Pauline Li Gaudefroy
On September 16th, drama-loving students and professional theatre coaches from all over the Kantō region joined up at Saint Maur to participate in the KPASS drama festival. Unlike volleyball competitions or the speech contest, this event was a time for students from rival schools to collaborate, get to know each other, experience something new, and enjoy their time together.
Participants were given time to chat with other schools before, during, and after the festival. The aim of the event was for students and workshop leaders (professional theatre coaches), who didn’t know one another, to collaborate and create a 5 minute long piece on the theme revolution. And, as a KPASS drama festival participant, I can say that the results were outstanding.
Everyone had such a blast that 5 hours was genuinely not enough to mingle around. Otherwise, the 5 hours were well spent and each group had diverse ideas on “revolution”. One group had the interesting idea of adding rap into their skit, inspired by “Hamilton” the musical. Another two groups were very serious and went down the road of rebellion. Lastly, the final group out of the four groups had falsely accused criminals break out of jail for attempting to shake hands with aliens who, coincidentally, don’t have hands. One of the prisoners was even sent to jail for saying “thanks for giving me a hand.”
We eagerly await to encounter numerous fresh faces and memorable experiences in the forthcoming years of the KPASS drama festival.
Pauline Li Gaudefroy