Senior Theatre

Class 10 are currently devising their own theatre production. These photos show their exploration in storytelling by making human sculptures with themes from their production. They practice moving together in a school-of-fish to develop ensemble performance. They are also learning a technique from South America’s Theatre of the Oppressed which explores the victim /dictator archetypes. These tools develop a ‘theatre language’, which is about telling a story with physically expressive images.

Class 10’s upcoming production is a class-devised piece based around the themes and the story of Eros and Psyche, and Psyche’s descent into the underworld. This is a modernised re-working of the story which explores themes surrounding depression, and is replete with dance numbers and questions around the process of theatre making.

The high school’s Drama curriculum includes study and performance of comedy, tragedy and Drama from ancient Greece through Shakespeare to today, as well as self-devised work, which is created through the art of improvisation. Students are introduced to theatre language via an extended range of techniques from a variety of styles and schools of thought, thus giving them an experiential knowledge that will then support their study of theatre in the IB Diploma, which is more academically focused. This method of teaching is at the heart of the Rudolf Steiner ideology, which is namely to experience world phenomena in the physical and soul realm before concreting it with intellectual processes.

Louise O’Dwyer