A visit to the Orange Tree Theatre
You are never too young to appreciate the plays of William Shakespeare! One of the most challenging, and also the most rewarding, of Shakespeare’s plays is King Lear and the Junior school have relished the opportunity to discover more about the king, his daughters and the intrigues that abound!
Mrs Van Der Merwe reports on the visit of the Juniors to the Orange Tree Theatre, the culmination of a programme of study which has involved the whole of the Junior school.
‘On Wednesday 21st June the entire Junior school downed their pencils and climbed aboard coaches for an outing to the theatre. We were off to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond to see their production of King Lear. Having participated in workshops recently we all had a good grasp of the characters, from the courageous Cordelia to the evil Edmund, but the actors had left us with cliffhanger ending and we were all eager to find out what happened next.
You may have thought that on one of the hottest days of the year the theatre would have been a stuffy place to be but once the performance, which included acrobatics, light shows and, of course, the beautiful poetry of Shakespeare, started we were all far to engrossed to notice the heat. It was an amazing performance and much enjoyed by all.
Marjia (Upper IIA) commented, “I was really impressed with the actors because they expressed their emotions amazingly and the ending was so sad I nearly started to cry.” While Naomi (Upper IIA) added, “It was really gripping, because you really felt the emotions of the actors.”
