What a wonderful way to end a busy year in the Drama department, with our lower school production of Alice in Wonderland Thank you to everyone who came to support our hard working cast. I’m sure you’ll agree it was a joy to watch and the performers’ enjoyment was palpable. The end of term has also seen our Year 10 Drama GCSE pupils complete their devised pieces and perform them to appreciative audiences. Along with our A level Theatre and Drama students, creating their ‘Forced Entertainment’ performance
Looking ahead to next year, part of the celebrations to mark 175 years of LHS, will be our Senior School production. We’re looking forward to bringing a musical to life on the LHS school hall stage
Sally Bruton
Sally Boon Head of Drama LGS Head of Drama LHS
Alicein Wonderland
In June, Years 7 and 8 pupils from across the Foundation, took to the stage in their production of Alice in Wonderland. It was Miss North’s directorial debut at LSF and the cast worked together with such fun and confidence, we’re very proud of what they produced. Luke and Poppy tell us all about their experiences below.
“I played Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland and I did indeed stand on a wall! The audition process was very efficient, and it was also a lot of fun We had to make different faces and try out some of the scenes from the show. In the performance, I got to play my trombone which was great as I played “Humpty Dumpty sat on a Wall” as I walked on as well as “Under the Sea” for the Gryphon and Mock Turtle scene The rehearsals were always fun and exciting I didn’t have a very big part, but we were always involved or doing something. I loved the show days because of all of the props, lights and projections The applause at the end of the show was very rewarding too ”
Luke Year 7 LGS
“I played one of the Alices in the lower school production. I’m so grateful to have been in Alice in wonderland this year as it was truly an amazing experience. All of the teachers involved were so kind and supportive and worked so hard to bring this show to life for us, they really helped me develop my acting in this show as well I enjoyed every single rehearsal as they were always so much fun. I liked that we mixed with the Grammar School for this production as I got to meet a lot of new people and made some new friends My favourite part of this production were the show days, just seeing everything come together with all the costumes, props and lighting was so wonderful I wish I could just do it all over again ”
Poppy Year 8 LHS
In August, 11 pupils from years 12 and 13 will be taking two productions to perform at the world renowned Edinburgh Festival fringe, under the Theatre Company name ‘Siege of Herons’, you can follow their progress on Instagram during the festival: @siege_of_herons. A member of the cast tells us about the process so far below:
“I joined up to the Edinburgh Fringe project at school because it sounded like an exciting and exceptional opportunity to perform at one of the worlds most famous drama and theatre festivals; and it has proved to be just that and so much more.
Having an old girl from the school come back to write a script just for our performance has been a unique and special opportunity and she has allowed us to provide feedback and influence our characters. I therefore feel more involved in the performance than I have ever done before. The script has been centred around ideas we found interesting and wanted to pursue in more detail meaning we have had a lot of creative freedom.
Our piece is centred around the 2018 false nuclear emergency alert in Hawaii and explores the contrast between the big and small things that would be on people’s minds if they knew the world was ending. Contrasting trivialities with enormities like wanting to fall in love for the first time and never seeing your family again was a really interesting concept to us all and it is something that we feel is explored in a new and exciting way through the lens of teenagers.
With around four weeks to go we are fast approaching our full week of rehearsals in the Summer and we will get going on the 4th of August to Edinburgh ready to start performing and exploring the city.”
Izzy Year 12 LHS
Year 10 Drama GCSE -
Component 1
We invited some of our Year 10 pupils to tell us all about their experience of creating the first piece of work that makes up 40% of their GCSE Drama exam, the process is about so much more than just their GCSE as you’ll learn below:
“ Year 10 GCSE drama is an incredibly rewarding experience for me as it has allowed me to develop my creativity, confidence and teamwork skills as I have worked with others to create our performance. This year's stimuli have been Greek mythology which provided us with a broad choice of options and ideas. We started by choosing a story, me and my group chose to do Theseus and the Minotaur and then we had to decide on a political issue to display in the piece in which we chose eating disorders. Then we researched the issues and intertwined them into our piece. We have also explored the use of lighting, costume and set design with different things such as gels and floor lights to objects such as blocks and screens, in our group we have a costume designer who uses costumes to dramatically portray different eating disorders and characters. Over the past weeks we have been developing and reflecting on our work making improvements and progression with feedback to reflect on, adding Brechtian and Splendid techniques that we have been leaving about before hand to further improve things such as audience interaction and the “tickle and slap” technique. My group and I have now finished our performance and after all the build up weeks of hard work to the final show I feel prepared and passionate, ready to give a performance that is both authentic and captivating.”
Sophie Year 10 LHS
“In drama this year, Year 10’s have worked on a devised piece of drama. We were all shown multiple stimuli, for example a music video about an absent father who regretted his failings and was too late to recover them, and from around five different stimuli, we picked five and adapted them. The stimuli themselves contained very personal or short effect, so they had to be altered, extended, and changed We worked in groups of three, chosen by our teacher, and spent a good while working on them. At first, we went through and analysed each stimulus, writing in our exercise books summary's and how it made us feel. Once they had all been done, and we were grouped, we began to work on adapting the pieces. Each group approached it differently, some scripted (for example my group) and some chose characters and went throughout, improvising and refining. Once my group had scripted the piece, we played through it and began to add depth to our characters, by improvising and using spas. Spas is a part of Brechtian style performance which is what all of our pieces must follow the general structure of and is the use of humour and playful elements in theatre. My understanding is that the general aim of Brechtian theatre, is to engage the audience and provoke critical thinking. It took a while, and some substantial changes, but now my group and I are confident in our pieces, our characters, and the structure of our piece.”
Year 12 A level Theatre and Drama
‘Forced Entertainment’
Our Year 12 pupils have now completed the first component of their A level drama exam, a devised piece of work which Henry describes below:
“For our project in Year 12, we had to create a piece based on ‘Forced Entertainment’, an experimental theatre company. The process started with our small group watching lots of Forced Entertainment pieces, shows like ‘Bloody Mess’ and ‘The Thrill of it all’ which ended up as our main inspiration. We slowly built up sections and ideas of jokes and characters, most of it just a chaotic mess, inspired by the insanity of their shows, eventually leading to our scratch performance, which went terribly – the whole group wanted to scrap the entire piece, but Miss Boon went through the performance with us, gave her support and eventually we reconfigured the piece into the final product, which was far better than what we had before, with a more story-based approach, inspired by other Forced Entertainment shows, rather than the chaos we had before which didn’t suit us as performers. Overall, it was a really fun experience to create our own piece based on a practitioner that was completely different to anything else I had studied before.”
Henry Year 12 LGS
LAMDA
We have some places available from September, for pupils at LAS and LGS up to Year 9 to take LAMDA lessons. If you’d like more information on this, please contact Sally Bruton on s.bruton@lsf.org
Spotlight on our Drama team
The unsung heroes of the LSF drama team, are definitely our technicians, who bring all our productions to life with their expertise in Lighting, Sound and Set Design. We thought it was time to introduce you to these key members of staff, Neil Broughton who supports Drama productions, GCSE and Alevel Drama and Tableau at LHS and supports the cast and crew of Siege of Herons at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe each year and Peter Viccars who supports all the drama productions along with GCSE and A level Drama performances at LGS.
Mr Broughton trained on the Arts in Social Context course at Dartington College of Arts and went on to create ’site specific’ works in museums and galleries. He found great delight collaborating on community arts projects with others passionate about all things ‘arty’. Projects included, mural painting, stencilling workshops, scrapyard installations and potato printing. He worked in Further Education in the Performing Arts as a technician and a lecturer of Stage Management. He went on to become a fulltime lecturer of Art and Design.
He is a self taught musician and soundscape artist having played in many bands from his teenage years onwards and his musical claim to fame is reaching No 4 in the Belgium Indie charts.
In his role as a performing arts lecturer, he has produced a number of student productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Eemm The Musical is a memorable show that he wrote and directed over a twoyear period back in 2002/03. Many of those involved can still recall and sing the songs he wrote and only recently a member of the original cast sang to him. His stand-out conceptual interpretation of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis where he reimagined the text spoken as that of a dysfunctional 1980’s indie band ‘The 4:48’s’, garnered 5 star reviews.
He established Mardy Arts with his creative partner Miss Boon and they have worked together creating many shows that have been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. They have also shown their work at festivals in Bristol, Brighton, London and Manchester to name but a few.
Mr Broughton has taught Art at LHS and more recently co-directed Shout Out!, a multidisciplinary arts project utilising his musicianship to inspire a desire in those he worked with, to have the confidence to challenge their preconceived ideas of what constitutes performance engendering a new perspective on creativity.
His personal motto is ‘Do one thing well and then do another.’ and his favourite colour is orange.
Mr Viccars has worked at LSF for nearly the whole of the 21st century! In that time a quick calculation suggests he has designed and lit over one hundred shows in the LGS drama studio.
He trained as a Theatre designer at Nottingham Trent University and spent several years working in touring theatre as a set and lighting designer, before freelancing as a scenic artist and illustrator.
As a scenic artist he was lucky enough to work for Tussauds Studios at Alton Towers. Working on all of the major attractions, and as a painter on the original Nemesis he was one of the first to try out the ride. He says one of the many challenges of working in the middle of a theme park was to see how many free burgers and rides you could fit into your lunch hour!
As an illustrator he worked for one of the major London agencies, illustrating several books and having his work featured on everything from budgie food to billboards. (You can still see the logo he designed for the Mail on Sunday on its front page every weekend).
He still enjoys a varied freelance career and in recent years has designed a giant robot for Bestival and regularly spends some of the summer building the huge burning man for the Greenman festival in Wales. However, wherever he may be working in the holidays he still looks forward to coming back to his second home in the LGS drama studio.
Enrichment opportunities on a Thursday afternoon at LGS from Year 10 upwards, extend to working with Mr Viccars as part of his Tech team. This is a great opportunity for anyone with a very keen interest in scenic painting, set building, prop making, lighting, sound and projection. Focusing on preparing for upcoming productions in the LGS drama studio, learning about all elements of technical theatre with a like minded group of people.
Celebrating our Pupils
Congratulations to Belles (pictured right) who not only appeared recently as Louisa VonTrapp in The Sound of Music with Barrow Arts Theatre Society, but was also chosen to perform in the the ensemble of Kipps, The New Half a Sixpence Musical at the Nottingham Theatre Royal in May.
We are also very proud of Lexie (pictured below), who after scoring 98 in her IDTA Musical Theatre Exam in March, was put forward by the examiner for the semi final of the Musical Theatre Awards (MTA) national competition, going on to secure one of only 17 places in the finals, out of hundreds of applicants. The final saw her perform ‘Popular’ from Wicked in Blackpool and she thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Congratulations to David and Alice who were recently in ‘Bring it on’ for Act One. Good luck to Katie who is appearing in the next Starlight Concert and to Jude and Evie who are soon to perform at the Curve, in the CYCC Showcase - Decades of musicals.
As always, it’s not just our students on stage! Miss Boon and Mr Broughton recently performed their show ‘Raving not drowning’ to sell out audiences at the Brighton Fringe Festival and will be appearing at Latitude Festival again this summer.
If your son or daughter is performing in anything outside school, please let us know by emailing m.bungay@lsf.org so we can include them in our newsletter.
Upcoming Auditions
We will be straight into auditions and rehearsals for New Directors’ Season, Shakespeare Schools Festival AND our Senior School Musical when we return in September. Here are some dates for your son or daughter’s diary:
Monday 9 September 16:00 - 17.30hrs: Shakespeare School’s Festival auditions. LGS drama Studio. Open to pupils in years 9 and 10
Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 September lunch break: New Directors’ Season audtions, LGS and LHS drama studios arrangements TBC. Open to pupils from years 7 - 13
Thursday 12 September 16:00 - 17.30hrs: Senior school musical auditions, LHS school hall, Open to pupils from years 11-13
Upcoming productions
Siege of Herons perform at the Edinburgh Festival fringe
Greenside @ George Street - Olive studios
6th - 10th August 2024
12:40hrs and 13.50hrs
New Directors’ Season
Performed by all year groups, Written, directed and choreographed by pupils in years 10-13.
LGS and LHS Drama Studios
25 and 27 November 2024
Senior School Musical
To celebrate the 175 year anniversary of LHS
LHS School Hall
4 - 6 March 2025
Shakespeare Schools Festival
Middle School - Years 9 and 10
Leicester Curve Theatre
14 March 2025
Lower School Musical - TBC
LGS Drama Studio
10 and 11 June 2025
Wishing you all a relaxing Summer break, from everyone in the LSF Drama Department
