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05
Feb

Drama Showcase

On Friday 5^th February, IGCSE and A Level Performing Arts Students at Harrow International School Beijing performed three pieces displaying both their talents and what they have learnt.

The first piece “After You’d Gone” is a dramatic portrayal of how one man reacts, following the death of his daughter ,written by the Year 10 students performing it. The intricate drama was deeply touching and the students bought an unexpected depth to the production with their maturity.

It was followed by ‘Antigone - the Sisters’ and ‘Antigone - the New Generation’.

In ‘Antigone – the sisters’ students from Year 13 explored a section of the ‘Antigone’ script where the two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, cannot agree to bury their shamed brother, Polynices. Students chose Egypt as a setting because they wanted to show that this classic play could take place in any place, at any time and they also chose to use symbols and colours found in Egyptian culture to support their ideas through costume and design. The students also brought the themes successfully to life though physical theatre techniques including stylized movement to represent situation and character.

The Lower Sixth Form Drama students presented the second “ANTIGONE” of the evening, a parody of the original Greek tragedy written by Sophocles. Dan Albar (Year 12) commented “We, as a class, took this quite frankly depressing and catastrophic story and added our own elements and our own selves to the mixture to see what would happen. The play was performed with an array of international languages, pretty much, each character having their own independent ‘voice’. The characters in Antigone have trouble listening to and communicating with each other which is why we chose to portray these roles in this way, also it was a challenge to see whether we could tell the story effectively without relying on voice and language too heavily.

Helen Thompson, Head of Drama, added “our students have a voice and a passion, they have something to say and tonight they translated this passion into the exciting and absorbing performance we have all just witnessed."