Stratford’s First Cohort of Drama, Film and Theatre Students

Using clips from their favourite films as a starting point, students have been discussing how the mise-en-scène reflects the director’s vision and how it tells a visual story. Students then took inspiration from these clips to create their own short ensemble scenes. Feedback from their peers is becoming crucial for learning how to perform in front of an audience and successfully create setting. Next we will dive into European Art Cinema, and examine how the ‘Young Turks’, a group of talented young filmmakers in the mid-1950s, presented a radically new vision of French cinema. They overturned the studio-based industry of the day, creating films that were modern, political, and highly influential.

Students are excited to see their first live theatrical production as a class, a modern re-telling of Middleton’s Jacobean ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ at the Peacock Theatre at the Dublin Fringe Festival. This piece will inform and inspire their own work, and they will each direct and showcase a short performance, as well as reflecting on the process in their portfolios. Fundamental to the course is this openness to engage in, respond to, analyse and evaluate their own work and the work of others.

And this is only week three of this incredibly exciting new subject! The specification states there’s more adventures to come: ‘Experiencing this subject will help students to develop creative and critical thinking and informed opinions. The subject provides students with opportunities for divergent and even radical thinking, to explore aesthetic experiences, to solve problems and to challenge conventions and orthodoxies.’ Can’t wait!

Ms Talbot