Drama group: Day centre visit

On 7 February 2020, some members of our school's Slovene drama club visited Dnevni center aktivnosti starejših (a local day centre for older members of our community) to see a play being performed by their own drama group.

As the trip coincided with Prešeren Day celebrations, the show started with their choir singing Zdravljica (Slovenia’s national anthem) and another of France Prešeren’s poems set to music by Jurij Flajšman. Then one of the drama club members recited Turjaška Rozamunda (a long poem by Prešeren) by heart and impressed us all with his memory. The play we were there to see, Snubač (“A Marriage Proposal”) , was written by the Russian author, Anton Chekov. Before the performance started, a representative from the Russian embassy delivered a short speech commemorating the author. There are three characters in the comedy: Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov, his daughter Natalia and her suitor, Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov. Ivan visits Stepan to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage and he gladly agrees but before the three of them can reach an agreement, some old dispute about the border of their estates comes up and the wedding is off.

After the show, we got a chance to praise the actors on their performance and invite them to come to see one of the plays we have planned at our school. The most interesting thing to me was how we have problems creating age differences between characters in our plays because the actors are all teenagers. We usually try to find ways to make them look older but the actors in that performance did not worry about how they looked the same age but allowed the audience to see who was supposed to be younger or older by using body language and facial expressions.

The experience was a fun and rewarding way to spend some time. In particular, we learned about how a different drama group works and how the actors help and support each other in a range of ways and I am sure we can use what they told and showed us in our own performances in the future.

Nika Rupnik
Member of the Gimnazija Vič drama club