An aspiring QE playwright’s coming-of-age story set in India was selected as one the best nine entries in a National Theatre writing competition.
As one of the shortlisted plays in the New Views competition, Year 10 pupil Adithya Raghuraman’s Train of Thought was given a rehearsed reading by professional actors at the National Theatre in London.
He had written the play during this School year, supported by a mentor playwright – in his case, Andrew Muir, a critically acclaimed writer for stage and screen – who visited QE to deliver workshops and to give Adithya personalised feedback and guidance.
Head of English Robert Hyland said: “Many congratulations to Adithya for a wonderful achievement. For someone as young as him to produce such a powerful piece of writing is truly astonishing – and for a student to have their work performed at the National Theatre is unprecedented in the School’s history.
“The play itself is an emotional tour de force – Adithya has a wonderful talent of being able to switch tone, moving from the comedic to the poignant to the reflective and finally to the uplifting. There is also great foresight in anticipating the transition from page to stage – when Adithya’s words were given life by a professional adult cast, it really allowed his talent at writing character and tone to be showcased”.
The New Views competition invites pupils aged 14-18 across the UK to submit 30-minute plays. More than 1,000 young people took part nationally this year, with just under 500 plays finally submitted.
“The competition gives students an opportunity to tell stories that are personal to them. From an English department point of view, it gives our QE students the opportunity to write creatively for a real purpose and a real audience, adding enormous value to their wider English education,” said Mr Hyland.
Before the actors gave their reading in front of an audience at the National Theatre, Adithya spent some time meeting with the director and producer, as well as attending a rehearsal with the actors.
His play was a philosophical and reflective story about a British-Indian teenager taking a train ride across southern India after his mother’s death, and the relationship he developed both with his father and with the country of India.
Adithya said: “Being shortlisted for New Views was an unforgettable experience. From the exhilarating moment Mr Hyland called me into his office to tell me the great news, to being able to watch a plethora of talented actors display awe-inspiring emotion as they completed the rehearsed reading, the entire process never failed to be exciting and rewarding.”
Writing the play had been “a fascinating and inspiring journey”, he said, with the final work and his success in the competition making it all well worth the effort.
“An important lesson I learnt was the importance of perspective – my perspective of the characters I had written about; my teacher’s perspective; the views of my director, and the expression of the actors as they empathised with Ashok [the main character] and stepped in the shoes of the characters they had to play.”
“The latter is a difficult task, but the way the actors embodied everything I had intended when writing the play, as well as adding in their own humour and incredible skill when portraying the characters, was something I will never forget.
Thanking Mr Hyland and the competition team for the opportunity, he added: “I look forward to writing more plays and stepping out of my comfort zone in English again in the future.”
Adithya’s mentor, Andrew Muir, has had plays produced throughout the UK and in recent years his work has been performed at the National Theatre’s Connections festival, at Soho Theatre and on the BBC. His assessment of Adithya’s play described it as “a joyous road trip of a story, in which both father and son are brought back together again following the devastating loss of their wife and mother respectively.
“A wonderful train journey from Mumbai to Chennai gives the boy, our central protagonist, an opportunity to get a better understanding about his homeland – the smells, the chaos, the colours and the language. The writer takes us on this journey with skill and delicacy, and…conveys the atmosphere of India with such depth that at times I felt that I was on that same train as Ashok, experiencing all those wonders of India for the first time also. Strong story-telling, atmospheric, witty and truthful. A young imagination at play here and it’s very good. Well done.”
Among the artefacts viewed by the group during their visit to Kew was the actual letter – known as the ‘Tide Letter’ – written by the future Queen Elizabeth I, founder of Queen Elizabeth’s School, as she battled for survival following her arrest in 1554.
The visit was a reward for the boys who submitted the best entries to Project 1573. This involved small groups of boys being given three primary sources relating to a particular aspect of QE’s history and then asked to produce a three-minute presentation after accessing 
Kelvin Chen, Ethan Yao, Jonas Dawit and Rishi Sen, also of Year 8 Pearce, researching E W Harrison, a long-serving teacher who retired in 1950 and is one of the two unrelated people after whom the Harrisons’ House is named
“The students were able to see the neat handwriting at the start of the letter become larger and messier as she was likely made to hurry by those waiting to escort her to the Tower. Fearing her enemies might alter the letter, Elizabeth struck lines through the blank space above her signature,” said Mrs Blackford.
QE’s founding Royal Charter of 1573 was authorised with Queen Elizabeth’s first seal. This, however, wore out during her long reign, and, Ms Blackford said, the boys enjoyed finding out about its replacement: “It is noticeably more elaborate, as Elizabeth had started to closely monitor her image.”
There were prizes for some, while the contribution of all the leavers – or graduands – was celebrated during an occasion in Shearly Hall that featured speeches and presentations, followed by afternoon tea on Staplyton Field.
Headmaster Neil Enright thanked parents for their “huge support, both moral and financial, over the years” and urged both them and their sons to stay in touch with the School.
Sahil attended Valediction together with his mother, cousin, friends and his brother, Nikhil Handa (OE 2013–2020). He recalled his first encounter with Deputy Head (Pastoral) David Ryan, who hauled him over the coals after spotting him dancing outside the classroom window to entertain his classmates during afternoon form time. This less-than-auspicious beginning soon turned into a supportive relationship, however, when he became part of Mr Ryan’s English class. “I thought he’d make my life miserable. But to my surprise, it seemed as though he’d forgotten the whole episode entirely. I went on to learn everything from him… Mr Ryan was also the first person who complimented me for being a generalist.”
A large majority of Year 13 students attended. All received a set of QE cufflinks, while the prizewinners also received a copy of former Headmaster Dr John Marincowitz’s new history of the School, Queen Elizabeth’s School: 1573–2023. Among the speakers was Theo Mama-Kahn, School Captain 2022, who was one of the leavers. He gave a vote of thanks.
The Year 9 trip to the north German city of Bielefeld saw the QE party enjoy the high life at one of the world’s tallest and fastest roller-coasters, at a tree-climbing adventure park and at the mediaeval Sparrenberg Castle (known locally as the Sparrenburg), which towers over the city centre.
The exchange, which began in 2005, is with a co-educational grammar school (or ‘Gymnasium’), Friedrich von Bodelschwingh Gymnasium in Bielefeld. The school is named after a German pastor, theologian and public health advocate, who ran large homes for people with learning difficulties and refused to comply with the Nazis’ euthanasia policies.
Music: the boys created their own digital music using GarageBand software. One of the party, Peter Atanasov, said: “We made our own beats on iPads to accompany a melody and learnt about new music genres as well.”
Performed during national Refugee Week, the play, which is itself called The Jungle, gave a voice to some of the thousands of men, women and children from many different countries who lived in the camp while trying to gain access to the UK.
An award-winning play, The Jungle was written by two young playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robinson, who met while studying English at Oxford. In the autumn of 2015, they first came to the Jungle camp, returning a short time later after crowdfunding to bring an 11m white geodesic dome there to serve as a theatre and community & arts space. They then spent seven months volunteering in the Jungle, before the authorities took down the encampment in 2016.
Aahan said: “Playing the role of someone who has been far less privileged than myself and has had many different experiences has been really interesting. Additionally, the character I played weaves himself in and out of the story, as if controlling it and the perspective, which was something really challenging but also really fun!”