Faculty Report

Term 2 has already been a particularly busy time for the Performing Arts department with events happening both inside and outside of the College.

Rehearsals for this year’s annual musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , are in full swing. On Sunday mornings the cast meet in the Founders Building to learn choreography, block scenes and practise singing the songs. Then in the afternoon the backstage team gather in the basement of the Provence Centre to design and construct minor sets and props. The involvement of staff, students and parents from the Mazenod community is outstanding and truly contributes to what promises to be a wonderful and exciting production. 

The Year 8 Drama classes are currently working on the productions of their spy or film noir movies. Anyone near the Founders Complex during the class time for these students will have witnessed Humphrey Bogart style detectives lurking around the building in pursuit of wrong doers whilst fighting off the femme fatale. The students are certainly enjoying developing their dramatic film skills with this task.

The Year 10 and 11 students have had the wonderful experience of working with Actor Scott Middleton in the development of their performance and expressive skills. Middleton runs Sheoak Productions and has been to the College twice this term to run workshops on the characters of Commedia del’Arte – a renaissance style of Italian comedy. This has certainly taken the students out of their comfort zone but what a thrill it was to see them embrace the challenge and really explore how far they could take their characters.

The Year 12 class in particular has a big term with the presentation of their Unit 3 Ensemble performance SAC. The stimulus this year was ‘Time for Change’ and the students developed a piece based around the role the 7 Deadly sins have played in many of the negative situations found in the world today. After working on devising, scripting, rehearsing and refining the piece since February, the class was finally able to present their work to an audience of staff, family and friends on Wednesday May 15th. This was received well by the audience and gave the parents in particular a chance to see their sons in action on stage.

Felicity Kamevaar

Faculty Head Dramatic Arts