Form 6 parents were treated to an entertaining and often highly humorous evening of plays involving the Form 6 leavers. Many of the plays were written by the children themselves including the Latin play ultio deorum which was the winning entry in the recent "Ludi Scaenici" Latin Drama Competition.
The Latin play imagined the gods becoming impatient with the behaviour of the mortals in Pompeii. Jupiter, angered by their greed, laziness and vanity plans to make them pay for their weakness and, in so doing, helps his brother Pluto who reigns alone in the Underworld. Three wayward humans are transformed into Cerberus, the three headed dog who guards the Underworld.
The children created a unique retelling of the famous Pyramus and Thisbe, featured within the play of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Donald Trump starred as Pyramus, who loves his wall! The play also featured a Mexican dancing girl as Thisbe, Theresa May as Snug the ‘British Lion’, Nicola Sturgeon as Wall, Jeremy Corbyn as Peter Quince and Vladimir Putin playing a cameo as Moonshine. The ‘Techy’ play was a spontaneous creation by the lighting team paying homage to the ‘Lighting Dragon’ Paul Curtis and even included someone playing Head of Drama, Mr Tim Clarke. The light-hearted monologue that followed was based on Nursery School – Flowers by Joyce Grenfell and was partially inspired by a previous Kindergarten teacher at St John’s.
Form 6’s final offering was a reworking of the successful Shakespeare Schools Festival play Twelfth Night but this time involved the whole year group taking part which really brought this party play to life. Mr Clarke commented, “It was also wonderful to see lots of children influenced by the fabulous Emma Rice production of this play which the children saw at the Globe theatre in London recently as part of their Leavers’ Programme.” The evening was rounded off with a heart-warming Leavers’ song which the children wrote with music teacher, Ms Drusilla Harris.
