Monday 6 December 2010

Trace & Place - Money well spent.

Over the years I have seen many many school productions.  Some that verge on professional, others well, probably best forgotten.

Most have been either scripted plays or popular musicals.  Trace & Place performed at the Tenbury Regal was neither.
Firstly it was highly ambitious, not so much in it's content, but by virtue of the fact it was performed by children from five schools, working together.  Now it's difficult enough to create a production at one school, but five geographically remote schools is bordering on madness, but project Co-ordinator & Creator Caroline Palethorpe did just that, and very well.

It also appeared to me (and I might be wrong) but the performers were not all the "usual suspects".

The drumming was brilliant, if you like that sort of thing (and usually I don't).

Some of the meaning behind the drama, I have to admit I didn't understand, but the performances on the whole were good.

There was some good use of technology, but I found that the projected text was both too small and too quick for my poor eyes not helped by me sitting right at the back of a full house, but given the lack of time available, shortened even further by the power cut on Friday quite understandable.

The other thing worth remembering is that the performance was only a small part of the project, and whilst many may scorn grant funded art projects, this one does seem to have delivered.

Other photo's
Tenbury Advertiser

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do believe money spent on art projects is money well spent as long as they fulfil the objective. The literature for the performance set out the objectives and was very professional. Unfortunately the performance didn’t relate to the literature. It is always risky to comment on childrens’ productions but when this amount of public money is being used for a purpose then those involved have a responsibility, for the most part to the children. I came as a member of public; I do not have school age children. I do hope the schools involved are encouraging parental feedback and evaluating whether this production was really of benefit to the children.