Photos of our costume/makeup

Polymath

 

A polymath person is a person of wide knowledge or learning, someone who has a wide skill set. Therefore a polymath performer would be someone who is able to have some education and skill from different genres within the arts, for example being able to sing, dance and act. By taking part in 'Hamelin' at Ashcroft, we are allowing ourselves to learn about different things we may not do in our strand. For example we would never have a chance to work with Rob on songs written for this particular musical, or even be part of a musical in Theatre. That's why the rehearsal process for 'Hamelin' was so interesting, and different to our usual method in 'Theatre'.

The same with CAP (Community Arts Practice) we get a chance to run workshops for children in our local community, during which we can learn new skills that we may not have realised we had. It's such a rewarding experience to work with the children who will come to see our performance, and inspire them.

Overall this term at Brit has helped us so much, in learning new skills, and gaining experience for the future. We have taken part in something we can include in personal statements because of the skills we have gained and developed. I believe we have learned different vocal, and physical warm ups that we didn't know we had before, which also can help us before future auditions, and rehearsals.

Rehearsal Process

Rehearsals for 'Hamelin' were very interesting, but also difficult and intense.

It was difficult, because there was only five or six of us, from theatre strand, in the community project for 'Ashcroft' and we had to rehearse dancing, and singing, as well as acting, which we weren't used to at all, so it was interesting learning new skills and rehearsal techniques.

We also split off in rehearsal, the actors, dancers and singers, and then came back at the end of the rehearsal and showed the rest of our cast what we had done. Then we had to show and teach them what we'd rehearsed.

It was also really interesting and fascinating being part of the rehearsal process of 'Hamelin' because we got to work with so many talented people, and got to meet some really amazing people from other strands which inspired me so much, and we made such a close knit friendship with our cast, it was lovely.

Community Arts

During the last term of year 12 at Brit, we take part in a Community project. For us this means working with students from other strands, whom we may never have met before. Many of the projects work with people from the community, some of them visit hospices and schools or drug rehabilitation centres. Our group is slightly different as we don't directly interact with our clients (our community) on a weekly basis. Instead we are in rehearsals for something known as The Ashcroft Show. This year we're rehearsing 'Hamelin' which is a modern version of the well known tale 'The Pied Piper'.

Our audience:

 Our show has been created as a family orientated show. We are performing to children of the ages 7-11 in schools based in Croydon. It's very exciting because many of them will never have been to the theatre before so it's our responsibility to introduce them to the world of theatre and performing.
 It's an incredible opportunity for us, to have that responsibility because the children come from less privileged backgrounds that perhaps some of us have come from, so it's an honour to be able to introduce them to something they can be a part of in the future and may never have known they could.
We are also rehearsing and performing an hour long workshops for many of the children who will see the show for the week following our performance.