Working with Stephen Poliakoff

Jamie, Esme, Grace and Lucy, Year 5 at JAPS, are no strangers to living in the city. Working with playwright and director Stephen Poliakoff, however, is a novelty, and contributing to the design for ‘My City’, his new play, a real privilege. The girls spent Saturday at a North London school at the invitation of Mr Poliakoff and assistant director, Laura Farnworth, ex-JAGS. Alongside Year 6 pupils from Highgate and Hanover Schools, they created drawings and giant paintings, props to be used in the new play.

How would you feel if, 15 years after you last saw them, you bumped into the one person who had the biggest influence on your life? This is the starting point for ‘My City’. On a dusky evening, old friends Richard and Julie find their primary school headmistress lying on a park bench in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. As they become reacquainted with her and the other teachers that helped shape them, memories of their vivid and imaginative lessons come to life.

The girls said Mr Poliakoff was very good at history! They were asked to draw impressions of significant events: the bringing down of the Berlin Wall (which they made with old Macdonald’s boxes), Princess Diana’s funeral, 9/11 and the Twin Towers….
 
“I was quite pleased with my drawings of the Berlin Wall and I liked the glitter mixed into the paint,” said Lucy. Esme enjoyed making the sunflowers, suggestive of hope. Grace was asked to draw Diana as though asleep in her coffin. “Like Dorothy in the field of poppies,” she said. “I was asked to draw sad people at Diana’s funeral,” Jamie said. Apart from the art, Jamie loved playing 40-40 home with the other schools, though there wasn’t enough time for inter-school dodgeball. Shame! “It was good making friends with the other schools,” agreed Esme. Then it was back to their own art lessons with Miss Johnson – initials! Beautiful!

The world premiere of ‘My City’ is on at the Almeida Theatre in September and November.

17 June 2011