On Wednesday 1 March, the Year 11 Drama class travelled to Penrhos College to participate in the Independent Schools’ Drama Association Drama Day. We were also joined by students from different schools. In our mixed groups, we worked through three different workshops throughout the day.

The first workshop was in developing acting technique. This workshop was valuable, as it got us thinking about how we can create a scene with more than just dialogue and actions. It also gave us an insight into what a director does and their thought process when looking at a scene.

Our improvisation workshop was extremely valuable and highly challenging. Apart from improvisation, we were also taught how to build ourselves up emotionally and physically for an emotional scene, without having to use emotional memory. This was a workshop we were all talking about!

The final workshop was physical theatre. This workshop was a lot of fun as it revolved around using our bodies and also incorporating a bit of stage combat! Everyone had a lot of fun getting creative by using typical day-to-day objects as dramatic stimulus for performance.

Drama Day was a huge success and it was wonderful to interact with people from different schools. Our wonderful little drama class are so familiar with each other and understand how each person works, which made being able to work with people we don’t know, hear their ideas and watch their style of acting, so much more beneficial. We all learnt so much from the drama day and are sad it’s over.  Thank you to Penrhos and ISDA for hosting the day, Mrs Pike and Mrs Pacecca for driving us and an extra thanks to Mrs Pacecca for arranging for us to attend.

Simone Shandley Jones (Year 11, Dillon)