Performing Arts
The Performing Arts Faculty's ambition is that all students find their passion as a composer, dramatist, singer, performer, director or producer. Students explore different genres and important work of the past and present in drama and music. Learning is creative and collaborative. Knowledge and skills grown in performance, technical and digital elements enable individual and group performances and ambitious large scale productions.
Staff Profiles
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Giles Butcher, BA (Hons), PGCE, NPQML - Head of Faculty
After graduating from university, I worked in the arts for fifteen years on a large number of collaborative projects, working with sculptors, dancers, musicians and other visual artists. During that time, I also worked as a musician and producer on a number of published music projects. I am passionate about the arts and teaching has allowed me to share this passion with students. I achieved my National Professional Leadership Qualification for Middle Leaders in 2019.
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Miss Florence Wood, BA (Hons), PGCE - Second in Performing Arts: Drama
I graduated from UWE with a first-class degree in Drama with Creative Writing and went on to complete a PGCE in English with Drama at Exeter University. I am passionate about the creative arts and believe young people significantly benefit from working as part of a team and creating a performance. I am currently Oracy Champion for Orchard School and have taken part in training sessions run by Voice 21.
- Aimee Green, BA (Hons), PGCE
I graduated from the University of Bristol with a degree in Music. My particular focus was composition, and I also play piano and cello to a high standard, having trained at the Royal College of Music for 6 years prior to attending university. I have a particular interest in digital innovation in the classroom, but I also love to work on class performance.
Drama - Curriculum features
Drama reflects the world as we know it. As students delve into our curriculum, we want them to recognise how performance is a vehicle to expose issues and incite change. Whilst performing is enjoyable and entertaining, it can also be used to reflect social and political issues, teach audiences empathy, reveal truths and even function as a form of protest. We aim to educate students about drama so they can recognise how powerful performance can be.
We want our students to be versatile in their thinking when creating a piece of drama from scratch. This means giving them access to a large toolkit of practitioners and performance styles to experiment with and incorporate into their pieces. Devising in drama allows students to develop social skills, collaborate and cooperate in groups. Drama students at Orchard School are encouraged to use drama lessons as a forum for debate and discussion so they feel confident with tackling difficult subject matter on stage and empowered by the way they can use performance to express themselves.
From the start of Key Stage 3 we explore various physical and vocal skills. Fundamentally, this means drama students at Orchard recognise how influential tone, pitch, body language and gestures can be when communicating with others.
At Key Stage 4 we explore playwrights from the canon across history. These high quality texts engage students and encourage them to voice their personal opinion when they encounter them. Carefully unpicking the language in a script allows students to discover and examine the possible inner thoughts and feelings of their character.
