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Romeo and JulietWhat on earth is going on? Benvolio is a girl – and she fancies Romeo. But Mercutio fancies Benvolio and he picks a fight with Tybalt to impress her. Oh – and Tybalt is also a girl but and carries a Stanley knife. This is Verona High where the inter-house rivalry has got really out of hand. Principal Escales is trying to keep things under control but when the Montagues invade the Capulets house disco unexpected romance blossoms – with dire consequences.

Redland High School’s Romeo and Juliet involved extended dance sequences, a Nurse in 4-inch stiletto heels and a Science teaching nun, ‘Sister’ Lawrence, taking botany classes and trying to keep her favourite student – the wayward but much admired Romeo Montague – on the rails. Oh, and a lot of fake blood!

This loose and lively adaptation was a refreshing, surprising and above all youthful take on Shakespeare’s well known tragedy. With a cast ranging from Years 8 to 13, dances choreographed by Siobhan Diffin (Year 13) and Jasmine Griffiths (Year 11), some costumes made by GCSE and A Level Textiles students, and stage management by Rosalind Russell (Year 12) ably supported by Emily Copley-Moorby, Helen Parrott and Lola Woodward (Year 11), this production emphatically underlined the extraordinary theatrical talents, ambitions and imagination of Redland High girls.

And there wasn’t – there really wasn’t – a dry eye in the house.

Drama

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Twenty two teenage girls, a bin bag full of dead flowers, a replica sub-machine gun in a locked box, 24 frozen pizzas and a plastic baby. Redland High School’s “Working Girls” were off to Edinburgh.

We had two weeks of outrageous fun at the Fringe. Trojan Women played to good audiences and very positive reviews – earning 4 star recommendations from 3 different Fringe publications.

“Three Weeks” said: …the movements are well crafted, and the musical performances simply sublime. The design deliberately resists a simple rehashing, and the potential and promise in these young players is staggering.

Trojan Women - Redland High’s “Working Girls” at the Edinburgh Fringe

The Fringe Review said: The most impressive element of this play is the very young and talented cast and ensemble. Euripides’ work is complex and intense, yet it never feels forced. In particular, the actresses who play Cassandra (Katherine Hope) and Andromache (Siobhan Diffin) are incredibly strong and well surpass others of much greater age. They have really grasped the challenge of the script and risen to it: it’s quite astounding.

In addition to walking away with considerable plaudits for our performance, we became voracious theatre goers ourselves, taking in everything from Classical tragedy to stand-up comedy with puppet shows, improvised musicals and even the odd straight drama along the way. We were not a school group – we were a company. No one got left out or left behind. Everyone looked out for everyone else. It was the warmest, kindest, cheeriest, maddest, most exciting, most exhausting, most exhilarating two weeks imaginable.

www.redlandhigh.com

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ExaminationsThe end of the year has seen a number of performances from GCSE Drama and A Level Theatre Studies groups. These met the usual high standards of our Drama productions and managed to break some new ground.In early March a small audience was privileged to see the Year 13s devised piece. This unusual work involved not only a 20 minute performance of monologue and dance, but also a series of installations around the School: a phone box, a prison cell and a graffiti wall on which anyone could record and lament their personal losses. The piece was performed several times during the school day – much to the surprise of passers-by – allowing the girls to experiment with the nature of the theatre audience. It was a highly ambitious and demanding project which testifies to the extraordinary standards expected of and achieved by the Theatre Studies students at Redland High.

The Theatre Studies group have created their own take on the A Level standard, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good. This unusual production involved a tonne of builder’s sand and a life-sized gibbet.

The GCSE performances (always an emotionally gruelling prospect) featured a piece which showed a mother and daughter dealing with the aftermath of a terrible car crash, a meditation on the nature of friendship and obsession, and a journey to the trenches of World War 1 where a terrible family tragedy unfolds. Unusually, two of the three pieces featured dance routines choreographed by the girls themselves. And one group had tremendous fun with props – a key scene involved someone getting hit over the head with a wine bottle so sugared-glass bottles

were acquired allowing the deed to be actually performed on stage. A great shock to the people sitting in the front two rows who suddenly found themselves showered with broken ‘glass’!

Redland High’s Drama work: shocking and exciting and ambitious and terrifying and hilarious and always very very good.

Trips

The Drama Department has always tried to run unusual trips. Our feeling is that the girls are always going to find their own way to big budget, big name musicals but our job is to take them to the things that they might not otherwise find for themselves. So how is it, then, that this year we’ve managed to end up going to two of the biggest theatrical events of the year?

In February, Year 9 went to see Cirque du Soleil’s Totem. Their month long residence at the Albert Hall was the only stop off that this world renowned company made in Europe on this tour. The piece was an impressive display of virtuoso physical strength and grace, an extraordinary integration of theatre, gymnastics, acrobatics, music, dance and clowning. And the girls loved it!

Then, in April, the GCSE and A Level Drama groups went to see Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. Currently the hottest ticket in London we were lucky enough to see it early on in the run – and half of us consequently went to see the NT Live filmed performance so that we could see the lead actors perform the roles of Frankenstein and the Creature the other way around. A truly astonishing piece of theatre that we will all remember for many years to come. (Although it’s possible that the bit some of the girls will remember best is meeting Benedict Cumberbatch afterwards at the Stage Door!)

And next we’re off to see one of our own Old Girls – Lucy Briggs-Owen as Helena in the RSC’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We can hardly wait!

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