Countdown
On your marks, get set, go! Counting down to a Claremont favourite
It’s a new year, a new term, a new start, and that can mean only one thing… The return of the Drama Department’s perennially popular ‘Play in 7 Days’!
The concept is simple: students have just seven days to devise a piece of drama two minutes in length for groups - one minute for solo performers – responding to one of three given stimuli. They then rehearse their mini-plays for a week and perform them in front of a panel of judges, plus their peers, on the seventh day. It started on Friday 13th September this year and the final performance was a week later.
To inspire the budding creatives, they were presented with three different stimuli: an illustration of a fantastical machine labelled ‘The Imaginator’, which belched sparks and smoke; a recent newspaper headline, ‘Spacecraft returns to Earth without astronauts’; and the beginning of a story about a clock whose hands move backwards. And this year, just for fun, all the pieces had to begin or end with the line: ‘I told you not to press the big red button, and what did you do?’ Students could only choose one stimulus, but what would they make of it…?
On Friday 20th September we had the answer. On show were a range of ideas, imagination and theatrical daring. It was a difficult decision but the judges finally awarded first place to Hannah Barrios and Lamya Akasha, both in 10.7. In addition, Acting Awards were given to Khushal Patel in 8.1 and Francesca Cameron in 11.3; a Creativity Award went to, among others, Mariam Al-Shdifat in 11.2; and Best Newcomer to several Year 7s, including Danya Kadhim in 7.5 and Tiah Davda in 7.3.
Afterwards, the students were clearly elated...
‘This was my first time doing Play in 7 Days,’ explained Khushal. ‘When I entered the competition, I felt nervous about performing in front of an audience, but when it came round to our turn I felt like I could do it with my friend by my side. When I found out I’d won an Acting Award I had no words - it was amazing! You make a lot of new friends sitting next to other people showing their plays. It's just really good fun!’
Ms Norrish, Associate Head of Drama, was certainly pleased with the event: ‘It was fantastic to see students getting involved from across the year groups, from 7 to 11, and the atmosphere on the day was brilliant! The performances were all of an incredibly high standard and demonstrated a wealth of creativity and imagination in response to the given stimuli. I particularly enjoyed the amazing props that students had created for the performances this year... We saw wigs, an “imaginator” machine, a human big red button and much, much more!’