Category: Woodbridge News
Poor lad. He had it all. Loadsamoney and much else besides. Women too. So much for all that, when Death came for a visit.
The morality play that is Everyman has been with us for over 600 years, recasting itself to every new generation sometimes simply through its staging and sometimes more fundamentally through a reinterpretation. Carol Ann Duffy’s 2015 adaptation is taut with disquiet and laced with unsettling references to our generation’s louche, destructive underbelly. The Sixth Form cast (plus Everyboy!) did extraordinary justice to her message in a performance that was mesmerising, witty, abrasive, and electric in its energy and capacity to shock – like a static jolt when one least expects it which almost hurts, yet leaves one cautiously excited for the next. I don’t relish an encounter with Death such as this (the reckoning would not go so well, for one thing): all Cockney-mocking swagger, with a grim certainty to her every action that the Kray’s might have been pleased to employ. No wonder Everyman, brilliantly tortured, by himself as much as by her, wheeled to no avail in search of respite. God’s resigned despair seemed all the more depressing as a result: helpless in the abject failure of her glorious project – save for her ability to call in Death to make amends. Family and knowledge, goods and deeds, friends and fairweather came and went, leaving Everyman to his fate, and the audience to its thoughts: we should do better, be better, check our account for a little more on the credit side, and look well beyond our own tiny horizons. How timely. Frighteningly so.
Brilliant – in performance, in staging, and in direction. My congratulations to cast and crew on a stunningly compelling hour’s entertainment (such a lighthearted word for something so powerful). The images, and the message, will live with me for quite a while.
A story in the EADT yesterday about the success of Woodbridge School riders at the NSEA championships.
A fantastic piece in the East Anglian Daily Times today, Tuesday 8 November, about the prizegiving of the Woodbridge Young Poets Competition. Our winners produced some absolutely outstanding poems and were celebrated both at the prizegiving on Wednesday last week, and at a fully booked event on Friday night at the Poetry in Aldeburgh weekend. Congratulations to all our winners!
Oliver Juszt of Year 10 is one step closer to achieving every sportsperson’s dream – representing your county. Oliver represented the Saxon Tigers U16 at the recent England Hockey HiPAC (High Performance Assessment Camp). HiPAC is a residential three-day camp which forms part of the Junior Regional Performance Centre Tier 2 Activity. Apart from being a wonderful experience and learning opportunity, Oliver also impressed the coaches and national selectors.
England Hockey recently announced the National Age Group Training Squads, and Oliver has been selected in the England Boys’ U16 squad. Oliver is therefore one of 31 players who will now attend a series of training weekends, training days and NAGS Academy sessions. The first of these will be a Training weekend on 12 – 13 November at Lilleshall National Sports Centre. We wish Oliver the very best for this, and for the training and assessments which are to follow. Meanwhile, many, many congratulations, Oliver, on what you have already achieved.
On Thursday 13 October the Woodbridge School Cross Country Team competed at the first round of the Suffolk Schools Cross Country Trials hosted by RHS.
An exceptional team performance with 6 medals, 10 top 10 positions and 29 qualifying by right to compete in round two at Culford on Saturday 3rd December.
With no seniors we only competed in 6 of the 8 races, and in 5 of the 6, Woodbridge School finished in the top three teams. Inter girls only had three runners and therefore an incomplete team.
Individual results were as follows:
Medalists:
Gold – Amy Graham – Inter Girls
Gold – Nathan Goddard – Inter Boys
Silver – Amy Goddard – Minor Girls
Silver – Henry Dinwiddy – Minor Boys
Silver – Charlie Turner – Junior Boys
Silver – Sarah Barker – Inter Girls
Four of the 6 above will be racing in the same age group next year!
Other top 10 finishers:
4th – Kit Evans Lombe – Junior Boys
8th – Edward Rufford – Minor Boys
9th – Molly Marshall – Junior Girls
10th – Issy Eaton – Junior Girls
19 other athletes qualifying by finishing in the top 50 : (age group and position in brackets):
Sophie Graham (JG11), Bea Thomas (JG13), George Rufford (IB14), Anna Jackson (MG15), Victoria Burrows (JG16), Ella Pitt (MG17), Emily White (JG20), Charlotte Dinwiddy (JG21), Nathaniel Gunn (JB23), Thomas Harrington (IB23), Will Franklin (JB24), Joanne Garnett (IG25), Mauricio Corfe (JB28), Tom Martin (MB29), James McCarroll (MB30), Jess Elmer (JG33), Billy Zhu (JB40), Katie Norman (MG43), Iris Morton (MG49).
Congratulations to all athletes taking part, not just the qualifiers, and thank you to staff and parents that supported on the day.
Good luck to everyone taking part in round two!
Two glorious days of poetry! Woodbridge School has been alive with the sound of the spoken word this week, as we have celebrated the delights of poetry with staff, parents and pupils of all ages across the School. The inaugural Woodbridge Youth Poetry festival #WYPF has seen 10 poets conducting workshops and interactive workshops with Woodbridge pupils in a true celebration of poetry leading up to the Aldeburgh Festival this weekend. The festival started with six poets holding workshops for Year 7 and 8 pupils- Ian Griffiths (nonsense words), Fred Ellis (who reads poetry?), Carol Lawrence (visual art inspired poetry) Rosalynde Price (speaking with words aloud). Tim Gardiner (Haiku) and our very own Mrs Davis (savouring the senses, a poetry collaboration about pizza!).
In the afternoon, the Woodbridge Young Poets Competition prizegiving took place in the Seckford Theatre, with family and friends gathered to hear the 24 worthy winners recite their wonderful works and to see them receive their prizes.
For those who had not yet had the opportunity to take part in the event, the evening saw a poetry reading by two wonderful modern poets, both new and shining lights in the poetry world, Vanessa Kisuule and Mark Grist, all hosted by the wonderful Amy Soapbox. Those in the audience who were perhaps unsure what to expect were soon watching in rapt delight as Vanessa took to the stage, charming, engaging, drawing us in as she talked openly about her feelings on bullying, social integration and family through her poems. A Q and A session with Vanessa sat comfortably on the edge of the stage gave more and more insight into this fascinating, delightful and inspirational young women. We were all starstruck.
Next the delightful and dynamic Mark Grist, an English Teacher from Peterborough- or a rapper, a pug lover, a beacon of hope for the disadvantaged, all wrapped up as a poet with the gift of the stand up comedian.
Two hours passed in a flash and everyone left smiling, laughing, and keen to meet with those who had delighted them during the evening, not least the large number of pupils in attendance, who formed an orderly queue to talk to Vanessa and Mark after the event. This may have been the first poetry event that the Seckford Theatre has hosted, but it will certainly not be the last.
On Thursday it was the turn of The Abbey pupils to sample some poetic delight, this time in the form of poets Rachel Piercey and John Canfield from The Emma Press. Years 5 and 6 from The Abbey, along with Waldringfield and Nacton Primary schools enjoyed the delights of an interactive reading at the Seckford Theatre; they stomped and roared as Minotaurs, whistled and roared as the sea whilst teachers took the role of sirens, delighted in choosing their martian style in a poem about the planets, and were frightful as monsters as they took on the guise of the fearful Ginny Green Teeth. In the afternoon, John and Rachel stayed for workshops at the Abbey.
Meanwhile at the Senior School, our lucky Sixth Form A level English Literature students were lucky enough to be able to experience a workshop with Mark Grist, met with understandable excitement as many had seen him perform the night before. It was insightful, productive and bold, as students shared their own work by the end of the session.
A wonderful first year for youth poetry, and the first of more to come!
Young poets across Suffolk were celebrated at the inaugural Woodbridge Young Poets Competition. After attracting over 450 entries in its first year, the competition ended with a special prize-giving event held for 24 young winners at The Seckford Theatre on Wednesday.
The overall competition winner in the junior category (ages 7-11) was Chloe Morgan at The Abbey, Woodbridge School, who wrote a thoughtful poem ‘The Power of the Sea’. Junior runner-up was Aurelia Hibbert, also from The Abbey, who wrote the poem ‘Firework’. Abbey pupils were particularly successful in the Junior section of the competition, with Beatrice Liddy receiving a highly commended award for her poem ‘The Secret’, whilst Alex Crawford won a commended award for his poem ‘Orchestra’, and Alice Sharratt was also commended for her poem ‘In My Mind’. Woodbridge Senior School pupil Lucy Hobday also won a highly commended award for her poem ‘I Should Like, written whilst she was a pupil at Kyson Primary School.
Woodbridge Pupils also featured In the senior section of the competition, with Alfie Davis winning a highly commended award for his poem The Girl at the Window’, whilst Lia Schreiber, Madeleine Cheshire and Sam Bryant all won commended awards for their poems ‘Your Ability to Trust’, ‘Love’ and ‘I Don’t Want It’. The senior section winner and runner up were Archie Gault and Beth Cope from One Sixth Form College.
The judges Ian Griffiths, former Chairman of the Suffolk Poetry Society and Fred Ellis of Poetry Anglia were delighted by the outstanding quality of all of the entries to the competition – indeed describing their task as exceptionally difficult. All 24 winning entries were warmly introduced by Fred and Ian who detailed the powerful reasons why they had won, and when the poems were read aloud by their authors, the fantastic quality of the winners was truly revealed. You could have heard a pin drop in the audience as we delighted in the excellence of the work, on themes happy to sad, light and dark, but all wonderful.
Our huge thanks to Fred and Ian for the amazing amount of work and thought they put into both judging the entries and presenting the winners on the day, and our even bigger thanks and congratulations to the winning poets. Well done!