French festival is a big hit with les Irlandais

ESTABLISHED in 1992 and now snow balling into something quite sizeable, a French theatre festival for Irish secondary schools seems like a novel way to stimulate the study of French in the classroom. Whereas only a handful took part in 1992, 26 schools from all over Ireland are competing in this year's Waterford French School Theatre Festival, the finals of which take place in Waterford from February 24th to 26th.

"The idea of the festival is to use the love the Irish have for the theatre and apply it to the teaching of French," says Marie Therese Panther, attachee linguistique with the French embassy's cultural service. "What happens is that French classes write, direct and perform their own short plays in competition with other schools."

She describes the festival as "a technical and financial partnership between the French embassy and the Department of Education, with sponsorship from Woodchester Bank and the Ireland Fund of France." The prize in the senior category is a trip to Romania for a "festival of festivals" at which schools from 12 countries around Europe present their plays and perform apiece in their native language.

Preparations for the festival really got under way in French classes around the country last October. Teachers received special training at the Department to prepare them for the festival and trained actors visited schools to work on things like improvisations, warm up exercises and staging.

"Although I had my doubts to begin with, the benefits for my first year French class have been incredible," says Geraldine Healy, French teacher at Ardee Community School in Co Louth. The school's Setanta 1 French class, wrote and staged Setanta, Le Sauveur, which won a recent regional final in the festival.

"The story of the play," says Healy, "is based around bringing the historic figure of Setanta to our school in a time machine. The school is in a panic as our best hurler has just broken his leg before a big game. Setanta steps in, saves the day and scores a screamer of a goal to win the important game of hurley.

Healy says she was so impressed to see her students starting to talk and think in French. "It was a marvellous social experience for them based on cooperation among themselves, with their teacher and with various departments around the school. The only drawback about winning the regional final is that it's going to take around £1,000 to finance the costs, including a two night stay in Waterford, of participating in the final. Fund raising is already underway."

Panther believes some French teachers are too worried about the syllabus. "They need to be convinced about the festival's merits," she says. "We could have more schools involved, but we will need more money from the State sector to subsidise any further expansion."