THE STRUGGLES
Friday 20th April 2018
The Struggles by Kendra Thomas
With thanks to Pioneer Drama
Kendra Thomas’ award winning play is about Megan, a young person coping with the learning challenges associated with dyslexia and ADD. She encounters the personification of her struggles and her journey provides a realistic look at what it is like to have learning differences. As her struggles reveal their true nature, Megan also discovers the unique strengths she has…
We spent 4 special days working on Kendra’s thought provoking play.
Thank you to our dance teacher/choreographer Jadyn Burt who came on the journey with us and helped us carefully interpret Megan’s struggles and feelings through movement.
We had great fun tie dying our black, purple and blue T-shirts to symbolise the bruises and knocks life deals us. Each t-shirt came out as unique and beautiful as our performers.
Hannah Kemp shone like the star she is and gave a sensitive performance as Megan. I asked Hannah for her thoughts on our workshop week…
“We don’t usually do plays like this at Standouts so it was an interesting challenge for me. I also felt very close to the character Megan because in a sense, I knew what she was feeling. It’s very easy to feel like a failure if you don’t match the standard people give you; whether that’s because you aren’t achieving in school or if you’re labeled as “not normal”. We are expected to fit into one mould.
I felt this was brilliantly shown in Kendra Thomas’ play “The Struggles” because a lot of the time Megan is told by her struggles than she is a failure and a disappointment.
I also was very close to the character because, while I don’t have Dyslexia, I do have Autism and spent a lot of my life before I knew, wondering what was wrong with me.
But of course, just like me, there was nothing wrong with Megan.
I did enjoy playing Megan and can’t wait to do more plays in the future on deep topics like this.”
Hannah Kemp
