This afternoon I went to our local Primary school in Inveraray to be part of the audience at a joint production by Scottish opera’s outreach team and 7 of our local primary schools. The reason I was there was that the Loch Fyne Oysters Trust has helped to fund the event. The remit of the Trust is to further ” the advancement of education and the protection of the environment particularly within Scotland and the area around the head of Loch Fyne” and this particular event couldn’t have fitted this remit better.
The schools had been individually rehearsing the music and words over the past few months, and today the Scottish Opera team got together with them to add costumes, moves, dance and performance within the space of 3 hours before they took to the stage. The excitement of the children and their concentration was a credit to all and resulted in a great production brimming with enthusiasm. The amount of ‘education’ received through this process was also clear to see – not only performance skills, confidence boosting and so on but also in the subject matter and messages conveyed by the script and music. It was amazing how poignant a moment can be achieved by 200 brightly coloured costumed children collapsing to the floor of a school hall as a result of the world imploding. Thankfully the ending was more upbeat with the message being that ‘it’s not too late to do something about it’. The kids all looked as if they were throughly enjoying themselves and meeting up with each other, as often the rural schools can be isolated from one another.
Meanwhile back on the home front our enthusiastic Facilities Manager, John Meaney, has been putting into place a whole range of projects to get our emissions down and recycling up. I’ll get him to tell you all about it one day but meanwhile you might be interested in the targets he has set us.
As a post script to todays event I noticed the script was by Ross Stenhouse. Ross is a performer and writerI have known for many years including a couple when he acted as Compere for our annual Food Fair. It’s a small world.
Thank you to Ross and the Scottish Opera team for a great show.
Leave a comment