This trip to Greece was a true collaboration between the Drama, Classics and Religious Studies faculties for their A Level pupils. Read on to hear from the girls on their favourite moments from this fantastic opportunity.
Hannah, Upper Sixth (Year 13)
Our trip to Athens and Náfplio immersed me fully into a world of Drama I had never experienced. It was incredible to see the difference between British theatre and Greek theatre, in terms of acting style and ensemble work.
I also loved gaining a perspective on the rich history of the Acropolis as well as the festival of Dionysus. My favourite experience of the trip was being all together as a group in such an amazing country, an experience I will never forget.
Keren, Lower Sixth (Year 12)
The visits to historical sites helped me understand the context of the texts I am studying for Classical Greek. I found the visit to Epidavros particularly useful as I am doing a tragedy for verse literature module. I got to know how the script was performed, and how the shape of this amphitheatre was designed for voice projection.
My favourite experience is the time I spent sitting on the edge of the harbour in Náfplio looking into the sea. The landscape was amazing.
Victoria, Lower Sixth (Year 12)
During the trip to Greece, I explored the vibrant culture of the country and as a student studying Classics at A Level, this trip allowed me to immerse myself in the world of Ancient Greece via visiting famous ancient architectures such as the Parthenon.
My favourite experience during the Greece was undoubtedly the opportunity to freely wander around Athens and Náfplion with my friends in our free time. Furthermore, I really enjoyed learning more about Greece’s history and culture both via sight-seeing and meeting new people there. Overall, it has been an absolutely wonderful trip that I am sincerely grateful for having the opportunity to go on.
Millie, Lower Sixth (Year 12)
I partook in two drama workshops during my time on the Greece trip, the first one everyone participated in. It was thought that only the people taking A Level Drama would do it but it turns out that was only the case for the second workshop (but we’ll get to that later).
The first workshop was run by Sofia Paschou and took place in the Eler Theatre in Athens. It was meant to be a more vocal workshop. In a way I guess it was, and through some good old fashioned soul searching, I discovered I am actually quite good at screeching like a bird, evidence of which, lies in the fact that at one point I was appointed “Leader of the Large Birds” which meant I got to “fly” around stage and force the rest of my “bird clan” to follow in my weird antics. Which, in my opinion, was actually quite fun. We were then taught a song in Greek (the pronunciation of which I probably got horribly wrong, but at least I tried). The song was apparently about asking for help and for some reason we all assumed that we were meant to be asking birds for help, so I guess birds were a big theme in this workshop? I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I missed something here. Maybe there is a Greek myth about asking flocks of birds to aid you in your time of need. The song was very nice though; it was ethereal and it was pretty and still to this day (admittedly only one week later) it is stuck in my head.
The second workshop was run by Erifili Stefanidou and also took place in the Eler Theatre in Athens. In this workshop we used physical theatre and took inspiration from ancient Greek statues and Gods in order to represent scenes and characters from the play Antigone, which is a play that is currently being studied in A Level Drama classes.
Now where do I begin here? This is where the issues start to come in, because my not-so-secret-secret on this trip was that I don’t actually take any of the subjects necessary to get an invitation for the trip. (For all of you who are wondering why I went: I signed up for the trip when I was planning to take A Level RS. I have since dropped RS. My parents however, had already paid for the trip (thank you parents) and so I could still go.) This made me an “impostor” of sorts. In a way, I felt like some kind of a spy who had successfully infiltrated this Drama workshop, only to realise that my negligence to do any kind of research in advance made it blindingly obvious that I was in fact not an A Level Drama student. I must say, what served for most (everyone but me) to be a great revision session for their academic studies, was to me instead, an excellent chance to practise improvisation. To be honest though, it was actually really fun to pretend that I had any kind of clue what I was doing, when I did in actual fact, not. I genuinely appreciated everyone’s patience while I was trying to figure out who all of the different Greek Gods were and everyone was very kind and helpful when they realised I knew nothing about the play Antigone or any of its characters.
In all honesty (not that I haven’t been honest so far) both workshops were positively brilliant and I had a marvellous time at both of them, so in short: 10/10, would participate again, and a massive thank you to all who made these workshops possible.
