Dramatic Adventures in Reading and Oxford

Two Sixth Form trips for our English and Drama students took place recently with the theatrical opportunities taking the group to the Oxford Playhouse for ‘Driving your Plow over the Bones of the Dead’ based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk and to Reading Rep Theatre for a performance of ‘Hedda Gabbler’ by Ibsen.

The Drama Department outing on Thursday 2nd March in Oxford was chosen to further student learning in GCSE, A Level Drama & Theatre Studies and IB Theatre and offered a truly contemporary theatre performance from the world-renowned international touring company, Complicité,  The darkly comic, anarchic noir caused a seismic reaction in Tokarczuk’s native Poland due to its defiant attack on authoritarian structures, with right-wing press branding the writer an ‘eco-terrorist’ and national traitor.

A thought-provoking, wry and otherworldly murder mystery, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a tale about the cosmos, poetry, and the limitations and possibilities of activism.

Ibsen’s play ‘Hedda Gabbler’ was enjoyed by the English students at Reading Rep on the same evening as the Oxford trip. Six pupils were able to widen their appreciation for literary texts with the work of this major 19th century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet, who is considered one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre.