Photography Showcase: View examples of photographic work by Year 12 students (2008/9)

Happy Days Performance l World Class Workshop with Matthew Godfrey l School Show 2011: O Brother, Where Art Thou? l International Schools Theatre Association Festival l Dreaming of Foxes radio show l School Show: "Down the Rabbit Hole" l Drama at Overgate Hospice l Future Heroes awards l Stunning performances in Berlin!

Showstoppers 2011



It’s that time of year again when GCSE Drama students step out on the boards, to perform a variety of songs and dances from the best known musicals. On 27 June, almost 70 Year 10 Drama students took part in the Expressive Arts department’s annual production of ‘Showstoppers’. An audience of over 200 people were treated to an evening of entertainment from the future stars of Calder High School.

The evening was full of numbers from musicals such as Hairspray, Grease, High School Musical, Oliver, and many, many more. As it is Mrs Leicester’s last performance at Calder High School, there were staff performances in there as well! Mrs Melnyk and  Mrs Leicester would like to say a big ‘well done’ to all the students who took part in the evening, and thank you to all staff and parents who came to support the students, the faculty and the school. 

Photo gallery:

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"Happy Days" performance (photos)

Mr Gregg's swansong:



Student performances:

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"Happy Days": a celebratory evening with Expressive Arts (18 May)

After six amazing years at Calder High, Mr Jez Gregg is leaving the school… for a second time! Leaving as a teacher now, however, he feels he has learnt a lot from Calder!

Mr Gregg says that he has “worked with amazing staff, collaborated with exciting  artists, been on unbelievable, life changing trips, and more importantly, has  had the privilege at Calder High to work with the most inspirational students in the world" (He is able to say this, as he has taught in nearly every continent).

He is leaving for a job as Creative Director of International Schools Theatre Association ISTA, an organisation that creates theatre festivals for young people all over the world.  Last year alone, ISTA played host to 37 festivals, involving 120 schools (Calder High included), across six different continents.

"Calder High students are a different breed… they are passionate, interested, creative, innovative and hard working!  They are polite, engaging and honest (sometimes too honest)!"

Mr Gregg also commented that "Calder High has been an amazing springboard to this wonderful opportunity and I can't thank my friends at the school enough for the support and inspiration that they have given me over the years!!"

In order to celebrate this aspect of excellence within our school, and to say goodbye to our much cherished Mr Gregg, the Expressive Arts Department is putting together an unforgettable night, celebrating home grown talent, across age ranges and disciplines, through Calder High’s artistic, dramatic, musical, and not forgetting dancing, students. But also look out for one or two guest appearances. And if this weren’t enough, the man himself will be hosting the night and also performing a few of his own talents!

The evening, ‘HAPPY DAYS’ is on Wednesday, 18 May, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, in the Ted Hughes Theatre, and tickets will go on sale early May, priced £5 (concessions £3.50), but don’t delay as there is a limit of only 200 tickets, which can be bought from Mrs Kershaw in the school office. All proceeds will go to the Great Generation funds being raised, a project very close to Mr Gregg's heart; along with our usual raffle, the school is even auctioning off three of Mr. Gregg’s infamous dance tracksuits to generate even more, much needed cash!!

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World Class Workshops with Matthew Godfrey

Matthew Godfrey is graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. and has taught Shakespeare, Red Nose Clown and Improvisation in Germany, Norway, Turkey, USA, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Italy, England and India for the International Schools Theatre Association. He travelled all the way from Los Angeles to deliver these workshops to our students. We were extremely lucky that he could visit us, he is world class! Workshops took place over a two day period at the end of March.

After the workshops Matthew commented “Students of this calibre are a joy and pleasure to work with. The level they are at has challenged me to rise to their expectations and talent. They have taught me a great deal and I leave here a better teacher.”

Mr Gregg, who organised the visit, said “For the students at Calder High to have this invaluable experience, will not only contribute to their theatre studies in school, but also to their life skills including confidence, sharing, enjoying and committing. Every student in Years 9 through to Year 12, who took part in the workshops entered the space with total focus, energy, enthusiasm and zest and left with so many new perspectives."

Quotes from our students included:
Ben Barker 10XD who said, “It was really funny and I got a lot out of it and it will help with my Drama exams. Matthew was really understanding. A great day and hopefully we will be able to do it again in the future”.

Jacob Jones 10YL commented “He was a proper nice guy and the group bonded well with him and especially with each other. We learnt a lot of great skills to use in our Drama pieces ready for our GCSE’s. He was very professional and it was a valuable experience which I will take away with me”.

Daniel Bladon 10 XC who was very enthusiastic said “He was a great person to work with and was a privilege to be given an opportunity to work with a man of world class talent. He was professional throughout and the exercises were fun and educational”. 

Rosie Mansouri 10YL said “It was a really good day and built up our confidence. It will help with our Drama coursework. We dressed up as clowns and interacted with the audience. Hats were used to get us into character. He was a really interesting person and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience”.

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School Show 2011: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Programme and cast list)

‘Welcome to this year’s annual school show – the Highlight of the Expressive Arts Calendar’, read the opening line from the programme, and ‘oh, brother’, was it a highlight. The stage adaptation of the Coen brothers’ Hollywood hit of 2000, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou’, was developed by the Expressive Arts faculty at Calder High School, and presented an exceptionally original piece of musical theatre.



The show opened as ghost-like convicts filtered in along the outer edges of the audience; on stage, the sound of rattling chains was framed by a salient motif provided by a chorus that, at times, borrowed register from the theatre of Ancient Greece. A live band and beautifully soulful singing, set the tone for what was about to unfold on stage.

The set was minimal, with bales of hay and a 10 ft white cross. The adaptation provided some aesthetically stunning images. The Baptism scene boasted the school’s ability to pull out all the stops; the chorus wore white gowns, dressed in blue light that bounced around the stage, originating from starry pin holes in the black backdrop. The mobile flecks of blue, communicated brilliantly the reflections from the moonlit river, to which the chorus ‘went down to pray’. A similar effect was achieved during a scene with dancing sirens, which moved as gracefully and not dissimilar to Richard Alston’s Ghost Dancers. These moving, tranquil scenes were tempered with sinister undertones from the time in which this piece was set; a scene depicting the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the ‘Deep South’ embodied this with a disturbing use of rhythm, produced by the chorus’ stamping feet.

The show was a wonderful concoction of drama, dance and music, including a rendition of ‘the spoons’. Slapstick comedy was as abundant as welcome, with the school office’s frog even making an appearance, though short ‘lived’ and in need of resuscitation by the end of it. Calder’s attention to dramatic technique was easily equal to professional standards, and this was echoed in Expressive Arts teacher, Jez Gregg’s Oscar-style thank you speech, just before the encore; ‘We asked the students to be young professionals, and they were.’

The show provided a perfect mix of authentic context and entertainment, particularly in the students’ impeccable take on an American, Southern accent. Every audience member left The Ted Hughes Theatre smiling. This whole-school production certainly did not ‘take my sunshine away’. The students were a tribute to their school and our community.

Review by Lyndsey Ashton

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ISTA recorded (message from Mr J Gregg, Curriculum Leader, Dance)
A follow up to the ISTA experience…. announcing a SHORT FILM about the ISTA festival at Calder High School! Well here is the most amazing short film not only about ISTA
but also about the amazing festival we had HERE at Calder High School in Hebden Bridge!! If you live in and know Hebden you'll love it, if you don't you'll want to come!
And if you've never heard of ISTA...you will want to know more!!

View here: http://vimeo.com/17346098 (Please note: this video will only be available to view outside school) Shed you tears of joy... And enjoy! It's unbelievable!! WHAT a town we live in!

An International Experience by Annie Fletcher, Year 10

Between 28 and 31 October, during the last half term when schools are usually silent and empty Calder High was the exact opposite. Just over 80 students from all over the globe were involved in a fantastic festival, organized by ISTA, The International Schools Theatre Association. These young people traveled from London, Rome, Nigeria and Germany and joined some of Calder High’s own students and students from Calderdale Theatre School, to create an amazing performance in just three days. The participants were split up into four ensembles – Music, Devised Theatre, Movement and Tech – that each generated a piece for the festival, based on the theme of ‘The Hebden Bridge’ being 500 years old.

All four ensembles went out on the Friday morning to various places in Calderdale, to look for inspiration for their pieces. The musicians had fun busking in the town square, the ‘movers’ visited the graveyard, the techies went looking for sounds and film and the theatrical students listened to people telling them stories in Hebden Bridge. Fortunately they were fairly lucky with the weather and in the afternoon they came back to work in their ensembles.

Calderdale International Young People’s Theatre Festival
28-31 October 2010 (Press release supplied by the Calderdale Theatre School)

There may not be 500 young people involved in the Theatre Festival but many of them will be travelling more than 500 miles to get here!

Young people from international schools in London, Rome, Heidelberg and Lagos will be making their way to Calderdale at the end of this month to work with 45 local teenagers drawn from Calder High School and Calderdale Theatre School. Using the 500th anniversary of the pack horse bridge as the theme for their work, the young participants will be working with international practitioners provided by ISTA (international schools theatre association), experienced in devising, physical theatre, music and stage management. They will be exploring the idea of the hundreds of thousands of feet that have crossed the bridge in its 500 year history; the stories of those people both real and imagined. They will then use those ideas to create a new piece of drama which will be performed at the end of the festival.

They will also have the opportunity to learn new skills from locally based actors and artistes, in workshops as diverse as trapeze, puppetry and Yorkshire Long Sword dancing to name but a few!

Calderdale Theatre School has been part of ISTA since 2004 when a small group took part in a festival in The Hague, Holland. Since then their participation has increased and this year the youth theatre, which draws its membership from all over Calderdale, has been asked to become ISTA’s first flagship school in the UK.

Calder High School first took part in a festival last year in Berlin and has enthusiastically offered to host this Calderdale Festival. CHS and CTS have been working together to make this festival an event to remember for all who take part.

You may see some of the festival participants out and about, particularly on Friday 29th when they will be doing some site specific work on and around the
bridge itself, on the Buttress and in Heptonstall.

Everyone is invited to the final performance at the end of the Festival in the Ted Hughes Theatre at Calder High School at 11:00am on Sunday 31 October. Admission free.

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Dreaming of Foxes: Radio drama
Calder High actors Joseph, Joe and Kieran, with 'Dreaming of Foxes' playwright and former Calder High student, Aelish Michael.

Three Calderdale pupils star in ground breaking new drama about late Yorkshire poet’s childhood. The late UK poet laureate Ted Hughes would have been 80 this year and to mark the occasion a ground-breaking new drama has been made about his Yorkshire childhood. Recorded entirely on location at his former house in Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge, it is based loosely on a true story.

In 'Dreaming of Foxes', the Poet Laureate is reunited with a long lost schoolboy friend after almost fifty years but what do these men have in common now except memories of old haunts and the landscape around Mytholmroyd in Northern England which inspired them both?

It was penned by writer Aelish Michael (a native of Mytholmroyd and former pupil of Calder High School) and directed by renowned stage director Joyce Branagh, who now lives in Todmorden. But rather than getting its first mainstream outing via TV, radio or film, it is, instead, being premiered via the internet. And it can be heard anywhere in the world.

It has been produced by award-winning radio production company, Made in Manchester, which makes programmes for BBC BBC Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 5Live and the World Service. Executive Producer Ashley Byrne says: “This is audio drama at its very best but delivered in a different way. It’s easily accessible, free to listen to and you can even download and keep it forever.”

'Dreaming of Foxes' stars Hebden Bridge-based theatre, TV and radio actor Robert Garrett as Ted Hughes and seasoned stage and screen actor Ian Blower as Douglas Greenwood. The drama includes flashbacks to Ted Hughes’ childhood – and young Ted and his friends are played by three teenage - Joe Cotton, Joseph Moorhead and Kieran Bell, all students at Calder High School.

Ashley Byrne adds: “What’s brilliant about radio drama is that you can turn things round so quickly. You can commission something one week, get it written the next, record it in a few hours, edit it in a week and get it out to an audience the next! Film and TV takes weeks and lots and lots of money. Theatre takes even more commitment.
 
“The scandal is that actors/writers don’t often get the chance to experience it and it’s been scandalously under-promoted as a genre to the public at large. Through dramas like Dreaming of Foxes, we hope to do our best to rectify that,” says Ashley.
 
(You can listen to/download Dreaming of Foxes for free at: www.independent.co.uk/drama / For more details about the writer, go to www.aelishmichael.com / For further information about Made in Manchester, go to www.madeinmanchester.tv)

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Year 12 Drama
Calder High School’s reputation for excellence in the performing arts was highlighted once again when the Year 12 drama students performed their exam piece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in front of an external judge.

The sixth-formers tackled the difficult and demanding story of life in a psychiatric hospital with immense maturity. The individual performers also recited their solo monologues before the examiner.

Head of expressive arts, Mrs J Leicester, said that the group had worked exceptionally hard to produce a  terrific performance. The actors were Patrick Boyle, Ellie Byrom, David Hyatt, Ben Wilson, Patrick Evans, Talia Gianotti, Lewis Finney and David Burnip.

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School Show 2010
Congratulations to students and staff - another stunning performance with a creative rendition of 'Down the Rabbit Hole' including trapeze, glowing caterpillars, and innovative costumes.

Performance photos:

'Down the Rabbit Hole' is where the audience will be following Alice when Calder High School’s annual production takes to the stage. That’s the title of a surreal and dramatic adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And Calder is leading the way, with the curtain going up a whole month before the release of the Hollywood version (which stars Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter).

Adapted and scripted by dance teacher Jez Gregg, 'Down the Rabbit Hole' has Alice on a flying trapeze, and 15 students playing the part of a luminous caterpillar.

“This is a spectacular show and unlike anything we have done in recent years,” said Mrs Jill Leicester, head of expressive arts. “It is very surreal, in the true Lewis Carroll tradition.”

The show is being rehearsed in just a tight three-week period as the first two weeks of term were badly disrupted by the weather. “But in true theatrical tradition, the show must go on,” said Mrs Leicester.

The show opens on February 9 and runs for three nights. Tickets can be bought at school in lunchbreak, or they can be ordered by calling the school on 01422 883213.

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Drama at Overgate Hospice
Drama students from Calder High School took two of their own pieces of work out “on tour” – and presented them at Overgate Hospice. The year 13 group, who are doing Drama A level, performed two plays. The first was Cluedo, a murder myserty which involved each audience member receiving a party bag and voting on the final outcome. The second was a slapstick farce called A Tale of Two Pipes, complete with traditional door slamming and double-takes. One member of the audience said: “It was hilarious, the best thing I’ve seen all year. It beat the socks of Mamma Mia!”

Mrs Jill Leicester, head of expressive arts, said: “The plays are part of a growing relationship between Calder High School and Overgate, which began last year with a variety concert. We hope to continue entertaining and fundraising for this amazing organisation.”

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Future Heroes awards



Seven students from Calder High School have won prestigious musical Future Heroes awards. They make up half of all the awards made throughout Calderdale in the competition organised by Northern Orchestral Enterprises Ltd. The winners, who were judged by the director of Northern Ballet Mr John Pryce-Jones, are Fingal Plumpton, Georgia Lomax-Thorpe, Solomon Cotton, Rebekah Rolinson-Lord, Madeleine Rolinson-Lord, Flora Harkness and Isla Harkness. They have all been awarded scholarships for extra musical tuition.

Head of music Ms Suzanne Peers said: “ We were up against some very stiff competition from private, grammar and specialist performing arts schools. We are delighted and extremely proud of our musicians.

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Stunning performances in Berlin! (Report and photo by Mr Gregg)



Mrs Leicester and Mr Gregg have just returned from an International Schools Theatre Festival in Berlin with 17 year 11s and 13s. They were one of 6 different international schools from Europe and beyond. The American School of The Hague, ABA Sultanate of Oman, Calderdale Theatre School, Marymount International School Rome, Schule Schloss Salem, and the Heidelberg American School. Each school brought approximately 15 students and they worked eclectically in ensembles with the other schools to create a performance based around the theme ‘the fall of the Berlin wall - a city once divided and now made whole’. Over 100 students aged 15 to 19 performed in the most powerful piece of theatre, that explored all the ideas surrounding the theme. They were insired by the sights they visited the; state secret police prison; berlin wall monument; palace of tears; Brandenburg gate and other locations around Berlin.

The work they produced was unbelievable. Through movement, voice, sound and drama they created a sincere performance that was honest and moving. They also demonstrated the fantastic skills they have in communicating with others; working in groups, offering opinions, being authentic and real in everything that they do, wanting to learn…they really were a benchmark at the festival, and can make us feel extremely proud of the students in this valley. Every artist that worked with the students had something great to say about them, about their authenticity and commitment...we couldn’t have asked for any more!

Calder High School is one of the first comprehensives to be involved in an international schools festival, and in partnership with the Halifax based Calderdale Theatre School Association, we will be hosting our very own festival next year…watch this space.  Calderdale is going global!

Mr Gregg would also like to thank Calderdale Theatre School for giving Calder High students this amazing experience.

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Music

Instrument and Voice lessons
A letter has gone out to Parents with information about the lessons being offered in school from the start of the Autumn term. Enrolment is taking place now. Please return the completed form or contact Miss S Peers for more information.

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Art

In their Element: Jewellry Design Competition
Students of Calder High were invited to participate in a jewellry design competition at Element in Hebden Bridge- and boy did they enter! First prize went to Rose Wagner Revitt in year 11 for her ‘Whiffle’ charm entry; a beautiful ethereal creature born from Rose’s imagination. Not to be outdone, Annalise Bradshaw in year 8 was commended for her entry of a giraffe. Entrants were asked to design a charm which could be made and sold as part of Element’s new charm collection.

Both Rose and Annalise received their charm designs in silver which had been handmade for the occasion. The ‘Whiffle’ is now being sold as part of the collection at Element Jewellery.

Congratulations to all those who took part!

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Young Brilliance by Year 8 students (see Poster)

As part of the Young Brilliance in Calderdale Schools project, Year 8 have produced artwork on the theme of the Mexican ritual 'Dia de los Muertos' (The Day of the Dead). These images will be on display at the Piece Hall during the exhibition which runs from 31 July to 1 August. There is a preview showing on Saturday 26 June from 2:30 to 4:00pm.

Dressing the skeleton:

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Showcase of Students' work:
Check out the wiki created by Mr Khan

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