Period Drama

Today our History set put on a production of Failed Revolution to Unity: Italy 1848-1861, an educational play we had written last lesson on the absentee instructions of Mr Mcshane. The single performance to a limited audience (Mr Mcshane) was a resounding success. We managed to scrape together costumes for most people (as Emperor Napoleon III of France, I wore my Tricorne hat that I got in Venice with a piece of card jammed in the front that read "FRANCE"). Despite the short time which we had to put the play together, we still ended up with a relatively accurate representation of the historical events. For example, the 1849 Fall of Rome was shown as French troops shooting at the Republicans while Pope Pius IX stood at the side shouting "Geroff my land!" As we didn't have any realistic replica weapons for the French, we used bananas instead to represent guns - fruit seemed to be something of a theme, as later on my character survived an assasination attempt when a bomb - or in our case, an apple - was thrown at him. We even managed to get a CD of the Italian national anthem to round off the show.



Giuseppe Garibaldi was played by Barley.



Pope Pius IX was played by Alex.
Cavour was played by Kate.
Mazzini was played by Gabbi.
Ferrini and Ricasoli were played by Sarah and Wansee.
Victor Emmanuel II was played by Martha.
Orsini was played by Jordan.
And Claire, Ellie, Charlotte and Becky narrated and played soldiers or ordinary folk in the battle or crowd scenes.

We also had another rounder-softball match at lunchtime (or roundball or softers or whatever it should be called). We started out playing boys vs girls again, but it quickly became clear that the girls were going to lose miserably again, so a change to mixed teams was called for. At one point, Mr Kemp himself turned up and had a go at batting. He didn't quite manage a rounder, but we still gave him three cheers afterwards anyway.