Carr Hill High School students took to the stage at drama competition Northern Beat to help raise awareness of the importance of positive relationships.
10 students from years 10 and 11 made the trip to the Lancaster Grand Theatre to compete against six other schools, all of which had been shortlisted by a panel of judges.
The competition required students to develop and produce a 15 minute drama production based on this year’s theme ‘Positive Relationships’. Competitors were asked to focus on the need for young people have for positive, strong, considerate, caring, stable relationships with the people closest to them.
The competition is an annual event and this was the 5th year Carr Hill students had taken part. The students chose to call their performance ‘Blended Isolation’ as it focused on the trials faced by a reconstituted family. The performance demonstrated the issues faced by the family and covered bullying at the workplace, homophobia and domestic abuse. The piece was centred on different members of one family dealing with different issues in their lives.
Year 10 student James was one of the actors in the Carr Hill production. He said: “We started rehearsing in December. We came up with the theme for our production very quickly so we have spent the last few months developing the characters and the plot. Our production focused around abuse in different forms and how that abuse can impact the whole family in different ways.”
Northern Beat is designed to tackle a series of issues that young people may come across whilst growing up. It’s a multi-agency collaboration that aims to work with young people on the impact of various crime topics and the corresponding link in behaviours due to the increased susceptibility that young people can place themselves in through direct engagement with local schools.
The students performed to a high standard and despite not walking away with the top prize they were praised for their creative and innovative performance.
Following the competition year 10 student Ross, who also performed at Northern Beat 2013, said he was proud of the production Carr Hill delivered. Ross continued: “I really enjoyed being up on stage as you have the chance to express your feelings in a creative way. I think everyone involved in our production did really well and I know a lot of us are hoping to have the chance to compete next year too.”
Drama teacher, Miss Gould said: “I’m so proud of all the students. They have worked very hard on this production with no outside input. It is not easy to create a production from scratch and their final piece of work certainly demonstrates what a talent bunch of young people they are.”
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CARR HILL TAKE PART IN NORTHERN BEAT
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