A ROEDEAN student’s play has been picked from hundreds of submissions to be performed as a rehearsed reading at London’s National Theatre next month.
Year 12 student Millie Foster’s play Three Butterflies, Two Chimpanzees, One Lion is one of a handful of plays written by 14-19 year olds around the UK that will be part of the New Views Festival at the National Theatre on July 2.
The festival is the culmination of the prestigious theatre’s New Views programme which takes place in schools across the UK. It offers training to teachers to hold regular playwriting classes across the terms and assigns a mentor professional playwright to each school. The playwright holds a kick-off workshop with pupils at the start of the process and then returns to give feedback on first drafts. Pupils then take on feedback and revise their plays which are then submitted. The few chosen plays feature in the festival.
This year just six winners were chosen, including 16-year-old Millie. More than a 1000 young people took part in the process.
The Roedean drama department ran the programme as a co-curricular activity for 15 students with a strong interest in drama. Millie created her first draft and then received feedback from the playwright Sian Owens. Following this, she developed her writing to create a final draft, which was then submitted to the National Theatre and considered for inclusion.
Said Millie: “My inspiration was drawn from shows that used to be broadcast on CBBC all the time, like The Zoo and One Zoo Three! I’ve always enjoyed the idea of a comfortable setting of a kids’ show being used to communicate to teenagers, and this seemed like the perfect application of that. Shows like that never follow one set of characters, so I thought it would be good to have different types of people represented as animals. The course was very effective and practical. I really enjoyed using all the time that was given to really develop my characters and story, especially the workshop with the playwright. She helped make all our ideas more tangible and realistic, with new approaches that I’d never heard of. I’d only ever written screenplays for fun before this, so I found it rewarding to be able to create something unique for the stage.”
Roedean’s Tahys Rodriguez, a member of the drama department and a playwright herself, said: “Taking part in New Views this year has been a transformative experience. Giving students the freedom to write without boundaries was incredible. The impact on the group has been profound, serving as a massive inspirational spark, boosting the students’ confidence and creative agency. Witnessing the dedication and the pride they took in their final drafts was the most rewarding highlight of the programme. They all deserve to be congratulated, but we are, of course, incredibly proud of Millie’s success.’
Millie will now have the remarkable opportunity to work with professional actors and directors to present her play in the Olivier Theatre, the largest auditorium at London’s National Theatre.
Categories: Roedean School
