'A Box of Tricks'
Mon 20 May 2019
This event brings drama students from local schools together to prepare and perform a piece of Drama devised from a box of stimulus. This event is hosted by Heather Davies at The Sandon School. One of The 成品视频’s Year 9 students has reviewed the event after participating this year;
A few weeks ago, at drama club, we were presented with our own box of tricks. The other 4 schools were given the exact same box of random items, but all five performances were very different!
Our first club session consisted of everyone being shown the stimulus and writing a post-it note based off each one. Then we each selected our favourite 3 from the large collection in the centre of the room, and then our singular favourite. This was a very interesting exercise which then lead to our theme: sleep paralysis.
Our performance was a very abstract piece which followed a sequence of strange happenings. Beginning with facts about sleep paralysis being said aloud and then finishing with these same facts but with a more sinister tone.
On Tuesday evening we went to Sandon school and we were able to use their drama facilities to perform our piece to all the other schools who took part in this. Although all the boxes were filled with the same items, it was exciting to see how every performance was extremely different.
The first one was about a Victorian boy who accidentally kills his mother but is able to go back in time and save her from being killed; the next presented everyone’s experiences in a group counselling session and how they were affected by their past. A later performance evaluated the bad things which phones and social media can do to young people and the final one was about two girls in alternate realities – one positive and the other negative – had swapped places for a day and then ultimately come to live in the same world with good and bad both working alongside each other.
The afternoon was great! And every performance ran very smoothly even though we hadn’t had a tech run. It was lovely to meet new people with the same passion for drama as us. Also, it was brilliant to see how every single performance varied so much, given the fact that we were all given the same stimulus. Also, to have everyone’s ideas included in making our performance and not following a set script was a very unique and fun way of doing it! Not only did we learn drama skills and techniques but also how to work as a team effectively.
It was an amazing experience and I highly recommend anyone who enjoys drama to take part next year!
Written by Grace YR 9
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