Mrs Howe (Director of Drama and Dance)

In Autumn 2020, as we emerged from the first lockdown, the Drama Department faced the challenge of how to produce creative opportunities for students when live theatre could not be performed and students could not collaborate across year groups. In such a time of change, this led us to step out of our comfort zone to devise a film project, a first for the department, that would help the BGS community reflect on the experiences of the past months. Thus, we hoped the project would allow our staff and students the space to reflect, process and heal as well as offering our students experience of working with Verbatim Theatre, a form which was new to them, as told through the medium of film. 

As a company, we learnt an awful lot together, producing a truly collaborative process and one which challenged the students to learn how to act to camera and to understand the social responsibility they had in shaping a narrative taken from the words of real-life accounts.

We were beset, of course, with many challenges – with year groups and individuals constantly being sent home to isolate, which delayed the project multiple times. This also meant in the end, a number of our Year 11 actors were unable to complete the project but we are still very grateful for the valuable input they gave throughout the production process.

We do hope that as we look forward to a new term, still under the shadow of COVID, but with hope that the end is in sight.

The video can be accessed via estream here