Twenty Minutes of Action Upper VIth Devised Drama
Friday 17th March 2017
We were expecting an audience of about forty, maximum. After all it was a Friday night and most Drama and Theatre Studies examination performances usually play to modest but keen audiences. Instead the hall was packed. This was a huge compliment to the four girls, Lily Rutterford, Willow Hellier Watts, Angelica Maxwell and Lucy Minderides, whose performance was simply outstanding. There had been a buzz beforehand: hand-drawn posters, featuring a pink bra and pants, had generated a certain amount of controversy, as did the cheeky pun on a play lasting just twenty minutes and the infamous claim by the angry father of a real-life convicted rapist, that prison was a steep price to pay for twenty minutes of action of very different and disturbing sort. But the play itself was intelligent, beautiful, brave and tender. It featured stories collected from FHS girls in the sixth form common room, the actual experience of a friend of one of the group, and the Ione Wells open letter to her attacker, originally published in The Guardian, and which was the starting point for the girls dramatic exploration of the subject. It ended with the girls own sung version of two verses from Maya Angelous poem I know why the caged bird sings. The group wanted to join the discussion, to look at the issue from different perspectives, and to provoke debate using the medium of contemporary drama. They certainly achieved that!
Mrs Oakley
