Arts & Tech News 

Theatre Studies Performance Round Up 

Year 9 Theatre Studies  

Year 9 Theatre Studies tackled Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this semester, where they recontextualized the performance to be set on a reality TV show, with the crafty producers, King Oberon and trickster puck fairy, Robin, calling all the shots on how the contestants were going to fall in love and break up for the entertainment of the audience. An intelligent and well staged performance was produced by the group. Congratulations to Year 9 Theatre 01 (Pegasus & Garuda) and Ms Guruparan on staging their first mini-production at Nossal.  

Year 10 Theatre Studies  

Year 10 Theatre Studies finished their exploration of script and performance with Moliere’s The Bourgeois Gentleman. The Bourgeois Gentleman is about an ambitious, newly rich man: Monsieur Jourdain, wishing to be part of the upper educated class, is easily swindled by those around him as he is incredibly stupid. The students were able to create a comedic performance by playing up the stupidity of the protagonist and creating comedy through the portrayal of inept Teaching Masters swindling the poor Monsieur Jourdain.  

Unit 1 & Unit 3 Theatre Studies  

Unit 3 Theatre Studies, supported by Unit 1 Theatre Studies students, finally staged their interpretation of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. The short (one hour), absurd, meta murder mystery play was full of laughs, cliches and gasps. The class did a phenomenal job at capturing the suspense of a murder mystery and the notion of a play within a play. Highlights included Cecilia Liu’s dramatic arm movements, Lola Sargasso’s dramatic fainting, Jack Moeller’s death stare as he exited stage, Nathan Orrell’s sneaking around stage, Anika Alam’s dramatic accent and bad back, Keisha Yam’s portrayal of a womanising man, Zahra Ebaad’s depicting a desperate critic wanting to be noticed, Cameron Cooper’s excellent cape work, Sophie Lan’s dramatic sound cues and Joyce Zheng’s excellent lighting operation. This performance was completely staged and interpreted by the students, and they have shown outstanding development in their ability to employ the core skills of problem solving, effective communication, critical and creative thinking and collaboration.  

Top Acts 2022  

In a big Nossal first (and I am certain there will be more in the future), I was fortunate to witness the excellent concert of Top Acts 2022, curated by Candy Bowers, and to celebrate the success of alumni Gabby Rota’s theatre studies monologue performance (Class of '21). The night was a fantastic celebration of what students across Victoria have achieved in the areas of Music, Dance, Drama, Theatre Studies and Media. Each performance seamlessly integrated into each other and the event was less of concert and more of a theatrical spectacular. The performances included VET Music rock bands, original compositions, classical harp playing, comedic and political Drama performances, contemporary and classical dance and (most importantly!) stellar Theatre Studies performances.  Each of the performers had a workshop with the artistic director and further elevated each of the performances from their original renditions. Gabby’s performance of Double was exceptional, and Candy Bowers was able to draw out the best out of their performance.  

For the final time, congratulations Gabby and we look forward to seeing what you do in your next in your performing arts journey.  

Mr Woon

Theatre Studies Teacher