SOME ?130 school-children from East Cornwall had a fantastic opportunity recently to learn from and share the stage with an international performing arts company.

The Young Americans visited Callington Community College to work with the college students and pupils from local primary schools.

The performing arts company consists of 41 students from all over the world, skilled in singing, dancing and performing.

Three days of workshops and rehearsals culminated in a full scale performance on the Sunday night to a packed audience.

Throughout the workshops the students were encouraged to build their confidence and work together to develop their performance skills in singing, song writing and creativity.

Evaluations of the experience showed how much their confidence had grown in only two days.

One student said about the experience: 'It will remind me to have a positive attitude and to enjoy life.'

Another said it taught them to 'be myself and not to worry about what people think'.

The primary pupils said that it had been a great way of getting to know the college before they join.

The Young Americans were hosted by 21 local families who did a wonderful job of feeding and transporting them to the college and they very much enjoyed the cultural exchange.

The group has worked with Callington College on several occasions before.

Debs Kemp, assistant head, said: 'Once again the Young Americans proved to be a great success — it was great to have them back.'

The Young Americans are continuing their tour around Britain which included the Marine Academy in Plymouth.

l Callington College's gifted and talented performance group 'Young and Unique Theatre' wowed audiences recently with its brand new play 'Remote', written by award winning writer Stef Smith.

Stef Smith is best known currently for the critically acclaimed show Road Kill which won a Laurence Olivier Award in 2012.

The play saw full size trees 'planted' in the middle of the drama studio at the college and the use of light from individual mobile phone screens to begin and end the play.

This was the college's 14th involvement with the National Theatre's Connections scheme.

The decision to include mobile phones throughout the play in the hands of all the story tellers added to Grace Davies', as Antler, protest about 'apathy'. Although the storytellers were involved in the commentary of the action, they were shown to prefer sitting on their phones rather than showing genuine involvement with the plot as it unfolded.

The play represented the wide range of talented drama students at the college and featured students from every year group. The central characters of Desk and Antler epitomised the diverse age range as they were played by Year 7 student Finn Hilsdon and Year 13 student Grace Davies respectively.

Director Jonathon Plunkett described the play as a 'hard-hitting but funny tale of a young girl who decides not to be part of the rat race anymore and, with just the right mixture of complex teenage emotions, was a pleasure to watch'.

The play will be transferred to Plymouth's Theatre Royal in April and, if the cast are lucky enough, they may be chosen to perform at the National Theatre in May.

Connections is the National Theatre's annual festival of new plays for youth theatres and schools.

The festival began 20 years ago when teachers and directors said they wanted exciting and challenging new plays for young actors. Since then the National Theatre has commissioned and published more than 140 plays for Connections, giving young people aged 13 to 19 across the UK and Ireland access to the very best new writing for theatre.