Showcase: Art • Dance • Drama • Music
Drama 24
Let’s Play! by Dileep Nota, Year 6.1 and Sydney Wright, Year 6.3 In May this year, Tanglin hosted the first ever Primary Schools ISTA (International Schools Theatre Association) Festival in Asia and everyone had an amazing time. The focus of the three day festival was ‘Play’ inspired by the Plato quote, “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.” Four international schools in Singapore came to Tanglin. We learned new things, took risks and made new friendships. Drama games helped us to get to know each other and work as a team. We also went to the Singapore Science Centre and learned about physics by making paper aeroplanes which we then used in our performance. In workshops we learned how to turn ordinary props into something else – we turned a fan into a boat engine and a bird cage into a fancy hat! In physical theatre, we made secret doors with our bodies and created the atmosphere of a haunted house. It was loads of fun but we still had to work hard, negotiate to solve problems and listen to everyone’s ideas. Some of us worked on Hamlet – we played with masks and tried using Shakespearean language which was a real achievement! We were also taught sign language by a composer whose choir performed in the Olympics. This was fun but challenging and we are pleased that we can now sign the alphabet. Not only was this the first ever Primary Schools ISTA Festival in Asia, but we are proud to be the first ever Tanglin children to complete our Arts Award Explore Certificate. We’ve had fun sharing our experiences of the arts, learning new skills and finding out more about all kinds of different art forms.
Medea by Hilary Jenner, Head of Drama (2012–2013) Last term was very busy with GCSE and A Level practical exams. For the first time, AS students were able to perform their production of ‘Medea’ in Studio 3. This meant that the audience’s experience of the production was much better as the students were visible at all times. The directorial interpretation of Euripedes’ classic tale of passion and fury was modernised and set in the hot house that was the colonial world of Singapore before the war, with the emphasis being on Medea’s otherness. This created an interesting dynamic between the characters and was something that the student body were able to understand with relative ease.