London 2018

Thursday 19th July 2018

Started the day exhausted after the long day yesterday. After the full English and continental breakfast, we made our way to Leicester Square wearing performing arts tops ready for a day full of workshops.
Not wanting to waste a lovely morning in London, Miss allowed us to do some shopping in Leicester Square for just over an hour. Naturally we went straight to M&M world, in which we spent wayyyyy too much time at the photo booth!
Other shops included the AMAZING kingdom of sweets and of course the Lego store. Here, we were assigned a secret mission- distract Tid while Ingles and Shmelks buy him a present.
Personally, we think we smashed it. From small talk, to car building and racing, and as a last resort an impromptu photo shoot whilst the prezzie was being bought. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but we say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
After this eventful morning, Adam took us to pineapple studios where we did our school of Rock workshop with Nick. It was an incredible experience, in which we learnt the aggressive and powerful choreography to the finale of the show, “Stick it to the man”. We got a sweaty picture with Nick, then with aching legs headed for some lunch. Boots meal deal at Covent Garden of course!
We then headed to our second workshop of the day at Donmar studio. Here we learnt lots of acting and devising techniques, such as group exercises about London/ the country side; which link together to form the end product. We performed our pieces and headed to Planet Hollywood for dinner.
This was, by far, our favourite meal with excellent food and entertainment (provided by us and fabulous song selection by the restaurant). We even became Planet Hollywood ‘famous’ on the CCTV screen and made it our mission to cheer louder than the other groups when our school came up on the tv’s!
Full from this exciting meal, we started the trek to the ‘School of Rock’ theatre. It was an incredible show with unbelievable talent from the children at such a young age, and I think we would all agree we were left a bit speechless. We liked dancing along using the choreography that we learnt previously in the day to the finale.
Once the show was over, we made our way back to the underground entrance, however it was extremely crowded and there was little chance of 33 people making it through without anyone getting left behind! So, we split into 3 teams of ten- #TeamShmelks, team Ingles and Team Tid. (team ingles like to think that they won but #TeamShmelks beg to differ!) unfortunately Team Tid came last by about 3 days- unlucky!!
Legs weak after the race up the stairs, we crawled back to the hotel and Liv threatened Shmelks with a remote.

By- Alys, Kayla and Liv

Wednesday 18th July: The Day of ‘The Jungle’

The day started with the shrill ring of alarm clocks as we woke up from our well earned rests. We tucked into a wide range of breakfast foods at around 8AM, this gave us plenty of time to talk about the exciting plans made for the day.

We set off promptly to catch the tube, buying drinks en route, this led us to Green Park where we observed the severity of the heat. The grass was completely dead! We walked on to Buckingham Palace, in the classic tourist fashion, many photographs were taken. We were lucky to see the changing of the guard along with the arrival of a Royal Rolls Royce!

After wrestling though the hordes of commuters, we stumbled into Boots in the pursuit of food. This was short lived as there was little time to spare for eating- we were off to the National Theatre! We arrived at the immense concrete theatre and met our friendly tour guides, they took us through all of the diverse spaces, from construction to performance. The tour gave us a precious glimpse of varied arts careers and terminology, potentially vital in our GCSEs/BTECs. We then had our well deserved lunch.

After an entirely necessary trek around the National Theatre gift shop we returned to the hotel, this gave us time to freshen up or rest before the evening. Dinner was at Strada on South Bank, the Italian foods were sublime and definitely filling, amongst the items we indulged ourselves with were carbonara, pizza and baked fish. We even had ice cream in a variety of flavours!

With our stomachs full and spirits high, we continued on to the Playhouse Theatre, the venue of the play we were going to see. The title was ‘The Jungle’ and it focused on the refugee crisis at Calais. The storyline that was inspired from real events and brought the audience into their lives- literally. The transverse stage was set as a cafe in which fortunate members of the audience were seated, this gave the play a realistic feel as the cafe was always in use. The plot followed a group of the refugees and their aid workers to show the highs and lows of human emotion through their efforts to create a home in what was previously landfill. No comparison can be drawn between the two shows we have seen, they have both been impressive and are entirely different performances in themselves. The impact of this show was enormous: as the play is set in crisis which still exists we can see how we need to act as a people to help others.

After another long tube journey, we returned to our hotel exhausted and made our way to our rooms. We are excited for tomorrow!

Andrew Woodmass-Calvert

Tuesday, 17th July:  1st day of London blog

1st day in London and although we all feel sluggish from the early rise we are ecstatic to start our 1st day in the city of theatre! Everyone is packed as though we are going to Turkey for a week when really it’s because we have to have 3 outfits per day for all the hard work we have to do in our workshops. So as we arrive in London we began to feel the rush from the busy atmosphere, as we make our way towards the hotel we talk about the things to come and begin to get excited, some of us starting the singing before we even start the workshops but it all begins to feel natural as you’re surrounded by lights and posters from all the shows to come. Arriving at the hotel gave us a chance to drop our heavy luggage off and get changed only to be running out the door twenty minutes later. This is where our journey officially starts, we make our way to Pineapple Studios and stand outside as we hear the angelic singing coming from the floors above, then we make our way to our 1st studio workshop. We meet our dance instructor Rob who gives us a little insight into the fun we will endure at the evening performance of “Kinky Boots”! We learnt the finale dance and it was definitely a fun and laughable atmosphere, we all enjoyed the upbeat music and let out all our sass! (Including the boys who were reluctant at first but once they got into it.... they showed off their sass too!). After the workshop it was a quick change into our evening clothes and a stop off at Pizza Hut to fuel us for the performance. As we walked towards the flashing lights of the theatre our excitement bubbled and as we stepped inside we could feel the excitement in the air. The performance....now the performance.... was absolutely amazing the talent and coordination from these actors was unbelievable (from my little experience of only visiting the Sands Centre for those Christmas pantos this was a HUGE step up!) when the performance was over my throat was dry from all the screaming and cheering!

The most amazing feeling though I have to say was sitting down comfortably for the first time in hours! Right now I’m still buzzing from the exciting day and cannot wait for tomorrow

This is maisie signing off
Thanks for reading!

Maisie Hailwood