Inaugural Latin Festival Performance for Falcons School for Girls

Our Year 5 pupils have showcased their exceptional talents with a highly-impressive display at, ‘Ludi Scaenici’ a Latin play competition hosted by Westminster Under School.

Falcons Girls is the first primary school to have been invited to the festival where they performed alongside pupils from a selection of leading London secondary schools including; City of London School for Girls, Queen’s College and Westminster.

A duo of Year 5 groups put on a spectacular presentation with their performances of, ‘Fasciculi’ and ‘Probitas’ both written by Andrew Downey creator of the festival. The talented pupils’, who have only been learning Latin for 30 minutes a week since September, performed a five-minute play entirely in Latin.

Much to the surprise of all in the Falcons company, the Year 5s  were given a special award for their production of ‘Fasciculi’. The judges John Taylor, (formerly Head of Classics at Tonbridge School and author of several widely used Greek and Latin textbooks) and Holly Edwards (Teacher of Classics at Forest School) highly commended the performance, commenting on the ensemble acting, props, costumes and the body-percussion rainstorm that opens the piece. John Taylor described it as having a ‘huge impact’ on the audience.

Diana Hillier, Head of Drama and History commented: “We were delighted to be the first school of primary age to be invited to perform at the festival. The girls were competing against children five years their senior, but they held their own and were excellent ambassadors for the school. The performance was astonishing, despite only learning Latin since September.

“At Falcons School for Girls we encourage our pupils to express their creativity, and the combination of applying their learnings in both drama and Latin was a valuable opportunity to do this.”