Drama News

Behind the mask

by Kate Ellis, Years 7-11 Drama and Theatre teacher and Year 10 Language and Literature teacher

Last week was a significant week in the realm of Drama at Preshil. Our first ever DP Theatre group had their first ever showcase!

Students Lucinda Greene, Liv Carlisle, Eleanor Theeboom, Abi Jacobson and Ben Chamberlain-Ward have been working on their first collaborative piece for 12 weeks. As stipulated by the IB, students are to have no stimulus for the task, rather, skills and performance theory so they can create a dynamic work.

Titled What They Think We Want: Manipulation At All Costs, our wonderfully creative and clever students designed a piece exploring the nature of masks, specifically how they are passed on from generation to generation for protection. Students argued through their didactic work that these masks were not needed and it was beneficial to have a life that is sometimes chaotic, sometimes frightening, sometimes deviant.

The IB also stipulates that students must create works for a target audience. They chose family members and had each parent beforehand decorate the masks they would wear for the duration of the piece. Parents and guests were also required to have their phones on and volume up, an unusual request from theatre makers. During the piece, two of the monologues were sent to audience members rather than spoken, creating a music-like rhythm and reinforcing the ways in which we can hide our true identities such as through social media.

I was truly proud of the students, likewise their families and friends, erupting into applause at the end of the piece and revelling in the responses they gave during the follow-up Artist Q & A. As their teacher, special note must be made to the way in which, even in conversation, students linked all responses to the theory and practice work we have been doing in class since the beginning of the year (in some cases since we started working together in years past).

A truly exciting and rewarding experience for all present and performing.