Holly Sanders (Upper Sixth, Arts Captain)

Before the half term break, the Upper Sixth Drama students performed their devised practical examination component in the intimate Studio Theatre.

After a few months of coming up with stimuli, we were stuck by the photo of a desolate beach and intrigued by the many individual tracks running through the sand. This led us to devise a piece called The Drowning, which was an exploration of how individuals deal with loss; focusing especially on the different stages of grief as represented on the Kubler-Ross curve. Our central idea was that a young man goes missing and the last place he is seen was by the sea. Our piece then shows how three characters related to the young man: his mum, his sister, and his fiancée, all deal with the grief differently by isolating themselves from each other and how they finally overcome their loss by finding unity, eventually gathering at the beach a year on to say goodbye to the young man.

The creative process for us was especially interesting, as we had to apply the techniques of an influential theatre practitioner and explore how their theories and approaches worked in practice to achieve our own aims and intentions. As the set designer, this component also allowed me to develop my design skills and learn how to make a model box. As part of my design, we used sand on stage, which created beautiful patterns, which linked back to our initial stimulus and enhanced the lighting states. Altogether, we are very proud of what we created and look forward to our next performance component.