'Allo 'Allo! Theatre Play

A memorable time in high school where I wrote, directed, and acted in a school play. There is a valuable lesson here that I wish to relay to the reader. 

Within my final year of high school I decided to partake in acting which I had never done before. The school hosted an inter-house play competition each year. The house I belonged to had seasoned actors with a play already figured out. Wanting to make use of some of my own ideas, I joined a school mate who was head of a different house who didn’t have a play. I had been watching the UK TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo! and convinced my friend to base our play on the TV series (here is a snippet of Season 1 of the TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo!). 

During the school holidays I spent 2 weeks watching ‘Allo ‘Allo! on DVD and writing out a script (internet wasn’t readily accessible at this point in time). I made simple sketches of the stage layout and determined what props we would need. Upon returning to school, my friend and I begun doing auditions within our boarding house. The premise was simple, speak English in a French or German accent. Most of the people (including myself) we selected to act had never done so before, and we were up against teams of people who had experience. Because our team had many first timers, there was an ever present energy about trying to achieve something big. 

I had the team gather for practice every day for an hour. We did this for a couple of months. Slowly adding in more people, organizing props, coming up with clever lighting sequences, and using any comedic material we could think of. At some point it was decided that I would take on the lead role. 

Eventually the night came to perform. We had late joiners to the team such as stage hands, teachers doing make up, any good idea was okayed. We even had parents bringing in real food that would be eaten as part of the play. We performed in-front of teachers, parents, and school pupils. There was endless laughter from the audience which required a pause from the cast to allow the laughter to fade. I can only therefore assume we were entertaining. 

After that first performance the judges had sent us to the finals. At the finals we were declared the winner. Weeks later I was awarded best actor for the year, having only ever done it once. Now, dear reader, an assumption could be made that the school had really bad actors. Or, consider this, if you’ve ever found yourself working amongst a high energy, highly motivated team, you’ll know that anything can be achieved. Rapidly iterating through ideas, discarding what doesn’t work, learning from mistakes. But most importantly, having the naivety of a bunch of first timers didn’t make us stick to conventional wisdom. We had a vision and just pushed in that direction until we ultimately succeeded. I put a great deal of personal time into this play, but ultimately it was the great team I had that made us achieve this small success. 

I will forever have the words “I trust the food was to your satisfaction colonel” stuck in my head… said in a French accent.