New video: Wellington College Arts Festival 2017
Our new Arts Festival video recaps a whole dedicated week of exciting workshops, talks, performances and productions. Don't forget to join us next year to meet extraordinary artists, break out of your comfort zone, and spark your creativity.
Posted by Wellington College International Shanghai on Monday, 10 April 2017
Last month Round Midnight were lucky enough to be invited to return to the third edition of the Wellington College Arts Festival in Shanghai, China. The festival is a dedicated fortnight where guest-artists (including us!) are invited to present workshops, talks and performances to promote creativity and imaginative learning.
This year the theme for the festival was “Film” and we decided to write our very own sequel to the classic- Back to the Future! However, instead of just travelling through time Marty and Doc travel through (you guessed it) CINEMA!
Working with children from year 8, 9, 10 and 12 we cast, rehearsed and performed our play in just 4 days. There were montages, romances, comedies and much more all strung together by Doc, Marty and the rest of the high school teens in our 1980's throwback. The performance was a total hit!
We also worked with some of the younger students at Wellington, teaching drama techniques and games which all related to film! Years 3 and 4 learnt about mime and silent movies, creating their own sequences in groups. We learnt about some of their favourite movies too, when we asked the children to create their own still-image poster of their favourite films! Years 5, 6 and 7 extended their understanding of silent films in to an exercise where one person mimed an activity and their partner created the sound effects- a great one for introducing comedy!
The last group of participants we had the privilege of working with were slightly bigger kids- the parents! We had a lovely group of adults come and take part in a workshop based on what their children had been up to during the week. It was great to see everyone having a great laugh. Maggie Wan, a parent at Wellington College had this to say about the experience:
“Thank you so much!!! I enjoyed watching the Y8-13 Drama performance on Thursday. It was brilliant!! I can't believe the 100+ pupils learned so much in 4 days and performed so well. Lastly, I enjoyed the parent drama workshop very much yesterday. It was FUN!!! Please come back again!!”
We had an absolute blast and fingers crossed we'll be back in 2018!