Sacred Heart connects globally with other schools

The college’s commitment and passion for the arts in education is reflected by four notable events on their busy cultural calendar: the TheatreLink project – which is managed by the Education Department of the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York – an appearance at the Crawford School’s Festival of Dramatic Excellence which was staged at the Joburg Theatre in May, the annual Sacred Arts Festival and the Matric projects in June.

Sacred Heart College was one of three international schools taking part in the TheatreLink programme, with only 20 schools participating in total worldwide. TheatreLink is a project of the Manhattan Theatre Club based in New York, enables students in geographically remote locations to study and create theatre together.

The two-phase TheatreLink process encompasses a full term. In phase one, each participating class studies a play produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, then write an original play inspired by the prescribed text. In phase two, each class sends its play to a partner school, which produces it. Each class is thus the author of one play and the producer of another. During the production phase students learn about and are assigned theatre jobs such as actor, stage manager, or designer.

At the project’s culmination, the author school, the producer school, and their teaching artist use video conferencing technology to view and discuss the live, streamed performance with their partner school. The process is guided by the Manhattan Theatre Club’s New York City-based teaching artists, who confer and collaborate with classroom teachers and communicate with the students through the site.

“It’s an amazing process for the pupils,” said Sacred Heart College drama teacher Tamara Schulz, “not only do they get this cross-cultural experience, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity for them to go through the entire play-making process, from writing through to directing, acting, designing and doing the technical work.

“They go through the process of writing a play, then they have to hand that over to a partner school and direct a whole new script – they take responsibility as a group for bringing the play alive.”

Prior to the TheatreLink project, the festival was an exciting evening for the Grade 11 class. The class presented their play ‘The Gray Area’, produced as part of the TheatreLink project. No less thrilled to be part of this prestigious event were the cast and crew of ‘Choices’ – the winning House play written and directed by Grade 12 pupil Nthabiseng Seane. The young thespians, delighted to perform in one of Joburg’s top professional theatre spaces, performed with passion and commitment.

‘Choices’ scooped the award for best script at the festival, and two awards for acting – to George Mokoena and Dylan Barry. ‘The Gray Area’, directed and performed by Grade 11 pupils, also received a pair of acting awards – for Balin Benissan and Waseem Jadean as the entertaining comic relief policemen. ‘The Gray Area’ was written by Ashland High School in Oregon, USA, as part of the TheatreLink project.

The Sacred Arts Festival, which took place on 6 and 7 June, was a spectacular conglomeration of the arts.