Development of Drama at LIST

   The Secondary department started in 2006 and by 2009 a Drama studio was created with black curtains all round, stage lights and moveable performance blocks. Since 2009, students have been able to take a two-year course in Drama, following the Cambridge IGCSE course.

Productions

In 2008, Lanna Secondary School staged its first major production: “The Good Woman of Setzuan” by the famous German twentieth century playwright Bertolt Brecht. Students in Years 12 & 13 were involved as actors. This comic satire set in China in the early 1900s was a great success and a positive beginning to theatrical performances by the school.

In February 2010, the Secondary school tackled its first musical: "Mamma Mia" featuring the songs of the Swedish pop group ABBA. Altogether 120 students (c. 40% of the student population) were involved. We pulled off this ambitious production and it proved a popular choice: tickets were sold out a week before the two performances and the audiences really enjoyed the show. We could probably have filled a bigger theatre!

In December, 2010, Secondary students performed a new one-act play called “The Pilgrimage” by Paul Goetzee, which was a clever, unusual ,witty satire on the futility of ancestral, tribal hatred and warfare. It was set “somewhere in the Balkans” with a clear reference to the wars of the 1990s there. The actors both in individual roles and in a group chorus managed well to convey the play's serious message, while at the same time maximising the verbal and physical humour. As far as we know, ours was the first production of this play in Thailand, and perhaps in South-East Asia!

In February 2011, the Primary section staged its first ever full production with The Fantastic Mr Fox” by Roald Dahl. This involved students aged 7-11 and proved to be a great success, full of the energy, fun and inventiveness associated with that writer. None of the cast had any previous experience of theatrical performance in a proper theatre, but this was not at all apparent!

The teaching of Drama and the staging of theatrical productions for all age groups has now become a major feature in the curricular and extra-curricular activities at LIST.