| GREASE is the word! |
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Woodlands Academy greased back their curtains and set the Greased Lightening ready for a thrilling ride. This year’s sell out joint musical production, ‘Grease’, astounded audiences with a fantastic cast, set and music played by our house band Johnny Quasar and The Starlights. In partnership with Tile Hill Wood Girls School, students between Year 9 and Year 13 amazed the crowds over 4 nights between Wednesday 29th February and Saturday 3rd March.
Danny Zuko played by Tim Boyce and Sandy Olsen played by Abi Carruthers wowed the audiences with that famous song “You’re the One That I Want” and stunned the crowd with their fantastic acting. Audiences commended the whole cast on their excellent dancing and singing of those legendary songs, “Summer Nights”, “Greased Lightnin” and “We Go Together” to name a few. |
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The T-Birds and Pink Ladies put on a tremendous show, their role plays were acted so convincingly and it was hard to distinguish the cast in the original film from those in this show. With excellent acting and singing by Frenchie (Laura Hunt), Rizzo (Kelsey Checklin) and Teen Angel (Dan Houston) there are certainly some rising stars to be seen and heard here. The whole cast truly struck a chord unheard before and raised the bar even higher, their excellence in acting, singing and dancing may be said of all members involved. From the costumes to the gel in the hair the entire cast took the audience back to 1958 and put us in the mood for what has to be celebrated as Woodlands Academy’s most successful musical performance to date.
The stage hosted an array of different scene changes and one in particular stood out the most. For the song “Greased Lightnin” the T-Birds rolled on the car and performed a well choreographed routine based on the original in the garage scene. From the mirror ball lighting the High School Hop and incredible dance and chorus routines to the silver jet explosions and confetti covering the crowd and cast, ‘Grease’ is certainly a show to be remembered.
Thomas Bartlett, Creative and Performing Arts Technician at Woodlands said “Woodlands Academy’s cast danced off stage in style and have driven home the success achieved by students here at Woodlands Academy and Tile Hill Wood Girls School. All of the performers have exceeded our expectations and achieved the highest of standards whilst having fun. Grease is our best performance yet and if you missed it be sure to see the next performance at Woodlands Academy.”
A DVD of ‘Grease’ may be purchased from the Performing Arts Department at The Woodlands Academy.
To view the photographs from ‘Grease’ please click here. |
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| Our Year 7's are Bad Guys! |
| Click here to go to the video's of our Year 7's performing in a joint music and drama lesson. |
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The Prospects |
Following our school’s Battle of the Bands competition, the group chosen as winners were ‘The Prospects’. The band members are all in Year 8 McLachlan and comprise Harry Holles, Reuben O’Connell and Jamie and Matt Keegan. The band went on to enter The city-wide Rotary Club talent competition which was held at Warwick Arts Centre in front of an audience of approximately 600 people, including judges from local newspapers and radio stations. The band performed one of their own songs and achieved great success by coming 3rd out of 20 acts. McLachlan’s Deputy Learning Leader, Mrs Palmer said “watch this space...our very own little rock band is going to go far! They’ve already ‘notched-up’ performances at a number of clubs and festivals and have recorded their own songs and have released a single!”. The school is very excited about the success of the band and we will follow their success as they continue to perform over the next few years. |
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Woodlands Does Dance! |
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On May 4th 2011, twenty-six apprehensive boys, one pretty nervous drama teacher (Miss Sedgwick) and a very helpful music teacher (Miss Pearce), descended upon Warwick Arts Centre armed with twenty-six pairs of red braces and twenty-six painted red tables. Miss Sedgwick said “We had been working for two months on our very first dance project and tonight we had our four minutes on stage. During the 2 months rehearsal period we had a professional dance teacher with us for some lessons and times when we were left to our own devices. These lessons were a challenge for us all!!! Filled with the highs (lots of laughter from us all) and lows (tears from myself) of twenty-six anxious teenage boys doing some very tricky dance moves on and off the tables, and slightly crazed drama teacher hoping that the hours of work would pay off. Skipping to the end and ignoring a fractious time in a far too hot changing room at Warwick Arts Centre, that didn’t help with our nerves, it was a tremendous success. There were eight other schools involved and our boys definitely did The Woodlands proud. As I stood in the wings on the stage, crying again (this time with pride), they did the performance of their lives. All twenty-six came off the stage excited and thrilled and ready to perform again. It was a fantastic experience for us all and I hope we will be invited to join them again. A huge thanks to all the staff and parents who came to support us and helped us throughout the process.” |
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Unplugged 2011 |
This year the Battle of the Bands competition takes place on Thursday 7 and friday 8th July 7-9pm.
Tickets are now on sale at the Music office (Woodlands) and charged at £3.
Click here for more details. |
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