5 July 2022
From musical theatre to monologues, poetry to piano trios and street dance to Strauss, there was something for everyone at last week’s inaugural Wold Fringe Festival.
The festival began on Monday 27 June with a wonderful art and textiles exhibition in the Millennium Centre, which you can read more about here. No sooner did the exhibition close, than it was time to move next door into the auditorium for Anything Goes. This concert may be a little less formal than some, but the quality of performance was excellent, as usual. As well as enjoying music from our orchestra, choirs and music scholars, there were many great performances created and rehearsed entirely by students.
On Tuesday 28 June, it was the turn of drama and performing arts scholars and students studying for speech and drama exams to showcase their work. Students from Year 7 to Upper Sixth confidently took to the auditorium stage to perform monologues, including from Jane Eyre and Daisy Pulls It Off, recite poetry and display excellent presentation skills (sales of air fryers may well have increased!). A very receptive audience also enjoyed a tragi-comic duologue, an adaptation of Peter Pan and a devised theatre piece from Key Stage 4 drama scholars.
Earlier the same day, going off script had been the name of the game, at an Improvisation Live Lunchtime.
On Thursday 30 June, everyone was ‘wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome’ to a fabulous evening of musical theatre at Face the Music, which opened with numbers from Cabaret before taking us to Chicago, South Pacific and many other marvellous musical destinations. The second half was based closer to home in distance, if not in time, with lots of great excerpts from Oliver!
This year’s highly enjoyable Wold Fringe Festival finished on Friday 1 July with a physical theatre performance and street dance on the lawn outside Marden and the opportunity to watch a recording of the fantstic Upper Sixth Production of Grease from November 2021. As The Wold Fringe Festival concluded, Director of Drama Miss Stacey Williams promised, “It will be back next year, even bigger and better!”
