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| Smoke gets in your eyes is about to become a musical! Well, a play with music and song anyway. This exciting project is being realised by Sarah Glynn and the staff and pupils of Chendrit School. Follow the on-line diary and as the project advances. Writing and producing a School Play is a mammoth task, but when you have the right story it is full speed ahead. Sarah Glynn, teacher of Drama at Chenderit School in Northamptonshire, takes a journey – a steam train journey – into the past to ‘smoke’ out exactly the right story. In the beginning (well March 2008 anyway) In the beginning is the phrase “School Play”. The phrase is often enough to shake of the uninitiated or nervous types – striking dread into many teachers and children alike - but to some, despite the obvious forthcoming pressure and turmoil, it is the Ultimate Challenge. We will inspire these young minds, we believe, and lead them on a journey into the exciting world of performance. Hmmm. But what? In our first meeting we quickly cast off the idea of reproducing another big budget musical. Trotting out the same formulaic frippery is unappealing. We have been down the ‘Grease’ and ‘Shop of Horrors’ route before, and whilst each musical always has its own merit, we cannot help feeling jaded by the thought of a repetitive slog with a story everyone already knows. Oh, and of course, the cost of performing rights is crippling… We hit a brick wall. We need something new. Something nobody has heard of before that we can make our own – hey! That’s it! Why not MAKE our own? Meeting 2 (April 2008) The production team have a group brainstorm. The school has a fabulous jazz band. It seems to make sense to utilize the talent and, over a laden table of nibbles and wine, we invent a brand new concept musical – a murder mystery based on the board game ‘Cluedo’ – and go home happy. Happy until the following morning when Paul, our directorial consultant, shows us his homework - a musical he ‘googled’ last night – called ‘Clue’. You can guess the rest. Drawing boards beckon… Meeting 3 (May 2008) Nobody has any bright ideas. We haven’t lost the impetus to Do Our Own Thing, so all is not lost. We decide to meet again having gathered ideas – each person will research locally for a good story. If we use something the kids can get a handle on – can ‘own’ – it will help to motivate them, and at the same time, publicise us. We arrive with stories and books tucked under our elbow patches – but nothing seems right…except, just maybe, this one book. It is new. An unknown quantity. It appears to be about our locale AND it has heroines and baddies and enigmatic strangers and is set in the era of Jazz! Maybe this time… Approaching the Author (May 2008) The job of emailing the author is delegated to me. I am tentative. How should I explain? He may be a very high and mighty person who thinks himself terribly grand now he’s a published author… I am worried that he will say No Way, My Book is not Musical Material. Actually he is rather charming and self-effacing. I break the news to the production team – we are doing SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES by Stephen Done… Getting the show on the (rail)road At school the months of May and June are busily taken up by our focus on exams. Of course that must be our priority, and SMOKE subsequently takes a temporary back seat. Following a number of emails and phone calls Stephen is now well on board, and his enthusiasm is infectious. I have had the pleasure of meeting him at a book signing and discussing initial ideas. As an extra bonus we have the backing of Northamptonshire Library Service – just as well as getting the 19GlynG40s feeling right is going to take a lot of research. Launching the idea with the kids (July 2008) Our last big school production was ‘Grease’ which was, naturally, an attention grabber and resulted in a very large cast. We decided to cash in on past success and launch SMOKE on the wave of enthusiasm that the kids have for performance. We invited selected students from across the school to spend a day in Drama trying out the new play. Stephen was to be in attendance helping to set the scene and light the fires of creativity. I put together a working script for the first scene, which was to be performed by my own Year 10 GCSE group (little did they know what they were getting into!) It is quite difficult to actualise a book into a play script – if you have no idea how to go about it! Despite having a degree in Drama and twenty years of experience of teaching Theatre Studies, it may seem surprising that I have never actually written a play. When there is so much fantastic literature out there, why bother? I have never been let down by Willy Russell, Alan Ayckbourn or John Godber, for example, so why should I feel the need to put my neck on the block? The short answer, I guess, is that it is fun. I never thought that it would be. But really it is. The First Scene is performed Stephen visits Chenderit for the first time and gets to tell the kids about how he came to write the book. I love the fact that SMOKE is set in the area that I grew up, of course, but it isn’t only that that draws me. I have a sneaky secret. Ssshhhh. Don’t tell, but I love steam trains too. The kids see some projected photos from the 40s, backed by ‘The Andrews Sisters’ and then are treated to the premiere of scene one! Despite only having had two hours class time to rehearse the GCSE group handle the script well and set the tone of the play effectively. All the kids have therefore had the opportunity to encounter the characters, and then follow this up with the chance to workshop ideas from the story. I had a brainwave that if I recorded their efforts I could nick some of the lines from their improvisations – making some of the creation of the final script partly down to them. Summer Vacation The production team agree to spend time writing some of the script during the summer holidays, and Mark the music director has agreed with his wife to be able to spend time away from the family locked in a room with his composing gadgetry! Needless to say, both Debbie (my Head of department) and myself have no such luxury! Whilst our partners are understanding and supportive, we are both full-time mums to (between us) 5 kids under the age of 10. We witness the wet summer wash away our hopes of watching kids careering around the paddling pool while we dedicate ourselves to the business of writing. With working hubbies we stand no chance of a minute to ourselves, and busily entertain our waterlogged offspring instead. On Exam Results Day we gather in school to celebrate the students’ achievements, but poor Mark is nearly crowned by me when he dares to enquire as to the progress of the script!!! I actually look forward to September beginning… Beginning of September – Full Steam Ahead! We have reached a point where there is no going back – the notices went up for auditions for the new school musical and we were inundated with questions. We beavered away on snippets of script for the kids to read – the hardest of which to write being Vignoles himself. We decided that he needed to tell the story, so finding his ‘voice’ would be vital. No worries, I thought, let’s just delve into the book and find Stephen’s own words to put in Vignoles’ mouth! Perfect. And then there is the issue of the gender divide. We knew we would get far more many females auditioning than males – some of the parts would have to become female roles – and so came forth the birth of Sally to replace Simon. WOW! It was better than we hoped. We had 91 young hopefuls sign up to try out for a part. It seemed to take on a feeling of ‘The X-factor’ with the production team lined up in a row looking all serious and stern! Fortunately we all wanted to be friendly with nobody Simon Cowell-ing it. I guess that is how we ended up with a cast of 91 in the end. Yep. Everyone gets a part. That’s the thing about school musicals – it’s our duty to encourage enthusiasm. It takes a further 3 hours of wrangling to choose our perfect cast. Principals, mostly, need to be able to sing, act and dance – quite a list – but we eventually mix and match to meet our needs. Now we have our Vignoles, Eddie, Sally, Violet, Police and bunch of evil baddies. We have a veritable myriad of villagers, a plethora of Land Army lassies and a select collection of kids who all want to be train drivers when they grow up! Now we just need to stage it! |
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