And the Oscar goes to…

Othello Joseph
The year 2017 saw the St Paul’s College Drama Department enter a new domain with their self-written and self-produced play, ‘Love: Chaos & Order,’ which commenced its three night run on the 20th of July.

As the new school year began in early January, the Drama Department, spearheaded by Madame Clémentine Ruel and Herr Mark Mehnert, held auditions to select some of the Colleges’ finest actors. However, rehearsal was only half of the unsuspecting actors’ workload, as they were tasked with writing, producing and directing their very own short plays that would be compiled to fit their theme for the year: love.

Although it was no easy task producing an original play, the talented, young cast/crew were able to organise their beautiful mess of ideas into well-structured plot lines with mature underlying themes such as infidelity, unrequited love and dysfunctional families.

The performance was split into four plays, representing four different types of love and four seasons, with four different troupes of actors, each tasked with writing a script that dealt with their ‘type of love.’ Added onto that, each troupe had to perform their component in an individual style of theater that they chose themselves. Summer dealt with romantic love and the cast opted for presenting their episode as a musical à la Grease (1978), while Winter cast presented unrequited love and chose to mime their piece as an ode to noir-films’ pantomime legends Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Spring dealt with family love and Autumn dealt with friendship.

Every performance was unique as each troupe of actors presented an extract of their play after which the audience was given the opportunity to vote for the two seasons they wished to see to completion.

The three night run of the play attracted audience members from within and outside the school community, all of whom very much enjoyed the play, almost as much as the cast/crew who, after each show, were kindly served coffee and tea by their wonderful mentors.

According to a member of the cast, “Opening night was the most nerve wracking, because everything that could have gone wrong ultimately did go wrong. But we were very slick and improvised some parts successfully.” Ultimately, the young talents of St Paul’s College were able to pull off an original play of immense quality, written, produced and directed within very little time. Although there will not be another play in the third trimester, the Drama Department will keep working to ensure that the talents of the college are well nurtured.