HANDS ACROSS THE SEA Kathryn Norton-Smith reflects on a busy and successful year in the Drama Department
W orking at full stretch across continents has been the modus operandi for much of this year, epit- omised in just one week in March when students delivered risk-taking, brave and brilliant work on both sides of the world with the performance of The Odys- sey in Singapore and the GCSE presentations of Frank- enstein and Jekyll & Hyde in London. This is testimony to a peerless, high-functioning, resilient and supple department who continue to reach out and offer our students ever more ambitious academic and co-curric- ular opportunities. In the spirit of Noel Coward from whom the title of this feature is borrowed – and a century on from the 1920s which he proclaimed the ‘age of youth with its own slang, music and fashion all quite distinct from its un- trustworthy elders’ – the Edward Alleyn Theatre affords a platform, more than ever, for our ‘youth’ to shape and stage their own vison of the world, ambitiously looking at life through their lens in their choice of original work to develop, as well as selecting challenging new plays to stage. Students have been actively engaged by the pow- er of theatre not just to make us laugh, but also to move us and ultimately provoke and make us think, and some difficult subject matter has ignited the EAT this year. The EAT also remains a place to escape as well as to confront reality – thus we were treated to the playful and anarchic Wonderland as a kaleidoscopic Christmas treat with its soundtrack of well-known dance anthems, as well as to the dark dreamscape of the fabled Pan’s Laby- rinth creatively adapted by our talented Year 12 cohort. Plaudits aplenty too for Marlowe’s wonderfully witty staging of Tom Basden’s Party, which scooped the top spot at Upper School House Drama, and to our A-level
duo for their presentation of Berkoff’s Dahling You Were Marvellous, which skilfully laid bare the heightened sat- ire of their own tribe of ‘theatrical luvvies’. 2023–24 has seen the Drama Department at the fore- front of co-educational provision at Dulwich, with JAGS pupils joining Dulwich pupils in five productions in the Upper and Middle Schools: The Odyssey, Wonderland, Finding the Folio, The It and the JAGS Senior produc- tion, Whispers from the Wardrobe , which celebrated the potency of theatre as a crucible for ghosts and theatrical lore. Our talented Alleynians were at the heart of this new original play set in Drury Lane, which plundered the fertile realm of the backstage world to weave together contemporary and historical episodes which were visual- ly beautiful, funny and gripping in equal measure. Once again, we have been able to introduce students to industry professionals through adjudications, work- shops and seminars from actor Shubham Saraf, direc- tor Ned Bennett OA, puppeteer Pippa Church, spoken word artist and actor Dan Whitlam OA, designer Sophia Pardon (JAGS alumnua), and writer and director Ollie Norton-Smith OA, who created the original new work Finding the Folio to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio. We celebrate the ongoing success of Old Alleynians working professionally and achieving notable success in the industry. Laurie Davidson OA and Nick Galitzine OA lit up the screen in Masters of the Air and The Idea of You, respectively, and starred together in the historical drama series Mary & George . Kwaku Mills OA is cur- rently at the National Theatre in Underdog: The Other Other Brontë at the National Theatre and Ekow Quar-
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THE ALLEYNIAN 712
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