Month: February 2018

It was a scorching day as 41 Year11 students headed out to the Pop-Up Globe at Ellerslie Events Centre to view their very popular performance of Macbeth. The fans and iced bottles of water for sale aided our ability to endure the two-and-a-half-hour show as groundlings.

The aim of the trip was to provide us with a better visual understanding of the play, which it most definitely succeeded in achieving. Everything from the blood and gore to the outstanding acting, made sure that the story would embed itself into our minds. It gave us the context we needed to proceed with our English literature study of the play for our IGCSE exams later this year.

Personally, having Shortland Street star, Amanda Billing, playing Lady Macbeth was an interesting way to engage in the show as I have enjoyed watching her in the television series for quite some time. But her great acting skills and interpretation of the role was not the only thing to remark on. Almost every other character maintained great energy and enthusiasm throughout the play, keeping us (literally) on our feet as they fought and cried and laughed and danced on stage. Shakespearean banter was shared between the audience and actors during parts of the show, with some of us ‘wearing’ the blood and urine sprayed liberally into the groundling area during some scenes. The realistic nature of it made many of us squirm.

The Pop-up Globe was an amazing experience for students and staff. It was a great opportunity to expand our grasp of Shakespeare and allowed us to approach learning in a way that couldn’t be taught through a textbook. It will certainly make our reading and understanding of ‘the Scottish play’ much more enjoyable.

Shakespeare Alive: The Merchant of Venice

The one school trip that our teachers actually want drama on, our annual visit to the Pop-up Globe Theatre, took place last Friday. Rather aptly named, the faithful replica of William Shakespeare’s theatre reappears every year in the gardens of the Ellerslie Racecourse.

With several productions on stage throughout the season, it gives Language, Literature, and Drama students a rare opportunity to watch the texts they study performed on the stage for which they were written. Having studied ‘The Merchant of Venice’ for IGCSE English last year, viewing this performance added a new dimension to our appreciation and understanding of the play and enabled us to consider the performance aspects of the drama texts we will be studying for AS and A Level this year.

The talented cast certainly brought the drama to life; highly skilled, comedic, and nuanced performances truly breathed new life into Shakespeare’s work. There were also plentiful audience interactions, as well as surprisingly relevant subtext and humour, which allowed us to form a more personal comprehension of this classic play.

There wasn’t a single one of us who didn’t enjoy the experience – not bad for writing some four centuries old.

Our year 9 English students are taking inspiration from our stunning surroundings to help them develop metaphors in their descriptive writing.