The Alleynian 708 2020

THE ALLEYNIAN 708 | OUT OF THE ORDINARY

Staying In - it’s the new

Deprived of the intimacy of the actor–audience relationship, how could we keep playmaking?

Going

Out

vernacular. The race to master technology such as Teams and Zoom was on, and the size of broadband width became the new boast. An Easter holiday highlight was an evening of terrific dramatic (sic) social quiz-tancing curated by our newest member of the department, Matt Jessup (OA), pitting the wits of Year 12, Year 13 and Drama staff against each other. We delighted in all the guest appearances, including Olivier award- winner Patsy Ferran, Ekow Quartey (OA) and Ned Bennett (OA) posing questions, and nobody had any idea who’d won. Mainstream and Fringe theatre have begun streaming from their archives of live productions, and much of our examination work has revolved around this. Following the National Theatre’s release of Twelfth Night , Dr Spence hosted a Zoom webinar with director Simon Godwin and fifty plus of our own and JAGS’ Drama and Theatre students from Years 10 to 13. Currently Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC, Godwin provided brilliant insight into the NT production, as well as exploring approaches to the staging and playing of works by Shakespeare and other classical texts. He also explored the challenges of lockdown, and the opportunities it affords for remote artistic opportunity, along with tips for embarking on a career in the industry. Most potently, Godwin argued for Shakespeare as a populist playwright, highlighting the importance of reflecting the mass appeal of his work in playing to diverse contemporary audiences. He has made innovative decisions such as that of setting Hamlet in Africa in the recent RSC production, and, famously, casting Tamsin Greig as Malvolia in his Twelfth Night . He believes that the staging of Shakespeare’s plays must reflect all backgrounds, all colours and all genders, which gives unlimited scope for new voices and new energies. He left us all invigorated and unified, not just by a shared sense of community but with optimism and the hope that we would all soon be back in the rehearsal room with renewed invention and creativity.

DRAMA

F lushed with the success of the award of Independent School of the Year for the Performing Arts, we finished 2019 by showcasing the talents of two senior casts at Dulwich and at JAGS, at the top of their game. The Macbeth company was steered by an outstanding Sixth Form cohort, and Leo Milne, Tom Giles and Benjy Bamert led from the front in the JAGS musical Legally Blonde . Milne gave a wonderfully generous and touching performance as Emmett Forrest, playing the charming young attorney with heart and passion and a precociously outstanding tenor voice. Equally impressive vocally was baritone Tom Giles as the legal shark Professor Callahan, and Bamert brought a suitable caddish smugness to the role of Warner Huntington III. With its homage both to sisterhood and to the merits of a well-chosen wardrobe, this sugar-rush of a show certainly set the festive mood. We roared into the 20s with the same buzz of creative energy that had pervaded the Edward Alleyn Theatre in the Michaelmas term, with stunning House Drama competitions in the Middle and Lower Schools and an exceptional Year 13 A-level presentation of Berkoff’s The Trial . Boys from every year group were rehearsing their dance moves – from Ballet to Contemporary and Hip-hop to Hoedown – in preparation for the Dance Showcase in May. Seth Davidson Petch (Year 8) and Freddie Roberts (Year 7) teased us at Lower School House Drama with an excerpt from an original contemporary ballet duet, Castor and Pollux , choreographed by Catherine Ibbotson. They went on to perform in the Dance Show at JAGS, which also included a contemporary routine created by Catherine for JAGS pupils. We were looking forward to welcoming the girls on stage here for the production in the EAT. Year 11s and 12s ventured to the Vaults Theatre Festival to see the Spies Like Us productions of Our Man in Havana and a new work, Speed Dial . Year 12 took fuel from this, and from subsequent workshops with artistic director Ollie Norton- Smith (OA) to conjure a classy and playful Kneehigh-inspired creative adaptation of DH Lawrence’s The Rocking Horse

Kathryn Norton-Smith looks back on a year which began with a raft of successes, and in which improvisation came to the fore after lockdown

Winner , due to be performed at the start of the Summer term. Our first ever GCSE cohort were in final technical rehearsals for their devised Gothic-inspired dramas when suddenly those associated tropes of foreboding and uncertainty took on a wider context off-stage. Within hours school was suspended and we were in lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The ominous mood initially manifested as panic – how on earth could we continue to teach the most practical, tactile and interactive of subjects remotely? World Theatre Day coincided with the first week of lockdown, and the new paradigm of social distancing stunned the creative world as theatres, concert halls, galleries and studio sets were closed. How were we to get our creative fix? Deprived of the intimacy of the actor–audience relationship, how could we keep playmaking? But then, in an echo of Ben Jonson, whose play The Alchemist captures the manic energy of a house left in the hands of the servants while the master is away during a plague lockdown, creative invention began. Within days Year 7 were uploading their own news reports, devised with wit and flair, and demonstrating accomplished presentational skills. Starsky Reeves’ contribution was priceless. Year 8 re-interpreted routines which had been choreographed for them, based on Matthew Bourne’s Gobstopper Dance in his version of Nutcracker! Meanwhile, Year 9 were reinventing contemporary dialogue for the Seven Deadly Sins from Doctor Faustus , embellished with their own brand of South London

So, no more wailing ‘All By Myself’, demanding ‘Get off my Cloud’ and ‘Don’t Stand so Close to Me’. Here’s to #TheatreAtHome and to the prospect of all being back in the EAT later this year.

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