Year 11 Playseries Explores the Power of Two
The College’s Year 11 Playseries, staged across two nights on 24 and 25 August, moved between five short two-handers and one tragedy built around twins. The same idea ran underneath both classes performances – two people, working out what they owe each other.
Ten-Minute Play Series: Be Challenged, directed by Katie Phillips, was built entirely on that structure. Six scenes by Lindsay Price, each a two-hander, worked through different kinds of pressure. Bottle Baby, played by Oliver Bennett and Ruby Hawkeswood, sat inside a family shaped by addiction and the surface labels that hide it. Hall Pass, played by Alex Doull and Blake Cuthbert, started as a rule-breaking stand-off before turning into a study of how perspective and role-play shape behaviour. Oh Chad, taken on by Sam Crosbie and Oliver Walters, parodied the drama of teenage relationships before swapping the joke for a far more sudden, realistic ending. You, adapted for two performers, George Chafer and Savannah English, traded blame back and forth until guilt and responsibility were impossible to separate. Sunday Lunch closed the set with Aarav Raj and Oliver White navigating the quiet unease of two families about to merge. Across six scenes and twelve performers, the pattern of two held.
Blood Brothers, Willy Russell’s play about twins Mickey and Eddie, separated at birth and raised on opposite sides of a class divide, gave the second half its own version of the same idea, stretched from ten minutes into a full production. With many roles double cast, Henry Cannon and Cohen Holmes split Mickey between them, Liam Simpson-Pudney, Jaxon Dowson and Charlie Evans shared Eddie, Mia Jansen van Vuuren and Evalyn Penney played Linda and Ruby Mapson and Dasha Rawnsley took on Mrs Johnstone, the mother whose decision sets the whole story in motion. Maddie Anderson, Phoebe Wakelin and Rosie Bilkey shared the role of Mrs Lyons who manipulates Mrs Johnstone and adopts Eddie. Porter Barkle and Jasmine Moore shared the narrator who commentates on society throughout the play. James Tattersfield and George Sharp play the comical roles of the Policemen, Milkman and Doctor. Directed by Steph Cooke-Allen, the production leaned into the play’s questions about nature versus nurture, letting two brothers with the same blood and opposite lives argue both sides at once.
Run separately from the Year 12 and 13 seasons earlier in the term but drawn from the same Playseries programme, the Year 11 nights made their own case for pairing as a form. Whether it lasts ten minutes or two hours, putting two people opposite each other remains one of the clearest ways to see what a character does under pressure.
