Download a PDF file of Rough Notes HERE - The Woodroffe School

The Day the Waters CameOn Friday 12 October 2012, all drama students in Years 9, 10, 11 and 12 watched ‘The Day theWaters Came’ by Theatre Centre, here in the drama studio. The play explored the experiencesof black residents of New Orleans during the terrible events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in thesummer of 2005. The play was extremely powerful and engaged the full range of the audiencebrilliantly. Some students stayed for a Q&A after the show, a very useful and interesting session,particularly for those considering going into the performing arts.Sophie Farenden, 10ACF, wroteabout the performance, below are some extracts from her review.The audience were on three sides of the acting area, the effect of this type of staging helped theperformers to make sure everyone saw enough. Also, it made sure that they didn’t always lookforward. As an audience, we wouldn’t always see everything, but we would see enough. One of theactors said “The four corners were a very important part of the play. They helped to create differentplaces and made the play very dynamic and powerful.The production used a range of conventions such as talking to the audience, this made us feel moreinvolved. The use of set and props was very effective. They had two main items to show the flood,which was: the top half of a bus and the roof of a house, these were cut diagonally to show the floodwater covering them.In the play, the actors took on many roles and changed characters almost instantly. There were a lotof different ways in which they showed that they had changed characters such as: change in voiceand appearance, for example, when turning from a gangster to an old man, they would: tuck in theirshirt; hunch their back and their speech would slow down.There were a lot of scenes that really stood out and grabbed me by the throat. I felt that they werevery strong and important to the play. An example of this was when the two young kids were stuckin the attic and suffocating during the flood. It was a very sad scene, no one came to save them.Another scene which I felt was really important is when Maya is on the roof really scared and thisreally disgusting, smelly, rotting body floats up and, no matter how hard Maya tries, the body will notgo away. It is as if it is haunting her. She didn’t know who it was and it wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. The fright on poor Maya’s face was horrific and made my body shiver.When people were taken to the Super Dome, they were desperate for water and food. Money wasworth nothing and it really brought out the ugly side in people, they were stealing and were preparedto do just about anything to survive. People stole anything they could if it meant that they could liveanother day. This scene showed us that, in desperate situations, people will do almost anything tosurvive. We don’t usually think about how people suffer around the world because it doesn’t happento us. We saw how different people cope in bad situations. Although, this was very deadly, noteveryone died. Maya survived.Anne Cruwys-Finnigan. Head of Drama and Dance.