Prior Park students to stage John Mackintosh Hall performance

Students at Prior Park school will be staging a performance built on the concept of the butterfly effect at the John Mackintosh Hall next week.

The performance of ‘Chaos’ is made up of scenes that while separated, are interconnected and overlap, mirroring the butterfly effect, which is also known as the chaos theory.

The youngsters will take to the John Mackintosh Hall on March 19 and 20 at 7pm for the performance, and will also be performing at the Gibraltar Drama Festival.

Sarah Alborn, drama teacher at Prior Park School and performance director told the Chronicle what to expect from the performance, which has involved students from year 7 to 12 rehearsing twice a week since October last year.

“It’s quite a complicated play. I wanted to go for something that really challenged our students and also challenges the audience,” Ms Alborn said.

“I also didn't want a play where there was just one or two main characters, I wanted it to be a real ensemble so that lots of students were able to take part and enjoy the experience.”

“I found this play, which is effectively built on the theory of the butterfly effect or chaos theory, whereby one small event can then have a knock-on effect and an impact on lots of other things.”

“What I really liked about this play is that it really focuses on one day in life and very different moments in time of different people's lives that all seem very disconnected, but in reality, do have connections and overlaps with them.”

“There's one event that happens that is told from the perspective of lots of different characters as well. And I thought that was a really intriguing idea to see if the audience can make the links or not.”

“It's like a jigsaw puzzle and the pieces start to fit together the further on in the play you go.”

She added that the experience has opened up the students’ creative minds

Year 9 student Luna Lee said that she is looking forward to performing.

“Musical theatre and theatre as a whole is really important to me, I love doing plays, so I thought I’d take part,” she said.

“It's mainly ensemble and then some monologues scattered everywhere.”

Luna will be playing a character called Imogen, which she said is a “really fun character to play”.

Emily Peate, who is also in Year 9, will be taking to the stage for the second time during her time as a Prior Park student, something she is looking forward to.

“I'm in two large scenes, but I'm also doing a monologue, and it's quite a nice monologue because I show two different sides of myself,” Emily said.

“One is me chatting with my friends and the other one looks like I'm a lot more formal so it's quite interesting to see two different sides of the character.”

Year 8 student Yael Elkin is playing various roles, something she said makes her both nervous and excited.

“You don't get to keep one single role. It's all really different roles,” she said.

Luca Federico Maximilian Mensa, a Year 7 student is taking part because he has always enjoyed drama.

“It's always been fun for me and I like how you can like physically do something instead of just reading from a textbook,” he said.

Luca added that while the concept of the play was hard to understand at first, it is an interesting performance which he is looking forward to taking part in.