Theatre
The Blackbox theatre
Year 11
by Kate Ellis, teacher of Drama and Language & Literature
The last two weeks have been truly enriching and eye-opening for Theatre students.
On Tuesday 7 May we went to the Melbourne Theatre Company for our first evening performance, The Violent Outburst that Drew Me to You. The play, directed by Prue Stent and lit by award-winning lighting designer Amelia Lever-Davidson, ‘…tackles the ticking time bomb of adolescence with humour and heart’. Students remarked on how the mature script and performance dealt with the thematic concerns of the play, ie that they weren’t patronising!
Both Prue and Amelia will join us for a Q & A at Preshil in the coming weeks; here students can make links between the skills we have been building in class and professional contexts.
In the same week, students also began their Masterclass series with Leisa Shelton. Leisa is a ‘…performance artist/maker and curator with a practice that foregrounds collaboration and an advocacy for new Australian transdisciplinary work’.
With the students, Leisa has been facilitating practice and dialogue around the nature of composition and what we already have at our disposal when thinking about how we create work. Students, for instance, were asked to empty the entirety of their backpacks onto The Blackbox floor and examine what stories each ‘artefact’ might hold... what weight, what significance; as well as what items might symbolise when it came to who they were.
Leisa also introduced a ritual familiar to many physical theatre and eastern theatre traditions, that of washing the floor at the beginning and end of each ‘practice’. Our wonderful Theatre students took time to ritualise the beginning of their work through this practice, remaining present as they went from one side of the room to the other on their hands and knees.
For further information about the play and Leisa’s work please follow the links below:
https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/season-2019/the-violent-outburst-that-drew-me-to-you/