Drama

After the challenges we have all faced in recent years, it has been fantastic to welcome our pupils back to the stage. From drama workshops to breathtaking performances, our pupils are once again in the spotlight where they belong.

St Peter’s 2-8

Festive shows a-plenty

It was wonderful to have real-life audiences for the first time in two years, and the children at St Peter’s 2-8 rose to the challenge.

The 2-8s shared their incredible Christmas plays with family and friends. Year 1 performed Ralph the Dinodeer, Year 2 performed Bah Humbug! and Year 3 performed Cinderella and Rockerfella on the big stage in the Memorial Hall. The children were sensational; they sang, acted and danced throughout all three plays with so much confidence, and with beaming smiles. For Year 1 and 2 it was their first-ever show on a very big stage and they did a brilliant job.

Our Nursery pupils performed Away in A Manger. The children also sang several Christmas songs and had their premiere showing of the Conkers Christmas film. They were so confident that you wouldn’t have known they were only two to four years old. Huge congratulations.

The children in Reception performed On a Starry Night in the Rayson Room. This was an original script based on the Christmas story with songs from Take That, Dolly Parton and Marvyn Gaye, to name a few. The children were simply amazing!

Following the White Rabbit

Year 2 enjoyed an Alice in Wonderland themed drama workshop in March, led by Sixth Form pupils from St Peter’s 13-18. The workshop involved warm-ups, shouting “Off with his head!” and acting out different stages of the story in groups. The workshop was organised by Ms Veasey, from St Peter’s Drama department, and the Year 2 children had a wonderful time engaging with the story.

End of Year Performance

All children participated in a summer end of year Celebration in the Memorial Hall, treating the audience to a variety of singing performances. They worked very hard in rehearsals with Mrs Hayden and it was wonderful to see them supporting each other during the event.

St Peter’s 8-13

Bugsy Malone

The energy of Bugsy Malone was just what we all needed after the disappointment of the J3 play being disrupted by Covid over recent years. Oliver 2020 was sadly cancelled on dress rehearsal day, and although Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2021) was a brilliant production, it was an online event only which didn’t do justice to our wonderful, professional productions which deserve a live audience. So, there was an added degree of joy when Bugsy Malone hit the stage in October. The J3s rose to the challenge with this long and bouncy show. The 1920s set, costumes and hairstyles combined with complicated dance routines to well-known tunes resulted in great anarchic fun for all, especially when the splurge guns made an appearance…

Shakespeare Festival

A group of J5s from St Peter’s 8-13 travelled to Leeds in January to perform their adaptation of The Tempest in the Coram Shakespeare Schools Festival at Leeds Playhouse. The company of J5s really stretched their Drama skills, using more abstract physical theatre styles, choral speech and live music. The group worked hard with theatre staff in the technical and dress rehearsal to perfect the transition from our very own Shepherd Hall to a much bigger, professional theatre stage. The group were praised for their creativity, energy and delivery of language. Our wonderful technical and backstage teams were also mentioned for their amazing efforts over the weeks. It was wonderful to be among other schools and there was a lovely buzz from the audience. A fantastic, memorable experience and we were extremely proud of all involved.

Other Drama News…

In November St Peter’s 8-13 hosted the Aesthetica Short Film screenings for our J4 pupils where they were pushed out of their comfort zones as they watched a wide variety of short films in different genres. The material was thought-provoking and was followed up in English lessons.

J2 hosted the annual Mr Men and Little Miss Conference. This workshop with a drama-forwriting specialist kickstarted an English project looking at developing characters for a book.

This followed hot on the heels of a visit from author Tom Palmer who talked about his life as an author and methods to get writing.

St Peter’s 13-18

Les Misérables

Pupils at St Peter’s returned to the stage in December with a mesmerising adaptation of Les Misérables. The Music and Drama Departments at St Peter’s 13-18 joined forces to produce this musical extravaganza which involved over 50 pupils, including 34 cast members on stage, 16 crew backstage and five musicians in the band. Les Misérables was performed over three nights in early December in the school’s Memorial Hall to a sell-out crowd of 200 people per night. The pupils spent over 50 hours rehearsing for the production!

Top-quality Performance Evenings

In the summer term there were eight audience-invited performance evenings across GCSE and A Level. The GCSE performances were inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem Caged Bird. The six groups developed and performed a range of pieces which sensitively tackled subjects such as loveless relationships, peer pressure and the danger of cults. They explored a diverse range of theatrical styles with some very physical work such as a lovely, moving piece based on the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and a poignant, thought-provoking play based on the verbatim style of Alecky Blythe. One group produced a darkly comic piece based on Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter. In the scripted works, pupils performed pieces such as John Godber’s Bouncers, monologues from Sophocles’ Antigone and duologues from Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers and Martin McDonagh’s harrowing play The Pillowman.

A-Level pupils created a highly effective immersive piece inspired by the style of Punchdrunk. The clever story wove together several strands concerning the loss of a child and break up of a marriage, a young woman’s search for her identity and the covert conversations between the hotel manager and her bellboy. The audience were treated to live singing in music hall style and were fully involved in the performance. Pupils also chose to perform a section of the Carl Grose play Grand Guignol, which was a modern interpretation of the infamous French Theatre of Horror. Highly melodramatic in style and consisting of a series of tableaux of horror, the performers learnt a great deal about this genre and how to work together as a disciplined unit.

LAMDA

Congratulations to all LAMDA pupils for their amazing results this year. Across the board, we had a majority of pupils scoring distinctions and a few merits. Congratulations to Pebbles, Oaken and Ella, who all received distinctions for their Grade 8 Public Speaking. The LAMDA public speaking exams are internationally recognised and prepare pupils to become excellent communicators. Well done to Sorcha for the hard work she put into obtaining her Grade 8 Verse and Prose exam with distinction. A special mention goes to Fourth Form duo Monty and Roman who began their LAMDA journey as a duologue pair at St Peter’s 8-13. They successfully received a distinction for their Grade 6 Bronze Medal LAMDA.