The Year 7 pupils put on a fantastic rendition of Roald Dahls’ The Witches on Thursday 8 June. The year group, which is split into two houses called Titans and Olympians, tackled the tricky script with imagination and finesse, and enchanted the packed audience in the Tithe Barn theatre.
Each year group have been working performing a play in their classes, with some pupils creating their own pieces of drama according to a brief. The Year 7 class chose to perform Roald Dahl’s much-loved children’s modern classic, The Witches. The book tells the story of a young boy, who is unwittingly captured by mice Filled with nonsense language, chanting and magic, the play was by no means an easy one to bring to life onstage. The pupils split the script into two halves, with the Titans and Olympians taking on one half each. This was a great way to ensure that all pupils had the chance to get involved with the play. Those not acting also had the responsibility of lighting and set changes, and the evening ran very smoothly.
The performances were brilliant; the pupils, donning wigs, fake ears, and even skirts and heels, absolutely embraced the play and put a great deal of passion into portraying their characters. It was clear that the thrill of Roald Dahl’s stories, despite being nearly 30 years old, still capture the imagination of children and audiences across the world. The pupils had also used minimal staging to great effect, with all the cast sat onstage around the action, mimicking the actions that the narrator, or main character, was saying. The play had equal parts suspense, intrigue, and humour, and the audience left praising it, and Mrs Sian Pearson, for all of the hard work that had gone into the evening.