Round and Round We Go

When members of La Troupe Royale aren't working on the big productions or performing at some out of town festival, we content ourselves with our drama class productions. That being said, this week we had to do a bit of both. 

Every year the grade 11 and 12 drama class creates three 10-20 minute plays that we go and perform at all the grade schools. These are either anti bullying plays or anti drugs/alcohol plays. M. Noecker chooses 3 of the students taking the grade 12 credit and those students come up with an idea, write a script, direct that play and they can choose to act or not act in their production. 

This year our 3 directors were Natalie Reid, Alyssa Outram and Rachel Robichaud. Each charged with a different kind of bullying to portray. With roughly two weeks to put everything together it was an unusually quick task to accomplish. 

It was a jam packed week of performances too. Wednesday we had 3 shows at St. Edmond, Monseigneur Jean Noel and Georges P. Vanier followed by a show at Monseigneur Augustin Caron and 2 performances of our big show on Thursday and 2 shows at St. Jean Baptiste and St. Ursule, Friday. Needless to say we were all quite exhausted by the end. 

At each school grades 5 to 8 were called down to come watch the 3 plays. The first show was Natalie's show and it pertained to cyber bullying, the second belonged to Rachel and warned against physical bullying and lastly there was Alyssa's show (this was the show I acted in) and this show was about verbal bullying. 

Following the three shows, the entire class takes the time to sit and talk with the students about our own experiences with bullying. We also answer all questions about our plays, our drama program, bullying itself, coming to Lajeunesse, and how to handle specific situations. To be quite honest it was very evident which students were being bullied and which schools had the biggest bullying problems. Some of the questions were quite specific and rather difficult to answer. 

THROWBACK!

My first ever year being part of these grade school performances was in grade 10. My director was Mackenzie Menard and we did an adaptation of 'Mean Girls'. I played the character of Regina George and it was an anti bullying play. Poor Kaitlyn, she played the victim and we poured water on her pants during every show!  It really has been a very eye opening experience to see all the different shows over the past few years and to see the students that benefited from watching us and asking us questions nobody else had answered for them.