Rocking international day at BIS
PHUKET:Siska Greene, a Year 9 student at the British International School Phuket (BIS), is belting out a rock number.
Thursday 23 February 2012, 05:10PM
Such a powerful voice comes out of the small girl, who is also very much at ease on the stage. The school is rightly proud of this developing singer who clearly has a promising future as a performer.
The Studio188 band, led by Michael Luévano, who have just flown in from their base in Shanghai for their first visit to Phuket, is providing the backing music, with saxophones wailing.
Young students form an impromptu line in front of the band, trying to dance in step with each other. One improvises solo moves that bring smiles and laughter from students stood behind him.
A small Thai student, impeccably clad in a formal traditional Thai outfit with white official jacket and blue silk sarong tied back in the same style that his grandfathers may have worn, hurries along an outside covered walkway to join the fun.
Already there, tall Korean girl students look spectacular in their national dresses, with long flowing red and pink silk skirts sweeping on the grass.
A blond Russian girl, in a very pretty white national dress, smiles while her friend holds up a small flag from her country, both stood in the welcoming shade of the Russian tent.
Another boy is wrapped up in a green-and-gold South African flag, while close by Australian children wear tall blue Mad Hatter hats adorned with the Southern Cross stars.
Space, a play to be performed solo by a young visiting actor from England, Timothy Mann, and supported by the Year 12-13 drama group of BIS, is due to begin in a few hours.
In the school’s drama studio, the dozen or so young actors of the Nose2Nose school troupe are busy in rehearsal, being coached by a visiting drama teacher Neil Farrelly. They shout, scream and prance in acts that the group is just now spontaneously sketching out for itself.
Later, in the school darkened auditorium and under spotlight, the troupe’s newly-created sketches come magically and dramatically alive in front of the assembled audience of parents, teachers and peers.
