To create a play, rehearsals are very important. These rehearsals had another positive aspect: bringing us, the group, together. In my eyes it was the best part of the exchange even though we had not that much free time and worked hard even in the brightest sun. For us rehearsals did not only mean drama rehearsals. We also had parts of singing and dancing in our play, so we also had to rehearse for this. Mr. Keeser, a teacher of our school who accompanied us, trained and improved our voices. He divided us into the different voice groups to get a better and dulcet result. Our song for the play that we have trained was a traditional South African welcome song. A former student of Mrs. Markram and now a dancing student, Shane, was our dancing teacher for the camp. He created four dances for the play, showed them to us and taught them to us. It took a long time until everyone got the contemporary dances, but we all made it. Furthermore he did on every rehearsal day some physical warm ups and workouts with us. It was exhausting, but in the end we were all warm enough for our rehearsals. In the foreground and so the most important part was our common passion: drama. Drama is eventually the focus of this international exchange. For our play we did not start at level 0 (it would be impossible to create a whole play within a few days only). Both sides brought some ideas and scenes to this camp referring to the topic Xenophobia and refugees. In the first days we improved our skills and had some improvisation exercises. Besides improving ourselves it helped us to get to know each other more and to get closer. Additionally Mrs. Markram, the drama teacher of the Eersterivier Secondary School, did some vocal and physical trainings with us. A strong, good audible voice was very important for our play, because we first rehearsed for an outdoor play, where it can sometimes be difficult to understand everything. Outside the acoustic is a lot worse than inside, because you have no room and no walls. Another point is that outside you have a totally different kind of play. The setting is in the nature so you have to be spontaneous and open for changes. Also important is the inclusion of this unusual setting and the decision where you play which scene and how you have to change it to make it fit in and in which order they should be played. The dramatic focus is also different. Nevertheless Mr. Blum and Mrs. Markram accomplished it with a lot and hard rehearsals to create a great outside play. Because of the bad weather we had to prepare another play for inside the day before the performance. This day was a long day full of concentration and hard work. The play changed, too. Even if this inside play was only rehearsed the day ago, the performance inside was very intense and as great as the other one. All the thanks to Mrs. Markram, Mr. Blum and Mrs. Höcherl for their patience, their hard work and their strength!
Written by Sandra Lipus
