The play „The Slug In The Shoe“

The classes 5-7 saw the theatre play „The Slug In The Shoe“ which was presented by the White Horse Theatre on 28th March in the hall of our school. All in all it was a little love story.

There are 2 single parent families: Luke and his dad Jake and Megan with her mom Nina.The two adults fall in love with each other and the kids are afraid to become  brother and sister. So they play tricks on them to do something against their relationship.

For the audience it was an amazing play because the actors played in an awesome way. There were also a few  funny moments when the people in the hall laughed a lot. For example when the adults found out that their kids slept in one bed. The White Horse Theatre was on a trip through Germany and also performed in other schools. Altogether it was a pretty good play and something for everyone. I think many of us understood the topic well because it was about daily problems in  single parent families.   

                --- By Caroline V. Kl.7a

Die Mittelstufe setzte sich mit dem sozialkritischen Theaterstück “Move to Junk“ auseinander, das eine ernste Thematik zum Inhalt hatte:

"Move to Junk"

Move to Junk is a play written and directed by Peter Griffith, head of the White Horse Theatre, which performs stage plays mostly at schools (but also in other places). The play I saw began at a about 10 a.m. in the assembly hall of the Grammar School Werner Heisenberg and lasted for about an hour.

The setting was very familiar, though mostly taking place in classrooms inside a regular school, and sometimes with one scene taking place at a club or just a party. The background was decorated with four mobile phones each belonging to one of the four characters of the story. The mobiles blinking up when somebody got a message or a phone call was a nice detail, which improved the overall atmosphere within the story.

There were four characters in the story, everyone with their own unique personality.

Amanda is a very shy girl that is new at the school where the play is set. She is not like other girls and rather spends her time playing football than going shopping or doing other typical girl stuff.

Stuart is a teenager who accurately can be described by the word “nice”. He supports Amanda after he realizes she is getting bullied and helps her to find out who is to be blamed. He sees her as nothing more than a friend, as he is not really into relationships.

Kylie is a typical teenage girl, mostly spending her free time going shopping. She fancies Stuart quite much and is persistent about it. After being rejected multiple times she finally acknowledges that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with her. She also doesn’t like Amanda, mostly because of her disinterest in shopping or boys.

Last but not least there is Donny in the play who justifies all his activities because for him “they are just for fun”. He doesn’t really think about the consequences of what he is doing. He seems to be often blind on what he or his actions might do to other people.

The story begins with Amanda joining a new school. The other girls, especially Kylie reject her, due to her uniqueness. While also being rejected by the boys for the same reason, Stuart is the only person giving her a chance and talking to her. One day he receives a faked photo of Amanda standing somewhere naked and offering sex. The image rapidly spreads around the school and beyond causing students and other people to reject Amanda even more as well as bullying her. While Stuart and Amanda try to figure out who’s sending the images the mobbing is only getting worse. Soon she receives her first mail advising her to commit suicide. Firstly having accused Kylie, Amanda and Stuart soon realise it can’t be her since if she hates somebody, she says directly what the matter is and doesn’t send anonymous mails. While the cyber mobbing gets worse and worse Kylie researches on the internet and tracks the source of the pictures. She reveals to Stuart that Donny is to be blamed.  But he says he has done all this just for fun, Stuart and Kylie cannot understand him and go to Amanda to tell her that the bullying is over. In the meantime, Amanda’s anxieties have overtaken her, and she badly injures herself with a knife. The play ends with Kylie and Stuart trying relentlessly to knock on the door to visit Amanda.

The acting throughout the play was amazing. I especially enjoyed Donnie’s performance, even after he had turned out to be the bad guy. Every time he was on stage, he made me smile due to his funny acting and flippant attitude. I must also praise Amanda’s performance as the bullied victim, since playing as a social outcast is not an easy task. Her actions felt very realistic and understandable, while still maintaining a spark of hope that her situation might turn out to the good

Props and costumes were not too special, since the play took place in a regular school. I really enjoyed having just the bare minimum of visual and audible effects, because the focus of the stage play was clearly on the story.

The audience was fine overall. The chatter when something funny happened on stage was a bit too long as to my taste but it was to be tolerated. Then again, I must praise the interactions with the audience which the actors included. They very cleverly integrated the viewers into the play by classifying them as the rest of the class. They even took a girl from the audience up stage and played football with her.

At the end I must state that this play could probably have been my favourite play I have ever seen by the White Horse Theatre, featuring excellent writing, great acting and an overall "dark" atmosphere while still maintaining the feeling of a regular school. Indeed, it took me a bit of time to catch up with the characters and the start of the show. But I think this is more a “personal thing” and not an issue of the play. 

                --- By Niklas G. 10s

Die Oberstufe erfreute sich am Shakespeare-Klassiker “Romeo und Julia“.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet in White Horse Theatre’s style

On 28th March, 2019, we were visited by four charming actors who came all the way from the UK to present us their performance of the well-known play “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare. Since we were all familiar with the plot, we were excited to see what the White Horse Theatre has to offer and we were definitely not disappointed.

As we all know, “Romeo and Juliet” is a tragedy about two star-crossed lovers named Romeo and Juliet, who both come from opposing families – the Montagues and the Capulets. To overcome the barriers of love, Romeo and Juliet marry secretly and try to escape from their families without them getting the hang of it. However, they both keep the secret too well, so that they even misunderstand themselves… well, and then we all know what Romeo has to face in the Capulet’s vaults, poor Romeo.

Since we have already experienced a performance of the White Horse Theatre’s actors, we were not surprised by the limited amount of props they used to interact with on stage. Nevertheless, they made it work and changed the setting several times when they moved on to the next scene. This is a typical feature of White Horse Theatre plays in general.

In addition, the actors portrayed the individual characters and their feelings in a great way; hence the audience kept completely quiet during the last scene, but broke out in laughter when Mercutio appeared. The actors even mastered to keep the audience’s attention even though they spoke in Shakespeare’s language, which (to be honest) we do not even understand in German, but that shows that the actors did a great job performing and overcoming language barriers.

Sadly, the director(s) had to cut the length of the play since they were only given a limited amount of time to perform. That is the reason why some scenes were shorter than in the original or completely left out. Sure, those were scenes which are not necessary to understand the plot, but we would have loved to see more of Romeo and Juliet’s romantic development – it just took place a little too fast.

To conclude, the White Horse Theatre’s actors did justice to Shakespeare’s drama and our expectations. Sadly, this was the last time for us seniors to get the chance to watch them perform in our school, but the annual experience of their performance ended with a great play we really enjoyed.

Also, shout-out to the actors who tried their best not to laugh when they first saw us in the audience wearing hilarious costumes during “Mottowoche”: You did a great job!

                  --- Maxi Brocke, Lea Engelmann, Year 12