The Office

Synopsis

A day at the office like any other… is it?

A boss trying to prepare a birthday party for his girlfriend, an information breach within the office. A huge mess with lots of fun (and drinking).

Does it end well? Let’s see…

After all, what happens in the office, stays in the office…!!!   

Written by Bárbara Carmelo and António Gonçalves 12.ºA

In the beginning of the school year, teacher Isabel Santos spoke to us about the objectives for the English Year plan – the last in our school career! There it was – a play!!! To write a full play and then perform it…!!!

At first the class was reluctant to this brand new challenge. ‘How are we going to write a whole script? What will the topic be…?’

Well, all these difficulties made us question if we were capable of succeeding. To say the least, the students were really unmotivated and maybe, quite frustrated, too.

The end of the first term drew closer and so it was time to take up the primary task – the topic. After a couple of weeks of indecision, disagreements and impatience we decided to create our own version of The Office.

The following task was to start writing the script, but it turned out to be a disaster, as we hadn´t decided anything about the timeline and the plot.

We learned from that experience! We decided that after the timeline was laid out, we could be divided into groups, the actors, the set decorators, the sound and lighting technicians, the costume designers and finally the person responsible for the media promotion.   

We noticed that, not only did the script gain form but our ideas were also well received, and we changed the way we looked at this activity! Only then we worked as one, faced our insecurities and defeated our fear of failing. By the end of March, with teacher Isabel´s help everything was almost prepared to start the rehearsals.

The third term was exclusively dedicated to the play. At first, we won’t lie, the rehearsals were terrible. But then we started having fun as a class and teacher Isabel motivated us with her enthusiasm and pride. After all the trial and error, we could not be happier with the outcome!

The class of 12 A/B learned a lot during the process! We realised that courage and humility are the ingredients to success!

Therefore, we would like to thank teachers Maria de Almeida, Ricardo Silva, Odair Gomes and João Quintas for their tireless help, and the spectators for their presence, but mainly teacher Isabel for her tolerance, effort and for showing us that by just stepping out of our comfort zone, we will be surprised by our own resilience and achievements!