A unique and foxy work experience project was on offer recently for nine students from The Commonweal School. This pilot was a partnership between the school, Connect Four, an arm of Theatreworks, and professional company Big State Theatre.
The nine Year 11 students worked for seven days with Big State to create their own theatre company. This culminated with a performance to an invited audience and workshops with Year 10, the latter being lead by the schools head of drama Heather Birkbeck.
The idea behind the project was to give the students the opportunity to experience creating a theatre company and all it entails. This included coming up with a company name, a mission statement, filling in a grant application forms, developing ideas for scripts, plot development, multimedia, staging, lighting and sound techniques.
Each student was allocated a task from director to publicity officer and the latter had to role play their tasks to theatre managers in order to book a tour. Visits to The Arc Theatre in Trowbridge, The Phoenix Theatre in New College and Studio One in the Wyvern were on the itinerary. Partners Theatre under the umbrella of Reach Inclusive Arts watched the performance at The Wyvern after the first performance at the school the day before. They also performed to an audeince of 250 at the school's Evening of Entertainment in November.
'Watch The Fox' was the name chosen for the young peoples theatre company. The play entitled ‘Deadline’ charts the experiences of an unfortunate work experience girl, lost in a Television Studio where everyone seems oblivious to her existence, until something goes wrong when she naturally gets the blame.
” The performance was slick
and everyone seemed to be having a lot fun, not least the audience. The jokes
were well put together and the comic timing of the actors superb. It was difficult
to believe that this was not a
professional cast and I highly recommend seeing the play if you get the chance.”
Josie Williams, Community Arts Development Officer.
“The students from Commonweal were exceptional. They listened to what was said, were enthusiastic and very focused. They were a pleasure to work with.” - Mark Bishop, Big State Theatre.
“It was really good, a real
insight into how a company works. It helped us understand how to do things
a lot better and get a professional perspective on work in theatre.”
Lianna Pim
age 15
“
“We’d definitely recommend it, especially if it’s with Big
State, because they make it fun and they treat you like adults!” Henry
Meridith age 15.
