing the
pieces was so much better! In the final 30 minutes, they allowed us to go away
and create our own pieces, my group had a lot of fun with that and took our
imaginations to the extreme!! All in all, I think that it was a fantastic way
to learn and it is amazing how talented everyone in that room was. I would just
like to thank Rhum and Clay for the fantastic workshop and cannot wait until
next year’s session.”