Breaking Boundaries: COLINE CADORET
Giving to the community is often thought of as one of life’ s extra-curricular pleasures. However, for those that are associated with, or are lured to, Win Coll, it is often an inherent and intrinsically unavoidable value, and one which is very much a central part of the school’ s wider curriculum. Every Monday evening, since arriving at the school in 2012, Coline Cadoret has been accompanying boys to the Blue Apple Theatre, a theatre company that was set up in 2005. In that year there was one part-time drama teacher supported by volunteers. By 2014 the organisation had employed its first full-time manager, who would work alongside the company’ s artistic director, choreographer and administrator. The company is the brainchild of Jane Jessop, who has lived in the area for many years. Her son William left the school in 2001 and has pursued a successful career in writing, directing and film-making. Her other son, Tommy, has starred in performances on stage and screen, having appeared in Casualty, Doctors, and opposite Nicholas Hoult in the BBC drama Coming Down the Mountain. Tommy also happens to be the first actor with Down Syndrome to star in a primetime BBC drama. The Blue Apple Theatre is an award winning endeavour that has truly broken boundaries. Adults with learning difficulties are joined by volunteers to put on productions as taxing as Hamlet, with the veritable ease that comes from a pure love for theatre. In June 2012 the company was named the 1000th winner of the Queen’ s Award for Voluntary Service. It was that same year that Coline joined the school. Her path having started many miles away, she had studied to become an English teacher in France. Whilst at the University of Bordeaux, she stumbled upon an opportunity to spend some time teaching English at a charming old boarding school, hustled away in the very heart of Hampshire, England. The posting was only for one year, as a conversation class assistant. Almost five years later, she has evidently found it very hard to leave. Upon arriving in the rural English setting, quite contrasted with a Bordeaux university campus, it took some confidence to become wholly immersed in the intricacies of English boarding school life.
44 The Wykeham Journal 2016