19 Dec Whole school production of ‘Matilda’ dazzles audience
A message from Mrs Stokes – Curriculum Leader, Performing Arts.
Whitley Academy’s first whole school musical production in over 10 years, ‘Matilda’, was performed for an audience from our local community on Tuesday 18th December. Thank you for joining us to celebrate what was an outstanding production which showcased the students’ immense amount of talent and confidence.
The students worked extremely hard to make sure we produced a show to remember and I know that they are incredibly proud of their achievements. It has been a pleasure to watch these students grow into young actors and to see the bond that they have all created.
I would like to personally thank our pupils for their dedication, enthusiasm and talent. They have given up a huge amount of their time and every single one of them is truly amazing. I would also like to thank the amazing ‘Matilda’ team that is Mrs Latue and Miss McCoy. Without the three of us pulling together this show simply wouldn’t have been possible.
On behalf of the ‘Matilda’ cast and crew, thank you for supporting us and we hope you had a fantastic evening. An additional performance is on Wednesday 19th December starting at 6pm.
The below was written by our Year 7 student reporters
It was an afternoon full of mist outside, but as soon as we entered the Auditorium the illuminating light filled the scene. The front of the stage was filled with amazing, handmade props: stacks of books, building blocks and letters. As the crowd filled the seats, the enthusiastic audience rose with eagerness waiting for the performance to start.
At 2:00pm, the performance began.
Our students sat excitedly as the play started. We all felt amazement to see the cast perform their lines word perfectly with no mistakes!
The cast told the story of the life of ‘Matilda Wormwood’, a clever little girl, who lived at home with her parents and older brother ‘Michael’, in a small town. Sadly for Matilda, her parents showed little interest in her. In a conversation between ‘Mrs Wormwood’ and ‘Miss Honey’ (Matilda’s school teacher), Mrs Wormwood said: “You chose books and I chose looks”. Most of us in the audience who are fans of Roald Dahl’s books knew this saying off by heart.
One of the characters we immediately bonded with in the performance was Abigail. She had an interesting role as a young girl full of hope and confidence, but that soon changed when the big kids rushed out terrifying her. As the play progressed you could see Abigail begin to enjoy herself more and feel as though she had more power and that nobody could stop her.
It was nice to see some flair and passion in the acting. Specifically, when both the little and big kids joined together to sing a song about how horrible their school really was! To make it feel real, the actors ran into the audience screaming as they sang the rebellious song. They all sang an impeccable finishing number, with Matilda centre stage, energetically skipping forward encouraging everyone to clap along which really made the audience get involved and set an amazing atmosphere for the actors. The cast received a standing ovation from the audience, and with that it was all over.
There was no words to explain how amazing it was … just WOW !
Some feedback from the audience was:
Mrs Latue: “They were really good and we are proud of them.”
“It was amazing! You could really see how much effort the cast had put in to learn their lines, the dances and the songs to make them perfect”.
The parents of one of the actors said: “It was very well put together and interesting to watch. It was really nice to see the children doing something they love and doing it extremely well.”
Pictures from the show are available to see here.