Middle School Play Success

Over the past week, a mixture of Year 9 and 10 Habs Boys, along with some pupils from the Girls’ School, have performed in this year’s Middle School plays – Bassett by James Graham and How To Be A Boy, with the latter being an original, devised piece of theatre.

Bassett was the first performance of the evening. The play focused on fourteen students being locked in their classroom after misbehaving for the full 50 minutes of the performance. A repatriation was happening on the high street outside, and the soldier being repatriated was an old pupil of the school who everyone knew. The characters within the classroom were desperate to get out, and the play explored what happened and the power dynamics when young people are faced with each other’s confrontations and differences. 

The cast were brilliant to be engaged for that amount of time, and have worked really hard to make sure their character portrayals were truthful and natural. The hard work had also been put in months beforehand, as the pupils worked toward developing their characters and the play. 

How To Be A Boy was an original piece of theatre written by Andrew Muir, and devised by the boys in the cast. It explored how confusing and messy the transition from boyhood to manhood can be, and what a boy is ‘supposed’ to be. The performance itself was highly amusing, charming, funny, and often thought-provoking. 

The boys involved in the cast had superb comic timing, and their energy remained extremely high throughout. The play’s creation process was also very rewarding for the boys as a lot of the content was based on real experiences, extending to stories and personal tales from the boys. From the very beginning they dedicated so much into creating this piece of work, and the final production was riveting. 

All three shows were received brilliantly by all in attendance – and the pupils thoroughly enjoyed providing such a fantastic experience for their audiences.