Work experience at REP.  

I was given the opportunity to work at the Birmingham REP Theatre, one of the largest theatre productions in the UK. It was a fantastic experience. 

What was my feeling throughout the experience?

It was on Monday 17th June so it was earlier than the rest of people's work experience in 2024. In my head, I was thinking about terrible scenarios, embarrassment, awkwardness, and lack of respect towards me as I stared at many people that I didn’t recognise. They were hearing. I was deaf.  However, I wasn't the only one who was deaf, one student who is my classmate was there next to me, attempting to reassure me. I just wanted the ground to swallow me so I could disappear. A lovely office lady told us to follow her to the room where the work experience had begun.

It didn’t take me long until I started getting comfortable going there. How? All the people were very relatable and friendly. Also, very welcoming towards me, although I might be deaf and the only one who didn’t speak. Only typing on my phone to communicate, it was a struggle that I had to give up my position as a director. At least my group understood; they knew the struggle of being deaf which suddenly made me feel welcomed in a short amount of time which was abnormal for me. After the last day, I just wanted to go back and stay there for the whole month.

What did we do?

While working at the REP for a week, we listened (watching for me because I can't hear) to a range of people presenting information about their job in the REP and we had Q&A sessions. If you aren’t familiar with it, Q&A basically means questioning and answering, it was all about questioning the people from the REP and them answering me. And we also had workshops after presentations with different groups from our performance group, which I will explain in a moment. We had drama games which made us laugh and went crazy. It was fun.

What is a performance group?

I knew you would be asking me about what I meant by performance group! When we had time (not during break and lunchtime), I would have a group that worked together to make a scene with two actors in it, one sound designer, one lighting designer, one stage manager, and one director. I know that’s a lot to take in, but to make it brief, I had a group that worked together to make a short scene from the script. On Thursday 20th June, we showed our performance with sounds and lighting to other groups. It was a success! Our performance went smoothly.

Summary.

Was I nervous at first? Yes. Did I start to enjoy it at the end? Yes. Did I have fun? Yes. Did I have lots of things to do? Yes. Lastly, did our performance go so well that I was pleased with my performance group? Yes! 

I had a really good time at the REP. I would recommend you or your child to go to the REP for their first work experience since it was also my first work experience and I loved it! The REP is a very welcoming place for many people; it would be good to go there for work experience. Clearly, that’s their own choice, but I would still recommend that.

Written by Faith.