Welcome back – I hope you’ve had a great vacation. I hope you’ve managed to get all your learning sorted out and lined up ready for the next challenge, I hope you’ve done some reading: if you’re looking for a short book I can recommend “As I walked out one midsummer morning” by Laurie Lee. We’re getting it for the library and it is beautiful, brilliant and inspiring. I hope, particularly and also, that you have had a rest because Resilience term lived up to its billing: it was a hard slog and I’m very proud of you all for getting through it. It was, however, also a good slog: we got some excellent learning done and the quality of scholarship in the school went up by leaps and bounds over the three months. It wasn’t, however, all slog and it ended on a marvellous high note with the House Drama: it was brilliant to watch you on the stage and to be reminded of a Shakespeare play you didn’t perform – as you like it – in which Jacques tells us that all the world’s a stage.
When I was growing up I didn’t have much exposure to Shakespeare but I did tread the boards: one of the local churches did a pantomime every year and my family threw ourselves into it – we took it very seriously: it was a serious business. Rehearsals would start just before Christmas and would go on throughout January, two nights a week, then in the February half term we’d have an all day rehearsal on the Saturday, a dress rehearsal on the Monday and four performances Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It was quite a thing to be part of. Those of you who are connoisseurs of the genre will be expecting that in addition to clever one liners, extended recurring jokes, slapstick and dance routines there would be singing and those of you who were paying attention at Christmas will be concerned about any production that involves my singing. You’re right to be concerned but let me reassure you that I never had a solo and only once was let loose on a duet – my partner in that enterprise still recalls the trauma. Mostly, however, I was kept at the back during the musical numbers.
I was in this thing throughout my secondary schooling but my favourite memories come from when I was in Year 12 when there were more actors than parts and I took a back stage role. I called myself assistant director but most of the time I was just a runner, there were, however, a few little bits that I was allowed to get my hands on, the extended slapstick scene performed by the comedy duo, for example. There were custard pies, there were buckets of water, there was a ladder carried on one shoulder that then knocked the other over whenever he turned round – it was brilliant. The difficulty with it was that these two parts were played by two fourteen year old girls, friends of one of my sisters, who for some reason best known to themselves had not squandered their Saturday mornings watching old Laurel and Hardy and Keystone cops movies and were therefore not as well versed in light slapstick as they might be. The scene was just not coming together and so I spent a wonderful morning rehearsing this scene with these two, working on their timing, getting it slick and making it as funny as only a custard pie to the face can be.
My great triumph though, came on the night of the dress rehearsal when one half of this comedy duo was kept at home with by a rather disgusting digestive ailment and the director was all set to have someone stand on stage and read from the script. That would be just about bearable for most parts but for one that was both heavy on physical comedy and part of an important partnership this would have been disastrous and so I said I’d do it but I wouldn’t read it, I’d learn the lines as I went along and act it out properly. This I did, the dress rehearsal went as well as dress rehearsals ever go and the sickness bug laid the actress in question out for two more days so I got to star on the Wednesday night and to have a go at the slapstick routine that I’d helped to create including getting a custard pie to the chest because I was almost two feet taller than the girl I had replaced.
I tell you all this by way of an introduction to the new term – celebration term – because I think it might be a bit unclear why we have chosen this particular name. We’re told that all the world’s a stage and we know that acting is hard work, the hours of rehearsal are much longer than the minutes of performance, the lines that need to be read over a hundred times are recited only once, you have to practice having a bucket of water thrown over you many times before you get the comedy exactly right and yet it’s wonderful because when you perform you get applause, even laughter if the water goes into your face just right. Performing is a wonderful celebration of all your hard work and talent and, as I watched house drama, I pondered on how unfair it was that the thespians should get this appreciation whilst those whose talents lie in Science, History or Mathematics should never get a round of applause. This term is named to remind us that exams are the celebration of how hard you have worked on your academic subjects, how clever you are – classes and homework are the hours of rehearsal and exams are the performance when everyone gets to see exactly how brilliant you are.
If that’s the case then the mocks are the dress rehearsal and if some of you are feeling like your mocks went like a whelk on a unicycle then I would remind you of the old theatre saying that a bad dress rehearsal makes for a great first night. There are two ways of taking that old saying: the first is pure self-delusion – I fluffed my lines, tripped over my toes and forgot my cue in that scene but it will be alright on the night – In that sense it’s a rubbish saying: if you don’t know what you’re doing then the performance is bound to be embarrassing but the other way of taking it is that a bad dress rehearsal gives you an opportunity to fix things, to learn those lines carefully, to watch where you’re going and to remember that this particular cue is one you might miss. If that’s how you take it – if a bad dress rehearsal is an opportunity for a good response than you have every hope of a great first night.
There are a couple more points to draw out of my metaphor and the first is from that slapstick scene. It was a hard thing for Charlotte and Sarah, a scene that could have been terribly painful both to watch and to be in, one where they were very exposed and one that was based in a genre with which they were completely unfamiliar. Some bits of your subjects will feel like this – it’s just something that doesn’t come naturally, that you’ve not been taught in the past, that you just don’t get. The answer is to do what they did – get some help and spend some serious focused time trying it over and over again until you get your head round it. That kind of topic can end up being your favourite – a banker for five marks if you really get it sorted.
The second point is a warning from my performance at the dress rehearsal. I’m quite proud of having learned the lines as I went along but it’s not something I would normally be able to do: I’ve tried it since and it’s a joke – there’s no way you can learn a big part one scene at a time whilst the play is being acted: don’t kid yourself – your short term memory is just not up to it. The only reason that it worked that once is that I knew the script really well from having been working on it for months. Because it was all there in my head, because I knew the shape of each scene and how they fitted together it was just a question of getting the details right and that is doable using only your short-term memory. I’ve used the same trick in exams: knowing the big picture really well and then picking out the details I tend to forget, memorising them the night before the exam (or even on the morning) and then dumping them on the paper as soon as I got in. You can’t carry much in your head like that but you can do some. The key is knowing which little bits to do.
The final thing I want to say is the importance of that dress rehearsal. I didn’t get the part perfectly right by any means but I gave it my best shot, I said my lines clearly, I gave everyone else a chance to do their bits around the right shaped part and importantly I was able to find out which bits I did know and which I didn’t: by the time Wednesday night came along I was much better. If you are worried about your mocks and don’t think they’ve gone well, don’t let that get the better of you: there are more exams coming up this week and if you do your stuff clearly and definitely; if you give it your best shot then some of that will be right and some will be wrong and you will be able to look at the paper and direct your energies to getting the wrong things right but if you are so worried about getting it wrong that you don’t do anything then you will never learn how much you do know, you’ll never be able to direct your efforts, you’ll never improve. Rehearsals are there for getting things wrong.
We have a few weeks to go before the exams, the great celebration, the opening night’s performance. Some of you don’t know your lines yet, you’re getting Us. That is quite poor. You need to learn them – don’t waste a single minute of the next three weeks. Some of you have got a scene or two that you can’t seem to get right. Face up to that custard pie, put some focus in – three weeks is actually 504 hours: there is a lot of time for you to use. Some of you have got to get the details right, the timing, the wordplay – that’s how it should be: work hard and you can believe it will all come together – but some of you are still mumbling your lines into your script, unwilling to give it a go in case you get it wrong. You have to do rehearsal properly, you have to practice exams under timed conditions, you have to put your notes and textbooks away – you will get some of it wrong but you’ll get some of it right and if you know which bits are which you can spend your time wisely, constructively improving the scenes that need work.
You are all brilliantly clever. You have all developed excellent scholarship skills over the last two terms. This is your opportunity to show everyone what you can do, to show the world that Harris Westminster students are the equals of any students anywhere, to celebrate exactly how brilliant you are.
Footnotes:
1. Advice on approaching the other side of mocks taken from the same Shakespearean speech can be found in Whining Schoolboys.
2. As I walked Out One Midsummer Morning formed one of the central pillars of Pericles and the Violin
3. Another introduction to the summer term can be found in Fifty Springs