The Alleynian 703 2015

Pictured (from left to right) : Josh McConnell (Year 8) as Hiawatha, Gabriel Rahman (Year 8), and Oliver Hoare (Year 8) as Minnehaha.

Lower School Production

Hiawatha

Miss Emma Prendergast and Mrs Kathryn Norton-Smith

H iawatha told an enchanting and vivid, visually astonishing tale. Both an atmospheric feast and fast-moving spectacle, it immersed the audience through its use of captivating storytelling in the world of Hiawatha and the five nations of the North American Iroquois. An energetically charged ensemble of 45 boys in Years 7 and 8 were seamlessly choreographed to brilliantly evoke the landscape and elegiac tone of Longfellow’s epic poem. Through embracing the mediums of dance and percussion in synergy with puppetry and mime, these stories were made as resonant today as when the poem was first crafted in the late 19th Century, bringing life to the newly transformed EAT playing space for its first show of its exciting Autumn season in the round. This adaptation expertly created a myriad of opportunities for boys to play multiple roles and also for transformation, with the embodiment of the tribes and the forest, the wide lakes and the West Wind creating memorable and beautiful stage pictures, punctuated effortlessly with haunting moments of stillness and clarity. The boys fully embraced the opportunity to engage their imaginations in the creation of characters other than the human, from the animals in the forest to the great god Gitche Manito. Young Hiawatha, played with wide-eyed innocence and eagerness by Josh Billington, morphed beautifully ‘out of childhood into manhood’ into his elder self. Josh McConnell assumed the maturity of the character with a measured stillness and commanding vocal presence. This maturity was then taken a step further in the understated performance of Henry Walden, who mastered the sagacity of the ‘wise old Nokomis’ with a controlled tone and vocal clarity. This young ensemble displayed an assortment of talents: the dexterity and mastering of circus skills demonstrated by Louis Rudniki in the role Mudjekeewis was then charmingly off-set by the virtuous vocal tones of James Kakanyera as Chibiabos. Jack Probert, Gabriel Rahman and Fred Robb as narrators orchestrated the shifting moods and atmospheres with a stage presence beyond their years. The production really was a sumptuous, visual feast, fuelled by energetic choreography, layered with rhythmically sensitive drumming and tied effortlessly

together with deftly delivered choral work. All were made more poignant through the use of such sensitive performance work. The stunning visual images, design and costumes, accentuated through the use of the theatre’s new circular truss as a representation of the sun, served to burn an unforgettable image into the imagination of the students involved and as a result left a resounding and evocative echo with its enthralled audience. It was a delight to see the thrilling emergence of another generation of Alleynian talent working together with extraordinary infectious enthusiasm. A great credit to Peter Jolly and Maggie Jarman for marshalling those huge tribes of stick-wielding Lower School boys, chasing across the prairies and the plains of the Edward Alleyn Theatre.

104

Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs