Art imitates student struggles
School productions can be a stressful time for the best of teachers but two Rangitikei College students stepped into their place and had a good result.
Seventeen-year-olds Gillian Bowler and Sam Hunter co-wrote and directed Behind Closed Doors, which was performed to a small crowd at the Marton school last Wednesday.
The play showed the lives of three students where everything was not peachy. It dealt with hardships faced by many teenagers, such as parents splitting up, death, mental illness and the effects of alcohol.
Bowler and Hunter drew inspiration from a movie trailer they made in a media studies class last year that dealt with similar issues. They took that idea to create the characters in Behind Closed Doors.
The pair said they started writing the script in term one and casting characters. Seven weeks were taken up with rehearsals.
‘‘We had a really good idea what we wanted to do with the script and we had a good vision between us,’’ Hunter said.
‘‘Seven weeks of rehearsals isn’t much for a 20-cast production but everyone upped their game and committed to their character.’’
Bowler said they were worried the younger cast members would forget their lines or not speak loud enough on the night but, fortunately, the stars aligned.
‘‘All the worries we had, or ran into, during rehearsals didn’t amount to anything and the whole performance seemed to just click.’’
Hunter said seeing the cast members grow into their characters was the most satisfying part of the experience. Most were in year 11 and 12.
‘‘We had 15-year-olds pretending as though they had been married for 40 years, so that character development where they had to understand that it was the character and not themselves was the biggest hurdle for them.
‘‘Some of them just clicked. They got a good idea of what sort of emotions they had to deal with.’’