Sancta Maria College’s portrayal of, “The Good Soul of Szechuan,” at Howick’s Uxbridge Theatre saw fourteen Sancta Maria College Year 12 students take on characters of this play as part of their NCEA Level 2 Drama internal. The main character of Bertolt Brecht’s play, Shen Te, was performed by Ella Flores, while her alter ego ‘cousin’, Shui Ta was played by Meggy Laguda.
The play shows how, amidst a city where many of the rich are selfish towards others, the gods eventually discover hope in humanity through Shen Te, a prostitute that unexpectedly, is one of the only charitable people in Szechuan. However, the pressure from society to help others, ultimately causes Shen Te’s alter ego, Shui Ta, to be formed to care for her own self-interests.
The style of the play was Brechtian which follows a dramatic genre that usually involves addressing the audience directly with analysis and questions to develop a moral of the story.
From their performance on Wednesday night, many of the audience were able to grasp the many teachings from the play, “I learnt that good cannot be in existence if there is no bad in the world because then, what are we to compare it to?”
The Year 12 Drama students put tremendous amounts of hard work into self-directing this play. Finally, six weeks of after school practices and trying to remember lines ensured the Year 12 students’ hard work was able to be appreciated by the audience.
“Everyone’s accents in the play were so funny. There was Australian, Russian, Asian and there was even a boy who had to act and speak like a girl. I loved his wig.”
Overall, the students from the drama class were just glad that their performance was able to generate laughter and giggles from those that watched last night’s play and hope that they will be able to develop their acting skills to be even better in future performances.
Zoe Chou
