Year 7

Students in Year 7 have a drama lesson with their English teacher where they are able to explore characters and ideas from the texts they study in the classroom. They also have the opportunity to come to a lunchtime Drama club, and are invited to audition for the school play.

Year 8

Students have a discrete Drama lesson once a week where they are introduced to different and imaginative ways of exploring and presenting ideas, using a range of different stimuli such as historical events, poetry, play text, images, music  and artefacts. Year 8 students also have the opportunity to audition for our whole school play, and make up a valuable part of the chorus. There is a lunchtime improvisation Drama club for Year 8’s once a week. 

Year 9

Students continue to have a Drama lesson once a week. In year 9, lessons are designed to give students an idea of the way they will be expected to work at GCSE. They learn how to devise from a stimulus and how to work with text, as well as developing physical and vocal performance skills. There is a lunchtime playreading club for Year 9 students once a week.As part of the Year 9 Drama course, we have previously worked with Trestle Theatre Arts company, on using their fantastic Trestle masks to create performances. We now own Trestle Masks, so students may have an opportunity to experiment with mask work in their lessons.

GCSE Drama

Our GCSE in Drama provides opportunities for students to understand and create drama as a practical art form. They develop a range of theatrical skills and work collaboratively to generate and communicate ideas and meanings through informed artistic choices.

During the course, you will have the opportunity to :

• devise your own original work
• rehearse and perform extracts from a range of play texts
• work as creative artists through exploration and rehearsal
• document the rehearsal process
• study a play text in depth
• analyse professional live theatre

We follow the OCR Drama GCSE Curriculum. More information can be found here:

https://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/drama-j316-from-2016/

A Level Drama

We currently offer Edexcel A Level Drama and Theatre Studies. Edexcel have recently updated their curriculum and have redesigned a qualification that will engage students through encouraging creativity, focusing on practical work which reflects 21st-century theatre practice and developing skills that will support progression to further study of drama and a wide range of other subjects. Year 12 students are also welcome to audition for the whole school play, and often gain the starring roles.  

During the course, you will have the opportunity to :

Devise an original performance piece

• A group performance of one key extract from a performance text.
• A monologue or duologue performance from one key extract from a different performance text.
• Live theatre evaluation
• Practical exploration and study of a complete performance text – focusing on how this can be realised for performance.
• Practical exploration and interpretation of another complete performance text, in light of a chosen theatre practitioner – focusing on how this text could be reimagined for a contemporary audience.

 More information can be found here: https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-a-levels/drama-and-theatre-2016.html

School Play

Each year we perform a whole school play, involving students from Year 7 through to year 12. It is a fabulous opportunity to get as many students involved as possible, and aside from the actors, students are also involved as musicians, set designers and a backstage crew. 

Theatre Company Partnerships

We are currently part of the Complicité Theatre Company School’s Network.At the core of Complicité’s education work are its workshops, which offer an insight into the company’s working processes. Let by a current Complicité Theatre, Company member this gives a valuable insight for our students, into how Complicité develops its work, as well as it’s professional practices. 

We are also currently working on projects with the Donmar Warehouse with students in year 11 (these students will have the opportunity to perform their own work on the Donmar stage later in the year) and Year 13 (these students will participate in workshops and theatre visits exploring a range of plays from Shakespeare to works from the 21^st century)

New Views is the National Theatre’s annual playwriting programme for 14 - 19 year olds. Every year, hundreds of students from across the UK learn about playwriting from some of the finest writers in the industry and write their own 30-minute plays. One play will then be selected to be produced at the NT with a professional cast and crew, alongside rehearsed readings of the shortlisted plays.

Theatre Trips & Workshops

Every year we take our students to watch a wide selection of plays and performances, as well as being visited by theatre companies, to run workshops for our students. Here are some examples of previous trips & workshops.

Splendid Productions present an epic, murderous tale of family, history, vengeance and honour in a story nearly as old as theatre. Condensing Aeschylus’s classic trilogy into an hour, Splendid’s regal cast of three retell the story of King Agamemnon, his queen Clytemnestra, and their children, Iphigenia, Electra and Orestes. A legendary family born to power, but destined to rip itself apart in a bloody cycle of tragedy. Splendid’s new creative adaptation explores the place where rage meets justice in an artful, political, physical, musical, entertainingly furious – and furiously entertaining - piece of theatrical magic.