The Calcutta International School EYP (The End of Year Production) 2019 - THE MAGICAL TAPESTRY - was quite an extravaganza. Held at the beautiful Science City Auditorium on the 6th, it was a superb 3-hour program that made us parents truly proud. Hats off to the teachers! Everything about the production was so professional - from light & sound, to prop & costumes. The logistics of making ALL students of ALL the 12 classes (from Lower Nursery to Grade X) perform must have been mind-boggling.
The program started off with a resounding performance by the Junior School Choir (comprising of students from Grade 2-5). The tiny tots of Lower Nursery & Upper Nursery were next – enacting ‘The Journey of Simba’. (Little Simba was enjoying himself so much that he simply refused to leave the stage)! Both the Junior (1-5) & Senior (6-10) sections offered a great variety in their items; and we marked how, as the grades advanced, so did the confidence levels of the students on stage. And the density of content.
It was great to see the ingeniousness with which the teachers adapted all genres of literature (poem, story, play) on stage, mindful of the age-appropriateness of the students who enacted them. I was reminded a lot of my ICSE syllabus, as quite a few of our poems - ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, ‘Macavity: The Mystery Cat', ‘Lochinvar’ – found a place in the program. But it was surely Grades 9 & 10 who stole the show, dramatizing as they did significant excerpts from Shakespeare – concentrating on the characters of Shylock (‘Shylock, The Villain!?’) & Lady Macbeth (‘The Fourth Witch of Macbeth…?’), respectively.
Meanwhile, Miss Srishti Sandilya was one of 14 maidens in ‘Hail, King Arthur’ (performed by Grade 2), that told the tale of how Excalibur found its new King! Her dramatic act consisted of the following: walking from one end of the (very big) stage to another; going round and round in circles with the other maidens in the middle of the stage at some point; raising her hands, bowing her head & swaying right-to-left / left-to-right several times! This was, of course, far more work than what she did 2 years back, in Upper Nursery (they have EYP every 2 years). Her class had danced to 'Do Re Mi' then... & throughout the song, she kept on forgetting her cues, as her primary concern seemed less to dance and more to crane her neck to try and spot me in the darkness of the auditorium.
I’m sharing this year's King Arthur video here… it's unlikely you will be able to spot her... but it doesn’t matter. She LOVED every bit of their 3-month-long rehearsals at school & the GR at Science City on the 5th & was super excited about it all through. She also obliged us by posing in her costume after the program. Seen in the 2nd photo is one of her besties – Anoushka. Bless the girls! 3 cheers, CIS!!