VCE Drama

Incursion with Performance Poet, Scottie Wings

On 19 July, Year 12 Drama welcomed performance poet, Scottie Wings, to the class. Year 11 Drama students were also invited to join in during their lunchtime and it was great to see so many of them attend.

Scottie began by performing three of his own poems, showcasing his command of the English language, his depth of feeling and his energetic employment of the expressive skills.

He then led a workshop on the art of storytelling, on what makes an engaging performer and performance, and a series of wonderful writing activities to help with writing scripts and thinking beyond the metaphor.

Students were first invited to tell their life story to a small group - in one minute only! Various instructions were given to each student whose turn it was, such as make your entrance interesting. The one minute time frame meant that students had to move fast and limit editing themselves. A discussion was had afterwards about what made people’s stories engaging. Energy? Climax? Body language?

A highlight from the workshop was a writing activity to help with script work (something that the Years 11 and 12 students have to do when they are play building). Scottie got students to write three stream of consciousness stories, each within a minute. The first was simply whatever came into their head. The second story had to be as if  this story was going to be read to everyone on the planet (what would you want to share?). The third had to be as if  no one was ever going to read it. In fact, it was going to go straight in the bin (Scottie told us he’d had a primary school student in one of his workshops once eating it!) because the piece had to be deeply personal.

Scottie told us he believed good stories and great performers have a knack of combining these three elements to their art. Something personal, something of themselves but also something greater than themselves.

The workshop was a refreshing, energetic, fun and educational look at performance making as much as those four expressive skills we are continuing to explore in VCE Drama.

Kate Ellis

Years 9-12 Drama Teacher