“I loved the feeling that we had nothing and suddenly we had a set, actors, a performance.”

Our students are afforded a variety of performance experiences through the year. However, every second year, when the focus is on the Senior Play, there exists a performance gap for our Years 9 and 10 students. This year we filled that gap with a fantastic project that came out of the Years 9 and 10 Drama Elective, ‘Creating the Drama’.

Our students were given the enormous (and daunting) task of writing, designing, rehearsing and performing two short one act plays. The stimulus for these plays was to create a ‘back story’ for two supporting characters in two well-known texts – Primrose Everdeen from The Hunger Games, and Lady Capulet from Romeo and Juliet.

The students began by taking on the challenge of scriptwriting, and it was extremely gratifying to see the dialogue they had written start to come to life during early rehearsals. As the Drama elective students worked tirelessly on costume, set and sound design during class, rehearsals began in earnest at lunchtimes. Years 9 and 10 students from outside the elective willingly auditioned as actors and came on board as backstage crew.

Striking black and red posters designed by the student marketing team began to appear about the School, and the Ballroom was transformed into a theatre. The performance of these plays was made all the more wonderful by the fact that everything was student run – from the programs to the sound design, from the set to the story.

So often, it is the actors on stage who are the most visible representative of any production. This production drew the students into the entire play-making process, giving them a taste of all aspects of theatre production. Producing theatre is the ultimate exercise in teamwork and our girls should be exceptionally proud of everything they achieved.

Ms Kathryn White, Drama Teacher, Head of Education Resources and Information Centre