Opening the Door to Shakespeare (Shakespeare Week 2021)
Shakespeare Week has become a March tradition for Form 5 at Eversfield and this year was no exception.
The nation-wide event opens the door to Shakespeare and ensures that children are given a chance to have a great first experience with one of the world’s most famous playwrights, and as a mandatory subject studied by teenagers for exams in Britain, it provides the perfect platform for later studies.
The Tempest, the choice for 2021, is unlike any other play in Shakespeare's body of work. It takes place all in one day and is filled with magic and spirits. It is a strange and illusory play which investigates power, authority and reconciliation, asking complex questions about human nature; as such it is a demanding script and many of the lead characters have a significant number of tricky lines to learn.
The pupils produced the whole play in a week from learning their lines, blocking the scenes and delivering the performance last Friday. As many of the characters in the play were performed by several different pupils, the children had to be extremely organised and professional in their approach to the performance. The teachers were extremely impressed with the final result – the final performance was spell-binding and captivating, conveying the magic of the story and showing off what a wealth of acting talent we have in Form 5. Indeed, one member of staff who had seen the Tempest at Stratford commented that, having seen our performance, he now understood the play!
Enforced social distancing restrictions meant that it wasn’t possible for us to have parents join us in person, but we were able to share a live broadcast of the children’s performance.
Well done to all the pupils involved for their hard work and well done too to the parents for all their support with learning lines at home. ‘Our revels now are ended’ but Form 5 will be able to look back at the performance with much pride and a great sense of achievement. Well done to all.