The cast of this year’s Upper School play – an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic, The Great Gatsby – have been working with Christine Devaney who leads the award winning dance theatre company, Curious Seed.  

Christine brings her extensive knowledge and experience to the cast to devise movement for some of the iconic locations in the play; exploring the excess of Gatsby’s mansion and his famous parties, as well as the industrial waste land of the Valley of Ashes. We caught up with Christine to hear how her involvement will help inform the final production…

How have you been involved in The Great Gatsby rehearsals? 

I worked with the ensemble right at the very beginning, even before rehearsals had really started. I worked with Jane Williams in terms of wanting to pull out and explore the physicality of the work, but we also had an intense weekend of working with the ensemble to try and bring them into how it feels to work as an ensemble. They didn’t all know each other well at that point, and for the young people to explore their own physicality and to get comfortable with their own physicality so that they could carry on as rehearsals developed.

I then dropped back into rehearsals about three quarters of the way through and that was great. The cast were on stage at this point and most of the set was there. They were completely into the play and were really on top of their lines. 

There was still a lot of work to do at that point but I was able to look and make even small suggestions around things they had come up with. I was able to help with getting them to go into their physical expression and move beyond ‘Great Gatsby’ the film. A lot of us know the film really well, and I would expect maybe these young performers know the film but actually we’re not making a film, it’s a theatrical production so everything about this has to be bigger, emphasised, a different kind of acting, a different kind of physical expression.  That was exciting for me to see where it was at and how I could feed into rehearsals then.

What are you most excited about with the production?

Seeing the young ensemble get on that stage and show all the hard work that they’ve been doing. I’m really excited about seeing how everything comes together, that’s always an exciting stage of any production and seeing how the audience responds to the work the young ensemble have done. 

What’s been the biggest challenge you/the cast have faced to date? 

I think it’s the relevance of this work today and how do we make it comfortable for a young ensemble to play it meaningfully and with authenticity. It goes beyond just pretending to be these characters, but to really find something that’s relevant for them and that’s relevant for the audience today.  That has been a challenge but I think they are absolutely coming up to that challenge and I can’t wait to see them share that.

If you could sum up the performance in three words, what three words would you use? 

Fresh, contemporary, fun.

The Great Gatsby performance will take place on 27 and 28 February and tickets are on sale now: www.trybooking.com/uk/events/landing/78705