The LVIth have to prepare a piece of theatre in the style of a chosen practitioner for their A-Level Coursework, and this year they have chosen the contemporary and very exciting theatre company Frantic Assembly. On Sunday 22nd they took part in a workshop with Frantic Assembly in the Wyatt Hall at Cranleigh Prep School. A visiting practitioner came down to Cranleigh to show them, JLC, NIL and LJB the latest work by the renowned company on physical theatre. Building on their work on physical theatre at GCSE, and the work already carried out this term, the visiting workshop leader showed them a variety of devising techniques including a number of simple lifts to include in their productions.
Frantic try to give equal emphasis to text, movement, music and design in their productions. JLC arrived with a car full of equipment to ensure the workshop was suitably hi-tech. We were mostly using music, and researching and choosing a suitable contemporary playlist for productions is a key step in their preparation.
The groups are performing Tender by Abi Morgan and Rabbit by Brendan Cowell for their exam pieces in the summer term. They will be researching the theatre company and rehearsing according to their methods to produce their productions.
The next stage is to go and see Frantic Assembly’s current production, ‘Lovesong’, which is receiving rave reviews at the Lyric Hammersmith. The trip is on Tuesday of next week – so we were lucky to have a member of the company to give us an insight into the production before seeing them in action.
JLC
Back to all news
