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< Back to Past Projects >   Intergenerational Film & Theatre Project - Noel Coward

Age Exchange Intergenerational Film & Theatre Project This Happy Breed by Noel Coward An intergenerational theatre and film project funded by The Noel Coward Foundation Summer Workshop 11 August – 15 August 2008 For a week in August we held a five day workshop at Age Exchange with a group of young actors aged from 13 – 17 and with some older students to act as mentors. David Savill, Director of Arts and Education at Age Exchange, and Malcolm Jones, Arts and Education Officer at Age Exchange led the week’s workshops and rehearsal. The young actors looked at the context of the play using historical material and interviewed some of the older volunteers at Age Exchange who had memories of life at the time that Coward’s play takes place. We also held an acting workshop with actor and director Ben Thomas and a musical workshop on Coward’s song London Pride with Musical Director Michael Chance. A very useful session was spent with Lil Murrell, Kitty Finch, Joan Pearce and Eileen O’Sullivan, Age Exchange volunteers, who shared details of how they and their parents lived their lives in the 1930s. This supplied a realistic backdrop to the students’ interpretation of the chosen scenes. Finally on Friday 15 August we presented the selection of scenes in performance to an invited audience including Robert Gardiner, Trustee of the Noel Coward Foundation, and actor/director Ben Thomas. The students were: Soraya Thompson, Paloma Thompson, Lauren Davies, Megan McGery, Alice Roche, Stephanie McAuliffe, Sharni Cowcher, Lee Cooper, Laurence Jarlett, Ellie Savill. Mentors: Emma Beard, Jess Amos-Davidson, Olivia Ponting Autumn Term 7 October – 9 December Age Exchange Youth Theatre autumn term began on 7 October and worked on Tuesday evenings from 4.30pm to 6.15pm. The students began to rehearse and work on scenes from the play that we felt captured some important moments from the period and allowed the group to explore some historical and social issues around the play. During half-term we ran sessions which allowed the cast to talk to some of our older volunteers with specific questions relating to their characters’ experiences and the world they inhabit. The volunteers, Ralph Gooding, George Thurgar, Joan Pearce, Kitty Finch, Eileen O’Sullivan, Lil Murrell and Anne Durrant. Finally the scenes from This Happy Breed the students had rehearsed were performed and were filmed by professional cameramen. This also gave the students some understanding of the skill of acting to camera. These scenes will be edited into a short DVD and cut with the filmed interviews they did with the older people. The students in the autumn term were: Soraya Thompson, Paloma Thompson, Stephanie McAuliffe, Jack Delaney, Sharni Cowcher, Lee Cooper, Laurence Jarlett, Katie Godding, Ella Sackville-Adjei, Grace Adams. Summary We were delighted that both the summer course and autumn students worked incredibly hard and really enjoyed the project. 16 students in all participated in the project with ages ranging from 13 to 19. These were not stage school students but largely students who would not have had access to Noel Coward with the Foundations funding. Most importantly for us they discovered a writer they had never experienced before in Noel Coward and became fascinated by the play. They also explored a period of history both politically and socially that they knew little about. Between the experience of acting the play and meeting the Age Exchange volunteers the participants finished with a greater understanding of people’s lives, including their own families, in the 1930s and a sense of enthusiasm about performing the scenes from This Happy Breed. Some of the students attended a showing of David Lean’s film of This Happy Breed at The Barbican Centre.

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© Age ExchangeTheatre Trust Ltd. 2008 (a company limited by guarantee) Registered in England No. 1929724. Registered Office 11 Blackheath Village, London SE3 9LA Registered as Charity No: 326899 Patrons: Roy Hudd OBE Glenda Jackson MP Rt. Hon. Nick Raynsford MP Sir Sigmund Sternberg KCSG JP