The Hare and the Tortoise
11am and 1.30pm, Tuesday 15 March 2016
Second year Drama students from one of our partners, University of East London, explored Half Moon’s history of creating bilingual performances in English and Sylheti-Bengali and toured a participatory performance to Lansbury Lawrence Primary School.
They used as their stimulus:
This bilingual play, written in 1989, was full of culturally rich and playful anecdotes as well as containing a dilemma still relevant in 2016. The key question explored from the original play, which was used to form the basis of the participative and immersive performance, was ‘how can we come together as a culturally diverse community where we respect & support differences and ultimately celebrate self-belief, self-esteem and self-confidence in others?’
The performers and devisers were themselves from a wide range of countries and continents around the world, with some being first generation immigrants. They used their cultural differences to inform the piece that sat within a Mantle of the Expert (Heathcote) and Process Drama (O’Neill) frame of Drama-in-Education. This meant that ‘the audience’ became the experts in the performance where they, as animals of the forest, had to find ways of helping the tortoise to believe in herself and ultimately to demonstrate the qualities of such a small, slow creature to others.
UEL ensemble members
Abdul Yoonis, Amanda Cooper, Amber Louise Jenkins, Ashleigh Davis, Diana Badia, Makeda Ellis, Mercedes Kemp, Primah Ndawula, Rose Uwakah, Stella Opoku, Tiam Parinejad
Director and Facilitator: Liselle Terret
Diana Badi, Tiam Paringejad and Primah Ndawaula are students at the University of East London. Here they discuss the performance of The Hare and the Tortoise which they toured to Lansbury Lawrence Primary School.
Second year Drama students from one of our partners, University of East London, explored Half Moon’s history of creating bilingual performances in English and Sylheti-Bengali and toured a participatory performance of The Hare and the Tortoise to Lansbury Lawrence Primary School.
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