Michaelmas Plays: A Round Up

This Michaelmas Term we have had the pleasure of witnessing two excellent Plays with contrasting tones and styles and pupils getting involved across the year groups.

Noughts & Crosses

The first, by our Lower School pupils, was an adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s ‘Noughts and Crosses’. The original story centres around two teenagers, Callum and Sephy, Callum is a Nought and Sephy a cross. In Blackman’s world, Noughts represent white people and Crosses black people, with the Crosses holding all the power in society.

For their adaptation, the pupil’s explored class divisions with Crosses representing the upper class and Noughts the working class/underclass. A very political story, the minimalist set encouraged the audience to really engage with the story and the characters.

Twelfth Night

By contrast, the Sixth Form play, ‘Twelfth Night’, twisted a Shakespeare classic and incorporated many of the sights and sounds of one of the most exciting periods of British history, the 1960s.

A very colourful and funny production set in the intimate venue of Big School, music was a significant influence on the production with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones inspiring the costuming while the fictional country of Illyria was turned into a Sixties nightclub.

The Kinks’s ‘Lola’ sung periodically throughout, in describing the sexual revolution of this period, chimed with the gender-bending plot of the Play.

Well done to all the pupils involved in both productions.