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New Views Playwriting
Competition
Emilia Hitching, L6W
This year, eight pupils have been participating in the
National Theatre New Views playwriting competition,
which encourages the development of young voices within
the world of theatre to tell the stories which are relevant
to our generation. While all of us are interested in drama
and creative writing, we had a variety of motivations to
get involved in the competition - some of us had previous
experience writing or directing house plays, whereas
others wanted to improve characterisation skills and hone
their writing craft. Our brief was to write a one-act play,
approximately half an hour long, about anything which
interested us.
This might immediately seem quite daunting to a group with little to no
experience of extended writing. To ameliorate these stresses, our process
began with group sessions led by Ms Middleton, when we practised
various skills which would come in handy in the next months. In free
writing sessions we had to keep on writing based on a prompt, the quality
being of far less importance than just getting words on the page, as it is
so easy to put off bigger projects for fear of them not being perfect. We
played characterisation games, developing backstories and intertwined
relationships for characters taken from stock images.
We also had
the benefit
of two
sessions with
playwright
Martin
Murphy,
who gave us
insider tips
on capturing
an audience’s
attention
and gave us
feedback
on our first
drafts. From
our eight final
drafts, one
will be long-listed for consideration in the national competition, with
the winner’s play being put on at the National Theatre in summer. This
was an incredible prize to motivate us; however, on a more personal
level, we have all drastically improved our writing skills and enjoyed this
creative outlet in the past few months.
6 DRAMA / LIBRARY
World Book Day
Many thanks to our library team headed up by Mrs Squire
for organising events recognising World Book Day in the
Senior School.
Competitions were arranged throughout the week, including a daily quick
fire tutor time quiz which proved so popular that Mrs Squire had to purchase
extra prizes to meet demand. On Thursday after school, the Library held a Book Tasting
session. This gave pupils the opportunity to dip into some of the latest acquisitions in the
Library while enjoying a cake or a book inspired snack (marmalade sandwiches, the favourite
of a certain bear from Peru, or cold apple pie on which The Railway Children feasted for
breakfast). So jealous were the staff of the Book Tasting that the event was replicated for
members of staff in their common room.
Top Girls
at the
National Theatre
Ms Entwistle, Miss Gartland and the
U4 Drama students
On Thursday 2 May, fifteen U4 drama
students set out for the National Theatre to
see a production of Caryl Churchill’s 1982
play
Top Girls
.
The pupils enjoyed the production very much
especially the first scene which involves historical
characters such as Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, explorer
Isabella Bird, Dull Gret from the Breughel painting
and Griselda. The women drink lots of frascati with
1980s’ ‘powersuited Thatcherite businesswoman’
Marlene and celebrate her promotion. The following
scenes jump around in chronology: we meet Kit and
Angie hiding at the bottom of the garden and Angie’s
mother Joyce; we move forward to the ‘wilfully shark
like women’ of the ‘Top Girls’ employment agency.
We look at female ambition in a ‘man’s world’. The
final scene occurs a year earlier and involves Auntie
Marlene visiting her niece Angie and sister Joyce.
Stand out performances came from Katherine Kingsley
as Marlene and Liv Hill as Angie. It was so refreshing to
see a stage entirely populated by a female cast! A real
piece of history but still relevant to the modern day.