Drama and Dance Snapshot

Drama and Dance 

Students are developing their creative brains in Drama and Dance in 2025, with an array of challenging concepts being explored across all year levels. They have been encouraged to participate to the best of their ability in a variety of tasks, building their skills in communication, confidence and collaboration. 

Drama

In Year 7 – students have been learning about First Nations Theatre and developing a Dreamtime Story for performance. Then they’ve challenged themselves physically with a unit run by Yip Yip Circus performers. 

In Year 8 – the focus has been on Playback Theatre and an exploration of how emotions can be shaped into interesting tableaux and performance work, with actors from Playback Australia. 

In Year 9 – students have been making stuff up in a unit of Improvisation and then moved to Renaissance Italy to play with masks in a unit on Commedia dell’Arte.

In Year 10 – they are being forced to question everything in a unit on Epic Theatre featuring the works of Brecht. They then demonstrated their acting and design skills through an exploration of the Australian play Ruby Moon. 

In Year 11, the ATAR and General students went back to New Orleans in 1946 while they studied Tennessee Williams’ text A Streetcar Named Desire, and then demonstrated that they could handle abstract and difficult concepts, looking at Angela Betzien’s Hoods. They have also navigated their first round of practical and written exams with confidence, whilst most also participated in the school production.

In Year 12 - the ATAR and General students have stayed closer to home, exploring Louis Nowra’s Australian text Cosi and then moved to early 2000s France to explore Yazmina Reza’s fun and chaotic play God of Carnage. The Year 12s have also faced their final round of exams and are gearing up for Mocks this week. 

Dance

In Year 8 – students have been exploring the fundamentals of dance with a focus on Hip-Hop and Contemporary styles. We have seen a large uptake of students choosing to study Dance in Year 8. 

In Year 9 – Students have been Jazzing it up and exploring things ‘all that jazz’ with plenty of funky music and self-devised moves. 

In Year 10 – Students have been getting in touch with their emotions and exploring a physical vocabulary in a unit on lyrical dance. The focus has been on devising their own works. 

We went Into The Woods!

The whole school production performed to four very full audiences in our all-singing, all-dancing take on Stephen Sondheim’s classic fairy tale production. Students showed their performance prowess onstage, their incredible design skills in backstage and technical roles and assisted reliably in front of house roles. Special thanks must go to the highly talented GATE Art students who designed and created the incredible beanstalk and some of our gorgeous costumes.

We loved this adventure and are excitedly anticipating our next musical production… stay tuned. 

Taneeka Grant, Dance & Drama