The girls originally staged 'Gargantua' in school last term. Julia (Year 10) has written a report about a day spent rehearsing and performing in one of London's professional theatres.
Our journey to The Albany Theatre began with our first performance of 'Gargantua' at school in February. We competed against other schools in the National Theatre Connections Festival and our hard work was rewarded by being chosen as one of ten to perform at The Albany Theatre.
On the morning of Thursday 5 May, the whole cast was buzzing to perform our play once again. We loaded the baby, Gargantua (or rather his feet), onto the coach and we drove up to Deptford with many run-throughs of our lines.
As we arrived at the theatre, we were shown the stage that we would be performing on. It was a very different set-up to our one at school, but it was a challenge that was easily overcome.
Our day started off in the morning with a workshop that consisted of many different activities such as trust exercises. With a break for lunch (and a feed of the theatre chickens), we finally were allowed to practise our performance on the stage with professional lighting and sound.
All of the time spent rehearsing during the day was worth it, allowing us to produce one of the best performances we’ve done. Although initially we were short of some cast members due to GCSEs, we managed to regain a whole cast from those attending and performed just as well.
Shortlisted for the opportunity of performing at the National Theatre, we are hoping that we will be given this further chance. On behalf of the whole cast, we would like to say a big thank you to Mrs Basu and Mr Campbell, without whom this opportunity would never have happened. We have enjoyed performing 'Gargantua' so much - thank you.
Gargantua