Dance & Drama

9/10 VCE Dance

Our VCE Dance students had an amazing time attending Sheltering, a Triple Bill by Bangarra Dance Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne on Wednesday! This inspiring live performance gave students the chance to experience the incredible storytelling, culture and artistry of one of Australia's leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dance companies. Opportunities like this enrich classroom learning, broaden students' understanding of dance and inspire their own creativity. At Wantirna College, we love being able to provide our students with memorable experiences that bring learning to life!

9/10 Drama Performance

9/10 Drama recently presented a dynamic devised ensemble performance using contemporary theatre conventions to explore issues important to young people today.

Working collaboratively from a range of stimulus materials, students devised, directed, and performed an eclectic collection of scenes examining themes such as identity, relationships, and social pressures. They also took responsibility for the production elements of the performance, designing lighting, costumes and set pieces to enhance their artistic vision.

Through this process, students applied drama practices to devise, rehearse, and refine performance work for an audience. They demonstrated creativity, collaboration and critical reflection while making informed artistic choices across both performance and design to communicate meaning, reflecting key learning outcomes of the Victorian Curriculum.

Gabi Bergman

Performing Arts

Year 8 Drama

Year 8 students explored two major theatrical styles this Semester: comedy and mime. At the end of their first unit, they presented short performances using mime techniques such as exaggeration, space and weight. In the second unit, students turned to comedy and staged their production of Bamboozled, experimenting with three classic commedia dell'arte characters: Pantalone, Arlecchino, and Brighella. We look forward to seeing these students continue exploring Drama in the years ahead, and we're excited to welcome a new group of Year 8 students next semester.

9/10 Theatre Technology

The Year 9/10 Theatre Technology class explored four major design areas: set, lighting, costume, and sound. Students developed their understanding through a range of workshops and activities, building the vocabulary that underpins each design area. They then put this learning into practice by redesigning fairy tales and presenting their ideas to an audience.

Our brand-new Year 9/10 Theatre Watch critique class began by developing vocabulary across acting skills and the analysis and evaluation of theatre. The students were fortunate to see four productions: Black Light by Malthouse Theatre, The Bookbinder at Arts Centre Melbourne, Waitress at Her Majesty's Theatre, and & Juliet by Windmill Theatre Company at Bunjil Place. 

This exposure to live theatre, and to analysing it, allowed them to develop a design brief and step into the role of directors for the Year 9/10 Theatre Technology fairy tales. They developed their ideas and presented them at a presentation evening, with work that went above and beyond what you'd expect at their level. I am incredibly excited to see these students come through the Theatre Studies program, and I look forward to seeing what they achieve in the future.

Surya Ganesan

Performing Arts