Sonnets can be about cheese as well as love…

All pride is willing pride and mine is so” to slightly misquote the Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

I am bursting with pride having just watched our Saturday Club (aged 7-17) perform a sonnet walk via zoom! What’s more we are soon to release the map of the walks that they have created over the course of the term and you will be able to follow the walks and download their sonnets at each stop!

Every Saturday, over the course of lockdown, it has been worth getting up each morning, thanks to these bright faced, talented young people adorning my computer screen.

In March, which let’s face it feels like about 7 years ago now, I wasn’t sure how on earth we would manage teaching a drama class via Zoom, but Fran, who is always positive, together with Indiana created a programme of work for this very format. That is what is so very brilliant about everyone who works at GSC; they are creative, positive, insightful and imaginative, hurdles are leapt over with barely a glance back.

Over the course of the term, games have been played, tongue twisters learnt, characters and improvisations created, sonnets brought to life or newly written. This young company of people haven’t stopped to question if acting and interacting can still work with us all independently in our own homes, they’ve just got on with it and brought an absolute treat to the table.

In the older group we’ve had couples squabbling in the High Street, a vicar in St Nicolas Church giving his sermon at a wedding using Sonnet 116, we’ve had a bridesmaid pacing outside Holy Trinity church determined to break up the wedding with Sonnet 130 “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”, and some wrote their own sonnets about missing the cinema. Then there were “cheese sonnets”; a short series of sonnets based on how much better cheese, pizza and ice cream are than boys:

“Before I met you, I settled for fondue”

The younger group all performed sonnets that they had written themselves. Amongst them were three dedicated to cats; one appropriately entitled “Call Me Your Highness”, a sonnet about trains, and, of course, a poem about a sloth!

One student inspired us all with a sonnet about Black Lives Matter. Her character is on the street asking people to support the BLM movement, and in it she muses on a comment she receives from someone who says to her:

Why don’t people say white lives matter too

Everyone just wants revenge for the past.

Her reply is:

“If it’s revenge, it’s long overdue

The wound of history will always last”

 

And another was beautifully brave writing about her best friend that had passed away

“You were so young when you spread your wings,

But it will always be a mystery.

You had seen so much but missed many things.

My friend is now an angel of history”

 

So when we release the walks, I hope you enjoy them, but well done to Fran, our education team and all the brilliant children and teenagers, that have virtually turned up every week to our drama club and created this brilliant body work. They should all be very proud of themselves. I know GSC is very proud to work with them!

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3 thoughts on “Sonnets can be about cheese as well as love…

  1. ..and (with apologies that this is not in sonnet form) a huge shout out to Fran, Sarah and all the GSC team who have continued to inspire, encourage and provide a weekly creative space for our young people through these challenging times.

  2. Will the 2020 Sonnet Walks be on the GSC website sometime, & if so, when? Was all set to participate on the day, but overtaken by long-delayed hospital admission.

    1. Hello Sarah

      Thanks for your comment. Our plan is re-stage the Sonnet Walks in December with a Festive twist. Details about this will be announced later in the year. The sonnet walk mentioned in this blog is one devised by the Saturday drama group and is different from the main Walks event.

      I hope you’re now felling better and on the mend.

      Best wishes, Matt

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