SPARK 2019

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1 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Contents

Sydney School Shakespeare ................................................................................................. 3 Storm Boy On Stage ............................................................................................................ 4 The Cunning Little Vixen...................................................................................................... 5 MTC Family And School Tips ............................................................................................... 7 Shows For Schools .............................................................................................................. 9 National .............................................................................................................................. 9 New South Wales & A.C.T. ................................................................................................ 13 Queensland ....................................................................................................................... 18 South Australia ................................................................................................................. 19 Victoria ............................................................................................................................. 19 Western Australia .............................................................................................................. 24 Costuming, Make Up, Props and Sets ................................................................................ 25 Study Resources: Louis Nowra & Alana Valentine .............................................................. 29 Staging A Musical Or Play ................................................................................................. 36 Sound And Light ............................................................................................................... 49 Training ............................................................................................................................ 67 Front cover image Sport For Jove’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Welcome to Stage Whispers' annual School Performing Arts Resource Kit (SPARK). The aim is to provide school teachers with more tools to spark a love of theatre in their students. Please click through to the section that is relevant to you.

We welcome feedback on this edition and any suggestions you have for us to improve it in future years. Leave your comments here

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SPARK 2019

The Tempest.

Photo: Phil Erbacher.

Sydney School Shakespeare The Sport For Jove Theatre Company is having its largest ever school Shakespeare program in 2019.

The season is designed by theatre and education professionals, encompassing full-scale productions, symposiums for HSC students and The Shakespeare Carnival for both primary and secondary schools.

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Six full-scale productions will be presented: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and the classic Shakespearean works Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On stage these texts leap off the page and into vivid life, taking students’ understanding of the texts to new depths.

Sport for Jove’s HSC Symposiums are opportunities to deepen students’ practical understanding through

More information on Sport For Jove’s extensive education program can be found at sportforjove.com.au experiencing and analysing key scenes and characters in performance.

Presented as a lecture, interspersed with scene work and expert commentary from Artistic Director Damien Ryan and his team, these symposiums explore famous scenes and speeches in multiple ways. This opens diverse critical reading and unlocks language and character.

Professional actors also discuss the ambiguities and challenges of each of the plays.

It’s aimed at helping students extract the key ingredients and critical thinking required to write on the plays under exam conditions.

The Shakespeare Carnival is a unique opportunity for students from primary and secondary schools to put their skills in music, dance and drama to the test with a state-wide competition that culminates in grand final performances at the Seymour Centre.

Students develop their own pieces in a range of categories and perform at School, Regional and State levels, improving confidence and literacy, building their ability to collaborate, and introducing them to Shakespeare’s stories and language in a fun and playful program that develops skills and abilities that are artistic, academic and personal.

Storm Boy.

Online extras!

Watch Director Sam Strong discuss Storm Boy by scanning the QR code or visiting https://youtu.be/FrFRBaWKe9E dunes into a theatrical playground.

This stage play will evoke the spectacle of War Horse and The Lion King with a uniquely Australian feel.

Among the puppets appearing on The iconic Australian story Storm Boy is set to inspire a new generation stage will be the charming Mr of theatre-lovers in a new co-production from the Melbourne Theatre Percival, a pelican rescued by Storm Company (June-July) and Queensland Theatre (August).

Boy. David Morton, Puppet Designer and Associate Director, says Storm 11-year-old Storm Boy lives a Boy is an amazing opportunity to simple and secluded life, combing create an ecosystem of puppets on Southbank Theatre the beaches with his reclusive father stage. “They’re designed to be played, Monday 22 July 10am along the wild coastline of South just like a musical instrument,” says Monday 22 July 1.30pm Australia’s Coorong. One summer Morton.

Tuesday 23 July 10am he discovers new friendships that This landmark new production Tuesday 23 July 1.30pm will shepherd him from childhood sees Colin Thiele’s heart-warming into adulthood: a local Ngarrindjeri story adapted for the stage by Tom Book at mtc.com.au/ man and an orphaned pelican Holloway (Double Indemnity) and education brought to life by the creative team prepare Storm Boy for the wider schools@mtc.com.au behind the sold-out season of Jasper world with poignant lessons about (03) 8688 0963 love, loss and letting go.

Jones, including director Sam Strong Alongside a cast including muchand designer Anna Cordingley.

Queensland Theatre loved actors Tony Briggs (Cleverman) Storm Boy will be a highlight of 29 July - 17 August and John Batchelor (Red Dog), this the year and the perfect first theatre Playhouse, QPAC production is made extra-special by experience. In Melbourne there are queenslandtheatre.com.au/ the menagerie of captivating four dedicated schools matinees at creatures by Dead Puppet Society shows/19-storm-boy the start of Term 3. transforming the sun-soaked sand 1800 355 528

Storm Boy On Stage

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The Cunning Little Vixen Australian rising star Desiree Frahn as the Vixen.

The Cunning Little Vixen is suitable for upper primary to Set in an idyllic forest, Janáček’s complete with a chorus of chooks secondary audiences and has a opera follows a Vixen’s journey from and children, The Cunning Little focus on the exploration of the youth to adulthood, where, with Vixen is a unique experience for bridge between the industrial and the help of her forest friends and a young audiences and a wonderful natural worlds and how we exist in handsome Fox, Vixen faces growing introduction to opera. those together. It is performed in up and the excitement and Nominated for four Helpmann English with English surtitles. uncertainty that a changing world Awards, Stuart Maunder’s evocative Czech composer Leoš Janáček brings. wrote this unique animal opera in production was premiered by The A magical allegory about life Victorian Opera in 2017 and 1921-3 when he was approaching cycles, global citizenship and selfpresented by West Australian Opera 70, to his own libretto. It was based discovery, Janáček’s opera is in 2018. The Adelaide season sees on a popular serialised novel of the considered one of the great modern the return of award-winning time that appeared in a local works. Accompanied by a full soprano Antoinette Halloran to the newspaper. symphony orchestra (the ASO) and role of Fox and stars South “The Cunning Little Vixen was Janáček’s personal valentine to the human condition in all its Four performances 18 - 25 May 2019, including a special schools inexplicable, maddening, fierce and matinee on Tuesday 21 May with a Q&A session afterwards. beautiful inconsistency,” says adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/events/sosa19-cunning-little-vixen director Stuart Maunder.

The forest comes alive this May at the Adelaide Showground.

The Cunning Little Vixen is a musical celebration of nature and the cycle of life.

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Rachelle Durkin (Fox) and Emma Pearson (Vixen) in West Australian Opera’s 2018 production of The Cunning Little Vixen.

Photo: Jeff Busby.

SPARK 2019

Online extras!

Watch highlights from The Cunning Little Vixen. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/V8Z99ez68MY

Creative Film And Theatre Solutions

As the exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand for Rosco Laboratories, a global leader in the lighting equipment, live entertainment and film and broadcast markets, Creative Film and Theatre Solutions is committed to being the one stop shop for schools when it comes to their next production.

The company’s cutting edge range of LED Effects Projectors creates dynamic lighting effects for a wide range of indoor or outdoor venues. Capable of throws up to 33-ft (10m) with four available lens options, the Rosco XEffects LED Projector is engineered to create stunning illumination effects.

Other products include Rosco’s range of paints that feature a flexible binder, single-sourced pigments and an ultra-flat finish, scenic paint for scenery and props, and digital compositing paint for blue and green screens.

One of the most popular products is Tough Prime, a unique water-based primer with special properties that allow it to bond to the hard-to-prime materials found in every scene shop.

The unique Foamcoat product is a non-toxic, water-based coating which provides a hard, durable finish for Styrofoam, polystyrene foam, primed wood, concrete block, primed fiberglass, papier mâché, muslin and many other materials.

The company also has a full range of flooring, including Rosco’s Chroma Floor which solves the long-standing problem of repainting your studio floor for every shoot.

Creative Film and Theatre Solutions ship to all areas via their Sydney warehouse and have dealers in most capital cities, so when it comes to your next school performance, with experienced staff in all facets of the business, why not give them a call? Phone (02) 9906 6262, email sales@creativefilmandtheatresolutions.com.au or visit au.rosco.com/en. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 6

MTC Family And School Tips The Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2019 season is filled with stories of adventure, love, friendship, discovery and drama.

The season takes audiences on a journey around Australia and the world via the very best new plays, reimaginings of beloved classics and fresh productions of international smash-hits.

Three productions hold particular interest for families and schools.

Esther Hannaford, Hunter PageLochard and Katherine Tonkin star in the MTC and Sydney Theatre Company co-production of Così, Louis Nowra’s darkly funny and deeply moving Australian classic, directed by Sarah Goodes. The timeless and much-loved classic novel Storm Boy is brought to the stage in an epic MTC and

Harry Tseng as Connor in MTC’s The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You. Photo: Michelle Tran.

Online extras!

Hear Harry Tseng discuss his role in The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You. https://youtu.be/qNbeQSVdfes 7 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Queensland Theatre co-production, in association with Dead Puppet Society, directed by Sam Strong. The Violent Outburst That Drew Me to You by Finegan Kruckemeyer – MTC’s 2019 Family and Education show – is a smart, sweet and fiery tale about two offbeat kids at war with the world, starring Harry Tseng and directed by Prue Clark.

In The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You we meet Connor, an angry sixteen year old. Everyone and everything annoys him, even his best mate. After his outburst, Connor’s parents exile him to the forest to calm down. There he meets Lotte – also sixteen, also angry – and the two teenage misfits find a happier future together.

The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You has a long title but a short message: we were all teenagers once – we have all experienced the ticking time bomb of adolescence, the impatient impulse to kick and scream (or whinge) at the universe, while wanting to lie still in a quiet forest glade and dream of the future.

Winner of the Australian Writers Guild Award for Best Play for Young Audiences, Finegan Kruckemeyer has written a script that will resonate with teenagers and anyone who has ever been one.

After its 2019 Victorian premiere season at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler (May 2 to 18), The Violent Outburst That Drew Me Tour You will tour regional Victoria and Tasmania, performing at Mildura Arts Centre (May 22), Ulmarra Theatre Bendigo (May 24), the Potato Shed Geelong (May 28), Lighthouse Theatre Warrnambool (May 30) and Hobart’s Theatre Royal (Jun 5).

For more information and to purchase tickets visit http://bit.ly/2Jc6g3R

Read our 2019 Course Guide online at www.stagewhispers.com.au/training www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 8

Shows For Schools

Bell Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

You no longer need to take an expensive trip to a theater!

Let your imagination run wild and experience real quality theatre, in any venue you choose. Alpha Shows brings everything with us to create that theater magic. We bring shows to your local area so everyone has the chance to experience a full theatrical show, no matter the venue. We are a group of dedicated theater professionals who adapt classic stories into powerful metaphors for our lives, as well as highly entertaining and fun comedy shows! As a group, we have been touring for over 16 years and are dedicated to what we do.

ECHELON PRODUCTIONS www.echelon.net.au AUSTRALIA

ALPHA SHOWS

www.alphashows.com.au/shows Incursion State All except WA and NT Available all terms Relevant to all Subjects Years P-9 Q and A or study resources available Real, quality theatre. That comes to your school.

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Launch To The Future Launch To The Future is a 40 minute in-school presentation that focuses on how space programs and lunar science propel us into the future using STEM! In a series of sketches, professional actor/educators use audience suggestions to create uniquely hilarious scenes that educate on the moon and space science.

Students will learn: How space science helps to solve the unsolvable (SCIENCE) Innovation drives technology (TECHNOLOGY) Space engineering helps design new solutions (ENGINEERING)

How maths helps to drive the future (MATHS) Science, Technologies, Maths, English, The Arts Literacy, Numeracy, ICT Capability, Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical Understanding Mon 5th August – Fri 23rd August SCIENCE WEEK 2019: Mon 12th August – Fri 18th August www.performeducation.com/aus---science-week-in-schools

CDP THEATRE PRODUCERS www.cdp.com.au

Billionaire Boy Excursion Various cities across Australia CDP Theatre Producers www.cdp.com.au/billionaireboy.html NSW, VIC, QLD, ACT, WA NEW ZEALAND Terms 1&2 Twelve year old Joe has everything a boy could ever want, Global Gamble! from a golden underwater Ferrari to his very own cinema.

Global Gamble! is an in-school educational program that combines high energy sketch comedy with improvisation to Joe and his Dad have more money than you could imagine, but what Joe really needs is a friend. When Joe arrives at his entertain and educate students through a fun and new school, life really gets tough. Facing the school bully, interactive experience. his Dad's new girlfriend and the world's worst school The program focuses on four key science-based messages canteen, Joe is about to learn that money might buy you a encouraging sustainable consumption, energy efficiency and conservation, with a core focus on Global Sustainability lot in Raj's shop, but it can't buy you everything.

The Arts - Dance, The Arts - Drama, The Arts - Music, Science.

English, Mathematics, Science , Health And Physical Students learn about energy, climate change and global Education , ICT, Design & Technology. warming through four comical and fact filled sketches.

Years K-6 Global Gamble uses suggestions from the audience where Teachers Resource Kit available for teachers upon booking the performers will build educational sketches, creating a unique and customised performance with each The Gruffalo presentation.

Excursion How is energy efficiency related to resources?

Various cities across Australia What are natural resources?

CDP Theatre Producers What is global climate change? www.cdp.com.au/gruffalo_2017.html How can we use energy wisely?

NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA Science, Technology, English, The Arts, Social Sciences Terms 1&2 A mouse took a stroll through the deep, dark wood...

TERM 2: After sell-out seasons across the world, including London’s CHRISTCHURCH:West End & Broadway, The Gruffalo returns to Australia!

Mon 20th May - Fri 24th May 2019 Join Mouse on a daring adventure through the deep, dark WELLINGTON:wood in this magical, musical adaptation of the classic Mon 27th May - Fri 31st May 2019 picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

AUCKLAND:The Arts - Dance, The Arts - Drama, The Arts - Music, Mon 3rd June - Fri 28th June 2019 English, Mathematics, Science, Geography HAMILTON & BAY OF PLENTY AREA:Years K-2 Mon 17th June - Fri 21st June 2019 Teachers Resource Kit available for teachers upon booking TERM 3: CHRISTCHURCH:Mon 5th Aug - Fri 9th Aug 2019 WELLINGTON:Mon 12th Aug - Fri 16th Aug 2019 AUCKLAND:Mon 19th Aug - Fri 30th Aug 2019 BOOK BEFORE END OF TERM 1 TO BE IN THE RUNNING TO WIN A $100 VOUCHER FROM ESSENTIAL RESOURCES NZ! www.performeducation.com/nz-stem-in-schools

BELL SHAKESPEARE www.bellshakespeare.com.au

Macbeth Excursion Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne Bell Shakespeare presented in partnership with Sydney Opera House and Arts Centre Melbourne www.bellshakespeare.com.au/learning/edu-2019-macbeth NSW, VIC Term 3. Playing at Sydney Opera House from 29 July – 20 August and Arts Centre Melbourne from 27-30 August.

Ancient Scotland meets our contemporary world in this brand-new production. Don’t miss Shakespeare’s original language brought to life with a media-rich, immersive twist.

English, Drama, Theatre Studies, Entertainment Industry www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 10

Years 7-12 A full suite of free education resources are available via our website.

The Miser Excursion Sydney Opera House, Arts Centre Melbourne Bell Shakespeare www.bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/the-miser NSW, VIC Term 1, Term 2. NSW: Wednesday 13 March (1pm), Thursday 21 March (11am), Wednesday 27 March (11am).

VIC: Wednesday 1 May (11am).

Passion and penny pinching go head-to-head in The Miser.

Starring John Bell as the stingy Harpagon, it’s Molière’s classic satire with a hilarious Australian twist.

English, Drama, Theatre Studies, Entertainment Industry Years 9-12 Free education resources are available via our website.

A saucy and razor-sharp battle of wits, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare’s contemporary comedies – exploring identity and self-knowledge in a male-dominated world.

English, Drama, Theatre Studies, Entertainment Industry Years 7-12 A cast Q&A is held following the performance. Free education resources are also available via our website.

MASHED THEATRE www.mashedtheatre.com SECONDARY SHOWS

Macbeth: A Porter's Tale Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc. mashedtheatre.com/macbeth-a-porters-tale QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3, & 4 Much Ado About Nothing Macbeth is a prescribed text for QCAA’s external Excursion assessment – but not only that! A Porter’s Tale is a one Arts Centre Melbourne, Canberra Theatre Centre, Sydney person show that explores a resistant reading of the Opera House classical text, filling in gaps and silences in such a way that, Bell Shakespeare www.bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/much-ado-about-nothing if you are a fan of Shakespeare, you will undoubtedly enjoy!

Drama, English VIC, ACT, NSW Years 10 - 12 Term 3, Term 4. VIC: Thursday 25 July (11am). ACT: Thursday 17 Oct (11am). NSW: Wednesday 30 Oct (11am), Q&A & Study Resources Available Wednesday 6 Nov (11am), Wednesday 13 Nov (11am).

Online extras!

See how Alpha Shows can bring the theatre to your school. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/PsnZ7mmV1HQ

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Alpha Show’s The Little Mermaid.

Romeo & Juliet: Love vs Fate Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc. mashedtheatre.com/secondary QLD, NSW, N Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 The classic trope – who is to blame? However, we’ve mixed this one up and taken a less traditional route. Expect uncommonly analysed scenes, and a deeper exploration into the text the Bard wrote himself!

Drama, English Years 9 - 12 Q&A & Study Resources Available

CDP’s Billionaire Boy.

Pressure Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc. mashedtheatre.com/secondary QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 Heavily inspired by the prescribed QCAA texts Miller’s The Crucible and Orwell’s 1984. PRESSURE cleverly entwines these two texts into a far-more-relatable-than-we-arecomfortable-with setting with a primary focus on bullying, pressure, and internet safety Drama, English, Well-Being Years 8 - 12 Q&A & Study Resources Available I, Rhetoric Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc. mashedtheatre.com/secondary QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 Who doesn’t love a bit of rhetoric? For English, this show covers the Syllabus objectives – exploring how we can use language to manipulate our audiences, altering representations and perspectives to suit our shifting agendas. For Drama – it’s a Brechtian/Absurdist/Political cross-over with a powerful delivery.

Drama, English, Well-Being Years 11 - 12 Q&A & Study Resources Available

Online extras!

Check out a hilarious preview of Billionaire Boy. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/kLwf_tQFkyM PRIMARY SHOWS

Plastica Fantastica Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc./Art For Earthlings mashedtheatre.com/primary QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 Sustainability is a cross-curricular priority in the Australian Curriculum. Plastica Fantastica takes audiences on a comedic and ridiculous journey, showing the effects of plastic on our environment and how we can reduce it in our everyday life.

Cross Curricular, Conservation, Environmental Sciences, The Arts Prep - 7 How To Make A Monologue TREE & ME Incursion Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc. Mashed Theatre Inc./Art For Earthlings mashedtheatre.com/secondary mashedtheatre.com/primary QLD, NSW, NT QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3, & 4 Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 A skill based performance relevant to all spoken tasks. This Trees are very important to not only our ecosystem, but us one person show identifies common performance habits in as well! They are vital in providing the oxygen we breathe. high-school students and highlights how very simple it is to This show demonstrates the importance of taking care of rectify those habits to deliver an effective spoken word task. our eco-system and what role trees play in our livelihood.

Drama, English Cross Curricular, Conservation, Environmental Sciences, The Years 7 - 12 Arts Q&A & Study Resources Available Prep - 7 www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 12

Holy Bins Incursion Mashed Theatre Inc./Art For Earthlings mashedtheatre.com/primary QLD, NSW, NT Terms 1, 2, 3 & 4 What does it mean to be a “bin pro”? Well sustainability is everything. This show takes us, as an audience, through the dos and don'ts of recycling, composting, and all things bin related to prepare us all for a sustainable future.

Cross Curricular, Conservation, Environmental Sciences, The Arts Prep - 7

Excursion ARA Darling Quarter Theatre Terrace 3, 1-25 Harbour Street Sydney, NSW, 2000 Term 1 April 4th at 7:00pm April 5th at 10:30am and 1:00pm Suitable for Years 10-12 The show has strong links to English, Drama and Music There will be a 10 min post-show Q & A with the cast Two trailblazing stars of the Australian music scene take to the stage to explore what it means to grow up Asian in Australia.

MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY

BELVOIR

The Violent Outburst That Drew Me to You

By Finegan Kruckemeyer Excursion Melbourne season: Southbank Theatre, The Lawler Regional Tour: Mildura Arts Centre; Ulumbarra Theatre (Bendigo); Potato Shed (Geelong); Lighthouse Theatre (Warrnambool); Theatre Royal (Hobart); Launceston College Southbank Theatre: 3 – 18 May Regional Tour: 22 May – 7 June A sweet and fiery tale about two offbeat kids at war with the world. Starring Harry Tseng (Jasper Jones), and directed

by Prue Clark (Contest).

VCE Theatre Studies (Unit 3 Playlist), Drama, English, Humanities Year 9+ Education Packs, Pre-show Talks and Workshops available.

The Wolves Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre Red Line Productions belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/the-wolves 11.30am, 27 February The Wolves presents a season in the lives of these young women. We see their anxieties, hear their secrets, watch them resolve their petty squabbles and deeper divisions.

"Preliminary Drama - Acting. HSC English - Texts and Human Experiences" Y11-12

mtc.com.au/education

MONKEY BAA THEATRE www.monkeybaa.com.au

In Between Two www.monkeybaa.com.au/shows/inbetweentwo

by Contemporary Asian Australian Performance 13 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

www.belvoir.com.au

Every Brilliant Thing Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre Belvoir

Online extras!

In Between Two explores what it means to grow up Asian in Australia. https://youtu.be/L1MzkYUSrf0

belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/every-brilliant-thing 11.30am, 27 March Every Brilliant Thing is a unique and beautiful play for a solo actor, who tells her story with the help of people in the audience.

"HSC Drama - Individual Project: Performance. HSC English Texts and Human Experiences" Y10-12

Y10-12

Things I Know To Be True Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre Belvoir belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/things-i-know-to-be-true 11.30am, 19 June One year in the life of an Australian family. Things I Know to be True is a beautifully crafted play from the everBarbara and the Camp Dogs rewarding mind of Andrew Bovell.

Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre "HSC Drama - Contemporary Australian Theatre Practice.

Belvoir HSC English - Texts and Human Experiences" belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/barbara-and-the-camp-dogs Y11-12 11.30am, 10 April Barbara and the Camp Dogs is a rock-gig featuring original Life of Galileo new songs in a play that’s part road story, part family Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre drama and part political cry from the heart.

Belvoir "HSC Drama - Contemporary Australian Theatre Practice. belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/life-of-galileo HSC English - Language, Identity and Culture" 11.30am, 14 August & 11 September Y11-12 Brecht’s classic play of individual liberty and political suppression hits the Belvoir stage with the redoubtable Winyanboga Yurringa Colin Friels as the wily, pugnacious scientist.

Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre "HSC Drama - Significant Plays of the 20th Century.

Belvoir Preliminary Drama - Theatrical Traditions and Performance belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/winyanboga-yurringa Styles" 11.30am, 23 May Y10-12 On the bank of a great river, six Indigenous women gather.

They think they’re together for a camping trip, a bit of Fangirls fishing, a few yarns. But there’s important stuff among the Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre hilarity.

Belvoir with Queensland Theatre, Brisbane Festival, in "HSC Drama - Contemporary Australian Theatre Practice. association with Australian Theatre for Young People HSC Drama - The Voice of Women in Theatre. HSC English belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/fangirls Extension 1 - Elective 1: Literary homelands" 11.30am, 30 October Monkey Baa’s In Between Two.

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Online extras!

Meet the team behind Dead Cat Bounce. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/6SzFMqXeygY

Griffin Theatre Company’s Dead Cat Bounce.

Photo: Brett Boardman.

Fangirls is a thrilling new musical by Yve Blake, about teenagers, and how powerful they truly are.

"Preliminary Drama - Acting. HSC English - Texts and Human Experiences" Y10-12 Packer and Sons Excursion to Belvoir St Theatre Belvoir belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/packer-sons 1pm, 28 November A deeply researched, muscular work from Tommy Murphy, Packer and Sons is a play about power and what it does to the men who wield it.

"HSC Drama - Contemporary Australian Writing. HSC Drama - Scriptwriting" Y10-12

GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY www.griffintheatre.com.au

Dead Cat Bounce Excursion Griffin Theatre Company, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/dead-cat-bounce 22 February – 6 April As if their 20-year age gap wasn’t trouble enough, Matilda’s fighting for space with Gabe’s long-time bedfellows: misery, booze and writerly angst. An 15 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

examination of romance and the baggage we all carry.

Drama, English Year 10+ (References to addiction, adult themes) Can do a Q&A. Prima Facie Excursion Griffin Theatre Company, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/prima-facie 17 May – 22 June Winner of the 2018 Griffin Award, Prima Facie is an indictment of the Australian legal system’s failure to provide reliable pathways to justice for women in rape, sexual assault or harassment cases. It’s a work of fiction, but one that could have been ripped from the headlines of any paper, any day of the week, so common you could cry.

Drama, English, P.E. Year 10+ (References to sexual assault) Can do a Q&A. City of Gold Excursion Griffin Theatre Company, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/city-of-gold 26 July – 31 August Young actor Breythe left Kalgoorlie dreaming of a dazzling career. Now he’s found himself starring in a controversial Australia Day ad that pays big, but draws the ire of his mob. City of Gold is a howl of rage at the injustice,

inequality and wilful amnesia of this country’s 21st century.

It’s an urgent play for our moment from a vital new voice.

Drama, English, Indigenous Studies, Society and Culture Year 10+ Can do a Q&A.

captures Rdeca, and so begins a star cross'd romance between hunter and prey.

Drama, English Year 10+ Can do a Q&A.

Splinter Excursion Griffin Theatre Company, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/splinter 6 September – 12 October A couple are reunited with their missing daughter. Fierce love has sustained them through her unbearable absence.

But now she’s home…something just isn’t right. How do they stop their imaginations running wild? Maybe if they return to the beach house where they spent their happiest summers, they’ll return to their old selves.

Drama, English Year 10+ Can do a Q&A.

SPORT FOR JOVE

First Love is the Revolution Excursion Griffin Theatre Company, 10 Nimrod St, Kings Cross griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/first-love-is-the-revolution 1 November – 14 December This is a play about hunger and desire. It’s Romeo and Juliet pushed to deranged extremes, where the unlikely sweethearts are a 14-year old boy and a young fox with brutal birthrights. Beneath the light of a full moon, Basti

www.sportforjove.com.au

The Crucible

By Arthur Miller Excursion 6-9 March - Seymour Centre 13-23 March - Bella Vista Farm HSC and Stage 4 teachers & students of English and Drama - do not miss this opportunity. Sport for Jove's critically acclaimed production of The Crucible returns with site specific performances at Bella Vista Farm and the Seymour Centre.

English – Stage 4, 5, & 6: Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre & Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available Othello

By William Shakespeare Excursion 10-13 April - Seymour Centre 22-25 May - Riverside Theatres

Sport For Jove’s The Crucible.

Photo: Seiya Taguchi.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 16

Ensemble Theatre Company’s A View From The Bridge.

Online extras!

Watch a preview of A View From The Bridge. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/_HPSd1GI80Q Othello, easily Shakespeare's most relentless and tightly compressed drama, a dark, brooding thriller. A rare chance for Year 11 students across NSW to see this masterpiece live in a new production from Damien Ryan.

English – Stage 4, 5, & 6: Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre & Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available The Tempest

By William Shakespeare Excursion 1-11 May - Seymour Centre After a thrilling and captivating run in 2017, Sport For Jove's exceptional 100 minute production of The Tempest returns to the stage.

English – Stage 4, 5, & 6: Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre & Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available The Merchant of Venice

By William Shakespeare Excursion 15-18 May - Riverside Theatres 22-25 May - Seymour Centre The Merchant of Venice is a story with themes Shakespeare couldn't resist: an unfathomable madness in a man's heart, the mysterious terrors of the ocean, hate crime and 17 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

religious intolerance, money and our willingness to gamble with our lives.

English – Stage 4, 5, & 6 HSC: also suitable for younger years in Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre and Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available Macbeth

By William Shakespeare Excursion 15 May - 2 August - Seymour Centre Sport for Jove's thrilling 100-minute Macbeth is back after playing to thousands of NSW students three years. An atmospheric, faithful and exciting introduction to the play for young audiences.

English – Stage 5 & 6, Stage 4 & 5 Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre & Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By William Shakespeare Excursion - Seymour Centre 5 June - 9 August - Seymour Centre The best possible introduction young people can have to the theatre and among the most powerful visions of growing up ever written. Back after delighting schools last year.

English – Stage 4, 5, & 6: Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre & Cultural Studies Years 7-12 Teachers’ Note are available

ENSEMBLE THEATRE www.ensemble.com.au

Diplomacy

By Cyril Gély Translated and adapted by Julie Rose Excursion www.ensemble.com.au/shows/diplomacy Term 2: 21 Jun – 13 Jul After the unprecedented success of our sold out 2018 season, Theatre legends John Bell and John Gaden reprise their roles in this entertaining WWII thriller.

Drama, English, History Years 10 - 12 Q&A with director and cast after the 3 Jul show

Director At Work Sessions Excursion www.ensemble.com.au/the-boatshed-projects An exclusive opportunity to go behind-the-scenes and see our skilled directors at work in the rehearsal room.

Murder On The Wireless with Mark Kilmurry Tue 28 May 3.30pm – 5.30pm The Last Wife with Mark Kilmurry Tue 13 Aug 3.30pm – 5.30pm Baby Doll with Shaun Rennie Thu 26 Sep 3.30pm – 5.30pm Suitable for years 7 - 12

A View From The Bridge

By Arthur Miller Excursion www.ensemble.com.au/shows/a-view-from-the-bridge-at-ensemble-theatre Term 3: 18 Jul – 24 Aug Italian-American immigrant life colours Arthur Miller’s thrilling and searing drama of love and revenge set in 1950’s Brooklyn.

Drama, English,History QUEENSLAND THEATRE COMPANY Years 10 - 12 Q&A with the director and cast after the 2 Aug show and www.queenslandtheatre.com.au 22 Aug show Barbara and the Camp Dogs The Last Wife Excursion

By Kate Hennig Bille Brown Theatre Excursion www.queenslandtheatre.com.au/Shows/19-Barbara-and-the-Camp-Dogs www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-last-wife 1-25 May Term 3: 30 Aug – 29 Sep When a family tragedy beckons, Barbara and her sister (and Kate Hennig’s stunning debut play reimagines the fellow muso) René set off on a long and winding motorbike dangerous game of power and passion between Henry VIII adventure from Sydney, through Darwin, and finally to and Katherine Parr through a richly provocative Katherine – where the bickering pair come face to face with contemporary lens. some home truths. Part madcap buddy comedy, part Drama, English, History electrifying rock gig, and part clarion call against the taint Years 10 – 12 of inequality, this effervescent play with songs sold out its original season at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre.

Baby Doll Drama, Music, Indigenous Studies

By Tennessee Williams Years 11-12 Adapted for the stage by Pierre Laville and Emily Mann Education Resources available.

Excursion www.ensemble.com.au/shows/baby-doll Storm Boy Term 4: 18 Oct – 16 Nov Excursion In a new adaptation peppered with humour and sultry Playhouse Theatre, QPAC comedy, heat and desire sizzle in Tennessee Williams’ Deep www.queenslandtheatre.com.au/Shows/19-Storm-Boy South tale of lust, jealousy and betrayal.

17 Jun- 23 Jul Drama, English, History Young Storm Boy lives a simple yet free life on the coastal Years 10 – 12 wilds of the South Australian Coorong, combing the beaches with his reclusive father, Hideaway Tom. During a long summer, he makes two friends who will shepherd him www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 18

from childhood into adulthood: the jester Fingerbone Bill, who teaches him about his country; and Mr Percival, an orphaned pelican who prepares Storm Boy for the wider world with a poignant lesson about love, loss and letting go.

Drama, English, Film and Television and New Media Years 6-12 Education Resources and teacher professional development available, post show Q&A, pre-show workshops Fangirls Excursion Bille Brown Theatre www.queenslandtheatre.com.au/Shows/19-Fangirls 7 Sept – 5 Oct Meet Edna: She’s 14, chronically awkward, and everyone thinks she’s a serial liar. But none of this will matter when her REAL life starts. With Harry. There’s just one problem, Harry is in True Connection - the world’s biggest boyband.

When True Connection announce a tour stop in Edna’s city, she realises that this is her one chance to meet Harry and convince him of their destiny. But just how far is she prepared to go in the name of love? Edna takes her obsession to unforeseen heights in this thrilling and hilarious musical comedy about first love, fan culture, and the danger of underestimating teenage girls.

Drama, English, Music Years 11-12 Education Resources available, post show Q&A, pre-show workshops.

18 May, 7:30 pm, 21 May, 11:00am, 23 May, 7:30pm, 25 May, 7:30pm Celebrating the beauty of nature and cycle of life. This is an excellent introduction to opera for students, and is accompanied by a comprehensive study guide and a postshow Q&A.Literacy, Information and Communication Technology, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Capability, Ethical Understanding, Intercultural Understanding.

Upper Primary to Secondary Q and A or study resources are both available for the Matinee Performance. Learning resources available via our website.

COMPLETE WORKS THEATRE COMPANY www.completeworkstheatre.com

The Women of Troy Excursion Eastbank Theatre, Shepparton – 1 May Drum Theatre, Dandenong – 2 & 3 May Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong – 6 May Darebin Arts & Entertainment Centre, Preston – 8, 9 & 10 May Euripides’ tragedy, a story told by the anguished women of troy, explores the horrifying consequences of violence and war on a community. (Don Taylor version) English/EAL, Literature, Drama, Theatre Studies Years 10 - 12 Selected performances are followed by a Q&A with the cast and director, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

STATE OPERA SOUTH AUSTRALIA www.stateopera.com.au

Cunning Little Vixen Excursion - Ridley Centre, Adelaide Showground 19 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

The Crucible & Year of Wonders Incursion 15 July – 30 August Scenes and extracts are woven into an enriching performance that enables students to make clear thematic comparisons and contrasts between the two texts.

VCE English/EAL

Online extras!

Cunning Little Vixen.

Photo: Jeff Busby.

Watch highlights from The Cunning Little Vixen. Scan the QR code or visit https://youtu.be/V8Z99ez68MY

Years 11 - 12 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Photograph 51 & The Penelopiad Incursion 29 July – 9 August Scenes and extracts are woven into an enriching performance that enables students to make clear thematic comparisons and contrasts between the two texts.

VCE English/EAL Years 11 - 12 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Black Diggers & The Longest Memory Incursion 12 – 23 August Scenes and extracts are woven into an enriching performance that enables students to make clear thematic comparisons and contrasts between the two texts.

VCE English/EAL Years 11 - 12 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Macbeth Incursion - Term 1, 2, 3 & 4 Excursion – 12 June, 1.00pm at Abbotsford Convent An abridged, one-hour performance that follows the Macbeth's rise to power and their ultimate downfall.

Exploring key ideas/themes of ambition, the supernatural and fate.

English, Literature, Drama.

Years 10 - 11 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Romeo & Juliet Incursion - Term 1, 2, 3 & 4 Excursion – 12 June, 10.00am at Abbotsford Convent An abridged, one-hour performance that follows Romeo and Juliet’s passionate romance as it quickly turns to tragedy. Exploring key ideas/themes of love, conflict and fate.

English, Literature, Drama.

Years 9 - 10 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Australian Poetry Incursion Term 1, 2, 3 & 4 Exploring the Australian idiom through poetry in a onehour performance and workshop. Forms include; ballads, narrative poems and spoken word.

English, Literature, Drama.

Years 7 – 8 Post show Q&A, comprehensive teachers’ notes.

Literature Workshops Incursion Term 1, 2, 3 Small group workshops tailored to meet the Unit/AOS. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 20

MTC First Peoples Young Artists Program.

Photo: T. J. Garvie.

Comprising staged readings of selected scenes and guided textual analysis focusing on the literary techniques and devices.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Speaking in Tongues, Othello and Twelfth Night.

English, Literature.

Years 10 - 12

MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY mtc.com.au/education

Così

By Louis Nowra Excursion Southbank Theatre, The Sumner Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company co-production 30 April – 8 June Inside a local psychiatric facility in 1971, a cast of unlikely characters prepares a performance of Mozart’s opera, even though no one can sing, act of speak Italian.

VCE Theatre Studies (Unit 3 Playlist), Drama, English, Humanities, Politics, History Year 10+ Education Packs and Pre-show Talks.

21 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Shakespeare in Love Based on the screenplay by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, with music by Paddy Cunneen.

Excursion Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse 15 July – 14 August Young Will Shakespeare is struggling to finish his new comedy when he meets Viola, an aristocratic lady determined to break convention and act on England’s male -only stages.

VCE Theatre Studies (Unit 4 Playlist), Drama, English, Humanities Year 9+ Education Packs and Pre-show Talks.

Storm Boy

By Colin Thiele, adapted for the stage by Tom Holloway.

Excursion Southbank Theatre, The Sumner Melbourne Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre coproduction, in association with Dead Puppet Society School Matinees July 22 – 23 After befriending a local Ngarrindjeri man, Storm Boy decides to raise three orphaned pelican chicks, embarking on a journey of discovery that will change his life forever.

English, Drama, Humanities, History Year 6+ Education Pack.

First Peoples Young Artists Program Enrichment program Melbourne Theatre Company HQ (Southbank) Week 1: Monday 1 to Friday 5 July Week 2: Monday 30 September to Friday 4 October Week 3: Monday 2 to Friday 6 December This is a one-of-a-kind learning opportunity for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people interested in a career in the performing arts. Across three intensive weeks, participants explore all aspects of creating and presenting a production, as well as seeing live performances and meeting industry professionals. Applications close Thursday 4 April.

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people aged between 17 – 22.

Performance Workshops Excursion (Melbourne) and Incursion (regional schools) Melbourne Theatre Company HQ (Southbank) and regional school.

Melbourne: Thursday 2 May – Friday 3 May Regional schools: On demand from 20 May Explore the elements of theatre composition, technologies, and styles seen on stage in The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You. This 2 hour performance workshop uses script excerpts to investigate key themes and moments in the play, deepening students’ understanding of the MTC production. Enhance your theatre experience by choosing this workshop ahead of your excursion, or extend your day at the theatre by adding this workshop post-show.

Year 9+ and VCE Theatre Studies

Jojo, Horton, Mayzie La Bird, Gertrude and more, along with fabulous songs.

Grades 3-6, Secondary Years 7-8 4 – 8 March.

12 – 15 March.

Suggested show times: 9:30am or 2:00pm Visit www.firstyearperformance.com.au or call 8199 8344 to book.

Chicken Licken Presented by Stage School Australia A 45 minute pantomime for young children, this is a fantastic introduction to live theatre which played successfully at MTC’s Southbank Theatre and the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Primary Grades K-4 1 – 5 April.

Suggested show times: 9:30am or 2:00pm.

Visit www.firstyearperformance.com.au or call 8199 8344 to book.

Stage School Australia’s I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

MALTHOUSE THEATRE www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Cloudstreet Excursion The Coopers Malthouse, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank VIC 3006 Malthouse Theatre and Black Swan State Theatre Company www.malthousetheatre.com.au/whats-on/cloudstreet 6 May – 16 June.

Tim Winton’s classic Australian novel, Cloudstreet is brought to life on stage in a monumental new production directed by Matthew Lutton. Don’t miss this once-in-ageneration experience.

English, Literature, Theatre Studies, Drama Years 9 - 12 Q and A or study resources.

Malthouse Theatre’s award-winning Prompt Packs will be available in early May for English and Theatre Studies.

STAGE SCHOOL AUSTRALIA www.stageschool.com.au

Seussical A one hour adaptation of the original Broadway musical based on the works of Dr Seuss. Enjoy the Cat in the Hat, www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 22

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Presented by Stage School Australia A 60 minute adaptation of Shakespeare’s most accessible comedy. Fairies and humans collide in a fun and fast-paced show. A great introduction to the magic of Shakespeare, with all the main action, and the poetry liberally and accessibly sprinkled throughout.

Primary Grades 5-6, Secondary Years 7-10 20 - 24 May. 27 - 31 May. Suggested show times: 9:30am or 2:00pm Visit www.firstyearperformance.com.au or call 8199 8344 to book.

Hating Alison Ashley Presented by Stage School Australia An acclaimed adaptation of Robin Klein’s classic children’s novel, Hating Alison Ashley - The Play features all of your favourite characters from the book, along with a few twists.

Primary Grades 3-6, Secondary Years 7-8 26 – 30 August.

Suggested show times: 9:30am or 1:30pm Visit www.firstyearperformance.com.au or call 8199 8344 to book.

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change Presented by Stage School Australia This long-running off-Broadway hit revue uses a series of songs and sketches to take a humorous look at modern relationships.

Secondary Years 9-12 (Teenagers) 16 – 20 September.

Suggested show times: 9:30am or 1:30pm Visit www.firstyearperformance.com.au or call 8199 8344 to book.

EPR PRODUCTIONS www.eprproductions.com

VIVA!…A Cultural Dance Experience Incursion and Excursion.

Ela Rose Studios, 20 Chingford st Fairfield Vic 3078 Terms 1,2,3,4 A fun and educational portrayal of a journey through Dance from around the world including Spain, South America (including Brazil & Argentina), Cuba, Central America, Italy, Greece & much more! An interactive presentation with a colourful array of instruments, dance, costumes & culture as we explore the various dance styles that are celebrated from numerous cultures.

The Arts - Dance, Drama, Visual Arts, English, History, Languages, Health And Physical Education Prep to Year 10, Content can be modified to suit year levels Programs can be modified to suit Prep-Grade 2, Grade 3-6, Years 7-8, Years 9-12 Details of the program can be forwarded prior to the performance Q and A or study resources - Available on request 23 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

LA MAMA

www.lamama.com.au The Yellow Wallpaper Excursion La Mama Courthouse Theatre, 349 Drummond St Carlton Mar 6 - 17.

Wed and Thurs 6.30pm; Fri and Sat 7.30p.m; Sun 4pm; Matinees on: Weds and Thurs at 1p.m; Fri at 11am A recuperating woman, a misguided husband, a hideouslypapered bedroom. Physical performance and text. A gothically-patterned tale challenging boundaries between care and control, madness and liberation.

Drama, English, English Literature, Psychology.

Yrs 10 - 12.

After-show forums, published script available for sale at Box Office, September Holidays Revision and Study Sessions.

Pinocchio Excursion La Mama Courthouse Theatre, 349 Drummond St Carlton La Mama & Make A Scene Arts Education May 15 - 26.

Wed and Thurs 6.30pm; Fri and Sat 7.30p.m; Sun 4pm; Matinees on: Weds and Thurs at 1p.m; Fri at 11am An epic adventure into the fantastical and dark world of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. What does it mean to be a real boy in contemporary society?

Drama, English, English Literature, Theatre Studies.

Yrs 8 - 12.

After-show forums, published script available at Box Office, September Holidays Revision and Study Sessions.

EPR Productions’ VIVA!…A Cultural Dance Experience

La Mama’s Pinocchio.

Tchekov at the House of Special Purpose Excursion La Mama Courthouse Theatre, 349 Drummond St Carlton Aug 28 - Sept 8.

Wed and Thurs 6.30pm; Fri and Sat 7.30p.m; Sun 4pm; Matinees on: Weds and Thurs at 1p.m and Fri at 11am Fast-forwarding Chekhov’s play 17 years into the future, the last days of the Romanov family, trapped in their provincial house, struggling to understand outside forces.

Drama, History- Revolutions, English, English Literature.

Yrs 10 -12.

After-show forums, published script available at Box Office, September Holidays Revision and Study Sessions.

DRUM THEATRE

www.drumtheatre.com.au The Gruffalo CDP presents Tall Stories’ production www.drumtheatre.com.au/thegruffalo Tuesday 14 May, 11.30am and 1.30pm After sell-out seasons across the world, The Gruffalo returns to Australia and will be on Drum Theatre’s stage. Join Mouse on a daring adventure through the wood in this magical, musical adaptation of the classic picture book.

Suitable for kids over 3yrd.

Robot Song Arena Theatre Company www.drumtheatre.com.au/robotsong 29 June, 10am Robot Song is a must-see theatre work for audiences of all ages, ready to amaze you with live animation, robot, animatronics and original music. This musical production is based on a true story that illustrates the profound, transformative nature of creativity.

Embracing being different; personal discovery; autism spectrum.

Children over 8yrs and drama/theatre students.

SPARE PARTS PUPPET THEATRE www.sppt.asn.au

Fox Adapted from the book by Margaret Wild & Ron Brooks Incursion Term 2, 1 – 5 July.

Fox is a riveting fable that will take you on a journey through scorched scrubland and ochre deserts to discover the meaning of loyalty, companionship and betrayal. Told through a fusion of puppetry and dance, Margaret Wild’s timeless story leaves you with questions that could take a lifetime to answer – a potent starting point for rigorous discussion with your students.

English, science, Humanities and Social Sciences, Health and Physical Education, Technologies, The Arts.

Perfect for year 1 - 4.

Q&A and study resources available.

Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s Fox.

Beauty and the Beast Victorian State Ballet http://bit.ly/2STraYW 3 August, 7.30pm One of the world’s most loved fairy tales is retold through excellent staging, superb ballet and choreography which bring magic to the stage.

Ballet; fairy tale Children over 8yrs and drama/theatre students. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 24

Costuming, Make Up, Props & Sets

25 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

COSTUME & PROP MARKETPLACE Tips From Costumes Without Drama Costuming school productions independent. The costumes need to be easy to put on and has a different set of take off. parameters to West End Costumes Without Drama productions.

Children need to look great on stage but it is actually more important that costumes fit the children - child size, not adult size adapted.

When you have 165 children getting dressed and on stage together, you cannot have wardrobe malfunctions.

Costumes for school children need to be easy to put on, take off and look great - each time.

There are teachers and parents helping to dress the children, but for the most part the children need to be

attempts to send costumes to schools approximately two weeks before the show, to allow children to try on costumes a couple of times before the production. This helps them get used to the idiosyncrasies of their own costumes and be able to help their friends look great too.

Once the children have seen their costumes, there is always a huge spike in the quality of their rehearsals; they suddenly seem to ‘get’ what their role is, and it all becomes very exciting.

You can view the full range of costumes available at www.costumeswithoutdrama.com.au or call (03) 8838 2616.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 26

Stage School Australia Costume Designer Jennifer McKenzie loves working on period pieces and her latest challenge is Les Misérables.

The Young Australian Broadway Chorus production of Les Misérables in January 2019 at the National Theatre in St Kilda will require period-correct costumes for a cast of around one hundred. I anticipate that my favourite will be Cosette’s costume when she is a young adult, because her dress, gloves and bonnet will need to be spot on in terms of period correctness and so will be a joy to design and create.

The challenge is to find the right balance of creating period-correct costumes using modern textiles and trims, all within the production’s budget and timeline.

The bicorn hats I will be creating are a good example. I could source them, because they are still a part of some military uniforms internationally, but they are quite expensive. I can’t justify spending too much because the hats the characters in Les Misérables wear need to look

lived in. So, I’ve decided to make them using my millinery training.

Historically these hats came to be the shape they are to channel rainwater away from the face by folding and pinning the hat brims up. They can be worn either way, with the point facing the front, or sideways, which was the fashion preference of both Napoleon Bonaparte and Horatio Nelson.

Originally bicorn hats were either made out of plush cotton velour or felted beaver pelts. Mine won’t be made out of real felted fur. I’ve chosen quality felt instead. I started with a sourced hat as a base so I didn’t have to block out the head piece, then added the brims and detailing. I’ve even made the French rosettes, which I aged so they looked like they had been through a battle.

If your school or theatre company is planning to present Les Misérables, the costumes and any sets created for the show will be available to rent through The Costume Dept from February 2019. www.lesmiz.com.au

For a complete range of available costumes visit www.costume-dept.com or call (03 8199 8345.

Fancy Dress Shop For Sale The Toowoomba Fancy Dress Shop, established in its current location for over six years, is up for sale. Owner Kerrie Edwards says it’s time for another creative genius to take over the business that covers a sizable part of Queensland.

This is the only costume shop of its kind for a very big city, its surrounds and beyond, stocking over 1800 costumes plus another 500 individual items of clothing as well as hats and accessories.

The shop is currently run by one person but an extra person is often needed. It is located on the main street, with plenty of off-street parking, just 1km from the CBD. The shop is leased, with a long lease available.

Kerrie is the costume co-ordinator for the long-established Toowoomba Repertory Theatre, which produces five major plays a year, and she has wide experience in costuming.

The shop is currently open 5 ½ days a week. www.toowoombafancydress.com.au

27 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

CLOC’s Strictly Ballroom Frocks

When CLOC Musical Theatre decided to stage one of the first Australian non-professional productions of Strictly Ballroom the Musical, they knew they had a monumental task ahead, in terms of producing the countless bedazzled, bejewelled and bedecked costumes that the show required.

No problem - Vicky Horne, CLOC’s resident costume designer and lover of all things sequinned and sparkly, was up to the challenge.

Vicky and her trusty CLOC sewing team were eager to flex their inner glitz in a show where no amount of sparkle was too much. And boy, did they let loose. For six months, 20 hardworking, talented and artistic sewers and milliners beavered away amidst metres of tuille, frills, pleats, feathers, beads, diamantes and crystals to produce over 200 costumes.

Each costume was individually designed, crafted and made to fit a cast of 34, including eight ballroom couples, who were colour co‑ordinated, both to each other and the colours of the sets on which they were dancing.

No two costumes were the same, and the male costumes had as much attention and detail as the females. Even the headpieces were individually designed and made to match the appropriate costume.

Some mind-boggling statistics - each ballgown contained 20 metres of feathers, 20 metres of pleating and 50 metres of petticoats.

The iconic Spanish costumes worn by the two leads were totally handmade and hand beaded, using literally thousands of crystals. Scott’s famous Spanish bolero jacket was covered with so many beads and crystals (all individually applied by hand) that it was a feat of strength and muscle just to lift. Each costume had up to five people

working on it at different stages to produce the finished result, plus the team of milliners to add the final touch.

And at the end, was it all worth it? With a proud and satisfied smile, Vicky says it was the very best work she and her team have produced. And going by the ecstatic audience reactions to the visual splendour and wonderment before them, the CLOC costume team nailed it.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 28

Study Resources

Sport For Jove’s Macbeth.

29 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

immigrant or fringe-dweller, were to become big themes for Nowra. Since childhood, he’s despised all racism and all group think.

An uncle, Bob Herbert, a playwright himself (No Names, No Pack Drill), took young Louis to the overseas musicals he was directing for J.C. Williamsons. Their beauty, the songs and vivid costumes conjured another world for Louis - his plays later plundered the same costume box for that escape into theatrical excess.

Not that there was much of that in the early days of the influential if Martin Portus profiles the remarkable Louis Nowra, the prolific writer spartan La Mama, then Melbourne’s hub of new Aussie writing. For Nowra, behind the Australian classic Cosi and much more. this world was much too blokey and A writing career seemed unlikely for Aliens, a play directly about his dogmatically leftist. He, on the other young Louis Nowra. Raised in a childhood; if, he says, a little more hand, was living with a part Aboriginal Housing Commission paddock suburb upbeat and romanticised. Louis played drag queen, taking hallucinogenic north of Melbourne without any himself as the Narrator. The play was a drugs and trying to copy the style of sewerage, ignored by his truck driving hit and is still widely studied in schools. Britain’s outrageous writer of farce, Joe Dad, belittled by his unhappy Mum, So too was his next play about staging Orton. little Louis couldn’t really read until he Mozart’s opera Cosi fan Tutti in a But La Mama staged his first plays. was 17. mental asylum.

One Nowra remembers as “the worst He was scalped in a brutal boyhood Premiered also in 1992, at Sydney’s Australian play ever written - and that’s accident which for four years left him saying something - so I realised I had to Belvoir theatre, Cosi draws on his real unable to properly talk, think or write, experience as a young man when he learn to write.” dismissed by his teachers as an Barry Otto and Ben Mendelsohn in Cosi. imbecile.

Photo: Currency House.

Nor did it help that on what was to be the date of his birthday, a few years before he was born, Louis’ mother shot dead her own father. He always wondered why she was especially moody on his special day; when he turned 21 in 1970, she told him.

And by then both his grannies were mad, and institutionalised in an asylum which, conveniently, was just next door.

But the electrics of Louis’ brain had miraculously reset; and he’d completed reading his first book - Lolita. He finally understood how sentences were made.

“Every day, I think how did I get here?” he says. “How did I get to be writing books and plays and going to It was the mid 1970’s and success, was employed to direct a musical with Hollywood, how? I am lazy but I have mental patients. Testament to the without any formal training, somehow this other persona that does all the healing power of theatre, Cosi is now came quickly. His work was admired in work. And I’ve never reconciled my Nowra’s most produced play and the Sydney, where Nowra admired its more upbringing with this persona who has subsequent film was highly acclaimed. theatrical, higher production standards. done so much.”

Heading a film cast with Australian “People at the Australian Nowra went on to plumb his bizarre favourites, Ben Mendelsohn played the Performing Group (in Melbourne) childhood for many of the themes, role of Nowra the director. thought Sydney was poofta-ville with characters and theatrical excesses of his Madness and amnesia, both theatre run by a gay mafia. I thought, plays. In 1992, the Melbourne Theatre personal and national, and the (Continued on page 31) Company premiered Summer of the outsider, whether sexual, racial,

The Playwright Born To

Shock

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 30

(Continued from page 30)

well, if that’s a gay mafia then they can run it for as long as they want. I worked there with the best directors Jim Sharman, Rex Cramphorn, Neil Armfield and later David Berthold.”

These early plays were vivid, fantastical and, interestingly, set internationally. Inner Voices is about an imprisoned 18th Century Russian prince who can’t speak; Visions is about a corrupt and despotic couple ruling 19 th Century Paraguay - Nowra loves stories about bad taste presidential couples; and The Precious Woman is set amongst the warlords of China in the 1920’s.

“I was impressed by Elizabethan theatre which could be set anywhere,” he says, “and so confused by Australia and the Ocker, and how to write about it, especially not being a social realist.

“So much of Australian theatre is confirming the audience’s view of the world whereas my thing is the opposite - I want to be shocked or shattered. It has to be larger than a living room.”

And so when Nowra did finally write plays about Australia - notably during a long residency with Jim Sharman’s famed Lighthouse ensemble in Adelaide - they were usually set outdoors, often around an affluent pastoral family and with powerful historical resonances.

“But I was still trying to find a way for Australians to talk without it being aphorisms, put-downs or attempted wit.”

Playbox’s 1985 production of The Golden Age. Photo: Currency House.

31 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Curiously, Nowra invented his own native idiom for the forgotten settlers in The Golden Age, lost for generations in the Tasmanian wilderness. Nowra had been giving a talk at Monash University and in the teacher’s room someone told him the story of this lost tribe.

“He was halfway through and I’d already worked out the opening scenes in my head.”

The tribe speak a rich Aussie wordmash of Cockney and Irish slang littered with poetic obscenities. After their discovery, they try to preserve their language and culture but, one by one, by then institutionalised in Hobart, they all die off. Meanwhile, the play’s themes of racial superiority and lost community and values take the action sweeping across the killing fields of World War I. Nowra was, by then, probably unique as an Anglo-Australian writer who introduced indigenous characters and storylines into his plays and novels.

Indeed, it’s tempting to see The Golden Age in 1985 as part metaphor for the Aboriginal experience.

“No, I was more interested in what happens when you are cut off from another world, and how you create your own. But that Aboriginal thing was obviously in the background.”

This remarkable play was popular but the critics savaged it. And Nowra was so bruised, he spent years instead writing telemovies - like Displaced Persons - about immigrants locked up in Sydney’s old North Head Quarantine

Rhoda Roberts, Rachael Maza and Lydia Miller in Belvoir’s 1993 production of Radiance.

Photo: Currency House.

Station, and Lizard King, about a French boy lost in the desert.

Capricornia, a landmark touring Bicentennial production, directly tackled Aboriginal storytelling with indigenous actors in lead roles (including Nowra’s then partner, the late Justine Saunders).

Based loosely on Xavier Herbert’s novel of life in the Northern Territory, it was the sort pf rolling landscape epic which suited Nowra. And he brought a warmth and empathy to his characters, defying critical mumbles that Nowra’s work can be cold and remote.

Since then, Nowra swears he’s never read a critic - not because they were critical of Capricornia but, rather, they didn’t spot the faults that Nowra knew to be there.

“The great thing about it was that I found my father’s voice (as an Irish storyteller). I found an ease about the Australian vernacular for the first time.”

This new empathy continued with the autobiographical Summer of the Aliens and Cosi, despite his painful childhood. Later, he wrote a more accurate rendition of his young life in the much applauded The Twelfth of Never, the first of his two memoirs.

“I think you become aware of people, their strength and weaknesses, as you get older. And with plays moving to smaller casts (for economic reasons), I become more interested in their psychology.

“And I began to find I was warmer to human beings. From the age of seven, I’d always disliked them: adults were monsters … violent and cruel to

has been performed widely from India to Czechoslovakia.

“Radiance was like overhearing my aunties talking about local gossip.

Unlike men’s talk, women’s talk was really personal and melodramatic.”

The film in 1998 was set in one of Nowra’s favourite settings, in the North Queensland tropical rainforests amongst the cane fields.

Radiance was the first commercial film directed by an Aboriginal (Rachel Perkins); it garnered six AFI nominations and won Deborah Mailman - with, says Nowra, a “smile that would light up a room” - the AFI Best Actress Award.

Louis Nowra went on to explore other indigenous stories in his work, and cross-racial relationships are a Louis Nowra spoke to Martin Portus for a State Library of NSW constant in his plays and in original oral history project on leaders in Sydney’s performing arts; the full screenplays like Map of the Human Heart and Heaven’s Burning. six hour interview is available on the Library’s website.

A ground-breaking writer for Martin is also hosting a Writers Festival forum with Nowra and Australian theatre in the 1970’s, he fellow playwright Stephen Sewell at the State Library on May 2 remained prolific and popular on stages 2018. For details, visit www.sl.nsw.gov.au/whats-on throughout the 1990’s and into the new decade.

There is, arguably, no other one another. And so with Aliens and of rehearsal they made sure that the Australian writer who has transformed Cosi, I began to see a warmth that in a word, Aboriginal, was never mentioned himself into such an adaptable jobbing play like Radiance really shone in the script.” writer of plays, screenplays, radio through.”

Yet a significant theme of Radiance plays, TV documentaries and films, Radiance in 1993 began life when is the dispossession of the late memoirs, short stories, novels, indigenous actors Lydia Miller and Aboriginal mother, with her house biographies, essays, neighbourhood Rhoda Roberts started chasing Nowra about to be claimed by a creditor and to write them a play. The story of three she, long rejected by those of her own histories and profiles, criticism and journalism. contrasting half-sisters, re-united at the country on the island across the And all from a once withdrawn home of their deceased mother, was mudflat. At the end, the sisters burn teenager who, for so many years, born. down the house. couldn’t speak or write a sentence.

Aboriginal story or not, Radiance “When we sat down at the first day Damon Herriman and Sara Zwangobani in STC’s 1993 production of Summer Of The Aliens.

Photo: Currency House.

David Field and Ben Mendelsohn in Belvoir’s 1992 production of Cosi.

Photo: Currency House.

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Our Master Storyteller From prisoners to footballers, from gay men in Broome to Muslims in hijabs, Alana Valentine shines a spotlight on communities shattered by flood, train wreck, abuse and injustice.

Martin Portus explores Valentine’s forensic approach to expressing their passions, habits and secrets on stage – in their own words.

Armed with meticulous research, persistence and a cool empathy, Alana Valentine has learnt how to move tactfully through diverse communities across Australia, question both leaders and fellow travellers, find their faultlines and craft the drama.

Often she uses the exact speech of her interviewees. Working class South Sydney Rabbitohs fans articulate the battle to keep their beloved rugby team. Tough women slowly reveal, for the first-time, childhoods of abuse at the old Parramatta Girls Home.

Valentine’s verbatim theatre, this art of making theatre drawn from life, is revealed in her new book and part-memoir Bowerbird (Currency Press).

2018 was a big year for her.

Her play Letters to Lindy, drawing on the 20,000 letters written by Australians to Lindy Chamberlain and so carefully preserved and filed by Lindy, toured the country. Sport for Jove in Sydney premiered Ear to the Edge of Time, about radio astronomy and Valentine’s fascination with the collaborative process of scientific discovery, a team spirit it seems often forgotten when the prizes get handed out.

She was also back with Bangarra’s Stephen Page for the third time, as dramaturg on Dark Emu; or what she 33 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Parramatta Girls.

Photo: Heidrun Löhr.

calls being Stephen’s “digging tool”, unearthing records of white/black Australia to be transformed into his dance theatre.

Flight Memory opened at Canberra’s Street Theatre. Continuing her enthusiasm for science, it’s about the Australian who in 1953 invented the cockpit flight recorder but had to go to London to find a backer.

sugar refinery in Pyrmont – just like Alana’s granddad did – and watching its streets give way to gentrification.

“I’d give anything to speak to my grandmother and mother, who are both dead, about some of the things I’ve become passionately interested in like my family,” she says.

“This is my most personal play. It’s about how memory is affected by place

Valentine says it’s going to be a jazz song cycle – Canberrans apparently love cabaret.

But her biggest step in 2018 was back at Belvoir Theatre, which has staged her hits Run Rabbit Run and Parramatta Girls, both verbatim plays studied for years on the NSW HSC Syllabus. With The Sugar House(staged in May) though, instead of giving voice to community stories, Valentine looks to her own family, her own secrets.

It’s about three generations of battlers working in or around the old

and how hard it is to live in a place like Sydney, which keeps changing; what do we keep and what do we discard.”

Valentine now lives with her longtime partner, music producer Vicki Gordon, in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern. Her life began there before moving south to Kogarah. She had a fraught relationship with her young mother, but adored her grandmother who introduced the teenager to the classics of literature. But her mother, despite the fights, did teach her to

sew, for which Alana, who is always also played with an audience’s surprise them by making it also about strikingly dressed, is forever grateful. preconceptions. the interviewer.”

“When people always ask about my “My career to date has always been The interviewer in Ladies Day is clothes; it’s my way of keeping her about finding conflict in communities urged to reveal her own experience of with me every day. It’s good to go that are often seen as monolithic childhood abuse, which Valentine hints back to what she did, not to what she groups, but within them there is this was partly autobiographical. She says said, which I always tell students is, as incredible diversity.” she was also keen in this play to a writer, the great way to know a That tug of war between tradition connect with the “modernity of character, not by what they say.” and change, so familiar in Valentine’s younger writers using autobiography” Valentine’s mother, grandmother plays and a tension common across all in their storytelling. and a rascally charming uncle live on in diverse cultures, is most exemplified as Alana Valentine has confronted the Sugar House characters played by between generations. many griefs but mostly as experienced Kris McQuade, Sacha Horler and Josh “Shafana became a play about a by others: relatives she interviewed of McConville. young person who wanted to tell an those killed in the Waterfall train Growing up, Valentine also picked older one who they loved that they derailing (for her play, Dead Man up a formidable work ethic, juggling wanted to do something that wouldn’t Brake), survivors of the floods through up to three jobs to support her be understood. It harked back to my Katharine (Watermark); women reliving through a selective high school and own experience of telling my beloved thwarted years (Parramatta Girls) and then studying Communications at UTS. grandmother that I was homosexual, others suffering incomprehensible Hunger as a child, she says, was a of having to endanger the most brutality at the Hay Institution for Girls great motivator. And it (Eyes to the Floor).

Alana Valentine with Ursula Yovich. still is.

“One of the things about From Newcastle to a playwright is not being Wollongong, from Hay to overly varnished, overly Wagga Wagga, from Alice protective. You have to be Springs to Broome, from equal to the test of London to New York, experiencing this; you are Valentine has gone where the first audience, the first the commissions or empathiser with this scholarships are, and to story.” communities with theatres Parramatta Girls began ready to invest in their when Valentine first met storytelling or healing. the indigenous women “If you don’t get this involved at a reunion in job, this scholarship, you 2003. As she has learnt, Alana Valentine spoke to Martin Portus for a State wouldn’t eat: it’s a great she waited patiently until Library of NSW oral history project on leaders in way to focus the mind,” a key subject, Marlene, Sydney’s performing arts; the full interview will be she laughs. turned to her and spoke. available soon on the Library’s website.

For her first play in “I’ll tell you my story, 1985, Multiple Choice, Alana, but only if you about teenage alcoholism, Valentine important relationship of my life.” don’t leave out the bad bits,” And as was lucky to have Alex Buzo as a Another cliché was in her sights Alana replied, “Marlene, the bad bits mentor. Even then she was drawn to with Ladies Day, which Griffin Theatre are what I really want.” using direct address to the audience; premiered two years ago. Based on The women had been so convinced Buzo advised against it. After the interviews in Broome, Valentine by their childhood tormentors back in opening he said he’d been wrong, and wanted to show how gay men can Parramatta that no one would ever she admired him even more. now negotiate assimilation in regional believe them that, until Valentine After Buzo’s death his daughter Australia. But the stakes rise when one turned on her recorder, they’d never commissioned Valentine to write a play is raped at the Ladies Day Races and he put it to the test. to match his classic, the two hander thirsts for a very non-PC revenge at the She gathered 35 different stories, Norm and Ahmed, for a double bill injustice. Valentine tested the verbatim carefully choosing only those women, 2009 revival. Valentine’s answer was form by writing herself into the drama black and white, that had a supportive Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, about a as interviewer. And the rape victim network. Ultimately, after a public young Afghani Australian student who turns on her. reading, she sought permission to wants to wear the hijab despite the “Let’s turn it on her and see how collapse those experiences into eight protests of her careerist Muslim aunt. she copes with this grilling on her. onstage characters. This device Valentine enjoyed delicious hospitality People are almost inured to the sharpened the drama and empathy but from Muslim families in Auburn – and verbatim process so I thought I’d

(Continued on page 35)

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(Continued from page 34)

also – even though their words survived – disguised some of those women still shamed by their experience.

Their revelations, when charged with being uncontrollable, locked up for being neglected, “dug a little hole in my soul”, says the playwright. But Valentine was given a lesson in dealing with trauma: “it is always through humour; they are very, very funny women.”

You sense, though, that Valentine was even more affected later when she, characteristically, won a scholarship to sit alone at the National Library and study all those letters written to Lindy Chamberlain. They ran from 1980 to the final coronial verdict of not guilty in 2012.

“For 38 years she meticulously filed those letters as an act of memorial, of grief, more than any other mother in Australia. Her faith is what sustains her and, as she says, she leaves vengeance to God. What she wanted far more than sympathy was justice, to be innocent before being proven guilty.”

35 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

The Sugar House.

Photo: Brett Boardman.

And while Valentine burnt with fury at those few (5% or so) letters vile and evil, Lindy, she said, would dismiss them with cartoon humour.

Letters to Lindy ends profoundly with a closure, a calming forgiveness, not for Lindy, of course, but for us, the bigots that we were.

Leah Purcell in Parramatta Girls.

Photo: Heidrun Löhr.

“It’s not just about individually saying sorry. The play really is a conduit for us to sorry as a group, five hundred of us in the theatre, and collectively, can go, we got it wrong – and then like her let it go, and move on,” says Valentine.

“As a collective experience, the theatre is perfect for this.”

Staging A Musical Or Play

Mad Musicals’ Supernova The Musical!

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39 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Choosing Australian Plays [Bringing Our Stories To Life]

Within the Theatre for Young People category there are twenty-nine plays that feature characters 16-18 years, exploring themes of migration, natural progression of what is being resilience, love, identity, culture and programmed on our stages. journey. Several have large casts, many Australian Plays is dedicated to offer an ensemble approach, and the publishing, promoting, licensing and theatrical or performance styles offer showcasing Australian playwrights great scope for page to stage and for and plays. There are over 2,000 scripts literary analysis. By subscribing to the by over 950 playwrights available E-News you receive regular updates online as well as a series of focused about new publications, and collections, monologues, and critical recommended scripts. essays from current theatre makers and writers. Eight new plays have Australian Plays is offering you a been added to the catalogue in free three month subscription!

January alone.

A glimpse at the most popular To gain access simply email titles on the front-page reveals Stolen, admin@australianplays.org Black Diggers, Picnic at Hanging Rock, with the subject line STAGE Neighbourhood Watch, Away, Cosi, WHISPERS. The Book of Everything, Ruby Moon Dr Meg Upton is the Consultant and Extinction. Many of these titles Education Curator at Australian appear on state based curricula and are powerful plays offering stories of Plays. She is also a drama Australia’s Indigenous history, the education lecturer at Deakin mythology of the Australian bush and University. the suburbs, the migrant journey, and www.australianplays.org the Vietnam War. But what else?

What other plays are possible?

Becoming a subscriber allows you Teachers and students have access to dig more deeply, to read plays to a powerful search application on the Australian Plays site, one that online, to access resources for shows enables them to explore and select including the newly created Malthouse plays that respond to some of the key Theatre Education Collection - 20 questions posed above. Click on Find-a years of Playbox/Malthouse scripts -Play and you can search for a title, with their accompanying education author, a keyword, as well as a resource - and explore the other category. There are forty categories collections in more detail. Many scripts currently in the collection including: are available to purchase online as a Australian History, Children’s Theatre, downloadable PDF, giving you Comedy, Gender Themes, Indigenous immediate access to the script you are seeking. Australian Plays also licenses a Themes, Verbatim, Plays by Women, and Political and Social Themes. There large range of scripts for production. is also an option to select the target In selecting, studying and staging audience, length, cast age and cast Australian plays we can bring to life a size. Further, there is a monologue myriad of Australian stories, and the search application for finding a text to voices of those who comprise this suit individual students interested in, complex, diverse country, to which our or required to, explore a monologue students make an important contribution. for their drama studies.

Stage Whispers readers are being offered a three-month free subscription to www.australianplays.org.

Meg Upton explains why it is such a valuable resource.

Each year Drama, English and Literature educators encounter the dilemma of selecting a play to study or produce in collaboration with their students. Which play? Which playwright? What’s good? How long?

How many students? What age? What about the school’s culture and broader community standards?

Importantly, will it engage them, will it challenge them, and will it enhance their learning?

Why study Australian plays?

Playwright Andrew Bovell told the Daily Review that “Australian audiences are not satisfied with a repertoire only of Noel Coward, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and William Shakespeare. They want new plays that tell their stories and reflect their lives … a theatre that prioritises the work of Australian playwrights, in all their diversity. I know that through such writing it is possible to read the pulse of the nation.” (Daily Review August 1, 2017).

In essence, if theatre is concerned with stories and stories are concerned with what it means to be human, then studying Australian plays enables teachers and young people to collaboratively explore Australian stories and feel “the pulse” of what it means to be Australian in a multifaith, multi-cultural society with a complex Indigenous history.

The 2019 seasons of nine major theatre companies indicate at least half of programmed work is Australian, and in many cases new works. Significantly, many are new Indigenous works, and in some instances work written by other culturally diverse playwrights. This is incredibly exciting. More students have the opportunity to experience diverse Australian stories in performance.

Studying Australian plays in class is a

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SPARK 2019

Songs From Australian Musicals for a home grown Australian musical came in 1988 with the musical of Australia’s classic story Seven Little Australians. Funded by sponsor James Hardie Industries, following development between Sydney composer and organist David Reeves and theatre legend turned minor hit. Quite something in entrepreneur Noel Ferrier (of the Australia in the fifties when nearly Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust), everything on the ‘hit parade’ it played to just under 500,000 as it emanated from America. toured Melbourne, Launceston, 1978 saw Reg Livermore’s Ned Hobart, Adelaide, Sydney and then Kelly and in the 1980s there was Brisbane, produced by the Royal clearly a belief locally that if America Queensland Theatre Company. The and England can do it, then so can creators were David Reeves (Composer & Producer), John Palmer (lyrics) and we. The Venetian Twins (with iconic John Palmer & Peter Yeldham (book).

Ten years later, in 1998, The Boy from Oz began its journey to become the most successful Australian musical to date. A ‘jukebox’ musical compilation of local showbiz star Peter Allen’s hit songs, it premiered in Australia, playing to 1.2 million people in a tour covering Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Opening on Broadway in 2003 it also played a truly strong season, something never achieved before by an Australian show. The brainchild of producer Ben Gannon, it went all the way with a book by Nick Enright and Australian performer Hugh Jackman, the Broadway star in the truest sense of the word. Peter’s songs are well number ‘Jindyworoback’, included in represented in these pages. this volume) premiered in 1979. A There are many Australian musicals further production transferred to and many musicals with ties to commercial theatre in 1981.

Australian creators. Most remain not Jon English and David McKay’s produced in any meaningful way, long journey with the rock opera Paris which beggars the question, ‘Why?’ began in 1990 and its number ‘Oh Surely in this age of the silicon chip it Paris’ can also be found in these is now possible to engineer and build pages. That year also witnessed Reg musical theatre audiences whose boxLivermore’s musical Big Sister. office resources can finance The first major box office success productions in reverse.

Composer David Reeves has compiled and arranged a new song book featuring fifteen songs from Australian composed musicals.

They include Matilda, The Venetian Twins, The Boy From Oz and Seven Little Australians (which he composed). In a forward to the songbook he reflected on the writers that inspired him, and notable local productions.

I will never forget the impact the new My Fair Lady musical made locally when I was growing up in Sydney. It premiered on Broadway in 1956 and its journey thereafter is the stuff of legends. I didn’t realise it at the time but without doubt Lerner and Loewe came as close as anyone to creating the perfect musical. The show’s success, its mystique, remains the result of the genius and magic created between a trio that included George Bernard Shaw and his play, Pygmalion.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (who had also tried adapting Pygmalion and given up) are in the same league. Writers hoping to emulate such towering figures truly need to have something unique to bring to the stage. But we all keep writing, composing, and dreaming up new ideas.

J C Williamsons produced what must surely be regarded as the first Australian musical box-office success with The Sentimental Bloke, based on Songs of a Sentimental Bloke by C J Dennis. It played a six-week season that was extended to five months in 1961.

The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust had been established in 1950 and in 1958 took up its option to launch a professional production of Lola Montez. Created by Peter Stannard (music), Peter Benjamin (lyrics) and Alan Burke (book), the show opened in Sydney on 22nd October 1958 after a short trial in Brisbane. The popular number ‘Saturday Girl’ is included in this volume and Michael Cole’s single recording of the number became a 41 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

“Stage Door Songbook: Songs from Australian Musicals” is published by Origin Theatrical and distributed by Hal Leonard Music. www.origintheatrical.com.au/work/10801

New Zealand Plays and Musicals Playmarket New Zealand’s top recommendations for schools.

Musicals The Invisibles by Dan Bain and Luke Di Somma At the beginning of her final year at rugby obsessed Riverhole High School, Lauren, a budding singer-songwriter, meets new arrival, rugby star and former dancer Scott, and attempts to enlist him in the annual nationwide music competition BandSmash.

Checkout Chicks by Rachel Callinan and Julia Truscott A fast paced, high-energy musical comedy that celebrates loving your job. In her bid to save her locally owned struggling supermarket, Tashandra enters into the Checkout Operator of the Year Award.

Plays Wheeler’s Luck by Nigel Collins, Toby Leach and Damon Andrews How will the people of Bell End decide what to do when a local personality dies, leaving her prime coastal property to them? It seems a bareback horse race will be the decider.

The Next Big Thing and Auckland Theatre Company’s co-production of Checkout Chicks.

Photo: Michael Smith.

Ophelia Thinks Harder by Jean Betts A riotous reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that puts Ophelia centrestage.

they have forgotten how to have fun, so they reawaken their playfulness by having teenager Hugo fall in love with Verona, a young Italian girl.

Heavenly Bodies by Kerry Lynch Ziggy’s Tribe by Gary Henderson In an allusion to Greek and A group of lost orphans flee south to Elizabethan theatre, three Fates realise escape bulldozers causing destruction and desolation, but are their assumptions about what is going on in the world correct?

Whole School Primary School Productions Emma Rose and the Enchanted Forest

by Jon Gadsby Emma Rose and her horse Smuggler head into the Enchanted Forest on a quest to heal Smuggler’s sore tummy.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Snow Queen by Jenny Wake.

Written for casts of 100-300 and 64154 respectively.

Space Circus by Holly Gooch.

Featuring scientists, astronauts, aliens, moon people, stars and planets, this play combines science education with dance, music and circus spectacle. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 42

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SPARK 2019

Young Aussies On Broadway

Young Aussie musical theatre stars from all over the nation embarked on the performance tour of a lifetime in January, which took them to New York City, to the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, and ended in Hollywood.

The intrepid team of 41 “Aussie All -Stars” participated in theatrical performance workshops in New York, saw Broadway shows, represented Australia at the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta and took part in the Disney Performing Arts program in California.

The ensemble was comprised of individually selected students who auditioned as part of the Junior Theatre Celebration Australia.

In New York City, the Aussie AllStars collaborated on a 15-minute performance piece featuring selections from the musical Madagascar: A Musical Adventure Jr.,

under the creative direction of Australian Daniel Stoddart, along with New York-based Australian choreographer Scott Morris. They gave a preview performance of their 15-minute excerpt for an exclusive audience including MTI Co-Chairman, Freddie Gershon and MTI Australasia’s Managing Director, Stuart Hendricks.

The students joined 7,000 likeminded young performers in Atlanta at the massive Junior Theater Festival, described by the New York Times as a “rousing celebration of theatre”.

The Aussie All-Stars performed their Madagascar: A Musical

Aussie All Stars Amelia Carpenter and Luke Barker, both award-winners for excellent performance at Junior Theatre Festival 2019.

Adventure Jr. excerpt for adjudication and received wonderful feedback.

They watched performances by their peers and were privileged to meet some of Broadway’s best, including composing duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land & The Greatest Showman).

A mini-documentary following the journey of the Aussie All-Stars is expected to be released in March.

Online extras!

The Aussie All-Stars on their US tour to the Junior Theater Festival 2019.

45 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Find out more about Junior Theatre Celebration Australia. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/D3sqO_ijhg4

Book Nook’s Play Tips Mary Sutherland from the Australia’s Performing Arts retailer Book Nook offers her tips to directors and teachers of Drama and Theatre Studies. All are for sale at www.booknook.com.au Hell’s Canyon by Emily Sheehan.

Celebrates everything magical about being a young person, the tenacity of teenage friendship, and our ability to transcend tragedy by reaching for the sublime.

The Almighty Sometimes by Kendall Feaver. It’s a quick-witted and bracingly honest take on the difficult choices you make in your child’s best interests, and what happens when you no longer have a say.

Motor-Mouth Loves Suck-Face (an apocalyptic musical) by Anthony Crowley. A musical comedy about hope, for the young and the young at heart.

Did we mention the Bollywood diversion?

The Feather in the Web by Nick Coyle. From engagement parties to team -building weekends to improv comedy, this is an unpredictable take on infatuation and self-discovery.

The Incredible Here and Now by Felicity Castagna. A play about cars and boys and having to grow up too soon.

Good with Maps/Teacup in a Storm

by Noëlle Janaczewska. With the current Royal Commission on Aged Care taking place, these are two very timely plays taking different approaches to very significant issues confronting our society today - aging, disability and caring.

The Harp in The South by Kate Mulvany. Follows the trials and tribulations of the Darcy family over thirty years, from country New South Wales in the 1920s to the inner-city slums of Surry Hills in the 1950s. Kate Mulvany brings her trademark humour and tenderness to bear on Ruth Park’s much-loved novels in this epic adaptation.

Where the Streets Had A Name by Eva Di Cesare. ‘What does home mean to a community that cannot return to

their homeland? When your home is occupied and you have no right of return, you hold on to what you can; the key to the front door, the title deeds to your land, a jar of soil.’

Long Tan. Verity Laughton’s intense and moving semi-verbatim play is composed from interviews with the surviving Australian soldiers, Vietnamese contributors, and the family and friends of those who died.

Elenore & Mary Alice by Peta Tait.

Explores the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the American President, and Australian Modernist artist Mary Alice Evatt, and Mary’s husband Doc Herbert Evatt, and their associated roles in the development of Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations, as Doc Evatt becomes the first elected President of the General Assembly.

Charlie Pilgrim (Or A Beginner’s Guide To Time Travel) by Sam O’Sullivan.

Have you ever wanted to change the past? Charlie Pilgrim has. And her prototype time machine - The Mobius is ready for a test run. Unfortunately, starting up the machine has accidentally created a closed time loop that adds a new Charlie every twenty-four hours.

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Choosing A Show

New Releases Music Theatre International Australasia www.mtishows.com.au

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang JR. Everyone’s favourite high-flying car is ready to land on your stage.

This adaptation of the West End production has many hilarious roles, classic songs from the beloved movie and a new score. www.mtishows.com.au/chitty-chitty-bang-bang-jr Disney’s Aladdin JR. Based on the iconic animated film, with an Academy Awardwinning score by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice.

When the street urchin Aladdin vies for the beautiful Princess Jasmine, he uses a genie’s magic power to become a prince in order to marry her.

Includes expandable cast and simple instructions for the magic flying carpet. www.mtishows.com.au/disneys-aladdin-jr-0 The Theory of Relativity From Drama Desk Award nominees Neil Bartram and Brian Hill (The Story of My Life), The Theory of Relativity looks at our surprisingly interconnected lives. Whether you’re allergic to cats, in love for the first or tenth time, a child of divorce, a germaphobe or simply a unique individual, audience members and actors alike are sure to find themselves in this fresh new musical. www.mtishows.com.au/theory-of-relativity

ORiGiN Theatrical www.origintheatrical.com.au Dangerous Daughters Book by Nick Stimson. Music and lyrics by Annemarie Lewis Thomas.

Full length musical, drama, docudrama/historic, 1910s / WWI. Casting: 3M, 11F. The lives and loves of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela Pankhurst, the three 47 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

daughters of Emmeline Pankhurst, the figurehead of Britain’s Suffragette movement.

The Pankhursts were a family divided, a family often at war.

The musical tells the story of these three remarkable sisters against the setting of the First World War and other great events of the time.

Chariots Of Fire

By Mike Bartlett. Full Length Play, Drama, 1920s. Casting: 32M, 2F, 7M or F. 1924. The Paris Olympic Games.

A devout Scottish Christian runs for the glory of God. The son of an immigrant Lithuanian Jew runs to overcome prejudice. Two young track athletes who live for the beautiful purity of running and who prevail in the face of overwhelming odds.

Dominie Drama www.dominie.com.au/drama From Pioneer Drama Service (www.pioneerdrama.com) Me, My Selfie & I

By Jonathan Dorf.

Cast: Flexible cast of 640. Duration: 45 minutes.

Through a series of scenes & monologues to explore the world of social media, we meet a group of teens who are struggling to find the balance between documenting their lives and living them.

Ask Shawna

By Vern Harden.

Cast: Flexible cast of 15.

Set: Simple Interior and Exterior Sets. Duration: 30 minutes.

A play about teen drinking and driving. Ideal as an opening to a discussion about teen drinking and driving, the play does not preach, but instead asks teens to learn from the tragedy that unfolds.

From Nick Hern Books 100

By Christopher Heimann, Neil Monaghan and Diene Petterle. Cast: 2m, 2f + 1 m/f.

Imagine that you must choose one single memory from your life.

Imagine that choosing this memory is your only way of passing through to eternity.

Imagine that you have just one hour to choose...

Blue Stockings

By Jessica Swale. Cast: 8-10m, 814m +2.

A moving, comical and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education and self-determination against the larger backdrop of women’s suffrage (1896).

Great Expectations

By Charles Dickens - a new adaptation by Nick Ormeroo and Declan Donnellan.

Cast: 7f, 16m.

A gritty adaptation of Dickens’ least sentimental love story with a cast of some of his most unforgettable characters.

David Spicer Productions www.davidspicer.com.au The Jailhouse Frocks

By Devon Williamson.

Duration: 120 minutes. 2 Acts. 3F, 2M. Dimwitted Police Officer Dwayne’s tranquil evening is interrupted by the arrests of three unlikely women - the mayor’s wife in a state of complete alcoholic breakdown, the local mad cat-lady looking for somewhere to stay out of the rain, and a dangerous looking New Yorker who has managed to crash her car into the police station while speeding through town.

Choosing A Show Royal Ball, inviting all of the eligible princesses from the surrounding kingdoms in the hope that Alexander will find himself a wife.

Maverick Musicals and Plays www.maverickmusicals.com School musicals are a joyous event - bringing together students, teachers and families each year! But choosing the right musical for your students is often not easy. Maverick Musicals have been creating and supplying original, age appropriate musicals to schools around the world for over 38 years, with an online browsing, ordering and delivery service.

“Musicals on a Stick” is a new online option that means scripts, scores, rehearsal and backing tracks and much more, for any title, can be ordered on a USB for maximum flexibility.

Browse sample script & music packages on the Maverick Musicals website.

The Princess and the Pea Script by Natalie Trengrove, songs by Jim Fury.

Cast 10 F, 5 M and Chorus. Includes CD Backing Track.

Queen Margareter and King Marmaduke are worried that their son, Prince Alexander, is lonely. They decide to hold a

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 48

Sound & Light

49 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

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Sound Advice Artie Jones from Factory Sound shares his tips for trouble-free use of wireless microphones.

Troubleshooting Wireless No matter how big or small the stage may be, wireless microphones are the essential first ingredient to help bring an intimate and detailed sound to the audience.

A well-designed system will always make the complex appear simple, and reputable wireless manufacturers have done huge amounts of ‘heavy lifting’ to make the set-up of a clear channel as easy as touching a button (or two).

Online extras!

Factory Sound can keep up to date with all of the latest in pro audio gear.

Dreaded Dropouts www.youtube.com/FactorySound There’s nothing worse than an unexpected ‘drop out’ of the wireless signal. It leaves the audience disappointed, while often proving to be unsettling for the performers.

More Antennas = More Headaches For inexperienced operators, there is nothing An unfortunate side-effect of having multiple channels surprising about wireless interference and drop-outs, if of RF running concurrently for a performance is that not the golden rules of wireless tech haven’t been followed only will the active channels have their own frequency before every show. signature taking up space in the RF spectrum, but extra nodes in between those frequencies will appear - kind of Rule #1 - Scan, Scan, Scan like a reflection - and this effect of intermodulation will It is the most basic rule to follow, and it costs cause, in some cases, interference to your wireless nothing!

With the maturing of wireless microphone technology channels.

Reducing the amount of antennas around the stage over the past decade, the process is simple. It involves area will actually decrease the amount of intermodulation, pressing a button on the wireless receiver (which will and so a well-designed Antenna Splitter is a great way to normally be placed at side of stage, or at the mixing desk maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of any multiposition), allowing it to find the most clear frequency channel wireless system. available. Then you simply sync the wireless microphone (or bodypack) to the same frequency, and voila, the system is ready for soundcheck, and the show.

The number one cause of wireless interference is failure to follow Rule #1. It doesn’t matter if the wireless system, or systems (more on that later) worked perfectly when you first pulled them out of the box, the fact remains that a scan will be the best way to avoid any problems.

Managing Multiples Sophisticated productions usually involve more than just one wireless system, which introduces a whole range of potential Radio Frequency (RF) concerns.

Adhering to Rule #1 when you are dealing with many wireless systems will involve a little more concentration, and large-scale set ups will usually involve a laptop with some kind of Wireless System Manager on-board, to assist with frequency scanning, channel allocation, and monitoring of RF integrity.

51 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Cables And Other Considerations Are you using the right cable for antennas? (50ohm, not 75ohm). Are the antennas in the right position? Can you select frequencies for your area that actually minimise the amount of intermodulation?

Managing wireless microphones can seem complicated, but really, follow Rule #1 and follow it often, and when it’s time to expand or refine your system, get in touch with RF specialists for advice.

Oh, and fresh batteries for every show!

Factory Sound is Australia’s largest supplier of professional audio equipment.

For sales or hire please visit factorysound.com, email sales@factorysound.com, call 1800 816 244 or stop by their showroom located at 75-85 York Street, South Melbourne.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 52

Can Small Theatres Afford LED? John McKissock from Clearlight Shows recommends that small theatre companies keep their traditional tungsten lights going for as long as possible.

The speed with which LED lighting is developing is increasing every year, yet the cost to change over to the new technology is still prohibitive for many theatres. In the long term we will all be using LED to light our shows, but in the short term the following is worth considering, prior to making the big jump.

Today there are a huge range of products available to us and all lighting manufacturers have LED products available, from moving lights to fresnel and profile spots, par cans and cyc floods. The challenge is to find the right products for your space within a budget.

From my experience, in over 40 years in the industry, the reality is you get what you pay for and the trap is to try to get more fixtures for whatever your budget is, rather than look at the

53 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

investment over several years and purchase products that will give years of trouble-free use.

In April I attended the Prolight and Sound show in Frankfurt and the range of products available from dozens of manufacturers was unbelievable. There were so many copy products that even with my experience I found it difficult to pick what was value for money.

In Australia we have good brands that are at a premium cost, then so many look-alike Chinese copies at a fraction of the price.

The best way to deal with this is to rely on an independent supplier to match the best product to your theatre and consider transitioning to LED over a

Left: A traditional Fresnel.

Right: An LED spotlight.

five year plus period. I suggest looking at what fixtures use the highest wattage lamps and consider replacing them first. Then look at what wash fixtures could be replaced for your basic colour washes.

Many companies push colour changing profile spots for your front of house rig, and these are great, but most designers use a cool and warm colour to light the stage, so consider the cost difference between two warm white only LEDs or half the number of colour changing LEDs. One of the most important considerations is the consistency between the colour batches with the same product. If you buy two cheap LED pars this year

John is the founder of Clearlight Shows.

For lighting sale & hire: www.clearlight.com.au

don’t expect that next year you will get the same matching colours from the same brand when you buy the next two. It is very important to pick brands that calibrate their colours so that you can spread your purchase over several years.

If your budget is very tight, consider some basic maintenance to your existing rig. This is a fraction of the cost of your total replacement and can help give you time to transition to LED over a longer timeline.

Replacement of the lamp base, if it is showing signs of blackening or arcing, could save you money on lamps that are failing early due to faulty lamp bases.

There are still lamps and lamp bases available for most fixtures, so this is worth considering for the short term.

Winter Wonderland at Sofitel.

Photo courtesy: Staging Dimensions.

The Wonder of Gobos Patterns and images called gobos are often used to create dappled lighting onto film sets, theatre stages or for mood lighting in otherwise boring halls and venues during events and functions.

Gobo patterns can be selected from thousands of standard images, with foliage or leaf breakups amongst many of the designs to choose from, or you can design your own if you prefer.

The standard images are cheap gobo stencils that do the job well and can last indefinitely in modern profile spots, as long as they are treated with care.

The end result is up to the creativity of the user, who can colour the beams

with cheap coloured gels to achieve great effects.

cut off the image where light spill is not desired.

A profile is used to create the sharp Half Price Profiles circular beam of light that highlights a To project these patterns and lectern or a speaker. By simply images you need a light fixture that removing the gobo you have a light can focus on the inserted gobo; such a that can shape its beam via the lenses light is referred to as a profile. A profile or by utilising the shutters, to have the can have a fixed lens system or it will light only where it is desired. be a zoom profile that can enlarge or Ten years ago most profiles used reduce the size of the beam. They high power filament globes and were should also have shutters to be able to connected to the dimmer rack in a venue. Many are still in use but more LED fixtures are coming into all types of venues. They don’t require lots of power and don’t emit a lot of heat, so not only are they safer to use but they save both the gobos and the electricity bills.

Gobotech is Australia’s premier gobo manufacturer and can cater for any design you can imagine.

For a limited time they are offering an Italian made 80W LED Zoom Profile with built in dimmer and DMX for $788+GST (that’s half price).

Included is your choice of a stock steel gobo from their extensive catalogue.

For sales and information visit www.gobotech.com.au www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 54

into our mixing desk, with the amps left on stage as props.

Rather than give them fold back, Recently we have been asked to do comes into the audience and straight we stick headphones on the musicians, the audio for a number of groups down the cast’s sensitive microphones. and give each of them an individual staging new rock musicals - such as We approach this at the outset by mixer. Each can then adjust the mix to Rock of Ages and We Will Rock You - having gentle negotiations regarding their personal taste, and volume. who have been more used to staging where the company puts the This can reduce the on stage traditional music theatre. The three musicians. The rear of the stage can electronic sound of the band to zero, most important factors here are help move them away from the with the only thing left to manage isolation, isolation and isolation. audience, but puts them very close to being the drums. A recent example The first challenge is the same as a the actors. In some cases they simply was Ashfield Musical Society’s traditional musical: in a lot of instances have to be down in front of the stage - production of Rock of Ages. We could people are doing a musical in a room which can be difficult to manage. make the show very loud in the room, which is not designed for performing a Unless you can isolate them with as there was no spill at all from the musical in (there may not even be an sound shields (as with perspex panels band into the performers’ microphones orchestra pit). So you end up with a lot for trumpets and percussion in regular (adjacent to the band onstage) or of musicians putting out a lot of musicals) then the more separated the directly into the auditorium. volume, often very close to the better - even in another room But don’t forget that the audience audience and performers. (although this does add extra costs for has paid to come and see a musical With a rock band that takes on a video links so the cast and MD can see theatre show, not a live rock concert, whole new dimension, with the extra each other). so the final mix needs to take that into volume compared to a conventional One advantage of a rock musical is consideration. Directors who ask for it orchestra. The musical director often that a rock band has fewer musicians, to be as loud as possible often come wants it to be the full in-your-face rock but on the other hand they want to up to us after opening night and say band, but when their volume exceeds a play loud. A recent solution of ours is that some members of the audience certain manageable point, it becomes to remove the musicians from the found it too loud (and clear, of very tricky. Much of the direct sound amps. We plug the instruments directly course!)

David Betterridge from Loud and Clear Audio in Sydney shares his tips on getting the best sound from rock musicals.

55 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Keeping The Lights On Melbourne company Clearlight Shows has bought ‘mountains’ of Tungsten lamps to assist smaller venues and organisations as manufacturers switch to LED. As major venues and production companies transition to all-LED lighting inventories, big manufacturers are ceasing to make replacement lamps for traditional fixtures, and many distributors are no longer sourcing and importing them. This could be a financial catastrophe for small venues, community organisations, houses of worship and educational institutions across Australia, many of whom are years away from being able to upgrade to LED. Melbourne based company Clearlight Shows has recognised this looming issue, and stepped up to ensure that the lights will stay on across the country for years to come.

“There are still thousands of venues and people in the market that need those lamps,” states John McKissock, Managing Director of Clearlight Shows.

“Most community theatres, churches and schools just can’t afford the transition to LED yet. The big problem with getting replacement lamps is that most distributors have

John McKissock.

stopped stocking them due to the drop -off in the volume of sales. That’s affected their wholesale price too; the less you buy, the more they cost. It’s a vicious circle.”

John realised that something needed to be done urgently when Philips announced that they would no longer manufacture tungsten lamps from 2017.

“That’s when we invested heavily in stock and bought mountains of Philips lamps,” John explains. “We’ve also sourced replacements from other manufacturers overseas to ensure continuity in our supply lines. We’re supplying wholesale and retail, and have a secure supply for at least the next 10 years.”

Clearlight is stocking replacement lamps for classic fixtures like Strand Pattern 23s and 123s, Pacific 1K Blue Pinch lamps, discharge lamps, pin spot lamps, DWE audience blinder lamps, par lamps, 110V par lamps, and in some cases lamps for fixtures up to 50 years old.

“Everybody else has walked away, but we’re still bringing them in,” confirms John.

“It is getting harder, but at Clearlight we are committed to ensuring that organisations will be able to keep running their traditional fixtures as long as they need to.”

For more information visit www.clearlight.com.au

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 56

Lighting Mega-Musicals Or Micro Musicals!

lighting. Our fixtures onstage consisted of Mac 700 Profile spots spread across 5 bars. This allowed us to be able to create decal washes, individual specials, and the “fantasy looks” required during the show. We also used a mixture of 12 Moving Head Washes onstage that allowed us to light the set and create silhouettes onstage and strong backlight.

Our FOH rig was the most important clever part of the design in that on our low perch shots we used the new Chauvet LED profile, having 6 per side. This allowed us to create saturated colours during the musical numbers, and fantasy, as well as creating skin tone colours during the dialogue and quieter moments. Also useful in musical theatre design is the Bowie Rising.

Advanced FOH Truss. This allowed us to rig large spot movers and washes to Jason Bovaird from Moving Light Productions gets asked regularly to quote on both large-scale musicals and boutique works. He explains the be able to create the face fill upstage or downstage. challenges posed by different scaled productions.

For a production of Wicked by the The first questions I ask our clients huge pressure of them getting the Encore Theatre Company at the when quoting for a show are what are show “right”.

Princess Theatre in Launceston, which the key elements to the production and As the lighting designer of a recently won Production of the Year at what style they want. This will commercial musical, the most the Tasmanian Theatre Awards, our determine the size of the lighting rig, important thing you want to do is to team used a lot of the in-house stock, lighting equipment required, and the be able to surround yourself with a which saved money for the company in crew needed. great lighting team. I engaged our the long run. This meant I was able to Let’s look at the large commercial resident Associate Lighting Designer use a lot more moving lights in the production of Avenue Q for Prince Maddy Seach and Head of Lighting design and create both a new look for Moo productions we designed in 2016 Declan O’Neill to ensure that it looked Wicked and still retain the commercial for Her Majesty’s Theatre in great and would be replicated in a “look” the audience expected. A show Melbourne. The producers of this show transfer to the 3000 seat Burswood like Wicked needs to have a lot of were new to the game of commercial Crown Theatre, Perth.

WOW Factor lighting and still be able musical theatre, so there was already a We brought in a mixture of moving to tell a great story. light technology and conventional Avenue Q.

57 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Memphis - The Musical.

The biggest challenge with Wicked was being able to create the ‘flying’ moment in “Defying Gravity”, where Elphaba had to look like she was flying with no wires being seen. This was achieved with a huge amount of backlight moving head spots creating a huge beam effect through the smoke and haze and creating a large amount of timed lighting cues with the orchestral music. Adding to that we were able to use 12 x Maveric Spots, 12 x Bumble Bee 330-watt spots, 24 x LED Cans, 10 x 60 LED Movers, 6 x Chauvet LED Profiles and 12 Moving Wash Units from our stock, shipped over to Launceston. The ability to be able to also light the set was a major component of the design, creating the huge, bold visual looks that you come to expect of Wicked.

One of the key factors with this lighting rig was being able to light behind the large rotating walls and create huge shafts of light, creating shadows.

Large budgets are able to provide this type of rig and allow you, as a designer and production company, to tour around Australia. Other smaller shows want to create the large bold looks of a musical on a smaller budget.

For Stage Art in Melbourne, Memphis - The Musical was an Australian premiere at Chapel Off Chapel. I opted for a much more compact lighting rig using the stock at Chapel and only brought in eight Spot Moving lights and eight Wash Moving heads. Memphis needed to look like

Wicked.

Moving Light Productions looks forward to working with new clients and can be found at www.movinglight.com.au the 1950’s, with loads of saturated colour and block colour, as well as keeping the black and white feel for dialogue scenes to transport the audience through time. This was the same for a production of Bowie Rising last year.

The in-house rig already had plenty of LED Cans onstage and 2 Robe 700 spots FOH, along with Source Four Zooms. By using a lighting rig like this, already in place at Chapel, it made the bump in cheaper and quicker.

Moving Light Productions has a busy schedule of diverse projects that range from a national tour of Peppa

Pig “Surprise” to the Australian tour of Around The World In Eighty Days and corporate clients. We also enjoy working with schools.

Over the last two years the team from MLP have been working closely with the staff from Mentone Grammar School and theatre designer Richard Stewart in providing the initial lighting consultation and implementation for their multi-million dollar performing arts precinct, culminating in lighting designing for the full version of Les Misérables, which opened the venue in August.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 58

Spotlight On Rosco product launches planned for the near Founded in 1910, Rosco is experience they’ve come to know future, Ross and his team are traditionally known for lighting from the manufacturer. Our core well-positioned to sell our products filters. The company offers product values align perfectly with Rosco’s, and service our customers in lines in more than a dozen and I look forward to continuing the Australia and New Zealand.” categories including LED fixtures, long-standing relationships Rosco The distribution of Rosco dichroic glass filters, lighting effects has cultivated with this region’s products through Creative Film and equipment, fog and haze machines, customers and dealers.”

Theatre Solutions is effective May 1, flooring, green & blue screen paint “Creative Film and Theatre 2018. Creative Film and Theatre and backdrops for film, television Solutions is the right partner to Solutions will operate out of the and broadcast. grow our business and support our current Rosco location in Artarmon, “We are proud to become the customers in Australia,” said Mark with select inventory being sold from exclusive distributor for Rosco in Engel, Rosco’s CEO. “With a number a second location at Camperdown Australia and New Zealand,” said of exciting and innovative new for added convenience.

Creative Film and Theatre Solutions owner Ross Hopkins.

Creative Film & Theatre Solutions Pty Ltd “Rosco customers will have a Level 2, 42 Sawyer Lane, Artarmon NSW 2064 seamless transition and continue to (02) 9906-6262 or 0417 828 346 receive the exceptional customer sales@creativefilmandtheatresolutions.com.au

Rosco Laboratories, a global leader in lighting equipment for the live entertainment market, has appointed Creative Film and Theatre Solutions as its exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand.

59 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Dressing The Stage Yeo Creative Solutions offers one of the largest selections of specialist scenic products in Australia.

Their products include flame retardant fabrics and flooring, specialist theatre castors, scenic hardware and vacuum formed scenic embellishments such as brickwork and rock face panels.

With an extensive theatre background as a touring stage and production manager in the UK, with companies such as the Royal National Theatre, Jonathan Yeoman formed Yeo Creative Solutions in 2014 with the aim of creating a go-to resource for all those useful items that designers and production managers wish they could find.

The result is a “treasure trove of the best products from around the world.

If we don’t have it here, we can probably get it for you,” says Jonathan.

The company’s products and services have featured on Home & Away, Channel 7 News, ABC Checkout, Survivor, The Logies and many more TV

shows, as well as in feature films and productions at theatre companies including the Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre and Arts Centre Melbourne.

“We are the Australian distributor for Triple E Engineering, manufacturer of a wide range of studio, touring and heavy duty drapes and scenery tracks, a supplier of rubber glass and break away plastics, mould making equipment, Varaform thermoplastic gauze for prop making, LED tape and control systems, specialist gaffer tapes … in short, a real Aladdin’s Cave of scenic products for every style of production,” Jonathan adds.

“Our supplies website is also a resource library containing facts and datasheets on many of our 2000+ products, together with videos and articles on ideas and best practices.

“We have recently opened our Yeo Supplies ‘Crew Room’, that brings together a backstage crew’s favourite tools - riggers gloves from Dirty Rigger, including gloves with a built-in LED torch, Leatherman multitools, torches from LED Lenser and Coast, tool bags, Stanley tools and more.”

The company has a warehouse and showroom in Crows Nest, Sydney and an online store on its website.

www.yeocreative.com www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 60

We Will Rock You A Lighting Designer’s Diary

Jason Bovaird from Moving Light Productions and Daniel Jow designed the lighting for We Will Rock You, staged by Centrestage Productions in Geelong, using 800 lighting and vision cues in a combination of state of the art and old school rock lighting. Jason explains how they achieved this combination.

My first question to the production team was whether they wanted to replicate the professional production or do something new.

The director Paul Watson created a wonderful new set design that evoked the feeling of Wembley Stadium. It comprised a semi-circular row of seats that gave the feeling of the last remains of the stadium. This allowed us to have four 3-metre lengths of hanging truss to create the feeling of light towers. These pieces of truss had ray-cans hanging off them to also create the old school rock feel that Queen had in its earlier days.

I wanted to add a design element to the rig that had never been used before in a musical of this size and researched ways to incorporate revolving truss and moving lights. The problem was that most of the revolving 61 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

trusses were way too big or only moved at one speed.

After months of investigation I found the perfect design from a company in Melbourne - Lighting Lab. The company had been testing a prototype from China - 1.5 metres in diameter with variable DMX speeds. It was perfect for the show, given that it required a “laser cage” to rotate regularly.

We put 230 beam “sharpies” on the truss as they would give a strong thin beam like a laser and also had some great gobos that would be used for many other scenes.

The most impressive moment that the truss was used for was the opening scene when director Paul Watson wanted to create the feeling of the cast member being chased by helicopters.

This moment had the rotating truss

revolving fast, with the sharpies in an open white to create the feeling of helicopter blades rotating.

A show of this size - with over 800 lighting and vison cues over 60 moving lights along with 150 generic fixtures - cannot be plotted in a normal production week due to the time in the theatre and the experience of the cast and crew.

It was decided to pre-visualise the show in a vison suite a week beforehand. Moving Light Productions engaged the services of Nathan Aveling from Starlight Productions and their factory. Nathan spent two weeks drawing up the scaled venue plan. He then created the lighting design in Vectorworks, which allowed the creative team to sit in virtual mode and begin plotting the cues of the show.

Being able to design the show in the visualisation suite with the director allowed us to be able to spend extra time on each of the cues and get the show almost perfect before we bumped into the theatre.

This allowed us to spend more time

Jason has just returned from London having taken over Lighting Design of the hit West End show Peter Pan Goes Wrong, produced by Lunchbox Theatrical Productions, which opens in New Zealand before its Australian Premiere in Melbourne in December. His team will also design the lighting for Melbourne Luna Park’s “Luna Dark” Halloween event. www.movinglight.com.au

incorporating three LED screens: two thin 4-metre LED screens and a centre 8 metre x 4 metre large central screen into the production.

These screens provided all the story -telling content, ranging from “live feeds” through to moving images, still images and text. The screens were able to provide wonderful images during the show that also added the extra design element.

Putting all this together created powerful imagery that allowed the creative team to provide the audience with a strong, visually entertaining production.

Technical details: The story has an element of the old world and new world of Rock and Roll which needed to be shown through the use of parcans, moving lights, LED cans and lasers. The lighting rig consisted of 24 x Bumble Bee 330 spots, 12 x 230 Beam Sharpies, 12 x 60 watt LED Profiles, 30 x 8 watt LED Cans, 64 x Par VNSP Cans, 15 x 1500 watt Blinders, and 12 x Ray Cans.

www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 62

Christian Peterson.

Photo: Maxwell Batista.

WAAPA Student Sounds Out Cirque

Perth. I lived in Perth and they happened to need an extra hand in the sound department. Right place at the right time, but had I not asked, it may never have happened!

When did you decide you wanted think that allows students a level of What does your job at Cirque du to be a sound engineer and why? ‘make it yours’. That’s crucial for Soleil entail?

I played music during my high transitioning into work outside of I work as a PA Tech (Public Address school years and performed in music WAAPA, where project management Technician, known in Australia as a theatre, which got me interested in and collaborating with other people Systems Technician) in the Sound sound. It wasn’t until I recorded my and departments is a skill everyone Department; my role involves band’s EP when I was 15 that I really needs. The lecturers we had were designing, rigging and tuning the got into sound. I bought some awesome and many of them have sound system for each new venue we microphones, a little mixer and become colleagues and great friends. arrive in. On arena tours, we move software to record it and it was all How did the gig with Cirque du every week and each venue has its done in my bedroom. A bit Soleil come about? challenges in acoustics, audience cringeworthy to listen back to now, I left WAAPA in 2015 and was seating, height/weight restrictions, etc. though you have to start somewhere. working full time as a sound technician I also mix the show as backup to the It’s interesting that a lot of legendary on festivals, concerts and theatre Head of Sound and a lot of my week is music producers recorded their first shows around Australia. I met some of spent on projects, whether new or albums on only four-track cassette the crew on the Cirque du Soleil maintenance. On this show I have over machines and now any kid who has an show Kooza in Melbourne last year and 150 speaker cabinets to maintain, rig iPad or a laptop can produce, mix and asked if they were hiring. I took a and tune, and the stage has audience export an entire album to the world. resume, wrote a cover letter, treated it on either side, so it’s quite unique in its What did you enjoy most about like an interview and after pestering design. We have an eight-piece band your studies at WAAPA? them enough that day (and the day I as well as artists and props mic’d on The real highlight was working on came back!), they asked if I would join stage. There’s a lot of wireless systems, the shows; they’re all student run and I them for the next leg of the tour in whether it’s microphones, in-ear

Production and Design graduate Christian Peterson is now touring the world as a sound engineer with Cirque du Soleil. According to WAAPA, graduates from the Sound and Lighting courses invariably have no trouble finding immediate employment.

63 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

monitoring for the band or comms for the technicians. The show takes a day to load in and have ready for performance, and it’s all packed up in under five hours, but we’ll have that down to even less, soon.

What are you working on now?

I am on Corteo, that’s just begun its North American arena tour, since it’s a remount of a big top show. We spent a few months in Montreal (where Cirque is based) and Quebec City designing and building the show, and since then we’ve opened in New Orleans and (at the time of writing) are about to load-in to Houston.

What do you love most about being a sound engineer?

I really enjoy the mix of creative and technical work that is involved in sound engineering. Some days I’m behind the console mixing a show based on the emotive and acrobatic content on stage and other days I’m rigging the speakers, making cables and loading trucks (and there’s no shortage of trucks...). Sound is very subjective and we all respond to it differently, so if an audience walks away applauding and happy, then that makes it worth the work. Ultimately what we do is a service, and I’m very thankful that I get to do what I love.

You have to enjoy working in a team environment as, like any career, the biggest challenges are often to do with people. Luckily I am surrounded by a great team at Cirque, with people from all around the world!

Corteo.

Photo: Cirque Du Soleil.

Corteo.

Photo: Cirque Du Soleil.

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“We were in one of NIDA’s smaller performance spaces, the Reg Grundy Studio, and the play was staged on a revolving stage in the round,” Veronique said.

“One of the challenges was, because we were lighting the audience area, that we had to create a dynamic lighting rig that worked for all the scenes but also didn’t shine in the audience’s eyes.”

The movement of the stage and how that affected the way actors were seen by the audience was another factor.

“Normally you know where the actor is going to be on stage and how they’re going to move. However, we didn’t have a revolve in the rehearsal room. On a revolve, the lights are coming from all sides as the actors rotate and are dipping in and out of the light, with the shadow on their faces changing the way they look. It’s much more dynamic. Depending on where a person is sitting, the performance looks different,” she said.

“The director wanted the audience to feel part of the production and Set construction for Fraternal.

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Lighting An Audience NIDA’s 2017 October season of student productions offered an interesting challenge for student Veronique Benett. She worked as the Lighting Designer on Fraternal - an original play from NIDA graduate Jake Stewart - which lit the audience. achieved this by lighting the audience as well as the set. This would then bring them into the same room as the actors. There were also venetian blinds all the way around the set, so the audience could be brought into the room.

“The lighting set the tone for the mood and what was happening. It was also used to help to shift the story along.

“I used a lot of colour, but in really soft tints for the set - like lavenders and chocolate shades. We lit the audience mainly using parcans, around 70 in total for the whole setup, with predominantly a warm wash.

“We had to shape the space.

Sometimes the lighting was on the

audience and we would adjust the brightness and intensity according to the scene and how we wanted the audience to feel. Other times it was completely off them because we didn’t want them to be seen and we didn’t want them to feel as though everyone else could see each other in the room.

“Once you’re in the venue, a lot of it is done as you go along because things look better once you try them out in different places. You have to account for what you see in the venue. It was a great lesson as a new designer to build flexibility into the lighting rig.”

Another challenge arrived in that the Reg Grundy Studio is a film studio and

This image and right: Scenes from Fraternal.

isn’t equipped with a standard rig like other theatres.

“I found a love of the really lowtech parcans and I also used an older light called a Pattern 23, which had really beautiful light because they’d been maintained by the team at NIDA. I was able to hire a couple of movers I had four of those in the corners.

Other than that it was conventional

lights, based on what we had here. I didn’t use any of the film stock.”

Why is important to be part of the process early?

“If you’re part of the design team early you can be part of the decision making and design process, rather than facilitate someone else’s vision.

You can incorporate the lighting as part of the whole picture on stage”.

Veronique Benett, who was a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Technical Theatre and Stage Management) student at the time of the production, is now studying for a Master of Fine Arts (Design for Performance) at NIDA and training to be a multi-disciplinary designer (lighting, set and costume).

The creative team included Ben Sheen, the Director, and Masters of Fine Arts (Design for Performance) student Genevieve Graham, who was Set and Costume Designer.

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Training

67 Stage Whispers SPARK 2019

Creative Development

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Photo: George Popov.

Australian Performing Arts Grammar School is an independent school unlike any other in Sydney.

Students are offered direct contact with industry specialists in a timetable that fits the NSW curriculum, alongside a day and a half of Performing Arts subjects.

Students are able to indulge their passions and enrich their learning in areas that inspire them. By scheduling these specialist Performing Arts courses during school hours, APGS students still have their afternoons and weekends free for their own training, extra-curricular activities and professional productions.

The Performing Arts curriculum is divided into Drama, Dance, Music and Visual Arts. Students can specialise or work across all four streams.

Senior students are extended through APGS’ creative partnership with the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA), where they can engage creatively at a renowned tertiary institution. The Performing Arts tutors are a rotating staff of industry specialists who are all active and well respected in their field of expertise, giving students the opportunity to gain an invaluable insight into these industries, and build connections.

Online extras!

Watch The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at AGPS’ 2019 Showcase. https://youtu.be/pSRp3TwjVIg The school celebrates their students at numerous showcases throughout the year.

A dedicated Music showcase is held in the first term and Drama and Art showcases follow in terms two and three. Musical Theatre and Dance classes work towards large showcases at the end of each semester. These performances offer students safe and supportive place to creatively express themselves and foster resilience and selfconfidence.

For more details visit www.apgs.nsw.edu.au

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Conference Of The Birds (2014).

Photo: A&R Coates Event Photography.

SPARK 2019

Setting The Stage Melbourne-based performing arts academy Stage School Australia has this year launched a new initiative to assist in the talent development of young performers as they move into tertiary level education.

First Year Performance Intensive is a full-time, year-long course where performers work on an abridged Broadway musical, an abridged Shakespeare, a cabaret evening, a musical revue, a pantomime, a naturalistic drama and a nonnaturalistic drama.

Seussical (2013).

Photo: Timothy Burgess.

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The course is designed for small groups of students to have maximum contact time with tutors.

For over twenty years, Stage School Australia augmented their weekly ongoing classes with intensive opportunities to rehearse and perform a full production, whether on tour with Seussical, Joseph and Once on this Island, or in Melbourne-based productions such as Spring Awakening, Wicked or the most recent sell-out season of Les Misérables at the National Theatre.

The progression seen in technique, creativity and energy when performers are working towards onstage performance seasons is dramatic, and far exceeds the progression the company has experienced from simply studio-based training.

This is what led Stage School to devise this year long programme, where performers alternate between intensive studio based ‘bootcamp’ training, rehearsals for performance seasons, and actual performance seasons in front of live audiences.

This group of performers then becomes a repertory company as part

For more information about auditioning to join the First Year Performance Intensive Course or the performances please visit firstyearperformance.com.au of their training, visiting schools and performing a range of plays and musicals for young audiences.

Performers also have the thrill of taking a show ‘on the road’ as part of a regional Victorian tour in the September school holidays.

The teaching staff includes James Simpson (Associate Musical Director of the Australian tour of Disney’s Aladdin and Disney’s The Lion King), Andrew Strano (Improvisation Fulbright Scholarship award winner), Cara Dinley (Course Director & Dance artistic director, director, choreographer and producer), Emily Wilkinson (Voice Studies - performer and vocal coach), Jacqui Green (Jazz & Musical Theatre - choreographer, dancer and dance teacher) and Tony Nikolakopoulos (Drama - leading Australian actor and director).

Les Misérables (2019).

Photo: Kit Haselden.

Online extras!

Get a sneak peek at the sitzprobe rehearsal of Les Misérables. Scan or visit https://youtu.be/0iQb7EwjSoU

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Showcase

Shubshri Kandiah.

Photo: Nick Morrissey.

Queensland Conservatorium’s

Disney Princess Queensland Conservatorium musical theatre graduate Shubshri Kandiah had all of her wishes granted after winning the lead role of Princess Jasmine in Disney’s smash hit musical Aladdin.

Ainsley Melham and Shubshri Kandiah in Disney’s Aladdin.

Photo: James Green.

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Graduating from the Bachelor of Musical Theatre six months ago, 22year-old Shubshri Kandiah is now the star of the country’s biggest show in her professional musical theatre debut.

She got a chance to play Princess Jasmine for the final weeks of the show’s Brisbane run at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), before wowing audiences in her hometown, Perth.

“I found out through my agent, who flew to Brisbane and caught up with me over coffee. I was pouring honey into my chai when my agent broke the news and the honey just went all over the table!

“I was excited but a part of me didn’t really believe it. There are still times when I feel like it’s not real.”

Shubshri has always been a fan of Disney’s classic movie musicals and had a special connection to Aladdin.

“It was the first film with a princess on screen who looked like me. And now to bring that character to life on stage is an incredible experience,” she said.

“As a kid I saw Jasmine and wanted to be like her because she was a beautiful Disney princess but as an adult I really admire her strength, intelligence and that she is never afraid to voice her opinion.”

Shubshri began performing at a young age, learning classical Indian dance, ballet and violin. She moved across the country from Perth after being accepted into the Queensland Conservatorium’s Bachelor of Musical Theatre.

During her studies, Shubshri dazzled audiences in productions like Sweet Charity and West Side Story, and was a featured vocalist with the Queensland Pops Orchestra.

Shortly before graduating last year, she performed the role of Ayah in Opera Queensland’s The Pearlfishers and was chosen to sing a duet with Broadway legend Liz Callaway at QPAC. “My three years studying at the Queensland Conservatorium provided me with so many skills that I have taken with me,” she said.

“From voice warm-ups to script analysis, dance technique and a knowledge of vocal health that will

allow me to perform eight shows a week - I felt more than prepared for a career in the industry.”

Queensland Conservatorium Head of Performing Arts, Associate Professor Paul Sabey, said Shubshri was always destined for great things.

“Her talent was evident from day one, and she has the drive and dedication to make it in the industry,” he said.

“She is a performer who is able to reach every audience member through her performance, which is a rare quality.”

Queensland Conservatorium Director Professor Scott Harrison said that fostering close ties with organisations like the Queensland Performing Arts Centre had opened opportunities for students like Shubshri.

“We are fortunate to be based in

the heart of Brisbane’s cultural precinct, and our relationship with organisations like QPAC mean that our students enjoy incredible opportunities to learn from industry professionals and perform alongside the world’s best artists,” he said.

Fellow Queensland Conservatorium

and Mamma Mia! The Queensland Conservatorium has also expanded its performing arts program with a new Bachelor of Acting that prepares graduates for a career on the stage and screen under the direction of internationally renowned teachers and performers.

graduate Kimberley Hodgson is also in the cast of Aladdin and will understudy Shubshri in the lead role.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Bachelor of Musical Theatre degree has turned out some of the country’s finest triple threat talent, with graduates cast in high profile productions like My Fair Lady, The Book of Mormon, Beautiful

Associate Professor Paul Sabey said both courses offered a pathway to a career in the industry for aspiring performers.

“Our goal is to ensure that talented performers are equipped with the passion, drive and skills to perform across a range of disciplines, from theatre to film and TV.”

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