Private School News

Independent Schools Association (ISA) Drama Festival 2010

On the weekend of March 12th and 13th March Hurst Lodge School, Ascot hosted the ISA Southern Section of the ISA Drama Competition, as it has for the previous 13 years. Every member school of the Independent Schools Association is invited to participate

This competition is organised by ISA to promote drama in schools. Schools may enter in 4 categories, Infant, Junior, Middle and Senior.

A total of 19 different pieces of theatre were performed over the weekends by children aged between 4 and 18 from a variety of schools from all over the country -The Northern competition was held the previous weekend at The Hammond School in Cheshire.

All were adjudicated by Mr Mark Oldknow (GODA) who was impressed with the standard of professionalism of all the entries. Hurst Lodge was praised for its facilities, the technical support given by the team and its general organisation of the event.

Following the weekend of performance we eagerly awaited the results. When these were published Hurst Lodge was delighted to discover that we had received two first place awards. The marks achieved were awarded for the technical, production, acting and entertainment value.

Pupils from years3-6 performed “Percy Parker’s Flying Bathtub”, a curriculum based musical that was devised by Andrew Holdsworth, a teacher at Hurst Lodge School. An overall mark of 63% was achieved.

One of the senior entries was a piece based on “The Good Person of Szechwan” a play written by Bertolt Brecht, which was awarded a creditable 72%. The other senior Hurst Lodge entry was “The Listener”, a devised production using the Walter de la Mare poem of the same name, as the stimulus for a piece of physical theatre. This gained the best results in the country, as well as being awarded The Clewborough House Cup for the Best Senior Production and The Dair House Trophy, (the Adjudicator’s Discretionary Award for “the most innovative and creative” piece).

These results rounded off a great weekend for the school and were well deserved by the girls for all the hard work they had put into the performances.