Download Maiden Erlegh Pupils Make Their West End Debuts! “Connections

Maiden Erlegh Pupils Make Their West End Debuts!
“Connections” is the Royal National Theatre’s national festival of new plays for youth theatres and schools,
giving young people aged 13 – 19 across the UK and Ireland access to the very best of new writing for
theatre. Taking part gives young people the opportunity to experience the whole theatre-making process.
Not only are they involved on stage as actors or musicians, but they also take on a variety of backstage
roles – designing set and costumes, operating lights and sound, or stage management.
Each year the National Theatre invites 10 writers to create new plays and, this year, the Connections 2013
playwrights travelled back to their home towns to work with young people on ideas for their plays. From
these encounters came stories of circuses, spaceships, sound clashes, mystery texts, fibbing parents,
phoney gadgets, mistakes, explosions, heartache and love.
This spring, 222 youth theatre companies presented premieres of these plays in venues from Scotland to
Cornwall, Northern Ireland to Norfolk. Each company performed at one of 23 Connections festivals in
professional theatres across the country, and ten companies will go on to perform at the Royal National
Theatre in July. Maiden Erlegh school’s Drama department performed “Ailie and The Alien,” by Scottish
playwright Morna Pearson.
Following an in-house sharing at school back in March, on Wednesday May 1st the company of 20 actors
and 3 backstage crew, from Year 8 to 10, travelled to the Soho Theatre, in the heart of London’s West End,
for their regional performance.
The company outside the Soho Theatre
After a very long day, involving a technical and dress rehearsal, and a vocal warm-up led by a Director from
the National Theatre, the final public performance was electric! The cast took on board the notes given to
them following their early dress rehearsal, making their performance the best yet! The 3 students working
backstage also applied themselves like true professionals in the West End venue. Tom Allott, the project
coordinator at the Soho Theatre commented that the “cast and crew acted with the utmost professionalism
and (the staff at the theatre) all had a great time watching the performance.” He also mentioned that the cast were
a “very talented bunch of actors who you should congratulate themselves on putting on a very slick production. “
Year 9’s Honey Virk, who played the title role of Ailie, said: “The day was amazing, and the reaction from
the audience at the end of our performance was thrilling! It made us all feel really professional.” Year 9’s
Jasmine Paonessa was the Sound Operator for the production: “It was amazing! The people who worked at
the Soho Theatre were so nice, and the experience has really made me think about pursuing Sound
Production as a career.”
The Drama department is delighted to have been involved this exciting project, and are very proud to have
witnessed our pupils making their West End debut!
The department should know sometime in May whether we get to perform “Ailie and the Alien” once
more…at the Royal National Theatre!
The cast on stage during the performance