Curtain Up
Helen Brown, Director of Drama at Shrewsbury School discusses the brand-new Performing Arts facility, the Barnes Theatre
Until this year, I loved silence in the theatre. I loved the anticipatory hush before the curtain comes up and before the actors have stepped on stage. I loved the breathless pause at the end of the show, before the applause.
In 2021, a silent theatre has meant something very different. It has been an empty stage, locked workshops, cancelled shows. It has been frozen zoom calls and abortive rehearsals with actors on mute.
For me, the greatest thrill of the coming months won’t be my first trip to the pub or my first foreign holiday; it will be the moment that I can sit in the dark alongside a stranger and be transported to another world by the generosity and commitment of the actors in front of me.
Luckily for me, I won’t have far to travel: as Director of Drama at Shrewsbury School, I have both a world-class theatre and a hugely talented group of performers on my doorstep. In September 2020, Shrewsbury opened a brand-new Performing Arts facility, the Barnes Theatre, thanks to the generosity of Sir David Barnes and his family. The building houses an intimate 250-seat auditorium served by generous front-of-house facilities, studios for drama and dance, state-of-the-art technical equipment, backstage workshops and dressing rooms. Our students have the opportunity to experience all aspects of performance and theatre design, and many have gone on to careers in the performing arts, with Old Salopians studying drama, dance and technical theatre at many of the country’s top universities and conservatoires.
Now more than ever, I believe in the immense value of such opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Negotiating the modern world is a challenge for all of us; for teenagers it is tricky, and for teenagers in a pandemic trickier yet. The past year has reminded us how central the arts are to our own humanity: as Michelle Obama brilliantly put it, ‘the arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time, rather paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.’
As we start to rebuild communities, the arts will provide us with both a space and a vocabulary to articulate the kind of people we want to be and the kind of society we want to create. At Shrewsbury, we will sing and dance and tell stories: stories that will define our future.
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