Performing Arts

Year 7 Drama - Horror

Our Year 7 Drama students are diving into the thrilling world of Horror this term! They’ll commence a creative exploration into iconic horror characters and explore atmosphere through lighting and sound design. Through hands-on exploration and improvisation, students will learn to use soundscape and tension to create Horror Performances. 

Students have already been demonstrating some fantastic skills in creating mood and atmosphere in their pre-test and the team is excited to see what other ways they can "jump scare" their audiences. 

- Amy Porter 

Year 9 Theatre Skills

The Year 9 Theatre Elective class have been busy experimenting with special effects makeup to create zombie hands and faces. They will then apply this to their comedic script interpretation of '10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse', alongside acting choices, lighting and sound designs. Through testing and trialing, students have been able to create some fantastic looks. They have also acquired knowledge of products, tools and techniques associated with this area of theatre design.  

- Laura Washington 

Here's what students had to say: 

When applying my zombie makeup, I focused on a lightish white coverage base to create a translucent skin look. I then used colours like black, green, brown and a cool pink to dab and build onto my hand. Using the black, I created a dot pattern on my sponge to create almost a scurvy look which helped add texture. I found the green and brown contour helped add an earthy look, that made my zombie hand look like it had been buried. Lastly, I added fake blood around my cuticles and waited for it to dry a bit so it would become sticky and splodged it around a bit to look like it had been around for years.

When under the stage light, the hand looked more washed out compared to in the dressing room. Usually this would be bad, but it actually helps make an undead aesthetic. 

- Charlotte Cowen (9B)

To put together my zombie hand, I first started with a pale white grease paint all over my hand, mixing a little bit of black to make it a light grey. I then unevenly dabbed some green grease paint on my hand in random places, to give the effect of rotting, moss or just plainly, zombie. I then layered a bunch of black grease paint on my fingernails and a little bit around it, purposely making it messy. I also added some on my knuckles. Then I used fake blood around the fingernails and on knuckles, anywhere I had put the black. I added blood powder to make the fake blood less runny and pastier, adding some more black greasepaint to make it look like weeping scabs. Then to finish it off and really give it the full effect of a zombie hand, I added more blends of grey, green, black and white. 

- Zoe Taufale (9D)

How I created the zombie effect: To start off, I layered white grease paint, dabbing it with a sponge all over my hand to create a nice, matte surface for me to work on. Next, I used black grease paint, dabbing it with a sponge on top of my nails/cuticles and in between my fingers. I also used the black grease paint to contour the areas of my hand where my bone structure was prevalent using an eyeshadow brush . This really helped the shadows and dimensions of my hand pop, revealing the skinny and undead nature of a zombie. The eyeshadow brush was a lot more delicate to use, which helped create a natural outline of the bone structure, being a better option over the sponge, since it wouldn’t allow me to do the outline. To finish up my zombie hand, I poured fake blood in between my cuticles to depict the zombie's swollen and chopped nails. I also dabbed a small amount of green grease paint with a sponge onto the nail where the blood was oozing out to create a textured and repelling infection. I really wanted to create some sort of scab infection on my zombie hand as well, so I decided to use the tip of a cotton swab and pressed it down onto my skin while I poured more fake blood on top of it. This really sealed the deal for a gross scab look. For last-minute touches, I dabbed small amounts of black grease paint using an eyeshadow brush onto random areas of my hand to replicate dust and dirt. And that’s the final look! 

- Ingrid Bernhardsson (9B)