深圳市新安中学（集团）高一（15）班 古薇

指导老师：郑启才 汤颖

The 22nd Art Festival was held in our school. At the end of the festival, a gala was held to celebrate the school’s 30th anniversary. Under the guidance of Tang Ying, our Drama Club put on an English play “Trial” from Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merchant of Venice.”

It was very successful and popular with the audience. I played a guard in it and enjoyed it very much. This experience helped me learn a lot about how to act in an English play, feeling very proud of myself and more interested in learning English.

First of all, Tang chose the actors and actresses. Everyone who would like to play a role was interviewed and asked to read the lines of the play. Unexpectedly, I was chosen and felt very happy. Then, we started reading the play to get to know the plot and analyzing the lines to feel the characters’ emotions. After that, Tang asked each character to go to her office to read the lines to guide us from the characters’ angles. Due to limited time, we rehearsed every day during the morning exercises’ break after the second lesson, after school and even in some evening classes.

Although my lines were very few, I was always actively involved. At first, I was not confident and spoke in a low voice. With Tang’s help, I became confident and dared to speak out my lines loudly. After I practiced imitating Tang many times, I could finally speak like the guard in the court.

On the day of the performance, I felt nervous, but when I was on the stage, I saw the audience in the darkness and I was not afraid any more. Jiang Qingfeng quickly picked up the character Shylock in the play and his performance inspired us. We felt as if we were in the real play. I really admire Jiang’s vivid stage performance and his ability to speak long lines quickly. Our performance was a great success and we received a lot of applause after we finished.

After only a little more than two weeks of rehearsal, we were all surprised we acted out the play so successfully and felt we had created a miracle. Every actor in this English play performed excellently. For example, I learned a lot from Liang Yushan, the president of our club. When she read her lines, she was very confident and had a good understanding of the character’s emotions.