On Friday 6 March pupils from the Senior School entered the 76th Welwyn Garden City Youth Drama Festival. The festival takes place all week with 21 schools and youth groups competing with performances lasting between 20 and 50 minutes. The adjudicator was Chris Jaeger MBE.
St Chris entered two pieces. Students in Year 12 performed an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. The performance was stripped down and used simple elements of colour and physicality to tell the story. The actors did a superb job, especially Stan Brown who had to walk straight off a minibus from a Geography trip and straight on to a stage! Students in Years 7, 8 and 9 performed Romeo and Juliet: the Musical; a one act comedy…think The Play That Goes Wrong meets Glee. The cast did an absolutely stunning job and the feedback from the adjudicator was very positive, however the competition is always extremely stiff so we crossed our fingers but tried not to get our hopes up…
The School was represented at the awards ceremony on Saturday night by Emma Roskilly (Head of Drama), Connor Vincent (Old Scholar) and Connie Skeggs (Year 7) and I am very proud to announce that our lower school team won the First Place trophy – The Elizabeth Cory-Wright Cup! Not only that but Year 7 pupil Edie Auckland was also awarded an acting medal for her role as Mia Rose.
All in all we had a wonderful time participating in the festival. Performing is great but it’s also interesting and inspiring to see the work put on by the other schools and youth groups. We came away buzzing with ideas! The hosts at The Barn Theatre in Welwyn always do a fantastic job putting everything together and the students especially loved performing in such a great venue.
Emma Roskilly, Head of Drama
