Drama

Year 9 

Year 9 students are focusing well this term as they begin to navigate their first year of their elective subject. Students have been introduced to the key elements of Drama, which are foundational aspects of performance and have begun experimenting with their onstage acting journeys. 

Year 9 have had the wonderful opportunity to work creatively both individually and in groups to develop some interesting and innovative scene work for their performances. 

Using their understanding of Elements of Drama theory concepts, such as atmosphere, time, space and tension within a scene, students have been able to build creative storylines that showcase an emotion or idea behind their performance. 

Students are also asked to constantly reflect on how these choices can impact audience engagement. Year 9 were also fortunate to have the opportunity to experiment with the PAC lighting to help support their creative development by using different colours and effects for their scenes. 

Year 10 

This term, Year 10 students focused on the Theatrical Form of Commedia Dell’arte, a comedy-based form of Drama. Students also experimented using Slapstick comedy, Farce and Irony as well as Lazzi and Larval Masks as dramatic conventions for performance. 

All these ideas were explored experientially, with students drawing on practical activities to help convey meaning through the story. Students are now in the process of creating their own Commedia Dell’arte performance scenes that they will present for an audience with props, costumes, lighting and sound for their upcoming assignment task. 

Year 11 

Year 11 students have commenced their senior studies of Drama. Early Term 1, students re-examined key principles of acting and scene development to make acting look as realistic as possible. When exploring these principles, students highlighted key examples of how to portray critical ideas to performance-based techniques and practised experiential learning activities to help solidify conceptual understanding. These key elements of acting have helped students prepare for a group project as their assignment task this term. This task required creating, developing and performing a scripted piece of work for an audience that highlights the key foundations of drama in their performance. Students will creatively use their knowledge and adapt prior understanding towards a stimulus to create an interesting and engaging performance.

Year 12 

Year 12 Drama students travelled to Sydney at the beginning of term to attend workshops and view professional performances to help support their understanding of theoretical dramatic concepts. Students had the opportunity to visit the Belvoir St Theatre’s performance of‘Tiny Beautiful Things’, a show about learning to work through contradictions of life as they arise. Additionally to this performance, students were fortunate to attend the 2024 season ‘Onstage’, a performance-based showcase that presents NSW Band 6 resulted Individual and Group Projects from the HSC 2023 Drama cohort. 

‘Onstage’ and ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ left our students in awe of the creativity and imagination use and gave them ideas to begin working on their own HSC projects next term. A workshop at the Sydney Theatre Company also provided students the opportunity to delve into the process of improvisation and build ideas for their HSC Group Projects. 

Finally, students were given the opportunity to attend a Belvoir St Theatre workshop that experientially explored the key philosophies of one of our HSC studied theatre practitioners, Jacques Lecoq. Students obtained wonderful experiences by attending this excursion, and as we returned to the classroom, we continued to use this enthusiasm to study our second topic ‘Studies in Drama’ and practitioner ‘Jerzy Grotowski’. 

Year 12 are now using their knowledge from both these practitioners to help create and develop their second HSC Assignment.