Children's Theatre Festival comes around again
The Children’s Theatre Festival was held on Friday 3rd May 2019, by the students of grade 8 for their younger peers at Junior School. 70 student actors participated and had an audience of 94. Read theatre faculty member George Macpherson's account below.
On Friday we got to see and listen to a roomful of children entertain, amaze and enchant one another in the Children’s Theatre Festival. This was the second installment of the festival and we saw exciting progress in the scale and quality of the productions. Students of grade 8 performed 12 plays that they perfected over six months of theatre lessons.
We started by looking at the ethical responsibilities of storytelling and the conventions of children’s theatre. Moving into the design phase of production, students studied stories that they chose from African folk tales, western fairy tales and the Panchatantra, and started to turn the ideas on the page into living productions.
The festival was the culmination of many months of work from our young learners, designing and rehearsing. There was a selection process for the plays and students showed real application and motivation to ensure their play made the cut. In the end we chose to present all of the plays – having been very ready to cut at least one from each section! The simple fact was that each of the plays had something wonderful to share with an audience.
On the day, over 70 grade 8 students performed twelve plays for nearly 100 Junior School students as well as over 200 Senior School students from grades 6, 7 and 9. There was magic and laughter and kindness in that space, first created by the grade 8 performers and then by the Junior School audiences. It was one of the most thrilling days so far in a fantastic year for the Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad theatre department.
Written by George Macpherson
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