By Madame Helm (Head of MFL)

On Wednesday, we were thrilled to welcome the Onatti theatre company into school with their latest French play Le cours d’art. Their interactive performance provided students from Years 8-11 a fantastic opportunity to practise their language listening skills, whilst enjoying improvised ’comedy’, all in French bar an initial sentence by the ‘English teacher’ covering the art teacher.

The play focused on the adventures of five students attending an after school Art Club. They are given a task by the teacher who leaves them alone in the room. When one of them goes to leave they realise the door has been locked and they are trapped in the room on the fourth floor. What happened next was funny and entertaining. Drawing from the BGS audience, Gabriella joined the cast to play the new art student and performed during the whole duration of the play! She said: ‘Whilst I was on stage I had to talk to them and really, listen and respond to what they said. I think it really improved my speaking and listening skills. I really had fun on stage as well.’

Other students agreed with Gabriella commenting that the play was:  

“Very entertaining, fun and quite easy to understand. I would love to see another one.”  

“I absolutely loved the French play because it was a great way to learn French in a fun and exciting way.” 

We are looking forward to welcoming back Onatti for plays in Spanish and German next week. What a great way to start celebrating International Mother Language Day on 21st February and all things languages.