"...For me, I originally wanted to be a producer and then there was this whole discussion with Ms Parr and Mr Kelly and they brought up the idea of directing for this War of the Worlds production and I thought yeah, it's a great experience so I signed up for it..." 

Hana

"...yeah, and for me, I wasn't originally going to ask about the directing thing, I just went to the Drama Office one day to ask Mr Kelly a question about theatre, and he just told me that 'oh by the way Hana approached me with this idea of directing and I was wondering if you two wanted to work together?' and I was like 'yeah why not'. It seemed like a good opportunity and I was super excited."

Harshini

"...I think one of the great things about being a co-director is that you have this other person there at all times to be able to build on your ideas, share them, sometimes even challenge them for the better... it was also really interesting to be able to direct people who were younger and people who were older than you because that's not something you normally do in a theatre class..." 

Harshini

"...First of all, in this school, I don't think it's ever been done before, like a full-fledged devised student-led production. So, with that sense, it was something that was a first for us, and for our cast as well. So, with that, we had to be able to really adapt and change, because with the devising process, things are constantly changing. You are putting in new scenes, you are taking out original ones, you are always trying to make everything better and sometimes that was difficult in the sense of lighting and sound and all the production elements because they had to keep on changing everything according to how our cast was moving and how our vision kept on changing as well..."  

Harshini

"...dealing with that stress is what changed us as human beings because we learned a lot of skills of like fast-paced thinking and problem solving in very time-pressured conditions - that's like a major thing that I took out of this is how to solve issues and solve problems in 5 minutes when they would have taken me 30 minutes to do before..." 

"I would probably do this again, but if it was in a different situation where maybe it gave us a lot more time, and also like I am happy to have worked with a co-director on this, if I were to work with a co-director, I would definitely do it again. If it was just me, maybe focus on a scripted piece. But this entire experience was very well done, I think, and very well planned out for us as well, so I think I would definitely do it again."

Hana

"...some of the special moments I gained from it are assembly building and getting to know people and learning to trust people through the process and then working together with them to create things that I first didn't know would have such an impact on the audience until I got feedback from the audience about how they felt about our performance so I would say that that was quite unique and like it was a great way to spend the beginning of my school year and it gave me a lot of exposure on what I can do in order to meet other people, connect with them, and public speaking..." 

Blessing

"...So I didn't know about Theatre before I came here, I only learned about Theatre from some novels I have read which are Western-based and then when I applied to UWC and I actually got in, I was considering which subjects I might take, I got sent this forum about Theatre and I went through it, and people spoke about their experiences taking Theatre and this is actually a great subject and I would want to learn about this... Theatre has made me more aware of who I am as a person, and like what I can do to achieve more, like what my actions mean, how I can project my voice, and like it has made me more aware about my body and my self, and more aware of the people around me and connect, interact with the people around me..." 

Blessing

"...so for the past four years, I've been watching a lot of these plays and enjoying it at school and I thought why not be involved in one as well and the reason why I wanted to work backstage is of course I don't really like being in front of the camera or in front of an audience, I'm usually behind and I'm a film student as well so I wanted to use the skills that I have developed through my Film Studies and see if those were transferable in theatre..." 

Jamie

"...sound involves like technical aspects using the sound board or learning how to layer sounds using the application so it was a daunting and kind of scary process at the beginning and also because we were a completely devised production, it was new to try to find the story without a script... So it was really challenging in the beginning trying to navigate both the technical and the aesthetic aspects but I think that the challenge was part of the fun... I think the best part about the whole process was the devising aspect where I watched the actors and I watched the directors create their scene and create their image without sound. So I would watch and sit and think about what music, what score, or what sound effects might go well with the image I was seeing visually and when I actually played the sound, the image and the atmosphere felt completely different. So without sound and with sound, I could feel as an audience a difference in tone..." 

Jamie

"...I was less frustrated because I knew that changes were inevitable and prepared for last minute changes as well because we kept changing sound, lighting and the cues even the day before the actual performance, so that flexibility was really important and something I gained from the process as well. And I think was able to develop a little community, a close community with people in the sound booth, in the lighting booth..." 

Jamie

"...I think the beauty of Theatre is that every single performance is different - the audience members is different, the actors and their conditions and their energy is different everyday and the collaboration between the actors and the production team also differs everyday and I think that was the most unique and interesting part of the four shows. And I really enjoyed the live experience was different every single time we performed. And finally I think after the performances are over, it was actually interesting, it was quite, the feeling was quite empty, and it was like bittersweet... I think it was a great experience because it was ephemeral and it exists for that one week but also we have the memory of preparing and performing the show..." 

Jamie