In October, our students began to explore the world of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest.  Through a variety of improvisation skits and scene readings, students showed their interests and abilities in taking on the characters from the play.  Because there was such a wealth of energy and talent, we decided to cast the show twice, with one cast set to perform the play as part of the Shakespeare Schools Festival alongside other schools in Hounslow and the other cast to perform at Hillingdon for our home audience, creating a home and away team of sorts.

In the early stages of rehearsals, we discovered the complexities of the story and began to invent the world we hoped to create.  Using movement, sound, and still images, students imagined Prospero’s island down to the finest details.  Students became trickling rivers, creaking trees, and ravenous rabbits.  Some of the creative elements from these exercises made their way into the final performance.  While Mr. Edwards and the ACS cast were contemplating the scenery and special effects for their production, Mr. Larochelle and the festival cast were exploring Ariel’s trickery scene as if it were savvy middle school students chatting through an instant messaging service with a cloned user ID, posing as Trinculo.  This activity allowed the students to relate the magic of the scene to something real from their lives.  They also explored the text with a monkey-in-the-middle game using a paper plate.  The conspiring characters had to keep the plate away from the outsider in the scene at all costs, helping the student actors commit to the lines and their objectives in the scene.  After these and other physical explorations of the play, the students found themselves delivering their lines “trippingly from the tongue” with a deeper understanding of their characters’ motivations.

In January, the away team traveled to Hounslow for a workshop with theatre professionals to further their acting skills and enhance their performance of The Tempest.  Following a series of focus games and vocal warm-ups, the students found themselves in a Shakespearean wild-wild-west for a Shakespeare showdown.  Students formed two lines with their backs to each other, took three paces, and turned briskly to fire their chosen line from the play at the opposing actor with different emotions and objectives.  The exercise helped students sustain their energy and commitment to the final word of a line and allowed them to discover new ways of interpreting a line that had grown stale.

Finally, in February, the away team traveled back to Hounslow for show-time, with the help of an organized and creative group of parent costumers.  The students performed a moving performance to a packed house, alongside three other schools who performed productions of Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing.  Our students created the world of the island with nothing more than some sheets of fabric, a rope, and their bodies, all magically controlled by Prospero’s glowing, wooden staff.  This successful on-tour production was followed by an equally successful school performance featuring the home team and the beautiful singing of original melodies by the three actresses playing Ariel.

Our revels now ended, the student actors at ACS are poised to serve as a cadre of local experts on the language and rhythms of the Bard.  Our English and drama departments will no doubt benefit from their expertise in projects to come.