Drama Department

KS5

Year 13 Drama: Cirque De Norique

Left to right: Megan Shine (Ringmaster, Mother, Father), Gemma Ingram (assistant 2, Alice) and Olivia McNulty ((Assistant 1, Edith, storyteller)

Three Year 13 students played a remarkable performance to a full house in the Alex Curtis Drama Studio at the end of January. They have been working hard on their own devised piece since November. To create their play they were given five different stimuli to work from:

Brain Damage by Pink Floyd (song
The Scream by Edvard Munch (painting)
Les Jours Tristes from Amelie (instrumental)
Crave by Sarah Kane (play extract about a deranged person)
Antonin Artaud (practitioner)

The girls said, in their programme notes, that they wanted to make a particular impact on the audience, making them feel uncomfortable, which they certainly did: "Do you like playing with knives sir??? We certainly do!!" In their piece they took a naturalistic real life situation (centred on the theme of an abusive society) and twisted it into the form of a circus. Their vision was to show how people are made to change and conform to society. During the remarkable performance the girls took on a number of roles to create a harrowing and very memorable piece of theatre.

Special thanks ho to a number of students who helped with the lighting and the sound: Lizzie Smyth, Katherine Brittin and Hugh Lyon.