ISTA/Scene March 07

Scene 

2006-7 March Issue 3 

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS THEATRE ASSOCIATION 

IN THIS ISSUE: 

What’s Happening in Schools 

SPECIAL 

EDITION 

: The International Theatre Educator www.ista.co.uk

ISTA – A WHO’S WHO 

Editor: Sally Robertson 

Artwork: Jo Doidge 

Print: Brewers Business Solutions Ltd, 

Cornwall, UK 

Cover Image: taken by Julie Ladner, Drama 

teacher and host of Western Academy of 

Beijing, Middle School Festival – Autumn 2006. 

Photographs: from Calderdale High School 

Festival and Beijing Middle School Festival; 

selected from the ISTA archives by Liane 

Campbell. 

To submit material or comments for future 

issues please email Sally Robertson on 

sallyr@ista.co.uk 

© International Schools Theatre Association 

(ISTA) 2006-7 

ISTA and its editors accept no liability for the 

views, opinions and advice contained in this 

journal. The editors reserve the right to edit 

any materials submitted for publication. 

ISTA Contact Information 

International Schools Theatre Association 

PO Box 74 

Helston 

TR13 8EE UK 

Email: enquiries@ista.co.uk 

Website: www.ista.co.uk 

Board of Trustees 

David Lightbody, President – General Manager Cameron 

Mackintosh China 

Fenella Kelly, Vice President – Cairo American College, Egypt 

Darren Scully, Vice President – St Julian’s School, Portugal 

Doug Bishop – Taipei American School, Taiwan 

Ian Pike – Freelance writer, UK 

Michael Westberg – Inter Community School Zurich, Switzerland 

Honorary Life Members 

Dinos Aristidou – UK 

Ted Miltenberger – France 

Mike Pasternak – Switzerland 

ISTA Global Patrons 

The American School in The Hague Community, the Netherlands 

Encore! Ensemble Theatre Workshop, USA 

International School of Brussels, Belgium 

International School of Geneva, La Chataigneraie, Switzerland 

International School Hamburg, Germany 

Michigan State University, USA 

The Robertson Family, UK 

St Julian’s School, Portugal 

ISTA Personnel 

Emmy Abrahamson, Vienna, Austria – emmya@ista.co.uk 

Bev Brian, Cornwall, UK – bevb@ista.co.uk 

Liane Campbell, Perth, Australia – lianec@ista.co.uk 

Sally Robertson, Cornwall, UK – sallyr@ista.co.uk 

Jo Webb, Cornwall, UK – jow@ista.co.uk 

Regional Representatives 

Africa – Fenella Kelly, Cairo American College, Egypt 

Latin America – Jeff Aitken, Escuela Campo Alegre, Venezuela 

North America – Rob Warren, Atlanta International School, USA 

Beijing MS

Editorial 

2006-7 March Issue 3 

ASKING 

MEMBERS... 

I’m absolutely thrilled with this issue! 

Each year at the Board of Trustees 

meeting, I ask various members of the 

Board to brainstorm possible themes 

for issues of Scene. It was at last 

year’s meeting where Darren Scully suggested the idea of ‘What’s 

Happening in Schools’ A collection of plays recently performed/ 

produced in schools to create a new resource for member teachers. 

Brilliant. 

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive, throughout 

the year, has something to do with teachers needing help or 

inspiration as to what kind of production to do. Whether it’s an easy 

musical, an all female cast, a play that is devised, a piece to do with 

IB students, a full school community project, a middle school play 

for over 80 kids etc etc. Teachers are constantly searching for new 

ideas and have very specific needs regarding the productions they 

want/are asked to do. 

ISTA should absolutely be able to help with this. The process of 

realising this particular idea has shown that such a project is doable 

and only enhances what we can offer to teachers by way of 

resources, not to mention the follow up (new dialogues, exchanging 

scripts etc) that ensues. 

Due thanks go to all the teachers who wrote in and put up with my 

pestering along the way. My wish is that you all feel you are getting 

back much more than you put in. I particularly enjoyed a comment 

from one teacher, who said being asked to write in with his notes on 

productions, forced him to reflect on the choice of plays he did with 

his students. Undoubtedly there have been all kinds of wonderful 

spin offs as well. 

Moving beyond purely content, you will see we have a new look for 

Scene. I can only extend my sincere thanks to Ian Pike and David 

Lightbody at this year’s Board meeting for their thoughts, 

suggestions and guidance. This kind of collaborative process 

ensures that we continually keep strengthening what lies at the heart 

of ISTA; dialogue, keeping things alive and partaking in the 

wonderful world that is theatre. 

Finally, thanks to Jo Doidge for her creative brilliance in realising our 

ideas. 

What’s Happening in 

Schools 

A new Publication 

I know that some of you were 

struggling for time, at the time of 

commissioning. However I would 

very much like to contact you again 

– to ask if you can contribute to 

‘phase 2’ of this project. It is our 

aim, at the very least, to double the 

current number of contributions, so 

as to create a new publication for 

the wider teaching community. I 

have a model for you to use and 

worked out in the early stages of 

this project that a contribution 

should take no more than 15-20 

minutes – given the formula we are 

using. It would be great to build on 

what we have started here. 

Other resources 

I am very much aware that we need 

to monitor how much we ask you 

to contribute during any one year. 

Getting the balance wrong would 

negatively affect good will and this 

wouldn’t be good practice. But say 

we tried to do a project of this kind, 

every 2nd year – what other 

resources would you find useful If 

we could collect other information 

from member teachers, what would 

this be Please do write in with 

your ideas, as the further ahead we 

can plan the better. As part of our 

Teacher Enrichment work, one of 

our goals is to develop and extend 

our current list of resources for 

teachers. You, as members of ISTA, 

have a voice in determining what 

those resources should be. 

I look forward to hearing from you. 

Editor 


Please respond directly to 


Scene | 2006-7 March Issue 3 | 1

What’s Happeni 

Charmaine Basel and Belinda 

Shorland – British International 

School, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 

THE TEENAGE DILEMMAS OF 

ANDY LEE: written by Charmaine 

and Belinda 

After looking through various plays and 

feeling that they somehow didn’t feel 

quite “international enough”, we 

decided to write one. The play 

focuses on its central character Andy’s 

trials and tribulations - a type of Adrian 

Mole with a cultural twist. It is set in 

Vietnam (but this could easily be 

interchanged) and explores the cultural 

particularities of having a mixed 

background and going to school in a 

multicultural setting. The play has 30 

written cast members of all ages and 

has potential for more. It is in three 

acts and running time without interval 

is about 1hour and 10 minutes. It took 

us around 4 weeks to write - including 

a few late nights and weekends. 

Highlights include: a whole cast 

Bollywood dance / dream sequence; a 

granny fight and a whole cast karaoke 

/ dance finale to Blue Suede Shoes. 

The piece was a success in the sense 

that the audience connected with the 

subject matter and really enjoyed the 

humour. We also received 

compliments on the writing. It was a 

worthwhile experience writing and 

directing the play and most importantly, 

it was wonderful to have the students 

perform a play that was specifically 

tailored for an international setting. 

Laurie Carroll Berube – Institut Le 

Rosey, Switzerland 

LOVE KNOTS based on a 

Commedia dell’Arte Scenario by 

Flaminia Scala 

Tackling a scenario for students to 

improvise around, rather than a 

scripted play, felt like jumping into the 

void - especially for the end-of-year 

production. In the end, I had more fun 

with this show than any other! Full of 

gags, pratfalls, and mistaken identity, 

improvised physical comedy relying on 

whiplash timing, it is exhausting to 

stage. But we had a great time 

creating an anything-can-happen 

cartoon world where lovers approach 

in slow-motion, servants in high-top 

2 | Scene | 2006-7 March Issue 3 

sneakers scold and flirt with the 

audience, and duels are fought with 

giant salamis. 

My starting point was Scala’s scenario 

“The Betrothed,” which I adapted to fit 

the twenty 11 to 18 year olds who 

auditioned. The first step was to 

encourage them to play, to experiment 

with movement, tempo and status. 

They studied the Masters: Charlie, 

Buster and Margaret Rutherford’s Lady 

Bracknell, Bertie & Jeeves, Basil & 

Sybill, Tom & Jerry. With no text to fall 

back on, it was important they take 

responsibility for their own characters 

and create their own Lazzi. I found that 

allowing a bit of anarchy into 

rehearsals gave birth to accidental 

discoveries, and many wonderful 

comic moments. 

N.B. John Wright’s Why is that so 

Funny was invaluable – especially 

when creating a Keystone Cops 

chase-cum-spaghetti-on-the-head 

food fight! 

Emily Blackburn – ACS 

International School of Egham, UK 

THE WISH PEDDLER by Tom 

McCoy: The Dramatic Publishing 

Company 

Our fall middle school production last 

year was part of a celebration of the 

arts at our school. This event included: 

a dance show, visual art displays, 

performances by our school’s four 

bands, a choir performance and a play. 

THE WISH PEDDLAR is a very short 

play, but it has an expandable cast. 

We wanted to have a lot of students 

involved, so this was ideal for our 

purposes. The play is a bit thin to 

stand on its own, but I can see that it 

would be a good jumping off point for 

other devised scenes. I think it would 

be a good project for lower school or 

for a middle and lower school 

collaboration. 

A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen: 

rights held by Samuel French 

In February one of my IB 12 students 

took on the challenge of directing A 

Doll’s House. The results were 

excellent. The small cast (3 M, 2F) 

allowed for intense work from some 

dedicated (mostly IB) actors. The 

intimacy of our small black box studio 

was ideal for this quiet and poignant 

play. The technical aspects of this 

production were very simple, but it did 

give some of my IB students an 

opportunity to further their design 

skills. The true challenge came in the 

development and handling of the 

characters. It was exciting to watch the 

students stretch themselves and 

succeed. 

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS by 

Marshall Barer and Mary Rodgers: 

rights held by Josef Weinberger 

Ltd. in the UK and Rodgers and 

Hammerstein in the United States 

Our school has a tradition of a largescale 

spring musical and last year we 

did ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. This 

production was a true crowd pleaser, 

and it was a joy to work on. The 

characters are funny and the students 

quickly related to the fractured Princess 

and the Pea fairy tale. We were able to 

include students from 6th -12th grade, 

as the themes and content are universal 

the whole school was able to enjoy the 

production. We had a cast of 24, but 

this number could easily be shrunk or 

expanded as needed. There are a lot of 

opportunities for large dance numbers 

and the chorus has a personality all of 

its own. Our small orchestra consisted 

of piano, keyboards, a double bass and 

percussion. It was large enough to 

sound good, but small enough to 

handle. This was by far our most 

technically challenging show of the year, 

but it wasn’t so beyond our means that 

weren’t able to create a strong 

production. We did end up having only 

nine mattresses due to health and 

safety hazards, but we made up for 

what could have been a disappointing 

effect by having Princess Winnifred use 

a trampoline to vault into bed! 

Mike Caemmerer – American 

Embassy School New Delhi, India 

MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by 

William Shakespeare 

This was a standard production but 

with my IB students in mind. The first 

year IB students were told in February 

of 2005 that the October production 

would be the Dream. As the director I 

gave them my rough sketch for design

ng in Schools 

and then set them about the task of 

critiquing the idea. Their critiques had 

to be based on research and theory as 

well as the potential that the idea had 

for bringing the play to life on stage. 

They were very much the design team. 

By the end of May, the idea had been 

solidified enough so that one of the 

students took on the task of bringing 

the costumes to life. She was in 

London in the summer and met with 

ISTA’s David Lightbody to get some 

design help. She came back in the fall 

with full designs. She then turned 

those over to another IB student who 

was in charge of actual costume 

construction, including fabric 

purchasing and working with the tailor. 

Nearly all IB Theatre Arts students 

were involved in some aspect, either 

on stage or off. The process for all the 

students was invaluable. They saw the 

birth of an idea and worked with it until 

they saw it (or acted it) on stage. Their 

ability to understand the intricacies of 

design and production grew 

significantly and the process clearly 

impacted their own work. As a school 

theatre director/teacher and given 

whatever constraints (real or imagined), 

I find myself avoiding the same steps 

that I require of my students. This 

process put into perspective exactly 

what I ask them to do on a regular 

basis with design and production. It 

also gave them the kind of emersion in 

a project they do not normally get. 

ALL IN THE TIMING and TIME 

FLIES: One Act play collections of 

David Ives: Vintage Books and 

Grove Press, respectively. 

I have found this one night production 

to be a great way to start a year. At 

AES, with students moving in and out 

yearly at a rate of about 20%, it is 

difficult to know what kind of large 

production the students are able to pull 

off. An evening of one-acts gives me 

as director the ability to choose pieces 

of varying difficulty, while at the same 

time giving around 20 students the 

opportunity to have meaningful roles 

on stage. I am a huge fan of David 

Ives. His style lends itself to 

challenging pieces for talented 

performers (SURE THING for example), 

but also lets students with less 

experience learn the art of timing 

(ARABIAN NIGHTS, CAPTIVE 

AUDIENCE). The school community 

audience can easily tolerate the short 

acts and the sophisticated humor 

behind Ives. The feedback for the 

actors is always instant and gratifying. 

COMPLEAT WRKS of WLLM 

SHSKPR: abridged, Borgeson, 

Long and Singer, Applause Books 

This is the most recent production at 

AES. Two graduating seniors dragged 

their IB teacher on stage to perform 

this well-known comedy. The 

stipulation from this teacher was that 

he have nothing to do with the 

production except acting. Students 

would be responsible for all elements 

of production. They agreed. The play 

is an intense production experience in 

that while only three actors are on 

stage, the supporting crew required 8 

members not including the student 

director. Most of these 9 were rather 

prolific on stage, but had little or no off 

stage experience. A baptism by fire! 

Again, the play was fine, but the 

process was the beneficial aspect. 

They really ran all elements of 

production-set design, costume 

design, posters and tickets, props, 

directing: they did it all. The play was 

pulled off in four weeks requiring an 

intense effort from all. And while the 

acting was a great penultimate 

experience for the seniors, it is the 

students who worked backstage that 

still talk about this play. This piece got 

the “stage junkies” in the wings to fully 

appreciate the enormity of work that 

goes into a production. 

MY FATHER’S DRAGON based on 

the book by Ruth Stiles Gannett 

The Thespian Society takes on as its 

community service goal to bring 

theatre to the drama starved 

elementary students. Thespians put on 

an annual theatre workshop for grades 

3-5 with 50 to 70 students who show 

up for the full day of theatre games 

and mini-workshops. Two years ago 

they extended that to create a full 

theatre experience for the students. 

The popular children’s story MY 

FATHER’S DRAGON had been 

adapted to music by the high school 

music teacher. It provided a great 

vehicle for an elementary show: flexible 

casting allowing for between 40 and 

70 students, outrageous costumes, 

and individual stage time, even for the 

smallest of parts. In addition, it meant 

that the Thespians could (had to) all be 

involved. They managed the entire 

production, from audition to closing 

curtain. They were in charge of makeup 

design and application, costume 

design and application, blocking and 

direction, choreography, everything. 

Calderdale HS 


“Come as you are and leave with a different perspective on life.” 

Hanna Lopes Coelho, St Nicholas School, Sao Paulo, Brazil 

Adults were asked to help, but even 

they played only a supporting role, 

following the lead of the Thespians. 

Because of the sheer number of 

students, it was necessary for me to 

do a lot of the time management, but I 

did so only in consultation with the 

student director. It was a fabulous 

experience for both the elementary and 

the high school students. The 

Elementary School students loved 

working with the high school students, 

and I think the feeling was mutual. It 

was a great community builder too, as 

3rd graders now know seniors and 

were greeting them in the school 

hallways like they were best friends. 

Kate Caster – International School 

Hamburg, Germany 

GOD’S FAVOURITE by Neil Simon: 

published by Samuel French, Inc., 

New York 

This is a comedy based on the biblical 

story of Job. You know the one... God 

and the Devil have an argument about 

who has the most faith in God. God 

tells the Devil his ‘servant on earth’ is 

Jo Benjamin (Job) who will never 

renounce God, no matter what the 

Devil does to make his life miserable. 

Simon has modernized the story with 

some funny twists, including a 

bumbling messenger from God sent to 

tell Jo Benjamin the bad news. We 

endeavored to do a double cast with 

this show because it only has 8 

characters. It did work nicely as it was 

a great opportunity for our community 

to see 2 quite different interpretations 

of the same script. It was, however, a 

bit difficult during the rehearsal 

process. Fortunately, I had a 

wonderful student director. 

KISS ME KATE: book by Sam & 

Bella Spewack, music & lyrics by 

Cole Porter, published by 

Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc., 

New York 

This musical is quite a good one for a 

large group. We were able to use 7th- 

12th graders with the variety this show 

has to offer. This show provides an 

excellent opportunity to costume 

characters in the 1950’s as well as the 

Elizabethan period. Not only does it 

have wonderful Cole Porter music, it 

has an interesting storyline... a little 

different from the typical musical 


comedies around. This is a play within 

a play where the leading actor and 

actress (who used to be married and 

now can’t stand each other) are 

putting up a production of “The Taming 

of the Shrew.” The off stage antics 

cross over to the on stage 

performance. Besides this, a side 

story involves 2 comic gangsters who 

are trying to extort money from another 

cast member for his gambling debts. 

Some of the more well known songs 

include: “Brush up Your Shakespeare,” 

“Why Can’t You Behave,” 

“Wunderbar,” “Too Darn Hot” and 

“Always True to You in my Fashion.” 

STORY THEATRE by Paul Sills: 

published by Samual French Inc., 

New York 

This show was developed with my 9th 

grade students for Elementary School 

children. It is a compilation of some of 

the best-known children’s stories plus 

a few odd ones. The great thing about 

his script is that you can do parts or 

the entire show. We chose to use 

most of the stories and cut the more 

gruesome ones. There is also a lot of 

opportunity to create each story with 

unusual and interesting characters. It 

works really well as an ensemble piece 

with no real set and minimal 

costuming. It’s a dream budget show. 

Doug Dean – Marymount 

International School Rome, Italy 

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S 

NEST by Dale Wasserman 

The rehearsal period for this high 

school production lasted five months. 

Each student developed their 

character’s “back story” individually 

and we spent a long time discussing 

mental health and the wafer-thin line 

that separates sanity from insanity. I 

worked on the “less is more” principal; 

I didn’t want a group of over-the-top 

“nutbags”, as McMurphy refers to 

them. I wanted real people that had 

simply found life too complex to deal 

with. That, for me, brought out the 

tragedy of their situations and lended 

extra weight to the coldly villainous 

attitude of Nurse Ratched. This is NOT 

an easy play to do well, I was fortunate 

to be blessed with an extremely 

talented and dedicated group of 

students. Our set was stark white and I 

went with a soundrack of Joni Mitchell 

and Bob Dylan, reflecting the play’s 

anti-establishment themes. 

REVOLTING RHYMES by Roald 

Dahl 

This was an 8th grade production. We 

had spent part of the year working on 

clowning, physical comedy and status 

and this piece gave us an excellent 

chance to put what we had learned 

into practice. The narrator of the six 

stories was a clearly identifiable 

authority figure, albeit one who had his 

status lowered as the plays collapsed 

around him. We introduced ideas 

taken from Michael Green’s Coarse 

Acting Shows, with actors “forgetting” 

lines, outsized props, misplaced sound 

effects, wobbly scenery etc. We made 

many of the props and costumes 

ourselves, including two life-size ugly 

sisters, complete with detachable 

heads. The bottom line was though, 

that through all of this, the actors still 

had to tell the story and tell it clearly. I 

cast 30 actors but it could be done 

with far fewer. The stage started in 

pristine condition but, by the end, was 

full of props, chopped-off heads, used 

dynamite sticks and discarded 

costumes, leaving the poor narrator 

utterly beaten as the curtain drew. It 

was SO much fun; I can’t wait to do it 

again with another group! 

THE TROJAN WOMEN by Euripides 

This was the high school production 

that we ended the 2005/06 academic 

year with. I had a group that was 

almost entirely female and, in particular, 

four gifted girls to play the challenging 

roles of Hecuba, Cassandra, 

Andromache and Helen. I wanted to 

strike a balance between the traditional 

Greek style of performing and a more 

modern, naturalistic approach. So, 

rather than having the chorus speaking 

in unison I asked each of the girls to 

develop an individual character and 

shared the chorus lines between them. 

The middle school art teacher, a 

talented artist in his own right, 

designed a post-apocalyptic set for 

me, with rough, patched tents, 

washing lines, broken machinery, fallen 

buildings; a world deprived of the 

luxuries we now take for granted but 

somehow still recognizable as our 

own. This is a moving, powerful and 

challenging play.

Alenka Dorrell - American 

International School Budapest, 

Hungary 

Kabuki MACBETH: three Scenes 

from Shakespeare 

As part of a final directing unit, three IB 

student directors tackled the Prophecy, 

the Letter and the Final Battle in 

Kabuki style. Each student actor also 

took on a production role. The results 

were spectacular and the learning 

curve immense for everyone. The play 

lent itself well to the style. Our witches 

created some very Kabuki special 

effects (fishing lights in their teeth, 

cobwebs sprayed from their sleeves), 

the kata for the warriors and the 

extremely bloody fights with convenient 

mie to underscore the action (and 

allow everyone to breathe!) gave the 

choreographers a job while the 

designers worked with Kabuki colour 

symbolism for the Hanamichi floor 

cloths and the wall hangings. There 

was space for the musicians to 

compose a drumming and flute score 

and our narrator spoke the text in 

Japanese and English! 

THE GRADUATING CLASS by the 

High School Theatre Ensemble of 

AISB 

This was a devised production. We set 

it in an International School, 

improvising with characters from 

different walks of life/circumstances. 

The basic premise was a student 

thinking on the questions posed by her 

headmaster at Graduation, ‘Where 

have you come from Where are you 

going’ After every rehearsal, I took 

away the notes I had written from the 

students’ improvs and wrote the script 

that way. This is obviously going to be 

a touch frustrating in terms of writing 

because often you would rather the 

story was different (!) but it is a great 

way to teach devising and character; 

and to give the kids ensemble 

ownership of their piece. It was also 

hugely popular with the audience 

because they recognized so much 

from it – though we tried hard not to 

tell any personal stories. 

THREE SISTERS: an adaptation 

based on the play by Anton 

Chekhov 

My IB Seniors are exploring Naturalism 

through site-specific and Promenade 

theatre, by rehearsing and performing 

in my house. The first two acts take 

place in the living room, the third act is 

in the basement and fourth act takes 

Calderdale HS 

place in the garden! I can report that 

we are having a ball doing this piece. 

Working within a domestic environment 

has been fantastic. So many moments 

happen differently. A stage rehearsal 

for instance, had Vershinin walking 

around when talking. In the living room, 

this was clearly ‘unnatural’ so we 

made it much more static but used 

hands and faces more. In terms of 

production too it has been fascinating. 

Mood music doesn’t work at home, 

but you can do all sorts of things with 

stage lighting. Our performance is, for 

instance at 6pm but the first act is 

daytime, spring. We are placing large 

lights outside windows to shine in and 

give the conceit. Because it is cold 

here, torches and fire heaters are part 

of the 4th act (now set at night...) 

Interestingly, the 3rd act, in the 

smallest space, works the best of all. 

Anne Marie Drodz – Bilkent 

University Preparatory School, 

Turkey 

ANTIGONE by Jean Anouillh 

adapted by Anne Marie 

Grade 12 IB Theatre Arts students 

gained an experience of performing 

this play in a professional small studio 

theatre in February 2006. The play was 

adapted to suit the individual needs of 

7 students. They were given enough 

individual exposure but were not 

overburdened with large chunks of text 

to memorize. The essence of the play 

was kept intact – maintaining themes 

of oppression, teenage rebellion and 

search for identity. Drawing on Greek 

myths and the theatrical conventions of 

Greek Theatre, (masks, ritual dance 

and choral movement), we also used 

rehearsal techniques drawn from 

Boal’s “Theatre of the Oppressed” 

which was later incorporated into the 

fabric of the play, eg, Colombian 

Hypnosis, Mirroring, Image Sculpturing 

etc. This was interlaced with modern 

music and modern references in terms 

of props and costuming. The set 

design owed much to the influence of 

Peter Brook with a minimalist approach 

and an “empty space” feel to the 

piece. The 7 actors gained a 

worthwhile experience of performing in 

a professional theatre space and 

gained a synthesis of the two year 

journey they had taken from Greek 

Theatre in Year 1 through to Theatre of 

the Oppressed in Year 2. 

THE DINING ROOM by A.R. Gurney 

The Grade 11 IB Theatre Arts class 

performed this American classic in May 

of 2006. Each of the six actors played 

six to eight characters in the course of 

the two-act play. As the director, I was 

thrilled to finally have the numbers and 

talent to put this piece on the stage. 

This was also the first time at 

BUPS/BIS that students performed a 

full length dramatic piece, another sign 

of how our theatre department is 

expanding. The structure of the script 

made every student stretch themselves 

to reach the ultimate challenge faced 

by every actor: How does one create a 

believable character onstage They 

had to exit, unbutton a shirt or pin up 

their hair and come back on stage as 

another character entirely. Due to 

scheduling restrictions, the IB students 

worked on the piece for over three 

months before it went up, requiring 

them to sustain focus and commitment 

on a much higher scale. The main 

challenge of the piece, technically, was 

the set and props. The dining room in 

question had to be stereotypically 

American WASP, yet versatile enough 

that it could withstand the 11 scenes 

played around it. Students learned the 

incredible frustrations every prop 

master goes through: how to find not 

just a spoon, but a whole set that not 

only matches each other but the 


Calderdale HS 

Calderdale HS 

overall design concept. The 

experience certainly allowed the actors 

to grow; the time commitment enabled 

them to reflect and focus on their 

process; and finally they gained an 

understanding of just how many items 

and roles are required to get a full 

length play on it’s feet. 

Geoffrey Duffield - Western 

Academy of Beijing, China 

THE VISIT by Freidrich Durrenmatt: 

translated from the German by 

Patrick Bowles 

Durrenmatt’s THE VISIT is a great text 

to stage provided you can cast the two 

lead roles that require a fair amount of 

sophistication. Beyond those roles, it is 

potentially a great ensemble piece with 

scope for lots of interesting 

characterization for a cast of about 35. 

We staged it on a fairly empty stage 

with design emphasis on costumes. I 

think this suits the Brechtian flavor of 

the script. This is an excellent piece of 

theatre to provoke discussion on 

ethical issues. 

METROPOLIS 

This was a devised project for a group 

of about 30 Grade 7 to 9 students, 

loosely based on an Australian play by 

Tony Nicholls and Felicity Lyons, URBS 

URBIS. Heinemann published the play 

in 1982 in the One Act Play series, but 

I think it is now out of print. URBS 

URBIS is a pastiche of scenes in a 

variety of theatrical styles on issues of 

urban life. Using the original text as an 

exemplar, the company devised 

original scenes about life in Beijing, a 

massive and ever-growing metropolis 

which offers the best and the worst of 

the urban experience. Transitions 

between scenes were achieved with 

the use of projected photographs and 

video and a rock band playing 

selections from The Clash. 

THE CHRYSALIDS: adapted by 

David Harrower from the novel by 

John Windham 

The text is specifically written for 

teenage actors and our cast of Grade 

7 to 10 students handled the roles very 

well. A design motif for the production 

was a reworking of Da Vinci’s famous 

image of the man with his limbs 

stretched out set inside a pentagon. 

This became the symbol of “purity” for 

the xenophobic citizens of Waknuk. 

The production was set in the round 

with five risers creating a pentagonal 

stage with 5 entrances. As a part of 

the project, Grade 10 music students 

studied minimalist music and 

composed in that genre. Selections 

from their compositions were used as 

scene transition music and to 

underscore the recorded passages of 

“telepathy” from the mutant children. 

Gillian Eugene - Lincoln 

Community School, Ghana 

THE MARRIAGE OF ANANSEWA by 

Efua T. Sutherland 

This tale is based on the oral traditions 

of Ananse, a trickster spider in the 

Ghanaian culture. As with many West 

African plays, it relies heavily on music, 

song, and has opportunities for quite a 

bit of dance. It also makes use of a 

storyteller, which is a well-known figure 

in Ghanaian culture. The play is most 

suitable for High School students, 

though we had a mix of High School 

and Middle School (in fact, the role of 

Ananse was played by a 6th grader). 

The cast can range from ten members 

upwards as, apart from the main 

characters, all the cast can act as the 

players (similar to a chorus), and a 

combination of other roles. I think we 

had fifteen to twenty students in our 

performance. The play is quite long so 

you will want to edit it. We had an 

outside artist who knew the play, and 

knew African drumming, singing and 

dancing, to come and work with the 

students. We were able to do a bunch 

of the songs in Twi (one of the local 

Ghanaian languages), which was very 

cool for the actors and the audience. 

He also taught us some West African 

dance, and worked on drumming with 

our student and teacher musicians. 

The cunningness of Ananse and the 

wild turn of events that take place 

makes this play very unique and really 

quite funny! The kids and the audience 

alike loved the play, and thought it very 

refreshing to see an African, specifically 

Ghanaian, play on the stage. 

RELIA: A NOH RETELLING OF THE 

TALE by Gillian Eugene 

In this play I adapted the familiar tale of 

Cinderella using the theatrical tradition 

of Japanese Noh Theatre. Aiding me in 

the writing process was a book, The 

Noh Plays of Japan: An Anthology, 

written by Arthur Waley that contained 

a variety of Noh plays. The result was 

something quite dark, spiritual and 

“ghost-like,” yet also quite funny! We 

set the play outside in the grass, trying 

to closely imitate the stage and set-up 

of an actual Noh performance. Around 

the stage we built a bamboo frame 

with lanterns hanging down. We had 

Japanese drumming playing as the 

audience entered and at various points 

throughout the performance. I had a 

local artist make these fabulous 

wooden masks for the main 

characters, and all the characters had 

on thick wooden clogs that made this 

amazing sound on the floor. Everyone 

had on a different style of kimono, and 

the hair and make-up became very 

wild and over-the-top! There were two 

musicians that played the flute 

throughout the performance. We 

incorporated much movement into the 

play and, I must say, the whole thing 

was just beautiful. We had mostly 

Middle School students in this 

production, and it was perfect for 

them. The number of cast can vary as 

the chorus can have any number of 

people take part. This was an excellent 

way to get the students and adults 

alike familiar with some of the elements 

of Noh Theatre. 

CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS by 

Peter Brooke and Jean-Claude 

Carriere 

This play is for High School students 

and has a cast of 12 – 16 (this allows 

each actor to play a bird and at least 

one other character). It is a challenging 

script, as one has to really work to 

discern the meaning of the various 

stories and to clearly grasp the overall 

narrative. The play is adapted from a 

Middle Eastern poem, and tells the 

story of a group of birds, led by the 

Hoopoe, on a grueling journey to find 

their king. There are various mini- 

6 | Scene | 2006-7 March Issue 3

narratives throughout the play, told by 

the Hoopoe, each to teach a lesson to 

the other birds. The play is quite 

visually stimulating. We had one of the 

classes at school design a bird mask 

and wings for each bird character; 

underneath this all the actors wore 

white Middle Eastern dress (baggy 

pants, knee-length shirt). The creativity 

and colours that came from the 

student’s bird creations were 

awesome! We performed the play in 

the round, with the main action taking 

place on a circular carpet surrounded 

by bamboo poles. When the birds 

were not in the circle they were 

perched on various sized ramps and 

levels in the corners of the room. The 

play is physically demanding in that the 

actors must work hard to develop their 

“bird bodies,” as well as give the 

illusion of flight throughout the play. 

Tim Evans – Yokohama 

International School, Japan 

THE BURIAL AT THEBES: Heaney 

after Sophocles 

This is Sophocles’ Antigone, but a 

fairly new version by Seamus Heaney. 

The language is very accessible. The 

students did not feel threatened by it. 

The cast was from 7th to 12th grade. 

I used all my IB class too. The latter 

took on both performance and 

production roles. I used some 

eighteen students on stage. I chose six 

students to be the Chorus; you could 

have two or twenty. It was my first time 

working with a CHORUS and was a 

desired challenge. They hold the play 

together. But what would I do with 

them on stage all the time! They 

explored: jazz dance, Tango, physical 

theatre and acrobatics. The stage was 

open and minimal. We reset it in a 

mythical South American country. 

Creon looked highly dubious as the 

Chorus swept in to the sampled Tango 

sounds of Gotan Project. He did not 

have a Cuban cigar. 

ARMS AND THE MAN by G.B.Shaw 

This is a perfect low-key, small cast 

project for IB students wishing to 

explore Victorian Theatre. 3 female, 4 

male. 3 ACTS. 3 settings. A set 

design challenge. We did it on an 

open stage with 3 distinct areas for 

each Act. Colour coded, semi-real and 

contemporary. The play has many 

themes: love, honour, deceit, war, 

male/female. It concerns a soldier 

trapped in the bedroom of a young 

lady whose fiancé is on the other side 

of the conflict. The fugitive appears 

eccentric in his views of war and 

honour. She becomes intrigued. Will 

she protect him 

THE NAVIGATOR 

This was an adaptation of the little 

known musical from 1976: Stephen 

Sondheim’s PACIFIC OVERTURES. 

With at least a dozen songs it was far 

too ambitious for MS/HS. But being 

here in Japan it seemed impossible to 

ignore. So we rewrote the start and 

the end. We only included 4 songs. It 

had a rather dated view of the 

Japanese: walkmans and sushi rolls. 

We added AWA ODORI dance, 

BUTOH movement and Complicite 

lighting effects recently seen in THE 

ELEPHANT VANISHES. The Cast was 

large. I used over thirty but you could 

add more in the crowd scenes. This is 

in many ways Sondheim’s attempt at 

an Asian play. So for IB students there 

are opportunities for exploring: Kabuki, 

Noh, Butoh, Kyogen and Bunraku. We 

selected two out of those; Butoh and 

Kyogen conventions. It is the story of 

Manjiro, a young boy who is 

shipwrecked. He is rescued by an 

American Whaler and is taken to New 

England. He learns English, one of the 

first Japanese to do so, and returns 

dangerously to the closed kingdom. It 

is all based on fact so there is plenty 

of opportunity for research and 

historical cross-over. Again we used 

our open stage and created settings 

with slide projections. We also had live 

music: taiko drums, koto and piano. 

This was a very special play to do and 

if you are going for your BIG one; the 

one you wish to be remembered by, 

the one you will watch again and 

again on your dvd, then... dozo. 

Jerry Flynn – International School 

of Tanganyika, Tanzania 

DRACULA SPECTACULAR: book 

& lyrics by John Gardiner, music 

by Andrew Parr, published by 

Samuel French 

This was a secondary school (grades 

6-12) musical play with a cast of 25 

(this is flexible). It has great music, 

both big chorus numbers and 

challenging solos and duets. The 

characters are melodramatic and 

stereotypical creating some great 

humor. It has good scope for design 

and construction and so we had a 

large crew working on those elements 

throughout the rehearsal process. It 

was also used as a project in stage 

lighting and sound for the IB Theatre 

Arts students. It was a three- month 

project, rehearsing twice a week as an 

extra-curricular activity. The outcome 

was kitsch and humorous. The 

students and staff had a great time 

working with this one and it was 

received well as an enjoyable evening 

of family entertainment. 

PINNOCHIO written by John 

Morley, published by Samuel 

French 

At the time of writing this is our current 

project. We are working with a cast of 

35 students from grades 6-12. There 

are 12 principal roles with supporting 

cast as puppets, circus performers 

and villagers. The play is directorially 

challenging with the script demanding 

a variety of illusions and complex 

settings. The original script is a musical 

although we have decided instead we 

have the MYP grade 10 students 

composing and recording an original 

score. The production is being used as 

a vehicle for the IB students as well, 

one who is working on Costume 

Design for her Individual Project and 

one who has taken on the role of 

Stage Manager. The production is 

working along the lines of 

Physical/Total Theatre. Its greatest 

challenge and benefit is the 

opportunity it gives for an exploration 

of movement and ensemble theatre. 

Beijing MS 

Calderdale HS 


Calderdale HS 

ANIMAL FARM adapted by Peter 

Hall, lyrics by Adrian Mitchell, 

published by Heinemann 

Educational 

This was the 2006 Secondary School 

production that was done with a large 

cast of 44 students plus 5 musicians. 

As the adaptation says, the play is 

called a ‘fairy tale...’ so the set design, 

created in part by the students, went for 

a two-dimensional story book feel. All 

the performers/characters wore masks. 

These were beautifully made by the Art 

department [visit www.istafrica.com]. To 

everyone’s credit the masks were 

brought to vivid life through three 

months of focused ensemble work. We 

saw subtle characterizations from 

everyone, and a sense of stage 

awareness and movement skills that 

belied any theatrical inexperience. 

There is a saying in the theatre... 

‘never work with kids or animals’. 

‘Animal Farm’ was a successful 

exception to this rule for sure. 

Leanne Fulcher – International 

School of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

PETER PAN: full length musical 

Age appropriate: Elementary and 

Middle School, separate scripts 

Original script written by Leanne 

Fulcher and Sarah Charley 

Lyrics by Sarah Charley 

Length: one hour and 45 minutes 

Cast size: 45-50 

Music: 10 songs with extra musical 

interludes between scenes. 

I have actually produced or coproduced 

this version of Peter Pan 

twice. The first time was in Monterrey, 

Mexico where I co-wrote the script to 

be a bilingual script. The natives 

(Mayans) were only Spanish speaking, 

the family and mermaids only spoke 

English, but Peter and his lost boys 

spoke both languages. We had the 

benefit of having a mostly bilingual 


audience, so we were able to have fun 

with the languages. The music is all 

recognizable tunes with original lyrics 

written by the very talented Sarah 

Charley. (10 songs in total including 

Fame which was re-written to be “Pan!” 

and the Cheers theme song that 

became “Never-Never Land.”) The 

music definitely makes this show, as the 

students still sing the songs 3 years 

later. The second time I produced Peter 

Pan was in Kuala Lumpur, where I now 

teach middle school. I re-wrote the 

script to make it more middle school 

humor, changed it to be a full English 

script, added historical details about the 

mermaids and changed the location to 

Kuala Lumpur. (Peter Pan is available in 

the public domain, so there was no 

need to pay for the rights.) We had a 

talented high school student who used 

blue screen technology to superimpose 

Peter Pan and the family as they flew by 

the Petronas Twin Towers. Floating 

clouds covered the stools to create an 

awe-inspiring scene. Sound and light 

and backstage was crewed entirely by 

middle school students. Our orchestra 

was hand picked from our middle 

school talent pool. 

THE UGLY DUCKLING: one act 

written by A.A. Milne 

Published by Cerf, Bennett and Van H 

Cartmell, 24 One Act Plays, First 

Broadway Books 2000, 

www.broadwaybooks.com 

Age appropriate: Upper Middle and 

High School 

Length: 40-45 minutes, although it is 

possible to cut this down to 20-25 

minutes 

Cast size: 3 male, 3 female 

The story is based on the children’s 

story, but is actually the story of an 

ugly princess, whose parents are 

frustrated in their attempts to find her a 

suitable husband. They end up 

scheming to present a beautiful maid 

as the bride-to-be. Luckily the princess 

ends up meeting the prince who is 

also scheming and they fall in love 

without the benefit of any tricks. The 

audience loves this story, because of 

the fabulous humor. The language is a 

bit difficult, but can be simplified. I 

used this script for an art’s festival. The 

set is very simple as it only requires 

two thrones and one bench. Costumes 

can be colorful and add to the story 

very much. 

THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES 

AGAIN: full-length play 

Written by William Gleason based on 

the film by Blake Edwards & frank 

Waldman, published by The dramatic 

Publishing Company, 

www.dramaticpublishing.com 

Age appropriate: Middle and High 

School 

Length: 2 hours 

Cast size: 25-24 with flexible number 

of speaking parts and 6-12 pink 

panthers 

This is our production for 2006/2007. 

We are really excited by the script. It is 

very slap-stick, which is fun for the 

students and the audience. The 

audition was equally based on balance 

and athleticism as on acting ability, 

which allowed for students to get 

involved that do not normally take part 

in the fine arts. We’ve done some 

great workshops on stage combat to 

prepare for this production. On the 

difficult side, there are an incredible 

amount of scene changes. The script 

compensates for this by 

recommending a simple suggestive 

set, but you can also make it more 

complex depending on your resources. 

Although this is not strictly a musical, 

our middle school orchestra will be 

supporting our music needs. We’ve 

also had a lot of fun with sound effects

for this show, although you can buy a 

sound effects tape from the publisher. 

The part we are most excited about is 

our Pink Panthers (PP’s). We have 7 

female and 5 male PP’s who function 

as entertainers between scenes but 

also move set and props on stage. 

This allows the show to run smoothly 

without the need to shut the curtain for 

set changes. Our dance 

choreographer also has them walking 

over chairs in the audience, belaying 

off the balcony and clowning for the 

audience during intermission. They 

have become as important to the story 

as the story itself. The students chosen 

as PPs were chosen based on their 

dance skills, gymnastics, athletic ability 

and/or circus skills. The PP’s are also 

developing their own specific 

personalities, such as the shy one, the 

rebel, the clown character, etc. 

Neil Harris and Flicky Lappish – 

Shatin College, Hong Kong 

OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD by 

Timberlake Wertenbaker 

The play is set in Australia 1789. A 

young lieutenant is directing rehearsals 

of the first play ever to be staged in that 

country. With only two copies of the 

text, a cast of convicts, and one leading 

lady who may be about to be hanged, 

they struggle on and eventually become 

transformed by the redemptive, 

transcendental power of theatre. 

In order to explore the play practically, 

we began by looking at Brechtian 

devices that might be used in order to 

tell the story more effectively: narration, 

cross cutting, addressing the 

audience, stylized acting, titles and 

slogans were all part of this process. It 

is a good IB project as the demands of 

the script (overlapping dialogue, for 

example) and the doubling-up of 

characters presents itself as a 

challenge for the actors. There is a fair 

amount of research the cast can do 

into the characters they are playing as 

well as the context in which the play is 

set. The “play-within-a-play” element 

allowed the students to research 

Restoration comedy in THE 

RECRUITING OFFICER that the 

convicts perform. 

OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD also 

presents a group with some strong 

ensemble moments that encourages 

the group of students to work on 

performance skills, another element of 

the IB Theatre Arts course. To this end, 

we started by looking at many of Boal’s 

rhythm games and ‘shoals of fish’ 

exercises as well as Liz’s monologue at 

the beginning of Act II to get the group 

thinking about using choral speech. We 

also found good use for Max Stafford 

Clarke’s technique of using playing 

cards to determine character status in 

scenes. These rehearsal techniques 

are always good for the students to 

record in their portfolios and can be reused 

when working on their Practical 

Play Analysis (IB Theatre Arts 

component). At the end of the scheme 

of work all of the lines and characters 

were divided up, a good opportunity 

for students to help determine the 

shape of the piece. The project, which 

is still ongoing, placed the students in 

charge of one responsibility each such 

as set design, costume, lighting and 

direction. We wish them well in their 

new theatrical landscape! 

ANTIGONE: two theatrical 

approaches 

The group began by improvising on the 

theme of moral dilemma. The scenario 

is: there has been some professional 

espionage in the company, the MD has 

to decide who is deserving of 

promotion, who dismissal. Pursuing 

the same theme but in a different 

context, the group looked at 

ANTIGONE by Jean Anouilh. After 

working on presenting the Prologue as 

an ensemble, further extracts were 

chosen for performance. 

Simultaneously the group researched 

the techniques of Brecht and 

Stanislavski and used their practice to 

interpret the text. The group was then 

directed to compare and contrast the 

extract with a similar moment in the 

text of Sophocles and at some time in 

the performance move between the 

two texts. These moments of switching 

between the two texts proved to be 

quite theatrical. The costumes used 

were simple, with the title character in 

white and with changes between 

actors realized on stage as a 

distancing device. Finally, the reasons 

for the different attitudes to the key 

protagonists were discussed and 

decisions reached about the 

playwrights’ intentions and the 

historical/political context. The group 

then returned to working as an 

ensemble for the final moments of the 

performance that was staged infront of 

parents in a studio laid out in a variety 

of stage configurations including 

traverse. Working on ancient and 

modern versions of this text offered 

both exciting and varied performance 

possibilities for the actors and a depth 

to their studies in World Theatre. 

THE RAMAYANA 

We performed the ancient Indian story 

of the Ramayana as a whole school 

production with about 120 students 

aged from Yr 8 to Yr 13. Our version 

borrowed heavily from the Balinese 

theatre traditions I had learnt about on 

an IB TAPS there. The script was 

compiled by borrowing from various 

sources, trying to “beef up” key 

sections between pairs of characters in 

a psychological modern realist sense 

e.g. “Why did Rama reject his wife” 

and dividing the whole epic into three 

sections for three separate casts. The 

whole ensemble came together at the 

beginning and the end. 

The Music Department wrote an 

excellent atmospheric score for a 

Gamelan orchestra of about 15 players 

who dressed up in sarongs on 

performance nights. Rama’s ‘hunting 

of the deer’ sequence was particularly 

magical with Gamelan accompaniment 

to the deer’s balletic movements. The 

monstrous characters such as Ravana, 

so important to the drama, were 

created through masks we made with 

gummed tape and we bought yellow 

and orange silk for the ‘good’ 

characters while purple or black cloth 

was used for the ‘baddies.’ The three 

Ramas wore all over blue body paint 

and there were three Sitas in identical 

saris. We went through a lot of 

makeup from Snazaroo! (an online 

face-paint supplier). As you would 

imagine with such a large cast, there 

was a great deal of ensemble work 

needed for the forest scenes and the 

great battle at the end but this didn’t 

prevent the sections being rehearsed 

independently. The production ended 

with the trial of Sita and a fire dance to 

test her virtue. (Not very PC I know but 

reflecting the tone of the original epic.) 

The opening at Ayodhya was 

performed outside on the playground 

with the parents looking down from 

landings. The actors and audience, 

behind a chanting chorus, processed 

together as if on Rama’s journey, to the 

school hall where others in the 

ensemble were already in situ as the 

magical forest. Difficult battles and 

seduction scenes were performed 

behind a shadow screen about 15 by 

15 feet in height. All in all I thought it 

was great fun but I think some of the 

students would have rather done 

Grease again! 


“Loads of fun and a real revelation about what general classroom teachers are able to achieve by 

integrating drama into their classroom.” 

Deborah Morehouse, Jakarta International School, Indonesia 

Ash Huxtable – International 

School of Penang, Malaysia 

WOLF LULLABY by Hillary Bell: an 

IB Theatre Arts production 

Second year students were keen to 

choose and collaboratively direct their 

own production. After reading a series 

of scripts they were immediately drawn 

to Bell’s tale of a nine year old Angie 

who is accused of murdering a twoyear 

old boy. The story draws 

inspiration from the nature vs. nurture 

debate that surrounded chilling real-life 

child murders (e.g. Mary Bell and 

James Bolger), resultant media 

attention and the effects this has on 

the accused, their parents and law 

enforcers. The students took up a 

challenging piece with enthusiasm and 

a great deal of consideration. They 

enjoyed the way that the story 

unfolded in a series of psychologically 

realistic scenes but gave them the 

opportunity to use anti-realistic 

techniques, staging and technical 

effects. A great play for original music 

and sound composition that is 

guaranteed to have your audience 

squirming in their seats. The real 

success comes when the audience are 

unsure whether they are meant to hate 

Angie or feel sorry for her. 

THE INSANE ASSYLUM: a 

Commedia dell’ Arte scenario 

Another IB project that challenged 

students to recreate the traditional 

atmosphere of a commedia 

performance. The project began with 

an introduction to mask using the 

excellent resources of the Trestle 

Theatre Company and their Basic 

Mask Set (the set comes with a 

detailed teacher’s resource pack with 

lesson by lesson workshops). 

Students took the skills learnt in this 

unit out into ‘streets’ performing 

original, short, spontaneous scenarios 

during primary school break-times. 

Here they learnt the hard way about 

the unpredictable nature of audiences 

as well as the limitations and 

boundless magic of masks. They used 

these experiences and new-found 

skills in approaching the demands of 

commedia, to improvising and 

rehearsing the ‘canavaccios’ of THE 

INSANE ASSYLUM. They had by now 

made the transference to commedia 


masks, bought over the internet from 

Darkside Masks in New Zealand. The 

students also designed and realised 

their stock character costumes as well 

as undertaking workshops in Lazzi 

acrobatics and circus skills (mostly 

juggling). The final performance was 

done in a small 100- seat theatre that 

the students transformed into a surreal 

lantern festooned wonderland. Preshow 

sought to energise the audience 

through displays of circus tricks and 

live musicians in an attempt to recreate 

a noisy market place. Traditional fourth 

wall barriers were broken in order to 

bring the audience closer to 

experiencing the production rather 

than just watching it – techniques 

learnt in the initial ‘street theatre’ mask 

work were invaluable. World theatre 

tradition transformed into a living, 

breathing event. 

PUTERI GUNANG LEDANG: The 

Fairy Princess of Gunang Mountain 

This devised performance took the 

very popular and well-known Malay 

folktale and re-told it using the 

traditional practices of puppetry, dance 

and music with a creative twist. The 

story revolves around the Sultan of 

Malacca and his arrogant assertion 

that he will marry the Fairy Princess of 

Gunang Ledang. A quest ensues, 

marked by terrible trials and results in a 

set of impossible demands laid down 

by the Princess. A cast of 40 were 

divided into Sultan’s subjects, a group 

of savage tigers, wild men of the forest 

and guardians of the Princess. The 

main three characters of the Sultan, his 

trusted warrior and the Princess herself 

were giant six-meter tall wayang golek 

puppets operated by students. The 

groups learnt traditional Balinese 

dance movements in a series of 

workshops. These movements were 

then used as a basis for more 

contemporary choreography (designed 

collaboratively by students and staff) as 

the students learnt to tell the story of 

“Puteri” through dance/drama. 

Transition narration was provided by 

wayang kulit puppets and voice-overs. 

An original score was devised by 

music students who used their work 

as part their IB and GCSE 

composition/performance 

requirements. This score also mixed 

traditional and contemporary styles. 

The whole piece lasted about 40 

minutes and was performed on the 

school field as the centre-piece of a 

performance evening called ‘Ria’ 

(Malay for ‘celebration’) that focused 

on the living culture of Malaysia – 

‘bringing the outside in’ – where invited 

performance practitioners were 

brought together to demonstrate their 

art for the school and local community. 

An exhausting exercise for a small 

department – but unbelievably 

worthwhile and inspiring. 

Greg Jemison - American 

International School of Bucharest, 

Romania 

SIAMESE FIGHTERS was a short 

play I wrote when I was teaching in a 

large comprehensive school in the UK. 

It was written at the request of a local 

primary school that was undertaking 

projects to highlight the problems of 

bullying in school. I worked with a 

small group of middle school students 

on re-working the play to make it 

relevant to an international school in 

Romania. This was a small scale 

production - bare stage, no tech and 

minimal props - aimed at 

performances for Grades 4, 5 and 6 

plus a performance for parents, faculty 

and friends. The play looks at bullying 

at different levels and at how victims 

can also be bullies. The script provides 

a framework for considerable 

improvisation and the performance 

finishes with the cast coming back on 

stage in character to face the 

questions of the audience. In fact this 

aspect of the project was the most 

grueling for the performers as some 

questions were very searching and 

really put the characters on the spot. 

Our major production was a musical 

melodrama called CAMILLA or 

CAPTIVE AT KENTIGERN COURT 

with a cast of 45 with almost the same 

number involved in support roles. It’s 

set in the early 1800’s with 

highwaymen, tavern wenches and 

aristocracy (mainly High Schoolers) 

and downtrodden servants (Middle 

School) oppressed by the wicked onearmed 

Sir Pegram and his sinister 

sidekick - Flitch. Comedy and tragedy 

are juxtaposed and the moment when 

the smallest servant stands up to his 

wicked master and has his neck

Beijing MS 

broken on stage guaranteed gasps of 

horror from the audience. Fun too for 

the tech guys who experimented with 

snapping celery and carrots in front of 

a mic to reinforce the effect. The music 

is scored for string quartet plus flute, 

piano and percussion and not having 

any string players we pulled in music 

students from the local University who 

were fantastic. We have good links 

with a local theatre and also a film 

studio who were invaluable in helping 

us with set, props and costume and 

this involvement with the wider 

community really helped to energize 

the students involved. I wrote the play 

some years ago with one of my 

students who wrote all the music. 

Our most recent purely High School 

production was Moliere’s THE MISER. 

There was some cutting and a fair 

amount of translation to make the play 

more accessible and contemporary. 

The production was not period specific 

and costuming was eclectic with 

Harpagon in tail coat and battered top 

hat and the sly servant La Fleche in 

baggy jeans and entering on a kid’s 

scooter. We used Commedia as a way 

into much of the physical comedy and 

this gave the cast the opportunity to 

create their own Lazzi and visual comic 

details. For the scene where Harpagon 

searches inside La Fleche’s baggy 

pants for stolen goods the two boys 

created an amazing and hilarious 

routine. Initially many of the cast were 

doubtful as to whether the play would 

be funny for a contemporary audience 

and felt such achievement when the 

audience responded as they hoped. 

We used a soundtrack based entirely 

on the Hooked on Classics series of 

well known classical pieces with ‘naff’ 

disco beat. 

Nancy Jenkins – Anglican 

International School, Jerusalem 

(formerly at International School 

Yangon, Myanmar) 

THE VENETIAN TWINS by Goldoni 

in a translation by Ranjit Bolt 

This is the second time I have directed 

this play, which I saw performed by the 

RSC twice! This is a brilliant, 

entertaining and irreverent translation, 

yet still suitable for schools. I worked 

with a cast of 14 for over 12 weeks, all 

of whom were aged between 13 and 

18. I cast two different students as the 

twins on both occasions. In Rangoon, 

one was a boy and one a girl. The use 

of half masks made this possible. Girls 

also played the father, several of the 

servants and the villain of the piece. 

This play can be performed with 

minimal set and lighting and it is 

possible to localize a lot of it, so the 

inn became the American Colony 

Hotel, Jerusalem etc. The audience 

loved it and so did the students. 

MY FAIR LADY 

I worked with about 25 students, 

aged 11 to 18, a Musical Director 

playing a piano and two 

Choreographers. I had to re-cast the 

musical in a morning because the 

school board banned my first choice, 

BLOOD BROTHERS, that I had 

chosen partly because I had promised 

the students we would do a musical, 

only thought I had one student who 

could sing and believed I could handle 

the choreography myself. Three hours 

later I assembled the cast of BB and 

announced a change of plan. We had 

a minimalist set and lighting, but we 

went to town on the costumes and 

props. I also had choreographers who 

made the dancing really innovative and 

exciting and the costumes were 

spectacular. It was extremely 

ambitious, but the students pulled it 

off. If we can mount a production like 

this, from within a Middle School/High 

School of 70 students with no music 

department, no drama department 

apart from extra-curricular and no 

dance training, anyone can... 

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING 

EARNEST 

The challenge of what to do after MY 

FAIR LADY... We decided on 

something more intellectual with a 

small cast, which would allow the two 

students who played Professor Higgins 

and Colonel Pickering to play opposite 

each other again. I worked with 9 

students aged 15-17. We went for a 

sumptuous set and less elaborate and 

authentic costumes. Students and 

audience loved the play, but the cast 

did comment that the first night 

audience was much better because 

they got more of the jokes. This 

production also featured an African- 

American Lady Bracknell! 

And this year... GUYS AND DOLLS. 

We now have a music teacher, so she 

will start a choir in October and teach 

all the musical numbers, I will cast the 

musical in January, for performance in 

June. 

Beijing MS 

Fenella Kelly - Cairo American 

College, Egypt 

SPARKLESHARK by Philip Ridley 

from the National Theatre anthology 

of plays for young people 

CAC had been experiencing some 

bullying and discrimination problems 

before I arrived at the school, so I 

thought this Middle School play would 

help highlight and address some of 

those issues. I auditioned as soon as I 

arrived and had an overwhelming 

number of students audition. I 

therefore decided to double cast the 

show and also avoid stereotyping by 

doing so. For example, the bully was 

tall and blonde in one show and very 

small and dark in the other; the object 

of bullying (the character of Finn, an 

older sibling with speech and 

communication problems) was a 

stocky boy in the first show and a tall 

girl in the second. The ‘popular’ girls 

gang was also different each night, 

with one group being predominantly 

American and the other group being 

more international. We worked on the 

play for 8 weeks and simultaneously 

the Middle School Stagecraft classes 

(one of which I was teaching) designed 

and built the set and designed the 

lights. Students felt true ownership of 

the production and the large student 

involvement meant that audiences 

were large, and hopefully our message 

reached many. 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND: an 

adaptation of the version in Plays 

for Children by Blanche Mervin 

AND 

THE EIFFEL TOWE WEDDING 

PARTY taken from The Infernal 

Machine and other Plays by Jean 

Cocteau 

My High School Acting class wanted 

to do plays that really enabled them to 

develop character, voice and 

movement. We therefore chose to do 

2 plays that could really allow them to 

work on contrast in rhythm, style, 

staging etc, but also have an 

overarching theme that they could 

apply to both. We chose these two 

plays and decided to do both of them 

in a Surrealistic style. The set and 

costumes were researched, designed 

and made by the Middle School and 

High School Stagecraft classes. These 

classes worked in collaboration with 

the director, who communicated the 

ideas and needs of the cast to the 

Stagecraft students. ALICE IN 

WONDERLAND was the most fluid 

script with students reading the A.A. 

Milne novel and taking other 

characters and scenes that they felt 

HAD to be included. Other lines were 

adapted and added to other scenes to 

allow for more characters and action. 

THE EIFFEL TOWER WEDDING PARTY 

was taken as written, but for both plays 

we had to add the Surrealist slant, so 

we experimented with unusual staging, 

use of trap doors for objects and 

people to appear and disappear ‘as if 

in a dream’ and we also worked with 

music and movement to add variety, 

juxtaposition and the elements of the 

unexpected. Students in the class 

worked on this play for 10 weeks. The 

Stagecraft classes worked on the set, 

lights and costumes for 5 weeks. In 

total there were about 90 students 

involved in the production process. 

Susan King-Lachance – Jakarta 

International School, Indonesia 

THE CHALK CIRCLE by Bertolt 

Brecht 

Jakarta International School’s high 

school theatre program recently staged 

this play set in Indonesia during an 

undetermined time period- yesterday 

today tomorrow There is a reason it 

is called Epic Theatre! Although it was 

a big show involving 45 cast members 

from grades 9-12 and almost as many 

crew members, it was great fun to 

work with and fairly accessible for high 

school actors. Since we set the 


production in Indonesia, we used 

kecak to stage the opening Parable of 

the Chalk Circle, wayang golek 

puppets for the lawyers, popular 

dangdut music, and comic clowns 

from wayang orang. It was a lovely 

experience for our students to actively 

study the performing arts of our host 

country, and our production hopefully 

opened the eyes of the audience to 

the social problems in their world. It’s 

amazing how contemporary Brecht still 

is; this play could be staged anywhere 

in the world and still be poignant. All 

we did was change the names of the 

characters to Indonesian names and 

references to places in Indonesia. Our 

prep time was seven weeks. Without 

two directors (myself and Tom Schulz) 

this would have been a bit too short of 

a rehearsal period for a production of 

this scale. Luckily at Jakarta 

International School we have stipends 

available for a set designer, tech 

director, producer, costumer, and 

director. 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW by 


Last March students prepared a 

Commedia dell’Arte version of this play 

as a 45-minute festival piece that 

traveled to Bangkok, Thailand. 

Auditions and casting were done in 

conjunction with a one-week CDA 

workshop given by Marco Luly (whom 

many ISTA members will know through 

attending various Asian festivals and 

TAPS). This piece was a double 

challenge for the cast of sixteen 10- 

12th grade actors since they were 

dealing with two distinct styles. 

Masked zanni sat on the stage the 

entire show and stepped forward to 

play various roles as well as 

contributing sound effects to the very 

physical comedy found in the play. 

Masks were designed and constructed 

by an IB theatre student who used the 

work as her individual project. Over 

the six week preparation period, actors 

fully explored the traditional Commedia 

style; masks made of plaster with foam 

rubber features were less traditional, 

but equally fun. Costumes were also 

student designed. Since the show 

traveled, the set consisted of long 

lengths of fabric draped over battens 

and hung rope ladders. 

WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER by A.R 

Gurney 

In late April of 2006, three one-acts 

were staged with the audience seated 

on our main stage in modified arena 

configuration. My favorite text was 

WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER, cut to a 

40 minute play. Rights can be 

arranged through Dramatists Play 

Service, Inc. We performed only the 

first act since we had a short fourweek 

rehearsal period. The characters 

are age-appropriate and the realistic 

acting style required was a nice relief 

from the more stylized and 

exaggerated traditional styles we had 

worked with last year. It has a small 

cast (two men and four women) and is 

an absolute jewel. 

Sandy Landis – International 

School of Stavanger, Norway 

Musicals: PIPPIN, FAME AND 

GREASE 

Pippin and Fame are available in 

Europe from Josef Weinberger Ltd, 

http://www.josefweinberger.com/weinberger/index.html 

Grease is available in Scandinavia from 

Nordiska, www.nordiska.dk 

High School 

I put these three together because 

they are quite well known texts. For 

our featured production of the year, we 

have, recently, tended to select crowdpleasing 

musicals such as these. Each 

has its own style and places its own 

unique demands on the actors. For our 

presentations of PIPPIN, we rehearsed 

for approximately six weeks three 

times a week. We split the lead 

player’s part among approximately 

fifteen students and attempted to 

provide each participant with a 

featured moment. Students were 

allowed to select the scenes in which 

they participated and responsibilities 

were shared. Much of the blocking and 

choreography was student-initiated. 

This is a very “sweet” text, with catchy 

music and a nice message. For FAME, 

we divided a cast of 35 into three 

ensembles: a music ensemble, a 

dance ensemble and an acting 

ensemble. These groups were able to 

have separate rehearsals and this 

allowed us to use an abbreviated 

rehearsal period (six weeks, three 

meetings a week). Our music 

ensemble made up the “music 

students” in the FAME school but also 

provided all the music for the show 

itself. The dance ensemble worked 

with our choreographer to develop 

their own dances that provided 

transitions between scenes and 

‘scenery’ for songs and scenes. We 

had minimal technical demands,

estricting our set to black boxes and 

platforms. The stage was a fluid area 

through which students moved freely, 

as if in a school, including moving from 

the performance space into the 

instrumental area. This text was 

extremely flexible and we felt that we 

could adjust it to match our group’s 

strengths effectively. GREASE, of 

course, is an old stand-by. While there 

aren’t many ‘moments’ in the text that 

challenge actors emotionally, it is such 

good fun that students challenge 

themselves. We really focused on 

character acting and comedic timing 

for this one. We spent eight weeks in 

rehearsals (three meetings a week), 

splitting time among choreographic, 

dramatic, and music rehearsals. We 

had a stationary set consisting of a 

scaffolding platform with a stage-right 

staircase and backstage access, a set 

of lockers and several benches that 

served multiple purposes. 

INTERVIEW: a one act play from 

AMERICAN HURRAH published by 

Dramatists Play Service, available 

alone or with AMERICAN HURRAH, 

www.dramatists.com 

High School 

This is a fantastic text to challenge 

drama students. It is approximately 20 

minutes long but those twenty minutes 

are extremely intense and demanding. 

The first half of the play consists of 

four anonymous interviewers 

bombarding four ‘average’ people with 

questions regarding their lives and 

work experiences. The audience 

understands that this questioning 

process in meant to approximate the 

situation of a job interview. However, in 

the absurd world of the play, the 

questions drift away from reality, 

becoming more and more absurd and 

seemingly more and more probing, 

even diabolical. The second half of the 

play follows the same characters 

through a series of monologues that 

move the action from the impersonal, 

surface realm of the first half to a more 

internal realm. Overall, the play is a 

fairly cynical statement on life, 

suggesting that the world is a cold, 

impersonal place where only the fittest, 

or cleverest, survive. In terms of style, 

the play verges on the absurd. It is 

very fast-paced and requires a strong 

sense of timing. While individual actors 

will be challenged and showcased, the 

play provides tremendous 

opportunities for creative ensemble 

work. It has a minimal set (eight chairs 

or boxes) and technical demands and 

is very flexible in terms of performance 

space. We developed it over the 

course of about five rehearsals for a 

one-off performance, but I have also 

used it as a contest piece and as part 

of an evening of one-acts. 

Keith LeFever – Schule Schloss 

Salem, Germany 

UBU REX by Alfred Jarry 

We read this play in our middle school 

theater workshop session looking at 

possible sections for scene work. The 

students were so fascinated by the 

intensity of the play that we decided to 

produce it for Parents Day, which was 

five months away. At first we would 

read a scene, then use the basic 

structure to improvise. In this way we 

could experiment with the play and 

find our own levels of expression. We 

also cast the play using the 

improvisations as the basis for 

character selection. We ended up 

having most of the main roles played 

by girls; only Tatzensaum and Bubelas 

were played by boys. Then we brought 

in a professional acting coach from the 

National Theater in Mannheim, to do 

an intensive two-day workshop on 

body language and extreme forms of 

expression, using masks and group 

exercises. We developed ideas such 

as slow-motion racing, the ‘great 

escape’ of the Queen and Bubelas 

over 12 meters long being supported 

only by bodies and not touching the 

floor, finger puppets to represent 

thousands of angry citizens, and using 

shadows as a method of execution. 

Our four musicians used tools that 

they found in the janitor’s room as their 

instruments. We used the floor of our 

Gym as the stage and it was 6 meters 

wide and 16 meters long. We had the 

audience raised on two sides with the 

stage being in the middle. At each end 

we had a two level scaffold and two 

Beijing MS 

wooden slides which lead down to the 

main stage. This provided plenty of 

space for the 28 actors and gave us 

endless possibilities for movement and 

the ‘crowd’ scenes. The entire tech 

was done by the middle school 

students. The lighting was particularly 

complicated and detailed and 

demanded long hours to hang and 

focus. The make up crew had a blast 

as we let them free to come up with 

outlandish designs, which produced a 

green Ubu with bones, bugs, and body 

parts in his hair. We had a wave of 

illness that reached the cast; therefore 

our rehearsal time was cut short. We 

asked the school if we couldn’t use 

some class time to finish the play, our 

request was rejected. Therefore we 

showed the rise of Ubu, but not the fall. 

THE LEARNED LADIES by Moliére 

This play we performed with the high 

school group as a main stage 

production. As usual we were 

searching for a play with strong female 

roles as the balance of power in our 

theater group hardly ever swings the 

other way. Most of the group had 

exceptional speech skills and had been 

with me for almost four years. The play 

has wonderful themes such as family 

dynamic, intellectual snobbery and, of 

course, the role of women in society. 

We used a great German translation 

that was modern and phonetically 

ingenious. Because of the language 

we decided to set the play in the fifties 

which had some of the same attitudes 

toward women, daughters, and 

intellectuals as in Moliére’s time... more 

or less. The choice helped our prop 

and costume department and cut 

down on our overall production costs. 

We had the stage set up in a sort of 

thrust mode, which was shaped more 

like a “T”, with the living room jutting 

out with the bar and entrances at the 

back. Having the audience on three 

sides increased the intimacy of the 


Beijing MS 

space and when watching, one felt like 

almost part of the family. The 

production was a huge success in the 

community, which always pleases the 

PR department. 

AFTER JULIET by Sharman 

Macdonald, published by Samuel 

French 

A play written by the mother of Keira 

Knightley, about what happens to the 

teenage Capulets and Montagues after 

the death of Romeo and Juliet. We 

chose this play again out of the need 

to find a play with plenty of female 

roles. In order to increase the number 

of the performers we coupled the play 

with scenes from Shakespeare’s 

ROMEO AND JULIET also to refresh 

the audience about who is/was who. 

Again, in order to cut production costs, 

we kept the stage almost completely 

bare using only platforms, scaffolding, 

a bed and a couch for both plays. The 

main production elements we used 

were lighting, fog, and music. We were 

fortunate to have two excellent student 

musicians, one on the grand piano 

with the other playing cello, they 

played original music combining it with 

fantastic improvisations. We also made 

“R+J” timeless using modern 

costumes and props and a rather 

modern translation (German). 

One more play that I’m doing with the 

8th and 9th graders is THE POET AND 

THE RENT by David Mamet (Samuel 

French)... a fun play with a very flexible 

cast and simple production elements. 

Gillian Lynch – American School of 

Paris, France 

High School Productions 

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU by 

Kaufmann and Hart 

Social /Political Context: America 

1930’s - great for getting students to 

do research. A very simple set inside of 


a house. I resolved the problem of the 

‘basement’ by creating an attic 

instead, this meant that actors were on 

stage and visible while they were 

making their inventions but it worked 

nicely. Character work fantastic and 

includes accents and physical stage 

combat /age work for students to 

explore. It’s a great ensemble piece for 

12-15 actors (I added in a few 

characters). Light comedy/love story... 

Students loved working on this. 

BLOOD WEDDING by Lorca 

Small cast, simple stage set. 

Melodrama. In this production I had 

the MS design a forest. We had a live 

cello player and baroque lyric singer 

and Bunraku type puppets woven 

throughout the production. Actors also 

had the chance to work with a tango 

dancer in workshop sessions for the 

wedding scene. 

CHANGES OF HEART by Marivaux 

Small cast. Simple set. Parallel work 

on Commedia dell’arte as Marivaux 

wrote for the Italian players. Great for 

IB dramaturgy. Heightened language 

but accessible to young acting 

students. Working on rhythm and 

timing important. 

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR 

by Gogol 

I am working with a cast of 30. 

Grotesque and physical comedy as 

well as having a very dark underlining. 

Very simple to stage, we are working 

on a 3m x 3m. Minimal set and 

lighting requirements. 

ANTIGONE by Anouilh 

An IB class project . Performed outside 

in “found” space for younger audience 

(MS). 

STEEL MAGNOLIAS by 

IB Class Project. Performed beginning 

scenes as worked on stage, reading 

for the rest. Excellent for set design, 

accents and older character work. 

Middle School Productions 

THE TREE THAT HOLDS UP THE 

SKY, part of the Cambridge play 

series 

Great ensemble piece (25students). 

Also looking into other theatre/ 

performance traditions. Story takes 

place in the Amazon jungle. A road is 

being build through the forest causing 

devastation until it comes to a halt as a 

result of a tree needing to be knocked 

down. A meeting of two cultures and 

two belief systems. Environmental play 

with a strong message. Also chorus 

work. Some of the script needed to be 

touched up but also has some 

moments of humour. Students loved 

working on it and great for all 

audiences (Lower School included). 

Adaptation of ALICE IN 

WONDERLAND and a few scenes 

from THROUGH THE LOOKING 

GLASS 

Mixed and massed a few scripts and 

adapted some scenes. Great improv 

work possible around the story in order 

to build script. Strong ensemble piece. 

Had the IB students design a modular 

set. (40 students) 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 

A massive undertaking with 6th-8th 

graders. They came out loving the Bard. 

A THOUSAND CRANES, OUR DAY 

OUT and I NEVER SAW ANOTHER 

BUTTERFLY have all been in class 

8th grade projects. 

Chuck and Becci McDaniel – John 

F Kennedy School, Berlin, Germany 

DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER by 

Bertolt Brecht: The Threepenny 

Opera, English version from Tams- 

Wimark, Blitzstein translation 

We produced Brecht’s Three Penny 

Opera in the original German. The 

music is sometimes lush, sometimes 

stark, and the small orchestra is ideal 

for schools with small music programs. 

The cast is flexible. (We used 27, but 

could have made do with19.) There are 

4 good roles for women (if you include 

the Street Singer). The piece also 

allows you to experiment with Brecht’s 

concept of Verfremdung (making 

things strange). We stripped away all 

the masking curtains, revealing the 

bare walls. The stage itself was, for the 

most part, bare. Individual scenes were 

introduced by Titeln (signs, in our case, 

projected PowerPoint slides). Each 

scene itself was represented by a 

single, free standing, painted flat that 

represented the location of the scene 

(bales of hay for the stable, lush velvet 

drapes for the whorehouse). The jail 

cell we created with a single gobo. In 

all, the spare setting allowed us both 

to cut costs and let the students 

experience a special kind of 

theatricality and intimacy with the 

audience. The play itself, with its cast 

of devious characters and its focus on 

social issues (greed, injustice, 

corruption, and more), was great fun 

for our students as well.

“It was wonderful to see young people from all over the globe coming together to further their 

learning about theatre in a mutually supportive and excitingly enriching environment.” 

Paula Mor, Island School, Hong Kong 

THE LADY IS NOT FOR BURNING 

by Christopher Fry, published by 

Dramatists Play Service 

Fry’s play is a beautiful lyrical 

exploration of life, love, and morality. 

This piece can be done in very 

Shakespearean style, with a simple set 

consisting of only a couple of raised 

platforms and a few benches and 

chairs. The small cast has several 

women’s roles with some meat to 

them, and the roles of the chaplain and 

town drunk can be converted, giving a 

balance of 6 M to 5 F. The play itself 

(written in blank verse) is both a verbal 

delight and an effective challenge to 

students. Our students revelled in the 

unusual word formations and, through 

working with the play’s intricate 

language, gained greater control of 

their own vocal mechanisms. Definitely 

a worthwhile challenge. 

ORIGINAL VIDEOS 

Our Advanced Drama class created 

original videos for public presentation. 

During class, we concentrated on 

three basic elements of filmmaking: 

directing, writing, and acting. We 

looked at both classic films, such as 

Citizen Kane and Casablanca, and 

more recent gems, such as American 

Beauty. The students, in groups of 

about five, pitched a script idea, wrote 

a draft screenplay that was critiqued 

by the teacher, then revised the 

screenplay into a shooting script. 

Students then created a locations 

chart, shot individual scenes, then 

edited them together using iMovie. 

Students were both their own actors 

and directors, and all students 

participated in the editing process. We 

had a gala presentation evening. All the 

students’ videos were shown, and the 

audience voted on Best Supporting 

Player, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best 

Screenplay, and Best Picture. Winners 

received little Smurf statuettes. It was 

a great way to cap the project, which 

we would recommend as a means to 

helping drama students connect the 

dots between the two media of theatre 

and film. 

Annie Mcmanners – Frankfurt 

International School, Germany 

HOMER’S ODYSSEY by David 

Calcutt published by Nelson as a 

Dramascript 

We worked for 2 months on this with 

9-12 grade students. 15 girls and 15 

boys. The first scene in the play is 

slightly dodgy and could take a few 

cuts, but it soon perks up. The girls 

played the suitors of Penelope in the 

first and last scene wearing masks and 

robes and then the boys burst in with 

a sort of Haka that was virile and 

visceral to lead into the rest of the play. 

Masses of music and movement 

opportunities, dance, mime and choral 

speaking. We performed on the floor of 

the room with audience on 3 sides and 

a series of platforms and steps leading 

up to the stage at one end. The 

Cyclops was rear projection with a 

voice over, but there are other great 

production challenges for IB students 

to work on. 

GRIMM TALES AND MORE GRIMM 

TALES by Carol Ann Duffy and Tim 

Supple, published by Faber and 

Faber 

Each of these contains 7 or 8 different 

stories with dramatizations. We 

selected 8 scenes from the two plays 

and put them together as one 

performance. We performed on the 

floor with audience on three sides with 

large painted screens on either side to 

provide exits etc. There was a cast of 

50, divided into two groups, but it 

could be done with 10 actors. In Act 1, 

one group performed as the sound 

factory for the stories, sitting apart 

from the actors, making sound/music 

using a variety of traditional and 

improvised instruments as well as their 

voices. For Act 2 they swapped with 

the other group. Each story has a 

different set of challenges and we used 

Folkmanis puppets in many instances 

as well as creating all of the settings 

and props using students. The screens 

were painted with a scary forest taken 

from a book of Walt Disney stills from 

Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. We 

worked for 2 months with students from 

grades 9-12. 

ARABIAN NIGHTS by Dominic 

Cooke, published by Nick Hearn 

Books 

Rich colour, fabric, carpets, gold and 

silver, food platters with real food, belly 

dancing, incense burners. This is all 

you need to do this show. We had a 

large cast of 55 and there are about 40 

roles but you could do it with 10, with 

doubling. There is a lot of room to 

make each story individual and I asked 

pairs of IB students to take charge of a 

scene, encouraging them to negotiate 

with each other to produce an 

umbrella design, as well as individual 

ideas. The Music department 

purchased a number of authentic 

Beijing MS 


instruments including a Duduk on eBay 

and learned how to play them for the 

show. Other music was provided by 

CD’s (there is a lot of Music of the 

Middle East available on World Music 

CD’s.) Plenty of opportunities for group 

dances at weddings and celebrations 

and at the end. 

Mark Mouck – American School of 

Warsaw, Poland 

Using David Mamet’s THREE USES 

OF THE KNIFE to explore dramatic 

structure 

After playing theater games for the first 

few days of a school year, I have each 

of my IB I students lead the ensemble 

through a game. Afterwards, they 

write about it in their journals in terms 

of taking leadership versus playing a 

supporting role in the ensemble. This 

year one of my students introduced 

me to a physical variation of the 

telephone game, which I have since 

used as a warm up. The idea is that 

one student performs an action for the 

next student in line, who then repeats 

it on down the line with oftenhumorous 

results at the end. I have 

found that the initiator of the 

movement generally wants to tell a 

story in mime: a freshmen being 

stuffed into a locker; burying a 

treasure-box; a frog trying to jump over 

a log. By the time the movement gets 

to the last person, the story has been 

lost. The last person usually flails 

about for five seconds and 

Calderdale HS 

Calderdale HS 


then throws their arms up in confusion. 

Then fingers are pointed at someone, 

usually early in the line, for losing the 

story. They want to turn the 

destruction of the story into a story, 

too, the plot of which is the loss of the 

plot. Even in the little games we play, 

we need to make up stories. 

When devising longer stories with my 

students, I emphasize making the story 

meaningful to their audience. To explore 

the creation of meaning, we explore 

dramatic structure. In their sophomore 

year, we spend a day looking at the 

various incarnations of the hero myth. 

The discussion springs from Joseph 

Campbell’s The Power of Myth and The 

Hero with a Thousand Faces. I warn 

them that this discussion may ruin their 

movie-going experience as we apply the 

structure presented in these books to 

Hollywood films. The analysis of 

structure generally helps their stories, 

but I wanted to go deeper into dramatic 

structure with my IB students. After 

reading that IB wants students to 

engage directly with the writings of 

theater practitioners, I bought a number 

of ‘primary texts’. David Mamet’s 

collection of essays, Three Uses of the 

Knife, was among them. 

The first line of the first essay is, “It’s in 

our nature to dramatize.” That is, we 

want to find meaning in everything that 

happens to us (and it happens to us.) 

Mamet provides a couple of examples 

of finding meaning in everyday 

experiences. “Great. It’s raining. Just 

when I’m blue. Isn’t that just like 

life” In another example Mamet goes 

on for two pages describing the 

perfect ball game. “Do we wish for 

our team to take the field and thrash 

the opposition from the First 

Moment... No. We wish for a closely 

fought match that contains many 

satisfying reversals.” Ultimately it is just 

a sphere (of sorts) moving back and 

forth across a field. Ultimately it is just 

water condensing in the atmosphere 

above us. Ultimately it is just a 

movement we are asked to pass down 

the line. Just as we find meaning in 

phenomena, we find satisfaction in 

creating highs and lows in life, what 

Mamet summarizes as the “Yes! No! 

but Wait!” structure of drama. He 

explains, “It is difficult, finally, not to 

see our lives as a play with ourselves 

the hero.” 

When I first gave the third essay in 

Mamet’s book to my IB 1 students last 

year in preparation for a Shakespeareinspired 

devised theater competition, I 

thought I was asking them to explore 

tragedy. A naturally comedic group, I 

wanted to challenge them to 

understand the nature and purpose (to 

steal Mamet’s phrase) of tragedy. But 

as they worked the piece over three 

weeks, they realized that comic relief 

was necessary for the rhythm and 

tempo of the play. As they fitted the 

play with the ups and downs they 

thought necessary, they realized, and I, 

that they weren’t studying just tragedy, 

only one of the masks, they were 

studying the nature of drama. 

The story they created was fun... for a 

tragedy. In the end, they decided it 

was about what would happen 

if Hamlet and Lady Macbeth, unmarried 

in their story, were to meet and fall in 

love. Somebody is going to cry “Out, 

damned spot!” (Hamlet) and somebody 

is going to get murdered (Lady 

Macbeth.) Story spoiler: Hamlet kills 

himself, too. But the beginning of the 

process to create the story came from 

the title of Mamet’s collection of essays. 

In the final essay he quotes the blues 

singer Leadbelly, “You take a knife, you 

use it to cut the bread, so you’ll have 

strength to work; you use it to shave, 

so you’ll look nice for you lover; on 

discovering her with another, you use it 

to cut out her lying heart.” At the 

beginning of the process, before they 

looked to Shakespeare for inspiration, 

before they considered the rhythm of 

highs and lows in the play, I asked 

them to use an object as a symbol or 

image that would, as Mamet suggests, 

“subtly change its purpose through the 

course of the play.” Like the knife, the 

symbol or image should not physically 

change, but our perception of it should. 

Mamet says, “The tragedy of murder is 

affecting as the irony of the recurrent 

knife is affecting. The appearance of 

the knife is the attempt of the orderly 

affronted mind to confront the 

awesome.” Like the rain or ball 

described above, the knife is neither 

good nor evil. Thinking has made it 

both. He summarizes the effect of 

purposeful dramatic structure here: 

In great drama we see this 

lesson [the worthlessness of 

reason] learned by the hero. 

More important, we undergo the 

lesson ourselves, as we have 

our expectations raised only to 

be dashed, as we find that we

have suggested to ourselves the 

wrong conclusion and that, 

stripped of our intellectual 

arrogance, we must 

acknowledge our sinful, weak, 

impotent state -and that, having 

acknowledged it, we may find 

peace. 

The object my students used and its 

symbolic nature got them third place at 

the competition. The first two places 

went to comedies. Their “knife” was a 

pen used to write a book on the 

virtues of the solitary life. After the 

book propels the author to fame, we 

encounter the first act problem: he falls 

in love. The audience is rooting for 

their hero though. Then the second act 

problem: the new couple has an 

argument over the virtues of solitude. 

Here I interrupted the student’s 

process for a discussion about 

character/relationship foils. They 

decided to insert a few scenes about 

“the ideal couple”, who in one scene 

have an argument, but who come to 

terms with their disagreement in 

another scene of emasculating comic 

relief. If only our hero could learn this 

lesson. After a few more plot twists 

where the author picks himself back 

up only to fall down again, our hero, 

tragically proud and unable to heed the 

rules of relationships, kills the woman 

with the pen for making him contradict 

everything he wrote. The murder 

sequesters him to a loneliness he can’t 

handle, and he writes a suicide note 

with the still bloody pen. 

The knife remains the same, but the 

play allows the audience to give it 

significance. The various incarnations 

of the knife, as it changes in the minds 

of the audience, charts the highs and 

lows of the story. The three uses of the 

knife are the three parts of dramatic 

structure. 

In the telephone game, while my 

students are passing the movement 

down the line, I have had some fun with 

keeping the rest of them entertained. 

Most recently, I asked the rest of the 

line to name an animal for me to mimic. 

One called out a monkey. I lowered 

myself like an American football player 

at the line of scrimmage, stuck my 

fingers on my head like a pair of horns 

and jumped around. “That’s not a 

monkey!” “Try a giraffe.” Again, I 

squatted down, put my fingers on my 

head and jumped about. “That’s not a 

giraffe!” After repeating a few more 

times, I squatted down with my 

fingers on my head and, while 

jumping around, asked them what I 

am now. They got the joke and 

started calling out all sorts of things. 

The action was the same every time; 

the joke was in their perception of the 

action. 

Mark Palfrey – Munich 


THE VENETIAN TWINS by Nick 

Enright 

A musical. The play text was written by 

Nick Enright and the music by 

Terence Clarke. The piece is a 

pastiche of styles and genres loosely 

based on Goldoni‘s A SERVANT OF 

TWO MASTERS. The MIS 

production was rehearsed as an 

after school activity. The cast 

worked 6 hours per week for about 

12 weeks to learn the dialogue, 

song and movement required. We 

had a live band and the 

actors/singers were mic’d. I 

employed two vocal coaches, 

musical director, set designer, 

choreographer and make up 

artists to assist. This show is a lot 

of work but is highly entertaining. 

CHRONICLE OF DEATH foretold by 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

I adapted the novel into a play script. A 

long task. The novel takes the 

structure of a Greek Tragedy so that 

was the starting point. The community, 

who do not stop the murder were the 

chorus, who never left the stage. They 

were set up as a jury watching and 

commenting on the action; they also 

delivered a lot of the text taking the 

role of the narrator. Most actors played 

multiple roles. We used live music 

(Indian) as we transported the story to 

Goa. We used rear screen projections, 

40 still images, as the backdrops for 

each scene. Chapters were introduced 

with Brechtian style titles, also 

projected. The death scene was done 

behind the screen with coloured 

images. The piece was rehearsed, as 

an after school activity, for about 12 

weeks. I worked closely with a musical 

director/musician, set designer and 

later a lighting designer. 

RANDOM 

This year I am working on Random. As 

the name suggests, it is a pot pourri of 

pieces. The aim is to contrast and 

juxtapose. Taking the audience from 

comfort to discomfort, humour to 

horror. The extracts will not be 

Calderdale HS 

Calderdale HS 

delivered in one piece but cut up. 

The set is minimalist, lighting and 

sound will be very important. I am 

working closely with the same team as 

last year. The genesis of this ides came 

from the demands of the previous year. 

It was physically and emotionally 

draining to undertake such a large 

project as CHRONICLE given the 

demands that IB and Grade 10 

students have on their time. Trying to 

get twenty cast members together for 

two hours was impossible. RANDOM 

allows groups to meet when they can 

and work on their own pieces. 

Elcin Peker – Eyuboglu High 

School, Turkey 

BLOOD BROTHERS by William 

Russell 

This ninety-minute play was performed 

by our Middle School students. We 

spent 2 hours per week- in a sevenmonth 

period, and we worked with 

two separate groups. Since the play 

requires two different casts to perform 

childhood and adolescent periods, we 

had the opportunity to work with 30 

students. We performed the original 

play. Although it is a musical, we only 

focused on 3 significant pieces of 

music and designed dance 


“What other event makes professional development feel like such a vacation for the mind and soul” 

Doug Bishop, Taipei American School, Taiwan 

choreography for them. After practising 

some basic drama skills and going 

over the importance of body language, 

gestures/mimics and posture we were 

ready to start. Before the audition part 

students did research on the play and 

read the critics. After reading the 

scripts, they started practising for 

audition. The play was performed at 

our school’s OPEN HOUSE DAY. 

John Pitonzo – International 

School of Florence, Italy 

PIRATES OF THE 

MEDITERRANEAN: Middle School 

Middle School students ideated and 

participated in the creation of the 

script. They spent 3 months putting 

the play together, creating their own 

costumes, writing the dialogue, and 

designing the set. The play involved a 

ghost pirate recruiting a group of 

neighborhood kids to locate a long lost 

treasure in order to end the curse 

placed on him by a lady Bucaneer for 

the “haircut” he had given her. They 

performed the play in front of the 

elementary school and at Teatro Le 

Laudi in Florence as part of a doubleheader 

with Romeo and Juliet. 

THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY OF 

FAUSTINA FAUX: High School 

This was a take-off on Marlowe’s Dr. 

Faustus. Faustina, an average student 

with self-perceived average looks, one 

true friend and an acceptance into a 

non-competitive university, makes a 

deal with the devil for the highest 

grades, beauty and popularity. 

Twenty-four years later, highly 

successful, men at her feet, the devil 

comes collecting and she has a 

change of heart. In this version things 

turn out in her favor as The All. 

Powerful shows up and plays a dirty 

trick on the devil. The play had a cast 

of 8 consisting of Faustina, her friend, 

Mephistofeles, a good angel, bad angel, 

a shady teen selling drugs, watches and 

black magic, God, the Devil, and the 

most popular boy in the school. This 

play was 50 minutes long and 

performed for grades 7 through 11. 

ROMEO AND JULIET: High School 

The Upper School Drama class, 

combined of 21 grade 9 and 10 

students, performed a contemporary, 

slightly edited version of Shakespeare’s 


love play. They performed this play at 

Teatro Le Laudi in Florence. The play 

included contemporary music selected 

by the students. 

Catherine Rankin - BISS Beijing 

International School, China 

RITES OF PASSAGE: student 

devised 

A group of 7 students aging from 11 to 

16 worked with me on a student 

devised piece call “Rites of Passage” 

for our One Act Play Festival. The 

main theme was based on what 

adolescents do to be accepted by 

their peers. Some of the ideas I had 

came from other small group 

workshops but the overall performance 

was a truly collaborative effort. The 

focus of the performance was 

ensemble work so there was no lead 

character. It started with the idea of a 

new person arriving into a tribe – “ 

Deep in the Jungle there is a tribe. The 

tribe is adolescence and the jungle is 

here!” The play then progressed 

through a variety of events such as – 

smoking (using Madonna’s vogue as a 

base) drugs; alcohol (poem about the 

hangover fairy); fashion sense (wigs) 

and sex. Through out sections the 

students performed monologues 

lasting one minute, that focused on an 

individual’s reaction to the “tests”. The 

play concluded with an initiation 

sequence. We performed the piece for 

the school and audiences at the 

Festival. The audiences found it to be a 

powerful performance. 

AIDS – Student devised 

The AIDS presentation was for World 

Aids Day. The performance started 

with a PowerPoint display with Avril 

Lavigne’s version of “Knocking on 

Heaven’s Door”. A group of five 

students were frozen in still images. 

After the PowerPoint, the lights came 

up and each person said a series of 

statistics. On the second series of 

statistics, the students moved into a 

circle. A chant of “Ring a Ring a Rosy” 

was used as the students moved 

around in a circle. At the end of each 

line, students would freeze and one of 

the students would come to the front, 

in role to present a monologue. The 

monologues included: a doctor; a 

friend of someone in hospital; a drug 

addict; and two monologues about 

getting AIDS through unprotected sex. 

The final sequence had the group 

saying the whole poem again ending 

with “All fall down” and the lights went 

out. It was a powerful piece and gave 

teachers an opportunity to discuss the 

issues of AIDS within pastoral care and 

the sciences. 

Stan Ratoff – American School in 

London, UK 

ANNIE JR from the Broadway Jr 

series 

Choosing a musical for MS students – 

in which the range of the songs are 

appropriate – can be difficult – at least 

it was for me. In the end, on the 

recommendation from my musical 

director, I looked at the Broadway Jr. 

series and found Annie Jr. It was 

perfect for 7th and 8th graders - even 

though it was originally geared for 

younger singers. The length of the 

musical was very manageable (onehour 

long) and it provided the students 

with a very positive musical theatre 

experience. 

We had a 10-week rehearsal schedule, 

meeting 2-4 times a week after school 

for the first two months and everyday 

for the final two weeks. We had a cast 

of over 30 students. The first two 

weeks focused on ensemble building 

and reviewing the themes of the 

musical. We read the original Little 

Orphan Annie comic strips to get a 

sense of the character and time it was 

published. The set was created to look 

like the original newspaper comic strip. 

Only after the second week did we 

begin to read the script and begin 

rehearsing the musical. Everyone in 

the cast felt that there should be a real 

Sandy (the dog), so we held dog 

auditions, with the cast members 

making the final decision. It was quite 

an experience working with a live 

animal – it reminds me of W.C.Fields’s 

comment that one should never work 

with animals and children – and here I 

was working with both! In the end, 

both children and dog were hits and 

everyone enjoyed the musical. As for 

Tech, we hired a lighting designer who 

worked with me on designing the 

lighting. He then trained a couple of 

8th grade students who ran the lights 

and sound for the performances. 

Musicals are big hits within a school

community – sometimes they 

overshadow a dramatic performance 

but within an international community, 

it will be a musical that will bring the 

community together. 

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS by 


Shakespeare can be difficult for MS 

students, and sometimes for teachers, 

but I decided to try my first 

Shakespeare play. Which one to 

choose It just so happened that I 

had tickets to see THE COMEDY OF 

ERRORS in the West End, London – 

and I was struck by both the simplistic 

and humorous way it was produced. I 

had found my Shakespeare play. Two 

week before auditions, students were 

able to drop by my room to read 

through the script and become familiar 

with the play. I spent many lunch 

periods and recess time talking with 

students about Shakespeare and THE 

COMEDY OF ERRORS. When I 

choose a play for MS students, I 

always try and find a theme that would 

be relevant to their life experiences. 

This Shakespeare play was a perfect 

choice to explore identity – which is a 

major issue for adolescent-aged 

students. 

With a 10-week rehearsal schedule, 

we spent the beginning weeks 

exploring the language and how to 

create ‘normal’ dialogue with the 

verse. During this time, we had the 

good fortune to participate in a 

Shakespeare workshop at the Globe 

Theatre, exploring themes of the play. 

We even had a chance to act out 

some scenes on the stage. This was 

an invaluable experience for the cast. 

Our set was all white with revolving 

doors, which were metaphors for the 

changing identities. Both set of twins 

were dressed the same and the action 

was more Commedia dell’ Arte than 

Shakespeare. The cast had a ball 

doing this play and their interest in 

Shakespeare grew. For me THE 

COMEDY OF ERRORS was an easy 

and funny play to do with MS 

students. It was very accessible as an 

introduction to Shakespeare. Again, I 

used MS students as crew, lighting 

and sound people for the production. 

THE ODYSSEY adapted by David 

Calcutt 

The ODYSSEY is a wonderful play to 

do because it touches on many 

adolescent issues such as identity, 

transition, friendship, risk-taking, love, 

etc. Another reason for choosing THE 

ODYSSEY was my policy of allowing 

anyone who auditions to be involved in 

the play as either cast or crew. Usually 

I get around 30-40 students 

auditioning for the MS play so I always 

try to choose a play with a large and 

flexible cast. 

THE ODYSSEY proved to be an 

amazing experience for both cast and 

myself. During the early stages of the 

rehearsal process, we explored the 

story and improvised each adventure 

Odysseus experienced. I also began 

to explore with the cast the concepts 

of ritual and storytelling. The 

adaptation focused on the concept of 

a story within a story – which made it 

easier for both the cast and audience 

to understand the story and to allow 

monsters and Cyclops to appear on 

stage by using effigies for these 

creatures. The staging was simple – 

chairs for listeners of the story in the 

play and the floor for the actors telling 

the story. 9th grade students who 

were studying THE ODYSSEY in class 

talked to the cast about the story. The 

characters created their own dance 

and rituals needed in the play. 

Through the exploration and 

development of rituals, the cast 

became closer to each other and a 

real ensemble experience was created 

for all involved. I also had a high 

school assistant director who worked 

with the students. My designer 

designed every costume and we had 

parents make them. It was quite an 

adventure – just like the journey in the 

story. It was a fascinating experience 

bringing together parents, cast and 

crew to work on one adventure – 

which was an odyssey in itself. 

Calderdale HS 

Steve Reynolds – United World 

College of Li Po Chun, Hong Kong 

WOZA ALBERT by Percy Mtwa, 

Mbongeni Ngema and Barney 

Simon 

The play was presented by IB Theatre 

Arts students as their year two/end of 

course production. It was the 

culmination of their African theatre unit 

as well as a celebration (and closure) 

of the course as a whole. The play 

features two actors playing a variety of 

characters with a basic (easy to 

prepare) staging. It is fast moving, 

funny and very physical, but also 

focuses on the serious issue of racism 

through its Apartheid South African 

setting. We split the play into four 

sections and two different students 

played the characters in each section 

(because there are so many characters 

there is little need for character 

development). A student director was 

then appointed for each unit. So, the 

students owned the material and I as 

teacher just oversaw the production 

values and transitions between each 

unit. We rehearsed over an 8-week 

period (the separately run units made 

simultaneous rehearsals easy), in 

lessons and after school. We explored 

the history of South Africa and physical 

theatre skills before focusing on the 

text and delivered a studio 

performance over three nights to the Li 

Po Chun college community. 

THE LIST by Steve Reynolds 

This play was presented by the Dar es 

Salaam Young Peoples Theatre, a 

youth group that was based in the 

International School of Tanganyika and 

open to all local young people (no 

auditions – inclusive entry). The group 

was dedicated to producing plays 


about African issues affecting African 

people in African places. The group 

decided to produce a play focusing on 

HIV Aids and I came up with an idea 

that (rather than the deluge of heavy 

moralizing material around) we should 

try to devise a comedy! I had an initial 

idea of a naive village girl who dies of 

Aids. She has been taken advantage 

of by a number of male characters. 

Just before her funeral, the village 

discovers that she wrote a letter to be 

read at her funeral and rumour quickly 

spreads that it is a list of the men that 

may have infected her. The comic 

element arises in the farcical attempts 

of the men to find and destroy the 

‘list’! Characters are lightly drawn as 

the message focuses on educating the 

audience about HIV Aids. The group 

devised scenarios in a number of 

workshops and I would note any 

characters, lines or actions that held 

potential for a script. I would then draft 

a scene, return to the group and 

rehearse it, making changes as we 

went along. We also invited medical 

and government experts to talk to the 

group and inform our work. The play 

was rehearsed over a 12-week period 

and features 19 characters (the 

protagonists are women) in a 2 hour 

show. The play was presented ‘in the 

round’ to the wider Dar es Salaam 

community including honorary 

government guests at the international 

school. The play is due for publication 

by Macmillan Aiden in November 2006 

in Swahili translation. 

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS by 


This is a good choice for a 

Shakespeare production because it is 

funny... and one of Shakespeare’s 

shortest plays! The play was produced 

at Li Po Chun United World College as 

part of the IB CAS (after school 

activities) programme. Students 

auditioned for a role. The play focuses 

on a series of mistaken identities and is 

a good choice for ‘mirror’ work or an 

exploration of identity itself. A big 

emphasis was made on demystifying 

the language and focusing on 

meaning. In rehearsal, modern English 

translations were made by the cast of 

every scene. Then the scene would be 

improvised in modern English, before 

returning to the original text to be sure 

that the students understood the 

material/language (and owned it rather 

than it owning them). Of the 15 or so 

characters, some gender switching 


was done to reflect the high proportion 

of talented females that auditioned (so 

some girls played men or male 

characters were changed to female). I 

was also lucky enough to have 

identical twins in the cast! The 

performance was staged in the open 

air with a bare brilliant white set 

comprising of a row of doors on an 

upstage wall. In contrast, the actors 

wore vivid and exaggerated costumes. 

The doors encouraged the fast paced 

on – off stage action of the play. Other 

activity groups were encouraged to join 

the production with the college circus 

group providing jugglers and acrobats 

for the setting of Ephesus and the 

college orchestral group providing 

music. The play runs for around two 

hours and was presented to the 

college community with a night (free of 

charge) devoted to the surrounding 

local community. 

Daniel Sartdet and Elaine Neilsen – 

Copenhagen International School, 

Denmark 

HANS ON! 

In connection with Hans Christian 

Andersen’s 200th birthday, we worked 

on a production involving all our 2nd, 

3rd and 4th Grade students. There 

were approximately 100 students 

altogether. Each grade level chose one 

of the stories and worked on a way to 

present it. The second grade chose 

“The Ugly Duckling” and sang the wellknown 

song with the same title. They 

created a movement piece using a 

narrator. The third grade worked on 

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” and 

every child was asked to memorize a 

very short line to contribute to the 

story. The fourth grade contributed a 

reader’s theatre presentation of “The 

Little Mermaid.” which involved 

everyone with reading, chorus work 

and sound effects. In addition, one of 

our language teachers devised a 

movement piece with her students, to 

tell the story of “The Nightingale” and 

our 2nd and 3rd grade Drama Club 

group presented a stylized version of 

“The Snow Queen.” The performance 

was held together by members of the 

4th and 5th grade Drama Club who 

shared poems written by HC Andersen 

and first person accounts of parts of 

his life. The Primary School Choir 

opened and closed the presentation 

with music and songs about Hans 

Andersen and his famous stories. The 

preparation and rehearsal period took 

six weeks that was found to be just the 

right length of time in order to keep 

and hold a meaningful impetus for 

children of this age. The Primary 

Drama and Music teachers 

coordinated the performance but all 

the teachers were involved in putting 

the production together. 

THREE MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS 

by Caryl Churchill, found in 

Churchill, Shorts, NHB, 1990, 

ISBN: 1854590855 

This was done by a small group of last 

year students. It is a wonderfully dark 

short piece that deals with 

disintegrating relationships. The play 

consists of three scenes that take 

place in three different bedrooms. The 

first couple has an argument about the 

husband’s adultery, in the second 

bedroom we see another couple where 

the husband keeps talking about cult 

movies while the wife slips further and 

further into depression, and in the final 

scene we see the wife from the first 

scene with the husband from the 

second scene discussing their 

relationship while repeating all the 

mistakes from their previous ones. This 

play is really good to do with the older 

students as they can take on 

responsibility for creating the 

characters, and the play employs 

Churchill’s device of overlapping 

dialogue, which is a great challenge for 

the students. 

SUMMER – A RED TENNIS BALL 

ON A COUCH IN A GARDEN OF 

LOVE: an adaptation of 

Shakespeare’s MUCH ADO ABOUT 

NOTHING 

This was a Senior School Production 

(14-18 year olds). We decided to have 

a stab at reshaping a classic. We 

looked at the text, but basically built 

each scene from scratch through 

improvisation using a synopsis and 

scene description from York Notes (!). 

The students felt a great sense of 

ownership of the play, and it renewed 

their enthusiasm for Shakespeare. 

Darren Scully – St Julian’s School, 

Portugal 

Three challenging plays: Bryony 

Lavery’s ILLYRIA, Fousto 

Paravidino’s NUTS, and Nick Dear’s 

LUNCH IN VENICE 

ILLYRIA is a country ripped apart by 

civil war where even the children, have 

known little else but fear. Title-tattle 

and gossip mean that truth is another 

casualty of war. Make shift military 

switch sides according to the way the

war is going and terrorize the 

community as they shake in their skins. 

Leaders come and go and envious 

bureaucrats jostle for positions. And 

foreign journalists report watered down 

versions for our consumption. Illyria 

could be anywhere. As an ensemble 

piece Illyria takes risks. It does not hold 

back from graphic tales of torture, 

rape, the abuse of power and the evil 

depths of war. At the same time it 

presents a positive vision of the healing 

power of storytelling. The language 

Bryony Lavery uses might shock some 

parents. We think the supportive 

structures of the ensemble mean that 

our actors are comfortable and safe in 

exploring such themes. We wrote an 

explanatory letter to parents pointing 

out Lavery’s ‘message’ and inviting 

them to a symposium on the role and 

purpose of theatre in schools: 

Theatre is a dangerous thing... But 

remember it is fiction. The place for 

brutality and horror is on the stage not in 

life and I believe human beings can 

rehearse for reality through drama. It is 

the nature of theatre to experience the 

inconceivable. Illyria has a strong moral 

standpoint and it doesn’t leave people in 

the horror. The journey is through horror 

to hope and resolution and to peace 

which are huge and mighty things. 

From the same collection, NUTS by 

Fausto Paravidino is a very impressive 

ensemble piece. The first half is 

intensely funny as Buddy is left to take 

charge of a beautiful house with an 

impressive sofa and an even more 

impressive TV. His failure to tell the girl 

of his love for her lead to a series of 

calamities as his friends turn up and 

the place is trashed. By the time the 

son of the owners has turned up 

Buddy has been thoroughly 

demoralized and walked over. The 

second half is very different. All the 

characters from the fit half reappear 

Beijing MS 

some ten years later but all 

relationships have been zeroed out 

and they do not know each other. 

Torture and humiliation alternate and 

the humour is dark. Paravidino 

explores the kind of mindset that 

allows for police states to emerge and 

maintain themselves. A final scene 

offers an alternate reality as we are 

taken back to the final scene of the 

first half but with a twist and Buddy is 

given another chance to assert himself. 

This is great theatre. 

LUNCH IN VENICE by Nick Dear is a 

short piece, around 40 minutes, for a 

cast of 6. The play is set around a 

campo in Venice on a hot day. Five 

students are ostensibly on an art trip 

and discussion centres on the meaning 

of art and its purpose in a society 

which is destroying itself. Harley is a 

knowledgeable, attractive and vain 

young man while Ben, equally smart 

but brooding reflects that all art glories 

war. Conrad is tearing himself up 

inside for his failure to find anything 

meaningful in his life. Bianca is in love 

with Harley and Emmy is fascinated 

with food and Italian culture. It is when 

Vivi, an older woman lost and trying to 

get to the Hotel Bauer for lunch, 

appears and disappears only to 

reappear still lost, that the audience is 

dealt a thunderbolt as we realize just 

where the characters are and what has 

happened. The truth of the play 

resonates until the end as the 

characters dance to Vivaldiís second 

movement of the Winter concerto. The 

play is a real challenge for a teenage 

cast and the Sixth Sense-ish quality a 

beautiful conceit. 

All three plays can be found in the BT 

New Connections Series/Shell 

Connections available from the 

National Theatre bookshop Check out 

the website at 

http://ntconnections.org.uk/ 

Tom Schulz – Jakarta International 

School, Indonesia 

B.YOND: THE STAR 

2006 Middle School Play 

Written by Bill Titmuss, Tom Schulz 

and Tom Bartlett 

Directed by Tom Schulz, Bill Titmuss 

and Tom Bartlett 

Music created and arranged by Rick 

Beder 

Choreographed by Kat Carag, HS 

student and Sara Becker 

Actors: 54 students 

Dancers: 32 students 

Bands: 12 students 

Tech crew: 10 students 

This play is about Middle School 

students and the possibilities of what 

they may be or become. Our 

production took place in two venues. 

One venue was a Little Theater, the 

other a large multi-purpose hall where 

we constructed a replica of the Little 

Theater stage. Each venue had live 

music. Each venue had a large video 

projection screen with live feed from 

the other venue so the audience saw 

both venues at once. This piece can 

easily be adapted to a single venue. 

ACT I: Two narrators in each venue 

explain to the audience that they are 

attending the Middle School 

graduation ceremony. The video 

screens come to life. A male student 

dressed as a female science teacher 

appears on the screen. The teacher 

attempts to explain the vastness of the 

universe, and quantum mechanics and 

infinite possibilities. She explains that 

perhaps the audience needs to see a 

more “Down to Earth” metaphor. On 

each stage there are eight Yonds, the 

main character, lying in fetal positions. 

As the video ends, eerie music starts 

and the Yonds perform a “Bhuto” like, 

slow motion birth. Eight “generic” 

students wearing Trestle Theater 

masks enter and watch the birth. 

“Principal System” enters and says to 

the mask characters, “You know the 

drill, time to get these new kids in 

shape.” The masks begin to teach the 

Yonds, a ritualized repetitive 

movement. The movement is 

disquieting in its repetitive submission 

to orders. The video feed is live in 

both venues. The narrators sing “When 

You Wish Upon a Star” the play’s 

theme song. Then in one venue, half 

the cast perform three stories about 

Yond’s first day at Kindergarten. In the 

other venue, we see three stories 

about Yond getting into trouble. 


Dancers take both stages. Next, the 

narrators in each venue remember 

Middle School dances. The dance 

starts with “Is It in His Kiss”. They then 

join in with a modern piece by Nellie. 

Act I ends with the principal busting 

two Yonds for kissing. 

Act II : The act opens with the repetitive 

movement with reminders from 

Principal System as to why the 

students tow the line. Then as with the 

first act, the audience sees three 

scenes about dating and three scenes 

about family life in each venue. 

Between scenes there is a dance 

number to “Shining Star” so the cast 

can change venues. Next is a fiveminute 

video interview with HS 

students talking about their time in 

Middle School. Included in the interview 

is discussion about their first kiss. The 

final three scenes are set in a Middle 

School classroom. The third and final 

vignette shows a confident Yond, a 

popular kid who does everything well, 

quietly rebelling against Principal 

System’s repetitive movement. The 

students unite in defense of this Yond. 

The casts exit both venues. Principal 

System then explains that students 

grow up and begin to see the 

possibilities as to who they are and 

who they may become. His job is 

done. He then asks the audience to 

quietly follow him out of the theater. 

Both audiences converge outside 

where all the students are assembled 

and singing a slow a cappella version 

of When You Wish Upon a Star. 

Beijing MS 

Beijing MS 


Other than our original piece, “B. Yond: 

The Star” last year, the last 3 of our 

past 5 shows have been Tim Kelly 

musicals. 

GROOVY – A MUSICAL COMEDY 

TRIBUTE TO THE 60’S 

In GROOVY! you’ll celebrate the 

hippies and flower children of the 

1960s. Travis, Muriel and Alice decide 

to throw a free Music, Beads and 

Flowers Celebration. A popular singing 

group, the Lemon Bugs, love the idea 

and donate their talent. In no time, 

crazily-painted buses start arriving at 

Crumb’s Apple Farm, the site of the 

festival. Everything is going nicely until 

Mrs Porter, who hates ‘The Love 

Generation,’ shows up and demands 

that the local police close it down. If 

this weren’t bad enough, two music 

promoters offer the Lemon Bugs a 

deal they can’t refuse if they will skip 

the celebration. Although the hippies 

might wear buttons that say ‘Never 

Trust Anyone Over Thirty,’ their hearts 

are in the right place and the 

celebration triumphs. Great 60’s style 

songs. Full length version of the one 

act EVERYTHINGS GROOVY! Playing 

time - 90 minutes. 

INTERNAL TEAM MACHINE 

Here’s an easy-to-produce musical! It 

takes place inside the body of a high 

school student. Marc Williams always 

starts to sneeze whenever he sees a 

certain girl he likes. Unfortunately for 

several students, Marc’s sneezes go 

too far. The teens, who were shrunk in 

a fluke nasal spray accident, are 

swooped into his nasal passages and 

thrown into his body’s dark interior. 

How will Chad, Mindy, Lavinia, Danny 

and Julia, the prom queen wannabe, 

escape In their attempts, they elude 

evil bacteria and take a rafting trip 

through the circulatory system on a 

toothpick. Watch the good white and 

red blood cells battle hostile 

intruders. Gasp in wonder at the 

brains’ Command Center. You’ll have 

fun with this show. Playing time - 90 

minutes. 

LITTLE LUNCHEONETTE OF 

TERROR 

Terror (and laughter) reigns when 

Mongo, a rock-eating creature from 

the center of the earth, contacts 

young Pete Berserker, owner of Pete’s 

Luncheonette. All the kids from high 

school hang out at Pete’s. But they’re 

no match for Mongo, who can control 

thoughts, cause havoc and change his 

shape. Actually, Mongo is a walking 

bucket of toxic waste. He plans to 

conquer Earth by enrolling the kids in 

his personal army. First, however, he 

drains their brains of ‘knowledge’ - 

that’s why they have to read the entire 

Encyclopedia Britannica! Pete’s 

girlfriend tells him ‘With a little more 

experience you could be a genius.’ 

Pete takes the message to heart, 

ultimately sending the nasty Mongo 

back to his own turf. The cast, of 

course, is a wild bunch. One very 

simple set, no production problems 

and all the tunes are hits. 

I have significantly rewritten these to 

include speaking parts for 60 + actors 

and to increase the ‘humor for adults’ 

aspect of the shows. 

A catalogue of Tim Kelly’s plays is 

available at http://www.playbureau. 

com/catalogue.asp 

ROBYN HOOD:OUTLAW PRINCESS 

by New Zeland playwright John 

Reynolds 

This is a ‘pop’ musical, based loosely 

on the traditional tales of Robin Hood, 

with Robyn portrayed as a female 

leading a female band of outlaws. It is 

essentially a fantasy and the setting is 

timeless. The characters can be played 

by actors from any ethnic or cultural 

group and is written for unlimited cast 

numbers, predominantly female. 

Instrumentation is for rhythm section 

(piano, guitar, bass and drums) with 

optional woodwind and brass or 

synthesiser. It is possible to perform 

this work with any combination of 

these instruments, or piano only. 

Sixteen songs, some solo, all written in 

low singable keys. 

Peter Shearer – British Council 

School Madrid, Spain (formerly at 

Southbank International School, 

UK) 

THE DOG BENEATH THE SKIN by 

W. H. Auden and Christopher 

Isherwood 

Read this script and you’d most likely 

think it’s impossible to stage, the 

perfect example of two literati writing 

for the theatre, or of a “play” providing 

no more than a form for literature. Put 

it on the stage, as we did, and you’ll 

discover and create something electric: 

a vision of Europe in the 1930s that is 

both terrifying and hilarious. Especially 

terrifying because we know what was 

to follow (the play was first staged in 

1936) and the authors’ prescience and 

perceptiveness is astounding.

“My tree of knowledge expanded by several branches during those four wonderful days.” 

Trine Kolbjornsen, St Johns International School, Belgium 

Having been involved in an Auckland 

University production of THE DOG 

BENEATH THE SKIN, I knew staging it 

was possible. A sprawling, episodic 

and incisively satirical play, it involves 

elements of epic and surrealist theatre, 

revue and music hall, as well as a 

chorus who speak some of the best 

modernist poetry ever written. With a 

large, keen group of high school actors 

and drawing the main cast from IB 

Theatre Arts students, we rehearsed 

42 actors (a third of the high school), 

most of whom were busy for the entire 

show. The chorus work became the 

challenge for first year IB students, 

who also took cameo parts and 

support roles. Second Year IB 

students, busy with coursework and 

Individual Projects, took on other 

cameos while drama elective members 

clocked up CAS hours by the score in 

yet more cameos and ensemble work. 

Mounting this play in our small studio 

theatre, creating space for audience 

and 40-something actors seemed 

impossible at first. The solution came 

by staging the piece in line, with 

audience in four rows on each side, 

close to the action. Which proved yet 

again the adage: “Good ideas solve 

problems.” Scene changes were drilled 

over and over and thus an entire 

generation of students learned to do 

this properly. Design was simple and 

we did not come close to realising the 

design possibilities this play could 

provide. The original music, by 

Benjamin Britten, proved impossible to 

get hold of. In any case (I’ve been told) 

it’s well beyond the range of most 

school voices. Just as well that a singable 

and memorable score by Mike 

Peake, a London based musician, was 

available and perfect for the play. The 

music pastiches and parodies’ styles 

move from the maudlin sentimental to 

Kurt Weill, via Wagner and others. 

Likewise, the performance rights are 

held in New York and took some 

tracking down (“Dog beneath the 

what Never heard of it!”), but we were 

compensated for our efforts by getting 

the rights for nothing. 

HIGHLIGHTS: a quintessential English 

village with the nastiest of 

undercurrents; an ensemble madhouse 

scene; an audience in tears of laughter 

at cabaret artiste Dirty Desmond, who 

destroys an original Rembrandt in front 

of a genuine art critic; shortly followed 

by transfixing poetry and a 

denouement that draws the battle lines 

for the conflict with fascism. This is a 

play that will challenge any production 

team (I recommend doing OH! WHAT 

A LOVELY WAR a year or two earlier, 

as we did, as practice and also as a 

thematic, musical and historical leadup). 

THE DOG BENEATH THE SKIN 

will also challenge preconceptions of 

theatre and history. Most of all, it will 

please, shock and captivate an 

audience, while giving them insights 

about where our society has come 

from and where it might still go. 

Pam Slawson – American 

International School Dhaka- 

Bangladesh 

A COMPANY OF WAYWARD 

SAINTS by George Herman, 

published by Samuel French Inc 

This is a contemporary play about a 

modern Commedia dell’Arte theatre 

troupe. I had a class of mixed first-year 

IB students and younger high-school 

students and wanted to do an in-class 

production that would serve all of their 

needs. The nine Commedia characters 

were played by the eighteen actors in 

my class - sharing the roles made 

perfect sense since a Commedia 

troupe could have more than one actor 

playing a masque. The topic of the 

play served as a springboard for IB 

Theatre Arts students’ study of 

Commedia conventions. They were 

also able to practice applied research 

of characters, Commedia performance 

techniques, masks, costumes, and 

history. The research was presented to 

all of the students who used it in 

designing masks, costumes and 

developing characterizations. The 

episodic nature of the text gave each 

student their time in the spotlight and 

made simultaneous rehearsing of all of 

the various scenes possible. The 

scene design was quite simple, and the 

theme of the show – the importance of 

working as an ensemble - was certainly 

relevant to my own class as the diverse 

group of students learned to work 

together as an ensemble. 

MANKIND & CO published by 

Thomas Hischak Pioneer Drama 

Service Inc, Denver, Colorado 

I’ve always liked using this play with 

Middle School students because the 

subject of the play is usually relevant to 

their studies (classical mythology), the 

performance style is lively and leaves 

room for a great deal of creativity, and I 

can cast an infinite number of 

students and spread the parts out fairly 

equally among students, giving all 

students a featured role. There are 

narrators, which can be divided into as 

many parts and played by as many 

actors as one desires, and the 

anachronisms, and opportunities for 

clowning, dance, mime, and music 

make it attractive to this age group. A 

clowning concept was used and 

Middle School students loved being 

able to help pull together their own 

mismatched costumes from our 

existing wardrobe. They also were 

allowed to design their own makeup, 

basically painting their faces with stars, 

hearts, lightning bolts, etc. 

A COMEDY OF ERRORS by William 

Shakespeare: Bollywood style 

Shakespeare’s plays make great 

material for understanding how a 

production concept can be applied to a 

play. I asked a class of Advanced 

Theatre students to help me make 

Shakespeare more relevant to their 

audience. The result was a production 

set in India and produced by borrowing 

some conventions from the popular 

Bollywood film industry. The characters, 

conflicts, and situations in A COMEDY 

OF ERRORS are familiar to the 

Bollywood film genre. Already the 

shortest of Shakespeare’s comedies, 

we cut the script so it would play in one 

hour without intermission. This was 

easy to do by accessing on-line text 

and deleting selectively. Music, Indian 

dancing, 19th century costumes, and a 

few selective name changes were all 

that was needed to make Shakespeare 

familiar in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

Sam Stone – Southbank 

International School, UK 

THE FORMAL by Sue Murray, an 

Australian play approximately one 

our duration 

Overview – Grade 12 girls are getting 

ready for their school Formal, (or Prom 

as it’s also known.) Three fairies are 

helping them get ready and comment 

on the action throughout. There are 

issues of body image, popularity, 


daughter / parent relationships and 

friendship to name a few themes. 

Excellent production notes and how to 

stage using Brechtian theatre styles 

therefore great for low budgets. Great 

roles for girls, but the ‘dates’ are literally 

cardboard cut - outs. My grade 10’s in 

Australia directed, produced and 

designed the whole production and did 

a fantastic job. They actually cast one of 

the Mum’s as a Dad and we had 2 male 

fairies that worked just as effectively and 

they also used males for the dates, but 

these are really cameo roles. I would 

use with Middle Year grade 10 students 

or as a Grade 11 IB1’s play to analyse 

Brechtian theatre. It could also be used 

for an Individual Project for IB2’S to 

direct and stage. It’s a fantastic issue 

based piece of poignant play writing! 

ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell, 

adapted by Ian Wooldridge, 

published by Nick Hearn Books, 

London 

Approximately one hour, with no 

interval 

Overview – ‘George Orwell’s satire on 

the perils of Stalinism’. Animals take 

over the control of their farm after 

ongoing neglect and ruthless treatment 

by their human farmer, but with the 

pigs now in control of ANIMAL FARM 

things appear to go from bad to worse 

with some animals becoming ‘...more 

equal than others’. 

At the time of writing, I am about to 

audition my Grade 6-8 students for the 

Middle Years play in February at my 

present school. The staff at Nick Herne 

books has been so helpful with 

regards to obtaining performing rites 

and sending the plays. I would highly 

recommend them to all teachers, 

especially to new Drama teachers. 

Easy to apply online no matter where 

your school is. 

It involves a large cast or you can 

double up actors to have a cast of 6 if 

your school is small. IB 1’s are involved 

in costume and set design as part of 

their Technical involvement in 

production and I am going to appoint a 

dramaturg too. There are helpful 

production notes included and the 

students appear to be very excited 

about ‘doing’ the play! 

Helen Szymczak - Marymount 

International School, London 

I only teach girls, so it can be a real 

issue finding plays that are suitable. 

Here is a list of some productions I 

have done. 


FIND ME by Olwen Wynmark 

About a girl called Verity Taylor who at 

the age of 20 was charged by the 

police of damaging a chair in the 

mental hospital where she was a 

patient. Later, she was committed to 

Broadmoor ‘from where she may not 

be discharged or transferred elsewhere 

without permission of the home 

secretary’. Using a technique of 

multiple characterization the play seeks 

to investigate in depth the personality 

of the young girl, to ‘find’ her – and at 

the same time studies the effects of 

her behaviour on the family, friends and 

officials in whose care she is placed. I 

had a cast of 23 actresses, so instead 

of one actress playing Verity I had 5. 

IB CLASSWORK 

I do a lot of short performances with 

my I.B girls as I usually have small 

classes – no bigger than 6/7, so 

combine a lot of skills in one project. 

One student will direct, another 

focusing on design, another on 

technical and the others will perform. 

Throughout their two years they all 

have to alternate the various roles. 

These are plays that have strong 

women characters, and small casts! 

KINDERTRANSPORT by Diane 

Samuels, written in 1992 

A full-length play- will need to choose 

sections to perform. The play is about 

a Jewish child being sent to live in 

Britain to escape the holocaust. She 

has to forge a relationship with a ‘new’ 

mother and she changes her identity. 

Later her own daughter finds some 

letters and asks her questions about 

them which forces her to confront the 

truth about her past. Cast (4-5): Evelyn 

– English middle-class woman in her 

50’s; Faith- Evelyn’s only child in her 

early 20’s; Eva- Evelyn’s younger selfshe 

starts the play at 9 and finishes at 

17 years old- Jewish German 

becoming increasingly English; Helga – 

Eva’s mum German Jewish woman in 

her early 30’s; Lil – Eva/Evelyn’s English 

foster mother. In her 80’s. 

Structure is chronologically moving 

forwards in present interspersed with 

flash backs to the past as Evelyn’s 

memories come back to haunt her. 

Act 1 has some good sections for four 

actors especially Act 1 Scene 2. 

MY MOTHER SAID I NEVER 

SHOULD by Charlotte Keatley 

(written 1987) 

A full length play- will need to choose 

sections to perform. 

Play about four generations of women 

in a family, how they relate to one 

another and how their different lifestyles 

reflect the changing 

opportunities for women in society 

over the last century. 

Cast (4): Doris Partington born 1900; 

Margaret Bradley born 1931; Jackie 

Metcalf born 1952; Rosie Metcalfe 

born 1971. The set is non-naturalistic - 

‘a magic place where things can 

happen’. The play moves through 

chronologically interspersed with 

scenes of all four women playing 

together as children. Scenes often 

done in pairs to begin with and later all 

four characters are together. 

METAMORPHOSIS by Steven 

Berkoff from Franz kafka‚s short 

story written in 1969 

Cast (4-6 – depends which section(s) 

you do): Gregor Samsa, his Mother, 

his Father, his sister Greta, his boss the 

Chief Clerk, the Lodger. This play is a 

physical theatre piece based around 

the idea of Gregor Samsa waking up 

one morning to discover that he has 

turned into a beetle. This symbolizes 

the way he feels he is treated by his 

family and boss and seems to 

represent his mental breakdown due to 

having to work so hard and feeling the 

pressure of people relying on him. 

Opportunities for stylized acting, 

costume, lighting and set design. 

THE CONAHUE SISTERS by 

Geraldine Aron, written in 1990 

One act play- will need slight cutting. 

Cast (3): Dunya, Rosie and Annie (all in 

30s). The play is set in Ireland and is 

about three catholic girls who killed a 

boy when they were children. They 

were curious about sex and made him 

kiss them and then, feeling rapt with 

guilt about what they’ve done, they kill 

him. The play is based around the 

three girls having a reunion and then 

re-enacting the murder- taking it in 

turns to play the boy they killed. 

Michael Thomas – Regent’s School 

Pattaya, Thailand 

HAROUN AND THE SEA OF 

STORIES by Salman Rushdie, 

adapted by Tim Supple and David 

Tushingham, published in paper 

back by Faber and Faber, 

ISBN 0-571-19693-4 

The school is fortunate to have a large 

space called the Globe and, like 

Shakespeare’s original, it includes a 

large balcony space behind the stage 

which leant itself well to the epic scale

of the text. The Asian setting perfectly 

matched the actual location of the 

eventual performance, which took place 

after 4 months of intensive but 

enjoyable rehearsal. This was the first 

large-scale drama production in the 

school’s history so much time was 

spent working on the creation of an 

ensemble through games and 

improvisation work based on different 

kinds of story-making tasks. The cast of 

35 assisted in the making of the 

numerous props and elements of scenic 

design and costume. The play also 

provides great opportunities for 

innovative music composition and the 

students took every chance to 

experiment with Thai instruments, most 

of which were eventually included in the 

final accompanying score. The 

musicians were situated on the balcony 

next to the actors who, when not 

featured in a particular scene, acted as 

a chorus on the action taking place 

below. 

THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: 

book and lyrics by Howard Ashman 

and music by Alan Menken 

This production involved nearly 40 

students in Years 7-9 on stage with an 

equal number in the orchestra. Most of 

the students had already heard of the 

show and, even when they had not, 

they soon absorbed the memorable 

tunes. A large design team, led by Year 

12 IB Art students worked on the 

creation of the giant plant Audrey 2 

and an IB Theatre Arts student created 

the choreography for the performance. 

The rapidly expanding plant eventually 

took over the audience at the end and 

so remained faithful to Howard 

Ashman’s original concept. 

THE CANTERBURY TALES adapted 

from Chaucer‚s stories by Phil 

Woods and Michael Bogdanov, 

published by Iron Press, 

ISBN 0-906228-43-3 

The plays provide a perfect blend of 

magic, tragedy and moments of pure 

bawdy humour, which found an 

appreciative local audience! In order to 

involve as many students as possible 

the links between each tale were 

developed to include more characters. 

The plays were all co-directed by IB 

Theatre Arts students. Elements of 

Asian drama traditions were integrated 

into the production including the use of 

especially deigned masks and Balinese 

Shadow puppets for the Franklin’s 

Tale. The play was also performed to 

students at the local Asian University. 

Tony Thomas – St Christopher’s 

School Bahrain 

AFTER JULIET by Shaman 

MacDonald, Shell Connections 99 

Cast of 15 (5m and 10f) 

Picks up the story after the death of 

Romeo and Juliet and takes place in 

Verona during the fragile peace 

between the warring families. There 

are some excellent female roles, 

especially Rosaline, who feels betrayed 

by her cousin, Juliet, for stealing 

Romeo away from her. The piece has 

an incredible intensity, which builds to 

a climactic finish. It was very popular 

with our senior students (15-18). Easy 

to stage – not too long – has some 

very powerful and funny moments. 

RESTORATION by Edward Bond, 

Methuen 

Cast of 13 (8m and 5f) 

This is a very funny and dark piece. It 

needs a strong cast, particularly for the 

central characters and you have the 

challenge of costuming a period piece! 

It is a brilliant play about the injustices 

of the class system in the early 

industrial era. Very Brechtian in style – 

loads of songs punching home the 

political message but you could leave 

them out. It does need cutting to 

bring down to two hours. But an 

interesting and entertaining yarn 

nonetheless. 

OUT OF THEIR HEADS by Marcus 

Romer, Young Blood anthology of 

youth plays 

Cast of 10 

Although this isn’t a big cast, you can 

double the main characters and have 

extra actors to people the clubs and 

pubs that form the backdrop of the 

play. This is a very exciting modern 

piece that tackles the subject of drugs 

in a non-condescending and truthful 

way. It has a terrific central plot 

involving a triangular relationship 

Beijing MS 

between two guys and a girl and has 

loads of opportunities to use modern 

music and spectacular lighting 

designs. It is quite easy to stage – 

suits a studio that can become the 

club using fluorescent lighting and a 

few moving lights. High energy but 

thought provoking, especially as the 

story cuts to different locations very 

quickly and tells the story nonchronologically. 

It has a very good 

twist in the story too, which the 

students like. Only suitable for high 

school students really or maybe upper 

middle schoolers. 

Jen Tickle – TISA, International 

School of Azerbaijan (formerly at 

Bangkok Patana School, Thailand 

and Overseas School of Colombo, 

Sri Lanka) 

All three plays listed below were very 

much team efforts, and developed 

through student led workshops as well 

as co-directed by drama teachers. 

THREEPENNY OPERA by Bertholt 

Brecht and Kurt Weill 

Universal Edition Ltd, 48 Great 

Marlborough Street, London, W1F 7BB 

(tel: 020 7437 5205 / fax: 020 7439 

2897/ email: 

deirdre.bates@mdslondon.co.uk or 

colin.green@mdslondon.co.uk 

High School students. Needs a few 

very strong singers for main male and 

female roles. The orchestration has 

some quirks and it’s not easy to play 

but we were able to fit out a band 

comprised of students and peripatetic 

music staff. There are a few options 

for the libretto – we worked with 

Jeremy Sams’ fantastic lyrics from the 

Donmar Warehouse version (available 

on CD through Amazon) that had to be 

toned down a little but made the whole 

show so politically relevant for all 

concerned. We had a cast of about 

thirty, and created a whole chorus line 


“A fantastic experience steeped in ISTA values which left me feeling both exhausted and 

inspired. We tried, we learnt, we discussed, we disagreed, we laughed and we made new 

friends. Every primary teacher should be able to have this experience. For childrenís sakes we 

need more of this approach in our classrooms.” 

Zoë Weiner, St. Julian’s School, Portugal 

of beggars and whores. Students 

choreographed the main numbers. 

Being in Bangkok we re-set it in our 

local red light district, turning the theatre 

into a cabaret bar with the audience sat 

round tables, waiters and computer 

monitors on each table which provided 

captions, snatches of song lyrics and a 

pictorial montage to enhance the 

modern relevance of the song lyrics. 

We also caused huge outrage and were 

nearly shut down after the first night, 

but I’d do it again any day! 

(A HARD DAY’S) TWELFTH NIGHT 

High school students with mixed cast 

as large as you like. The Shakespeare 

classic set in the 1960’s. An idea 

taken from a music teacher in Beijing, 

this was hugely successful as students 

helped to play a part in updating the 

setting, which gave them great 

ownership as well as a refreshed 

understanding of the dialogue. Duke 

Orsino, in flowing ‘60’s hippy gear 

enters strumming a guitar and singing 

‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’; Sir 

Toby Belch sings ‘I am the Walrus’ in 

the kitchen and a chorus surrounds 

poor captive Mad Malvolio accusing 

him of being a ‘Nowhere Man’. It was 

fun to work with the cast choosing 

Beatles songs that fitted the text and 

helped support it. Groups of students 

choreographed the whole show that 

took place in the round in a Girl Guide 

shed decorated with saris and incense. 

The music was simple to arrange for a 

basic five-piece band and a small 

string group, based on one of those 

Beatles Complete songbooks for 

piano. It was a great crowd pleaser 

and a fabulous way to expose an 

international cast and audience to 

Shakespeare in a non-threatening way. 

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 

Lower Secondary students and a large 

mixed cast. This was quite a dated 

text that we chopped up and turned 

into a wonderfully warm show. We cut 

the songs and work-shopped a 

number of new ones that we made up, 

based on fragments and folk songs 

from many of the countries visited in 

the play. It was easy to direct as it 

fitted neatly into five sections which we 

cast independently and then fitted 


Shahariar and Scheherazade into the 

transition sections. We were able to 

explore many theatrical styles from 

Beijing Opera to belly dancing, 

fabulous costumes in rich colours, a lot 

of dance and physical theatre with all 

the students having a great deal of 

input into their sections. We spent a 

good deal of time focusing on the rich 

cultural traditions of the Arab world, 

which created some very valuable 

discussions. We also had a Muslim 

Dad come in and act as our sensitivity 

gauge, as we added prayers and a 

variety of Muslim cultural traditions and 

phrases. We decorated the hall with 

huge swathes of fabric like a Bedouin 

tent; the local carpet merchant lent us 

some (very valuable!) carpets for the 

floor and local Indian and Turkish 

restaurants sold food outside. 

Kristen Van Ginhoven – 

International School of Brussels, 

Belgium 

ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND 

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS 

by Adrian Mitchell, rights from The 

Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd, 

Drury House, 34/43 Russell Street, 

London WC2B 5HA 

This was a middle school production 

done in the style of Physical Theatre. It 

is a terrific ensemble play that affords 

tons of opportunity for use of 

imagination. We had over 50 MS 

students in the show, with 5 different 

Alice’s. There was a ‘physical theatre 

chorus’ that took over all the 

responsibility for creating the different 

environments. They became the water 

by using fabric, they became the train 

tracks or the forest or the flowers by 

using their bodies and working as an 

ensemble. They also used their 

imaginations to create the different ways 

that Alice grows and shrinks. We had a 

‘storytelling chorus’ that took over the 

responsibilities of narrating the story. 

Many of the poems in the play were 

delivered by this chorus using choral 

reading techniques. We also had a 

‘sound master’ who was in charge of 

creating the sounds that accompanied 

the show. There was a continual 

soundscape and he and his assistant 

had a sound booth on the stage filled 

with all kinds of soundmakers. Then, 

there were the actors who mostly took 

on double roles throughout the play, as 

there are so many parts to cast. They 

were all dressed in neutral black 

costumes and added extra bits to show 

the audience who they were in that 

scene. We had a physical theatre 

specialist, Rebecca Patterson, come in 

to give a workshop on a Saturday for 

the kids early on in rehearsal, which 

made a huge difference. The idea of 

putting on this version of the play can 

be daunting, as it is so complex and 

there are so many environments and 

characters, but, once we latched onto 

physical theatre, minimalism (we started 

with a blank stage with one platform the 

length of the stage upstage) and sound 

as our main vehicles to tell the story, it 

became an excellent experiment in 

using imagination and the MS students 

who participated in it all said afterwards 

that they never would have expected it 

to turn out so well. They truly felt the 

power of working as an ensemble. 

SHAKESPEARE’S WOMEN by 

Libby Appel and Michael 

Flachmann, rights from Southern 

Illinois University Press, 

fax: + 618-453-1221 

This play became a collaborative 

project between the HS performance, 

technical theatre, choir, strings and 

visual arts classes. Plus, it also had 

students in it who auditioned as part of 

an after school program. It grew out of 

a desire for the Performing Arts 

department to collaborate on a project 

that would afford all the students 

diverse challenges in their specific 

area. So, the play is basically a battle 

of the sexes featuring Shakespeare’s 

greatest scenes. We decided to use 

each act to visit a timeline in history as 

part of our concept. Therefore, act 

one, where the male narrator is trying 

to persuade the audience that women 

are frail, using various scenes from 

Shakespeare to illustrate his point, 

moved from medieval to renaissance 

to classical to baroque to romantic to 

cold war. Act two then followed the 

same timeline, although it was 

presented from the female narrator’s 

point of view, where she was proving 

that women had infinite variety. The

Calderdale HS 

Beijing MS 

visual arts classes created art pieces 

that were projected in each scene that 

were inspired from artists of the time 

periods, the choir and strings classes 

explored music from the various time 

periods and the performance class 

explored acting styles. It included over 

80 students and the school supported 

the project by providing three in house 

rehearsal days when the ‘full cast’ 

could come together to put the project 

onstage. There were, of course, 

elements that needed to be ironed out 

as all the pieces of the puzzle came 

together, but, working in this way 

provided an incredible depth of learning 

for the students and teachers alike. 

Rob Warren & Sherry Weeks – 

Atlanta International School, USA 

24-HOUR PLAYS 

Over a 24-hour period of time, working 

with 6 Guest Directors and 5 Guest 

Designers with various theatrical 

backgrounds (clowning, improvisation, 

comedy, dance, puppetry, tragedy, set 

design, costume design, light design, 

publicity & prop design.) High School 

students had been divided into either 

performance or production groups on 

a sign up first come first sever basis. 

Beginning at 7:00pm Friday night with 

a family dinner each performance 

group was given a Shakespearian 

sonnet to create into a 5-10 minute 

production using the Guest Director’s 

background in theatre. At the same 

time each production group worked on 

designing, building or creating their 

relevant production area. During the 

first 12 hours scripts were written, 

rehearsed and staged. The set, 

costumes, props, lights and posters 

had been designed and construction 

was taking place. At 7:00am 

Saturday morning both performance 

and production groups were putting 

final touches to their areas ready to 

perform a dress rehearsal after 

lunch at 12:00pm. From 1:00pm 

onwards students were brought 

into the theatre to begin staging 

the opening and closing of the 

show in addition to running a 

tech/dress rehearsal. Little time was 

left for final changes however some 

groups managed to fit time in. All 

production work had stopped and 

these students began working on 

technical positions needed to run the 

show, for example backstage crew, 

light & sound operators, ushers, tickets 

& concessions. At 6:00pm the 

audience arrived at the theatre to take 

their seats for a night of Theatre. What 

they didn’t expect was what 24 Hours 

of little sleep, constant pressure to 

taking risks and a Shakespearian 

Sonnet could create. At 7:00pm the 

curtain rose on 50 eager performers 

and 30-inspired production crew who 

had created something out of nothing 

in 24 hours. This project is truly a 

remarkable experience that shows the 

power of ensemble and student’s 

imaginations. My only criticism of this 

project is the final productions can 

focus too heavily on “in-house jokes” 

or “things that only the 24-Hour 

participants know about” and therefore 

the final product can often be not as 

clean or un-finished. However, to see a 

production where no one gets cut, 

every student is welcome and the 

amount of creativity that occurs over 

24 Hours is well worth trying. 

THE DEAD MAN WALKING Project 

by Tim Robbins 

The DEAD MAN WALKING School 

Theatre Project (the Play Project, for 

short) is an opportunity to broaden 

discussion about the death penalty 

and involve schools and their local 

communities in an inter-disciplinary 

dialogue about this major social issue. 

What is the Play Project Check it out 

at http://www.deadmanwalkingplay.org 

Any description we give you would not 

do justice to the experience our 

students had on this project. It was 

truly a remarkable experience all around. 

JUNGLE BOOK by Edward Mast 

This was a production I did with our 

Middle School students a few years 

ago. Although the script describes the 

production as being set “not in a 

jungle, but a jungle-gym”, we decided 

to take this opportunity and research 

how Rudyard Kipling’s writing was 

influenced by the time he spent living 

in India. Allowing the students to 

research Hindu myths and making 

connections between their Jungle 

Book characters and the Hindu God’s 

& Deities we decide to develop our 

production on Indian culture and 

traditions. Using this to guide us our 

design team who were made up of 

IBDP Visual Art and Theatre Art 

students, who had been influenced by 

a Julie Taymor production we had seen 

in New York, decided to design the 

production using masks and puppets. 

What later became the set and the 

actors’ costumes began as mock 

sketches of an Indian jungle, a study of 

animals at the Atlanta zoo, and 

research done on Hindu art and 

artefacts. This final production was a 

huge success both visually and 

through the process we took. Giant 

animal puppets roamed the stage, 

characters with masks hanging over 

them, traditional Indian dancing and 

music, and finally a group of Upper 

and Middle School students who had 

learned the true nature of theatre as an 

ensemble art form. 

Tom Wilkinson – Dresden 


(formerly at Colegio Roosevelt, 

Lima, Peru) 

From Lima 

We began the year wondering how to 

have as many students on stage as 

possible and not do a musical. Having 

always had a burning desire to visit 

Friedrich Durrenmatt’s THE VISIT and 

trusting other choices would not 

provide the stage time necessary for 

forty to fifty budding actors, Todd 

Welbes, who taught and directed with 

me, and I decided the time was right. 

His comment, “It’s so dark and 

devilish,” pushed the decision even 

further. We cast the show with a 

marvelous pair of actor lovers, Claire 

Zachanassian and Anton Ill, but 

surrounded them with a cast of 

villagers who managed to control the 

audience through almost three hours 

of performance. We even added song 

and dance as we wrote in parts for a 

pair of Harlequin narrators who led the 


audience through the stage transitions. 

The effect on the IB and MYP theater 

courses was to provide a practical 

context, allowing set, lights and sound, 

and costuming as well as acting to be 

the focus for many of the students. As 

well, the idea of building a cast around 

two ensembles, one of villagers and 

the other of the evil visitors, proved the 

cement around the performances 

success. 

With a small group of actors, we 

explored the ideas of CHILD 

LABOUR – thanks to M. Pasternak for 

the push – in the very real context of 

Lima and the street kids who cluster at 

every street corner waiting to sell gum, 

juggle, do flips or simply beg. Based 

on research and real discussions and 

using Boal image theater techniques, 

the students explored the problem 

realizing that who they were and what 

they brought to their street corner 

encounters was as important as 

understanding street children 

themselves. They developed a short 

Forum theater piece for elementary 

school children as part of CAS where 

the actors followed their performance 

with discussions about child labour 

with the elementary students. The 

investigation and performance led to 

students working in orphanages 

sponsored by a local Limian group 

called Lima Kids, using drama games 

and discussion techniques to get to 

begin to understand the complexity of 

the issues surrounding being a child 

and alone in Lima. The year ended 

with the graduating seniors who had 

been part of the original group 

spearheading a fund-raiser to support 

Lima Kids which included performance 

and hands on work with the schools 

and orphanages associated with Lima 

Kids. 

Last, Todd and I with our Limian 

Spanish theater colleague, Jose Luis 

Meijia, produced a truly bilingual 

production of Marivaux’s THE 

DISPUTE. Based on a script 

developed in English from a Neil 

Bartlett production of the play (the 

script is available through the National 

Theater in London) at the Lyric 

Hammersmith a few years ago and a 

French version translated into Spanish, 

we provided our small cast – 12 

maximum – with the task of making 

their own bilingual script from the two. 

As Colegio Roosevelt is a bilingual 

school this was in a sense easy. 

Allowing the student actors to tell the 


story, a simple one, in Spanglish, a 

combination of English and Spanish, 

the local Babel on campus, allowed 

them to create a piece of theater that 

in the end was essentially scriptless. 

The original is equally delicious and is a 

wonderful script for physical theater as 

well as character work. And, 

compared to THE VISIT, it lasted only 

one hour. Plus it gave our students 

experience with real improvisation, 

physical acting and movement as well 

as scripting skills. 

Maggie Young – Pechersk School 

International, Kiev 

MORE LIGHT by Bryony Lavery 

This play is a wonderful vehicle for a 

group of girls. I used a group from 

grade 9 to grade 12, second year IB 

Theatre Arts. It has challenging 

content and the chance for the 

production team to shine also. One 

student designed the set and another, 

a series of dances for their Individual 

Projects. We rehearsed over a sixweek 

period and performed for two 

nights. It is a about the Emperor’s 

childless wives and concubines who 

are buried alive with him when he dies. 

The only way to stay alive is to eat him. 

The interesting thing in the play is the 

concept that in their dire captivity they 

find personal freedom. Each woman 

and child discovers talent within 

themselves that was stifled by the 

confined life of the ‘harem’. When the 

food runs out MORE LIGHT, the 

warrior, goes out of the central 

chamber to find more and finds more 

than she bargained for!!! There is love 

interest! MORE LIGHT, now published 

as a separate edition, appeared firstly 

in the Shell/National Theatre collection 

Connections. A new set of plays is 

commissioned each year. At last there 

Calderdale HS 

is a fund of challenging texts that are 

relevant to the 14 – 18 age group. I 

have produced four plays from the 

collections over the last few years that 

include THE CHRYSALIDS and 

SPARKLESHARK. 

THE GOLDEN DOOR by David 

Ashton, is described as a ‘twelve shot 

myth’. It is a great opportunity for a 

group of 13-16 year olds not only to 

act but to create wonderful 

soundscripts and scenery. It is set 

underground and involves two 

opposing ‘tribes’ who are struggling to 

find both resources and a sense of a 

future. It contains big issues and yet 

its world-under setting allows for both 

technical and artistic innovation. It was 

the final piece for my Grade 10 drama 

class and provides the opportunity for 

everyone to get involved. You could 

rename it ‘a hundred and one ways to 

use a camouflage net’! We worked on 

it for six weeks, mostly in class until 

the final week and they designed both 

the set, makeup and costume as part 

of their course. It is also part of the 

New Connections collection. 

THE VISIT by Frederick Durrenmatt 

is a great script for senior students. It 

is about an old woman, forced to leave 

a small town because of pregnancy, 

who returns to exact revenge on the 

man who betrayed her. It has lots of 

opportunity for a big cast, good 

character development and interesting 

set. It is flexible enough to allow for 

wide ranging directorial visions and lots 

of opportunities for IB Theatre Arts 

students to flex both their Performance 

and Production muscles. We 

rehearsed over a seven-week period 

and gave three performances. 

Parts were filled from lower 

grades where interest dictated.

ISTA 

PROFILE 

The ISTA Consultancy Service... 

By Doug Bishop, Taipei American School and ISTA Board of Trustees 

It took me years to recognize the 

obvious: I can’t know it all; however, I 

can get stuck in a rut. Although ISTA 

festivals and TAPS helped expose 

some students to other professionals 

and expertise, the majority didn’t get a 

chance. The ISTA consultancy 

programme has proven to be a 

godsend to address this need. 

I remember becoming a more 

vocal proponent of the idea of bringing 

expertise home several years ago 

when rising travel costs and perceived 

danger caused increasing numbers of 

my students to reject a trip abroad. 

However, with the consultancy 

programme, the expert came to us. 

The beauty of this arrangement is 

simple: instead of traveling to an event 

set up by someone else, my students 

stayed home and attended events 

tailor made for them. 

In January 2005, Greg Pliska 

visited the Taipei American School for a 

week long consultancy, as we 

embarked on a script devising project 

called Moxie, to raise funds for a 

tsunami-relief effort. Greg helped 

theater classes begin the process of 

developing script ideas; he worked 

with mythology classes on adapting 

stories to the stage; he worked with 

HS and MS play casts in character 

development; he worked with teachers 

after school on weaving drama 

techniques into the classroom. His 

work was a wonderful jumpstart to the 

Moxie project, our production process, 

and the second semester. 

Two years later, in November 2006, 

Sherri Sutton spent three days 

presenting a very diverse range of 

events. Her IB Theater class work 

centered on styles; she also had 

individual conferences with my six year 

2 students about their research 

commission. With beginning theater 

and advanced English classes, Sherri 

worked on both ensemble building and 

character building. She developed 

specific lesson plans with teams of 

grade 6 and 9 humanities teachers, 

while offering two open after school 

improvisational theatre comedy 

workshops, as well as meeting with 

the cast of Woody Allen’s God to begin 

the character building process. Sherri 

left a wake of enthusiasm and energy. 

In both cases, my kids and I felt 

we’d been on holiday. The routine was 

broken. New energy was palpable. 

The ripple effects across the 

school˜through teachers, through 

theater students, through non-theater 

students was certainly noticeable. 

Thus, not only did my students and I 

get a wonderful boost through the 

experience but the status of theater 

was raised in the eyes of the 

community. 

I can hear your thoughts: yes, 

there are obvious advantages, but it is 

pricey. True, expertise has a price. I 

couldn’t have afforded it out of an 

annual budget, to be sure. Unless you 

have a very generous administration, 

you probably need to do as I have: 

seek help from your school’s support 

groups. In my case, the PTA has been 

amazingly generous in its efforts to 

provide students and the community 

with as much enrichment as possible – 

particularly in the arts and writing. 

Here we have a chance annually to 

submit proposals to the PTA for 

funding. For both Greg and Sherri, I 

submitted a proposal in the spring of 

the year before. Often, you can 

connect with ISTA staff who will be at 

an ISTA event in your region, saving 

travel costs. For example, Greg went 

on after Taipei to Michael Thomas at 

Pattaya in Thailand, and Sherri stayed 

on a day for a consultancy with the 

Taipei European School, reducing 

costs for both schools. 

By early March, ISTA will publish 

sites for next year’s events. Check 

them out. Contact Sally Robertson 

about a potential consultancy that 

piggybacks on another event. Prepare 

those funding proposals this spring... 

and next year you will reap the benefits 

of expertise that energizes both your 

students... and yourself! 

Go to www.ista.co.uk > 

consultancies for more 

information. 

...geared up to help you 

on home ground 


SHANGHAI TAPS 

Shanghai American School, China – October 26-28 2006 

Photographs: Courtesy of 

Julie Ladner, Geoffrey Duffield 

and Giel de Groot. 

www.ista.co.uk

ISTA/Scene March 07

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