The It

The Key Stage 4 & 5 production of 'The It' by Vivienne Franzmann opened last month in the Arundel Centre and wowed audiences over three evenings.

Presented in the style of a direct to camera documentary, this darkly comic 'state of the nation' play explores adolescent mental health and the rage within, written very specifically for today. Grace (Catarina L) is an usual teenage girl who has something growing inside her. It starts as a feeling, a strange pulsing, which expands in her body. It starts in her stomach, but quickly outgrows that, until eventually it takes over the entirety of her insides.

Congratulations to the cast and crew for a thought provoking and poignant piece of contemporary theatre exploring mental health, which was brilliantly enhanced with inventive choreography and a striking set design.

My Mother Said I Never Should

Year 13 students performed extracts from 'My Mother Said I Never Should' by Charlotte Keatley this week, in a set designed to symbolically reflect the secret which is slowly revealed over the course of the play.

The action takes place in Manchester, Oldham and London, moving in time between the 1920s and the 1980s. It is about the difficult relationships between mothers and daughters. A story which explores the lives and relationships of four generations of women: Doris, Margaret, Jackie and Rosie. Their loves, expectations and choices, are set against the huge social changes of the twentieth century. When Jackie falls pregnant with Rosie she is unable to cope and hands over the baby to her mother, Margaret. This play looks at the consequences of this secret and each woman's opinion on it.