The Year 9 Performance Evening took place on Wednesday 24 May, with every pupil in Year 9 donning costumes and taking to the stage, to perform original pieces of drama. The group had been working on their own pieces within the classroom, with Head of Drama Mrs Jenny Nunes and Mrs Sian Pearson working with the groups on the brief ‘this I know to be true.’
Opening the evening to a packed Tithe Barn, Mrs Nunes told watching families, pupils and staff how the stimulus had generated much conversation in class, about what the pupils actually knew to be true. The extensive discussions around the topic meant that the groups had produced a wide range of pieces, from comedic plays about technology, right through to heart-wrenching pieces about the sinking of the Titanic. The year group was split into five smaller groups. The first group to take the stage performed a hard-hitting piece about the Hudson river plane landing. The minimalistic setting was very clever; pairs of chairs with a corridor between them formed the inside of a plane, and the pupils portrayed a range of characters, from a female air hostess (complete with a wig and tights) to an elderly, mostly deaf, gentlemen. The piece ended with a real-life video clip of the heroic pilot safely landing the plane and saving the lives of all the passengers on board. The second group to take the stage performed a topical piece about contactless payment, in which an inventor had created the contactless chip to scam people out of their savings. This chip, which was then mass-produced as a viable business model, was then found to be the cause of a mass breakout of a particularly deadly virus. The third group in the spotlight had written a piece based around the sinking of the Titanic. The piece was littered with factual references, including the ratio of lifeboats to the number of people on board. Clever setting helped to create the front of the ship onstage in moments. The piece had a particularly hard-hitting ending, as each pupil stood up in turn to say their character’s name, before sitting down with their backs to the audience, as real-life footage of the passengers of the Titanic boarding the ship played behind them. This served as a poignant reminder of the sheer amount of lives lost in the tragedy. The next group performed a piece about mental health, which was incredibly sensitive. Set in an unspecified past era, the piece focused on the different approaches to helping those suffering from mental health issues. The final group to perform had written a piece about a young cancer sufferer, who wished to be cryogenically frozen. The performance cleverly focused on the relationship between father and son, and emphasised how important family is.
Following the performances, Mrs Nunes commented: ‘the boys have worked incredibly hard on these pieces, and all of the work that you’ve seen tonight was their original thoughts. The pupils were in charge of everything, from researching ideas and writing scripts, to organising and executing lighting and sound on the evening. The originality and enthusiasm we’ve seen this evening is a great indication of what we can expect in Drama as these boys moves up through the school.’