So session 2008/2009 has begun and it’s all go already! I feel like i’ve been back months!

Knox Academy are offering Higher Drama for the first time and our cohort of pupils doing the course are brilliant with some really exciting script writing ideas taking place now for their Investigative unit. The Standard Grade students are underway looking at characterisation and S2 are already using all they have learnt from first year to produce some excellent work. So we are already well underway for an exciting way.

Some exciting things to look forward to in this session

Junior Drama Production - TROJANS

The House of Troy have abused their position for too long. They deny the Youths their rights, have destroyed society and squander the country’s wealth on a stalemate war with Sparta. Enough is enough! While the Royal family plan a big party, the Council of War plan one final assault on the enemy and as Princess Cassandra tries to appeal for peace the Youths are preparing to fight back. Will the House of Troy fall? Will the rebellious Cassandra jump? Will Helena be returned to Sparta? All will be revealed in this powerful drama that takes the legends of the Trojan Wars and throws them into the madness of the 21st Century.

Senior Production - The Crucible

In a recent post I spoke out a collaborative projected between Knox Academy and Queen Margaret University. 10 pupils from S1 worked with final year community theatre students from the BA(Hons) Drama and Theatre Arts course. The final piece told the story of a small town in East Lothian called North Barr.  The pupils worked really hard and seeing the finished product was a joy to watch with some great storytelling and imagery used. A big thank you to the four students from QM who worked really hard on their project to make it a success. It gave our pupils a real chance to shine and show the people of East Lothian the talent we have here at Knox Academy.  The ‘Mussel-In’ project received the Santander Community Award for contribution to their local community with Knox Academy sharing the award. We are over the moon for all those involved and again a big thank you to everyone who supported the project. The four students who created the project should be very proud of their work and I’m sure we will see them nuturing the young talent of Scotland in the coming years.

Well it’s been awhile since my last post but the Drama Department has been busy, busy, busy with non stop activities since christmas.

Holocaust Assembly

Last week seen all students at Knox Academy attend an assembly relating to the Holocaust. We had two students (from thr English Department) who went to Auschwitz last year and we wanted them to be able to reflect their time there and enable students to be aware of what they seen. The Drama Department, along with English, created a 30 mins assembly that really made the students think. It included an edited video of NBC’s ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ put to Simple Plan’s song ‘Untitled’, personal accounts from the two Knox students, reflections from The Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, 3 poems, a power point presentation reflecting life in Europe before, during and after the Holocaust and the Knox String group playing the theme to Schnidler’s List.

The impact on the students was amazing, they sat completely silent taking everything in, respecting each piece. The power point was played during the String Group and when they had finished the images kept going for another 2 minutes and the wall of silence that hit you from the young people was so powerful. What was so rewarding was that although I ‘directed’ the order of the assembly this was very much student led with the ownership on them.

We are now about to have a de-brief session and start planning our event for next year.  I would just like to thank all the staff and students involved for making this a rememorable experience.

American School link

Well we are now under way in our collaboration production with our school in the States. Students from the youth theatre have started to look at script writing skills and will begin their research into terrorism in the UK and after Easter will begin to create and write their pieces.

Across the pond they have began to look at their structure and the overall piece is to be staged in both schools in May - lasting roughly an hour.

All go! Keep looking for more details later

Junior Courses

S1 students have now completed their dance/drama unit, creating some lovely work in connection with the Holocaust. Each student in S1 watched the acclaimed film ‘The Diary of Anne Frank - the whole story’ to gain insight into life during WW2 for Jews. They have now started a new unit of work on Bullying which has seen us actively discussing all sorts of bullying. They have now started to examine the story of ‘Wicked - the untold story of the witches of Oz’. By using a well known story (The Wizard of Oz) students will look at how there are two sides to every story and because of being different the ‘wicked’ witch of the west was bullied. We will then use the skills learnt in the unit to devise a docu-drama about bullying.

Over in S2 we have a new rota of students so we have just started Stage Combat. Using feedback from the students who completed the course before Christmas I have now changed the course slightly and these students will sit an acting assessment based on Stage Combat using skills learnt in improvisation, self-control, focus, stage combat, characterisation and status.

New York! New York!

The Drama department are taking 42 senior students to New York next February break (2009). They will spent a week in capital city of show business taking part in a Drama workshop with a Broadway performer, visiting some of the most iconic sites in the City, seeing two Broadway Shows and shopping! We are all excited and will be posting more about this later.

S6 Acting Company

As you may remember from a previous post; Knox Academy has an S6 Acting Company which produced ‘In Holland Stands a House’. Since then they have been focusing on skills and are now working towards a showcase evening which will see each student take part in a duologue; each scene will be linked by a cast member reflecting on her friends in the street where she once lived. Can anyone guess who? Yup! Mary Alice Young from Desperate Housewives will be telling the audience about what she can see. Audience members will see scenes from ‘Angels in America’, ‘Perfect Days’, ‘Bondagers’, ‘Medea’, ‘Sleeping Around’, ‘The Architect’ and all are linked by monologues from Desperate Housewives… as well as a trio from the musical ‘The Witches of Eastwick’. Should be an excellent evening of entertainment!

The Women of Lockerbie

On a personal level I am now directing Deborah Brevoort’s award winning Drama ‘The Women of Lockerbie’ with my own theatre company random ACT.

A mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Lockerbie Scotland, looking for her son’s remains which were lost in the crash of Pan Am 103. She meets the Women of Lockerbie, who are fighting the US Government to obtain the clothing of the victims found in the plane’s wreckage. The women, determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim’s families. The Women of Lockerbie is loosely inspired by a true story, although the characters and situations in the play are purely fictional. Written in the structure of a Greek tragedy, it is a poetic drama about the triumph of love over hate.

We went to Lockerbie last sunday and visited the crash sites and was overwhelmed by what we saw and the kindness of the people who showed us round and spoke first hand of what happened that night. It was important for us as a theatre company to make sure that we do this play complete justice.

This is to be staged in April at the Scottish Storytelling centre. For more details click here

So as you can see it is all go… and i’ve not mentioned the admin, the report writing, the course options etc! I love teaching!

I just wanted to write a wee something about our first production by Knox Academy Drama Department.

It was always going to be a challenge to do a full scale production with a group of S6 students who had never done drama before and rehearse it in only two months, one hour a week. The technical rehearsal was awful and so I thought we, and I say we as drama is a team subject, had bitten off more than we could chew.

To find a play that will a) not only engage the actors but also the audience and b) suit the talents of the cast isn’t always an easy option.

Come opening night we were all nervous and with an audience of around 30, students, teachers, parents and friends the lights went to black and the show began. Having decided to stage it on the thrust (audience on three sides), to make it seemed confined and like the house they were living in, the actors and audience were very close together and the company really had to focus to get through the night. As soon as the last scene finished I became teraful, they done it and they were amazing. The second night seen us perform to a full house with us having to turn a few away and through word of mouth we performed to a varied audience including SMT.

The Holocaust is very personal to me and I am honestly honoured to have worked with these talented and amazing students on such a powerful piece, to make members of an audience cry, to make them discuss, to make them feel moved by what they have seen is a great thing for any actor to be part of, let alone a student company. That is what theatre is about!

As Tess said, we’ve set a standard now and I really hope we can live up to it.

A huge thank you to everyone involved, I am so thankful to work in such a supportive faculty in such a fantastic school. Rock on next terms S6 production.

As well as being a drama teacher I am also a theatre practitioner and am founding member of random ACT theatre company. 

My passion is Directing and i’ve kept this quiet but have been nominated for a  national theatre award ran by the Arches theatre for stage Directors. This is all very exciting and probably won’t get the award as there is some amazing people up for it to. The work I do as a practitioner really enhances the work I do in the classroom.

Our next project is a theatre double bill entitled ‘Confined’. I’m directing Isabel Wrights ‘The Waiting Room’. This is an exciting time for random ACT as we have joined forces with new state of the art performing arts venue to be their in-house theatre company. The Music Box is a state of the art performance space at Stevenson College.

 Details below… really hope you can make it.

random ACT theatre company
presents

CONFINED
‘what would you do?’

‘Waiting Room’ by Isabel Wright and ‘Iron’ by Rona Munro

25th to 27th October 2007

The Music Box (Stevenson College), Edinburgh
7.30pm

random ACT theatre company starts off it’s new season with a Scottish theatre double bill.

We are proud to be staging this exciting double bill at The Music Box, a brand new, state-of-the-art, music and performing arts centre at Stevenson College.

Waiting Room by Isabel Wright and directed by John Naples-Campbell. The play is based on two women, confined in a classroom as they try to survive their war torn country Marah is driven by the injustices she has witnessed and searches for facts to make sense of her world. Her daughter-in-law Naomi is haunted by nightmares but dreams of a brighter future. The relationship between the two women is riddled with love and hate.

Iron by Rona Munro and directed by Kerry Macbean. Fay is serving a life sentence for murdering her husband with a kitchen knife. Her daughter Josie, who was 11 at the time and who has not seen her mother for 15 years, decides one day to visit. That, her subsequent visits, and the relationship between mother and daughter that develops within the pressurised confined environment of a room under constant surveillance makes for gripping viewing.

random ACT theatre company facilitates the work of writers who base their work on gender theories or gender issues. Our work is not only based on writers in Scotland but also across the world. We always aim to make our productions enlightening, intimate and touching.

Still in our early stages we have proven to critics and public that we are dynamic and engaging in all our work, finding new ways to engage audiences and actors by telling new and classic stories.

John Naples-Campbell is a graduate from Queen Margaret University College. Since graduating he has worked continually in theatre and Drama and directed the Scottish Premier of the award winning play ‘The Women of Lockerbie’.
Kerry MacBean graduated from Bretton Hall College, since graduating Kerry has been involved in Theatre in Education and Drama in Education.

Tickets: £7/£5 (conc)

School groups: For every ten seats one teacher goes free and every school will receive a resource pack including script extracts etc for those interest in using the texts for Higher Still courses. To book a post show discussion with cast and crew please state when phoning or emailing.

For ticket information/booking or for more details please contact  randomacttheatre at hotmail.co.uk or call 07949 678 312

‘(what you) will see is an expertly staged and highly disciplined performance, directed with real flair by John Naples-Campbell’ The Times.(Women of Lockerbie)

‘outstanding performances’ Scottish Theatre (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)