Work Experience with Avant Cymru

My name is Rhian. I am in Year 10 and I go Treorchy Comprehensive School. The GCSE options I am taking are Media, Drama and French along with the core subjects. I chose to go with Avant Cymru during my work experience week because I wanted to see what was behind the scenes of a drama company and how they prepared themselves for upcoming projects.

On the first day of my work experience I took part in a meeting focused on the upcoming project “FestyPorth”. We had people from all different types of businesses attend the meeting and 150 people who couldn’t attend the meeting showed interest in getting involved. We had writers, poets, dancers, performers, artists and many other people who worked around the arts come up with ideas and events for FestyPorth such as a murder mystery trail, a talent show and a writing challenge. We even had ideas of how to make the location look visually attractive to the public. After the Festy' meeting, I attended a youth dance class and took part in learning beginner hip hop dance and learnt some choreography to a song written by Rufus Mufasa.

On Tuesday, we started the day by making a PowerPoint on information about FestyPorth. We included information such as where the festival would take place and where the main focus of the event would be in Porth. We also included information about which businesses are supporting and involved in the project and we talked about some events taking place leading up to October, such as the canvases done by local artists being put up in cafes in Porth. We then went to Radyr Comprehensive to do a talk about Avant for their careers week. We talked to Year 12 students both interested in pursuing drama as a career. We talked about what Avant has done in the past and also upcoming events for the future. We also told them ways to get connected better to people who often branch out to actors needed to help them get involved in what is going on.

On Wednesday, we were in the Park and Dare carrying on the FestyPorth presentation and adding more information. We added individual slides on the events that will be happening and stating how much each part of the event will cost. We wrote down the ideas gathered from the meeting, making sure we covered everyone’s input. I also helped by interviewing Amelia for her meeting with National Theatre Wales which she was not able to attend.

On Thursday, we finished the Festy Porth presentation ready to send to the council and worked out how much each event would cost and put all the final costs into an excel spread sheet and worked out how much it would all cost and worked out our budget for the event. We then attended the Getting Porth Connected meeting in Porth. The meeting was about getting all the businesses in Porth together to about what themes we could use and who we could work with for Rhondda Road.

On my last day Friday, I helped Rachel write up some notes for her meeting later that day. We then created a to do list for the Punk Rock performance held by Theatre Tri. We worked out which scenes we hadn’t blocked yet and which we should do in upcoming rehearsals. Rachel couldn’t attend the Punk Rock rehearsals, so she gave me the notes to take with me. During the Punk Rock rehearsals with Theatre Tri, we blocked the last scene where all characters were involved in. It was a productive rehearsal and the last scene was going to be the hardest we blocked but we all stayed focused and finished the last scene.