In anticipation of this week's College performance of the Tempest, we caught up with Joe Swarbrick – drama teacher and the play's director.
In the video interview below, Joe describes the play's aesthetic – inspired by gigantic heaps of discarded machinery – and how a 400 year-old text can tell us something today about the interplay between knowledge and power.
The video features original music written and recorded by Joe.
(Details on how to book after the video.)
If you'd like to come and see the play, hurry and book your tickets now, as we still have some seats available on both nights:
Thursday 1 & Friday 2 July, 7pm Leckford Place Hall Tickets £10 (adult), £6 (student/concession)
For the first part of the AS Drama and Theatre Arts Unit 2 Performance Exam, the Year 12 Drama Students had to perform in either a monologue or duologue. There were performances from The Seagull (Chekhov), Medea (a version by Italian activist writer Franca Rame), Tartuffe (Molière) and Miss Julie (Strindberg).
Ed Hornsby
In these scenes, the audience was invited to look behind the closed doors of four family homes, to listen in on the domestic discussions that are unfolding there. A young man who had grown up in the shadow of his mother’s fame confided in his uncle and tried to find his own voice, a woman betrayed by her husband prepared to exact unspeakable revenge, a young woman colluded with her maidservant to avoid marriage to a religious zealot; and two lovers, a mistress and servant found themselves tortured and entrapped by society’s expectations.
Georgie Olesen
The second part of the exam involved a performance of a cut version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. Originally based on an ancient Chinese myth (echoed in the Judgement of Solomon) this is a parable advocating the importance of goodness in a corrupt and weak world.
The story follows the tribulations of Grusha Vachnadze, (a poor servant girl) who sacrifices her own dreams and wishes to safeguard the life of an innocent baby.
Along her journey she meets some amusing and larger than life characters: parodies, Buffons, hypocrites. Set against a backdrop of war, the play exposes the weakness of individuals, greed, faithlessness, the cruelty of dictatorship and the suffering of the poor.
Today, a quick update from Zambia. Last summer, a group of d'Overbroeck's College students (from both Leckford Place and the Sixth Form) travelled to the country and – as well as scaling mountains and swimming under waterfalls – they engaged in charitable work, teaching at a village school and visiting victims of AIDS, malaria and TB.
We recently received an update from one of the Zambian charities to which we donated at the end of the trip, letting us know that some of the funds had gone towards the construction of a new school for children affected by (or themselves suffering from) AIDS.
The building is still unfinished – but they sent the photograph above to show us the progress so far.
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