Performing Arts
St Vincent's College Drama Night 2023
Tuesday night was the St Vincent's College Drama night for 2023! Parents and friends saw performances that were group devised performance works created in class for the Group devised assessments and individual performances for Performance assessments that were either scripted or self devised. They also saw some scenes from the upcoming College Production Servant of Two Masters and some Senior theatresports!
Creating, performing and devising in a group has many benefits - you can expand on other people's ideas and skills and you are literally not on stage alone, so it is really exciting to see our young performers working together so seamlessly. Drama is the only subject that requires group work as part of the curriculum every year and this ensures our drama students have incredible collaborative skills. It also allows students to explore and comment on their world and how they perceive it. Their growing confidence and skill development can really be seen as they create theatre that engages the audience through the exploration of concepts or through the manipulation of mood and atmosphere or fantastic scripting. The final part is then gaining the confidence to perform for an audience, some were brave enough to perform live on stage live on Tuesday night for their peers, parents and friends.
Curriculum Drama includes such areas of study as Improvisation games, Physical Theatre, Script work, Group Devised and play built theatre and Melodrama in Year 9. Year 10 includes Ancient Greek Theatre, Commedia Dell’Arte, Group Devised and Absurdism, Year 11 includes Elements of Production, Theatre Practitioners and Group Devised and Yr 12 consists of the study of Contemporary Australian Theatre, Voice of Women, Group Devised and Individual Project. On Tuesday night the audience saw examples drawn from those content areas and skills built from the study of these topics.
They also saw Theatresports - an incredible show of quick thinking, incorporating both performance and play - it is the speedy interaction between creativity and bravery. So the evening began with the joy and freedom of actual theatreports games and finished with a work that celebrates and satirizes Theatresports by one of our Year 12 Drama class groups.
My sincere thanks to students and parents for coming to support our talented students. To Ms Georgia Britt for running the Senior Theatresports item and for her incredible passion, skills, and time and energy she has given to these students over the years ensuring not only can they play these games with energy and wit but they can compete with absolute confidence that they have every skill and advantage from Georgia’s professional world as a Director and performer in her own right.
Thank you to Mr Jim McCudrudden for sharing his extensive skills, and training - his VET Entertainment class was the Lighting and sound crew for the night. The addition of the VET Entertainment class to our Performing Arts department has been wonderful for the College but also for students who wish to apply themselves to professional Event Management and live performance event upskilling.
Ms Belinda Peoples and Bob Anderson for behind the scene support Ken Devlin and Graeme Grocott for setting up and packing down the hall for our performance and all the many things they do to help students and staff throughout the day.
