Barry Comprehensive School

A group of Barry Comprehensive School’s year 10 and 11 Performing Arts students have just completed a week’s run of a performance focusing on knife crime. The production highlighted the dangers of carrying a knife and the consequence that could follow. The play was performed to years 7 – 10 during assembly time at the end of March.

Along with the use of live music, video projections and a very talented group of actors, the audience were gripped from start to finish by the story and the harsh realties of what could happen if you carried a knife.

As well as having the experience of performing to the whole school, the students were also lucky enough to get the chance to work alongside Emyr Bell (a professional actor from Theatre Iolo). For five weeks, Emyr ran workshops after school introducing the young actors to the problems regarding knife crime. Along with Emyr and their performing arts teacher, the students devised their short play. The rehearsal period was only 3 hours (a true testament to the professionalism of the actors).

The resulting performance was thought provoking and clearly addressed the issues of carrying a knife. The play used scenes of humour and comedy to engage the audience as well as key facts about knife crime provided to us by the police. Emyr said “Considering the seriousness of the topic they (the actors) managed to create a piece of theatre that had us laughing one minute and within a second we were dragged back to the reality of knife crime and the consequences that follow. Many a professional actor would struggle to do this”.

The performance was viewed by the Artistic Director of Theatre Lolo and key members of the Vale of Glamorgan Police Force, all of whom commented on what a good job the actors had done in highlighting knife crime to young people. “These boys should be very proud of themselves. They’ve provoked the whole school into thinking about the dangers of knife crime. What they have done may well save a life or two in the future”.The performers were: Levi Sims, Jason Ivins (year 10), Nathan Boyer, Bradley Miller, Joe Church, Jacob Chorley, Tom Cottle and John Barrett (year 11).

On behalf of everyone involved with this project, we would like to say a huge thank you to he actors and Emyr Bell for their hard work and commitment in making this project such a success! We look forward to working with Emyr again in the future.

AC 2009-04-19