The Tempest

At the start of this term the A Level Drama students and a group of GCSE English students enjoyed an opportunity to see The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest, which has had rave reviews. It was the turn of the A Level students first, who travelled to the home of Shakespeare on Thursday 5 January to watch the performance live at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. This will be the production that the girls will evaluate as part of their summer examination, and they were impressed by the ground-breaking special effects put together by director, Gregory Doran, and designer, Stephen Brimson Lewis, who worked with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios to create some magical and innovative scenes.

So engaging was the piece that the students joined the group of GCSE English students (who are studying the play for their English Literature GCSE) to watch the live streaming of the performance at the cinema in Cambridge the following week, in order to soak up every last detail and benefit from the close-ups and interviews offered by the cinema relays. For both sets of students, lively discussion of both staging and characterisation ensued, and all agreed it had been a spectacular production.