Lord of the Flies Trip
GCSE students in Year 10 & 11 saw the production of ‘Lord of the Flies’ at The New Victoria Theatre on Thursday 17th September. This highly rated performance, follows a group of schoolboys who survive a catastrophic plane crash. What starts as a desert island adventure quickly descends into a struggle for survival in a darkly sinister world of superstition and immorality. The performance was outstanding and gripped the students from start to finish. The students represented Cove impeccably well and the public theatre-goers commented upon the professionalism of the students. The highlight of the trip was when the students met performers after the show and shared with them their enjoyment and interest in the production. Back at school we evaluated the performance and it is safe to say students gained a great deal of drama knowledge from seeing this dramatic piece. Jessica Burcombe in Year 10 wrote the following in her review:
The play Lord of the Flies was adapted by Nigel Williams and is based on the book by William Golding. Before the performance I didn’t know what to expect and as we walked into the theatre and saw the set we were surprised by what we saw. They used half an aeroplane with a stack of suitcases at the edge of the plane and there was clothing and books along the edge of the stage near to the audience, the audience were positioned in front of the thrust staging representing the edge of the beach. The stage was essentially split in two, with centre stage and downstage being the beach and the aeroplane wing as the mountain, upstage.
In the first act the costumes were smart and showed the various school uniforms and in the second act the characters were just wearing shorts and half of them – ‘the hunters’- were wearing robes, almost like capes. The differences in costume in the second half showed the dynamic split between the Islander boys, it was clear the ones wearing robes were a grouped together whereas the ones not wearing robes/capes seemed rather distant from each other and more isolated.
I was also quite impressed by the way the actors were moving when they were almost tribesman, they moved almost like monkeys, I thought this was effective because the actors were very good at physicalising the animalistic traits therefore making them seem more savage like. Zia also thought it was awesome because their acting was very believable and engaging which created empathy at the climax where both Piggy and Simon died.
We are looking forward to taking GCSE Drama students out again to see more live theatre in the future.
Miss Brown
