Drama
The school's main theatre, named after alumna Celia Johnson, is where most school productions are staged, with a play in the autumn term and a musical in the summer term most years. The drama studio is another, smaller, space where many of the other productions are staged. Both are black box. Productions have, in the past, been performed elsewhere in the school, including the Great Hall and the Concourse.
Students are able to put on 'studio productions' where they direct, produce, tech and act in a play of their choosing. This is open to the whole school.
The Colet Play is put on annually by the girls of the Seventh (Year 12). Voted for from a pool of proposals, the production is undertaken independently of the school, though its premises are used. In recent years several productions have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, often with critical success.
The VIIIth play is an annual undertaking for the Eighth (year 13), where a member of staff not in the drama department directs a play of their choice. Recent VIIIth plays have included 'The Love of the Nightingale' and 'The Changeling'.
The leavers' revue is another annual tradition, written and performed by the outgoing Eighth (Year 13) to the rest of the school. In recent years the revue has undergone numerous name changes; from the Eighth Revue to the Eighth Event, the Eighth Charity Event, and, in 2009, the Eighth Burlesque. In 2010 the title returned to The Eighth Revue. Advertisement for the VIIIth Revue has in recent years borne the slogan 'It's Coming'.
Drama club runs on a weekly basis for students in the MIVth (year 7) and the UIVth (year 8) where they devise short performances, and junior and senior improv club also run. Commedia dell'Arte troupe has been running for several years. The Theatre Society runs trips to theatre events around London, chosen by the Theatre Society Committee made up of senior girls. Several trips also run throughout the year to theatres to support learning in other subjects such as history, English, classics and modern foreign languages.
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Famous quotes containing the word drama:
“In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self- respect.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1858–1924)
“The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)