Drama Club 24-25

This year’s performance was a comedy adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. The story follows Tom Canty, a beggar living a tough poor life in 1547 London. One morning, Tom befriends his identical lookalike, Prince Edward Tudor, who’s soon to be king after Henry VIII.

Fascinated by each other’s lives, Prince Edward proposes an idea: to swap clothes temporarily. Their little game backfires when the palace guards chase out Edward to the streets, leaving Tom to be the prince. As Edward tastes the harsh life of a poor person on the streets, Tom is threatened by the evil Earl of Hertford, who is keen to turn the prince into his political puppet.

To tell this story, we tried something new with the stage design. The stage was split in half; one rich side, and the poor side to compare and contrast their differences.

The Hong Kong School Drama Festival performance was held on the 3rd of March at the K2 auditorium to an audience of two P3 classes and one P6 class, who seemed to follow along the story smoothlyy, often laughing along with the funny gags presented by the cast.

The two leads, Hanson Sin (6F) and Elly Liao (5G), as the Prince Edward and Tom Canty were a fun comedic duo. Their most challenging task on stage was to do a quick costume change under 2 minutes, which they practiced intensively.

The supporting cast were given double roles and were up-to-the task, rapidly changing their costumes backstage and reappearing as a separate character to help populate the stage.

Ethan Guo Mu Qian (4B) and Charlotte Wong Ching Fei (5C) won the Award for Outstanding Performers respectively as the Narrator, for his hilarious performance as a mustached narrator who is frustrated with the story and the Earl of Hertford, for her devilishly scene-stealing villain performance, hatching her evil plans to take over the throne behind-the-scenes.

After the performance, the Hong Kong School Drama Festival judges gave the students some comments and led a few drama exercises, teaching them ways to sustain their character for longer.

Overall, the students learned the value of staying focused and working as a team.