Year 9 pupils took a trip back in time to the dark days of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at a special Enrichment Day that offered them the chance to engage dramatically and creatively with the ‘Scottish play’.
Featuring a series of interactive workshops, the day brought to life Shakespeare’s brooding and exciting tragedy, which most of Year 9 had studied – from a purely textual point of view – earlier in the year.
Head of English Robert Hyland said: “Shakespeare was not written to be studied, but to be performed; therefore, an engagement with Macbeth would be incomplete without some understanding of the stagecraft and dramatic opportunities that this approach to the text provides, away from the minutiae of language analysis.”
Pupil Mahmudur Rahman enjoyed the day and said it helped him understand the play better: “The thing I like about drama is that you can play another person’s life – it’s a distraction from normal life and you can live in another person’s shoes. You can explore any dimension in history, going back centuries before, which I find fascinating.”
Mahmudur’s fellow Underne House member, Varun Maheswaran, said: “It was a fun day. When we played out the Macbeth scenes, it was enjoyable to explore the play in an interactive way.”
Organised by Mr Hyland, the all-day event took place in a classroom and the Main Hall. It was led by experienced drama professionals Gavin Malloy and Lauren Steadman, from RM Drama, QE’s external drama partner.
The workshops focused on:
- Key characters – such as the relationship between Macbeth himself and Lady Macbeth
- Key scenes – looking at the opening with the three witches
- Key themes – including ambition, guilt, the supernatural and violence.
The techniques explored included the deployment of ‘freeze-frame’ tableaux, the use of dialogue and improvisation, and the development of soundscapes (where atmosphere is created by the use of collective sound).
With drama not being part of the normal classroom curriculum at QE, the day was especially significant for those Year 9 pupils who were not involved in the School Play, Lord of the Flies, at Easter nor in QE’s contribution to the Shakespeare Schools Festival in the autumn, Mr Hyland said. “While a good number of students have been involved in school productions, many other will not have had exposure to such an innovative approach to a Shakespearean text. It was really refreshing to watch boys perform so ably and creatively, and engage with Shakespeare in a completely different way. For many, this was an opportunity to demonstrate a set of talents that might have gone unnoticed in the classroom.
“The team from RM Drama did a fantastic job at getting our students active and involved – there was a real sense of energy and purpose as the day developed.”
A strong performance at Sports Day helped Broughton overtake Pearce to claim overall victory as the leader of QE’s six houses – a victory announced to great excitement at the end-of-year House Assembly.
running Sai School Appeal, which aims to help the Sri Sathya Sai English Medium School in Kerala, India.
For the Sai School Appeal, a FIFA Tournament saw staff and pupils battle it out, games controllers in hand, in what was perhaps the most popular charity event of the year. One notable match included that between the Headmaster and the 2019 School Captain, Bhiramah Rammanohar.
The assembly also reviewed other activities of the year.
Years 8-11, as well as those who performed strongly in the UK Chess Challenge. Junior, intermediate and senior chess colours were presented.
Lord of the Flies charts how a group of schoolboys stranded on a desert island descend into murderous brutality as they attempt to self-govern.
Headmaster Neil Enright also congratulated the boys: “This was an ambitious and impressive production. Drama offers our pupils valuable opportunities to develop attributes such as verbal confidence and self-assurance, while the experience of learning lines and stage directions strengthens mental faculties including concentration and information recall.”
The book is also seen by many as a rejoinder to works such as R M Ballantyne’s 1858 novel, The Coral Island. Like Lord of the Flies, this features adolescents marooned on an island, yet while Ballantyne’s protagonists largely conquer the evil they encounter, in Golding’s work it is the evil which overcomes the boys.
Golding went on to write many other works, including plays, essays, short stories and poems, as well as other successful novels, including Pincher Martin (1956), which gives the thoughts of a drowning sailor, and The Spire (1964), about the building and near-collapse of a spire on a mediaeval cathedral.
In addition to praising QE’s actors, Mr Molloy highlighted the contribution of the boys providing support to the production: “We are fortunate to have a highly skilled student technical team who have helped bring our nightmarish vision to life on the stage with their excellent visual effects.”
Year 13’s Rahil Shah, who took the title role, and QE’s now-retired former Drama Director Elaine White both featured as case studies in this year’s national Shakespeare Schools Festival programme booklet, with both praising the benefits of Shakespeare in shaping young people’s lives.
Supporting the cast was Year 12’s Arjun Patel, who was in charge of lighting and sound.
“Personally, I hope to do computer science at university, but still appreciate the fact that SSF has allowed me to perform Shakespeare and take part in drama in my free time. It provides something different to my academic aspirations, and offers a balance that I think is both crucial and beneficial.”
At School, Sahil was elected a drama director and also ran the QE dance club for four years. He has built significantly on this QE experience at Harvard: “I was the lead male actor in a play called JOGGING, which was performed eight times at the American Repertory Theatre and directed by professional director Melissa Nussbaum. The play is set in Beirut, deals with themes of religious violence, feminism, and motherhood, and involved me playing six different men at different stages of life. It was definitely the most intense (and rewarding) theatrical experience I’ve had so far; luckily, my mum was able to visit and watch!”
During his first year at Harvard, he has taken a few trips with fellow students, which has served both to deepen friendships and to further his love of travel. These included a road trip & trekking expedition in Texas and a last-minute trip to Iceland a week before examinations, with Sahil and his fellow students taking advantage of $100 tickets and studying on the aeroplane to make sure their results did not suffer.