12 January 2023 Abingdon News The overarching question in the 2022 Middle School production ‘Eleven’ is whether or not the hapless B XI cricket team will learn how to play as a team and win their first victory of the season. Subliminally, however, this is a play which addresses the life questions, issues and anxieties of a group of teenagers, making it shrewdly relevant to young people (and their parents) today. The brainchild of writer Edward Rowett, who is perhaps best known for the award-winning Radio 4 sitcom ‘Reluctant Persuaders’, ‘Eleven’ is the third play Rowett has written for Abingdon. An OA himself, Rowett was a contemporary of, and remains firm friends with, Abingdon’s current Director of Drama, Ben Phillips who commissioned and Directed ‘Eleven’ last December. “It may sound obvious, but being a single gender school means we are fairly limited in the production options available to us. As a department, we really like to mix things up to provide a variety of the traditional and the contemporary; the serious and the more frivolous. However, finding something different each year which will also continue to stretch and challenge our students’ acting skills is not always easy” explains Phillips, “so being able to give Ed a brief and have him write pertinent and contemporary material, really enables us to work within the confines of our requirements - including number of characters, age appropriate material and so on. It is extremely valuable.” Rowett has previously written two other plays for Abingdon. B12: a school story – drew inspiration from Abingdon School archivist Sarah Wearne’s ‘A History of Abingdon School in 63 Objects’. Set in room B12 – one of the oldest rooms in the School – the play was an episodic piece, in which each of the five scenes explored a different period in the School’s recent history, culminating in a farewell encounter between a master and a recent pupil, now in uniform and about to leave for the front. The other was a spoof murder-mystery which challenged the cast to take on the difficult art of making comedy look easy as they surmounted every conceivable theatrical disaster with the time-honoured virtues of grit, pluck and improvisation. “The idea for ‘Eleven’ was borne out of going to see Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’ explains Phillips. Ostensibly, it is a play about a council wanting to evict someone from a caravan but Butterworth gives prominence to all the characters who the audience quickly realise are experiencing their own individual crises, exploring sensitive but applicable themes. In essence, that’s what I wanted our production to achieve - something that was relevant, helpful and which was going to stretch the abilities of our young thespians. ‘Eleven’ is particularly challenging as it takes place in real time - this is quite an ask of any actor and our Middle School students rose admirably to the task and did some very brave acting.” Director of Drama, Ben Phillips, discusses the recent Middle School production ‘Eleven’ The 1st Years spent the morning learning about ‘the 4 Rs’, ‘the grow model’ and discussed ways in which they could develop skills for learning and remembering in the classroom. They were then joined in the afternoon by the 2nd Years for a talk and demonstration from Mike Mullen, former BMX halfpipe World Champion. Mike reflected on how much one can learn from failing and set the pupils a task in which they thought about the values demonstrated by their personal role models. Some of the pupils were given the chance to test their balance in a BMX stunt and all were suitably impressed when Mike jumped his BMX over no fewer than 4 Lower School tutors! Be More Griffen This year’s ‘Be More Griffen’ programme was officially launched in Lower School in September.
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