TECH REVIEW: GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

George and the Dragon was the Year 8 and 9 play performed last term in November 2022. Directed by Mr Hennelly, it told the story of a young knight, George, travelling through different periods of time to fight a dragon.

From a technical perspective, this was one of the most challenging shows we have put on at school, with new challenges for every member of the tech team. For those who didn’t watch the show, we made a human-sized dragon. We sat down together one week at tech club and brainstormed all the ways we could build a performanceworthy dragon in just a few weeks. Eventually, we had a plan. We crafted a giant dragon puppet out of poles, hoops and lots of fabric. Two people were able to stand inside, one of whom held a hand-crafted and painted puppet head to give life to the dragon and the other who controlled the huge wings. Many lunchtimes later, we had each completed our designated role, from sewing what became known as the ‘dragon skin’ to working out how we’d be able to see… And we had a dragon.

But this wasn’t the only obstacle we faced. Mr Hennelly had requested a shadow sequence of one of the fights between George and the Dragon. We needed to find a way for the shadows to be seen without being seen ourselves. A few sheets of gauze and some clever lighting later, we had choreographed a successful fight scene for the production.

We were working with younger students in the middle school, so we didn’t use microphones, encouraging them to project, which had varying degrees of success. It also meant we couldn't give them as much freedom with hair and makeup as we would for older students. Influenced also by our director’s vision, which had three different casts representing the same characters across different time periods, we did matching hairstyles on students from each of the three acts. This proved a challenge, due to time constraints, but also working with students prone to undoing their carefully done hair halfway through the act. Similarly, we had to put the same makeup on each character, another difficult task.

Often the favourite part of a show for the tech team is building the set and dressing the stage. For this particular show, we had to paint the floor to mimic cobbled streets, a slow and laborious task. We also had to create a clocktower which proved difficult design-wise. Mr Hennelly's vision involved three dolls houses, turned around in each act to reveal kitchens from different periods of history. This required Mr Boase to teach us how to solder, a dangerous but fun skill, and also needed a lot of intricate design work.

Overall, teching George and the Dragon was a really rewarding experience, as despite the numerous challenges, the show was really successful and taught us so many new and amazing skills. - Amy