Triumph!!

Tim Roach

Teacher - Drama

Last month Impro Melbourne hosted the annual Schools TheatreSports Challenge. 

The entire Impro Melbourne Company volunteered their time to host the event in Elwood, to mentor students from 8 different schools and including students from across across Years 7 to12.   We take this opportunity to thank Impro Melbourne members for their commitment, tireless enthusiasm and for making this experience available to our students.

Brunswick Secondary College fielded teams in both the Intermediate and Senior Divisions at the Challenge - and our teams earned FIRST PLACE in BOTH!

TheatreSports is a ‘competitive’ version of Improvised Drama, designed to give audiences the same feeling that one might have at a sporting match. You may have seen it be displayed in various school events such as a House TheatreSports competition, or on TV in shows like ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’.  A TheatreSports team involves 3-5 people, but scenes can involve any amount of people from that team. Each scene is scored out of 5 points by each of three judges, and essentially the highest-scoring team at the end of the show wins. 

Participating in the Impro Melbourne TheatreSports Challenge has been a fantastic experience for my students. Seeing them grow as performers and develop friendships across year levels has been wonderful, as has seeing them develop a love of improvisation. Improvising is such a powerful tool for young people. to use - teaching them to think in different ways, to work together to problem-solve and to be creative.

Our victorious students have even started making up their own TheatreSports games - and now they want to start getting ready for next year to defend their titles next year!

Click on the gallery to see the action!

Gabriel Di Falco

Year 9

Intermediate

Once it is your turn to go up on stage, your creativity and expression run the show. The golden rule of improv, in general, is to always make your partners look good - so you aim to interact effectively and to accept any offers that teammates might want to introduce to the scene. Some light-hearted jokes may also make the judges laugh a bit, which is always good!

Liv Talko

Year 8

Intermediate

The ImproMelbourne Theatresports Challenge was held at the Phoenix Theatre at Elwood College, and it was against teams from different schools. When we got there, we did an hour-long workshop that was run by some of the Impromptu Melbourne staff. We met with our mentors who work with IM and helped us a lot throughout the day. We chose the games that we wanted to play, and then it was showtime! All the teams performed in front of an audience, and everyone did so well. After each game that a team played, the judges gave scores, and the team at the end of the day with the best scores won the whole competition. There was the award ceremony, where the judges gave awards for the best line of dialogue, best physical offer and most supportive player. After the Intermediate ceremony, the seniors did their performance, and at the end of the day, we were lucky enough that both of our teams came home with trophies!

Emily Lynch

Year 8

Intermediate

Each year, we hold a Theatresports competition at our school which runs pretty similarly to the Improv Melbourne event. 

We played for our Houses (Abyad, Caagar, LanSe and Oro) with a Senior and Intermediate division.  From this in-school event our two competitive teams were picked - one for the senior and one for intermediate competition. 

In preparation for the inter-school competition, we practiced every Friday before school – it took a while to get used to waking up so early! In the end it was worth it though because we all ended up being pretty great friends. We got pretty good at the games too! Then we had an awesome workshop with an ImproMelbourne company member, who helped us to make our scenes better and taught us some new games. We all had a great time and by the end we were much more confident than before!

Lisette Wilkinson

Year 11

Performing arts Captain

I enjoy improvisation because there is a constant element of surprise to it. Particularly in groups, you can’t control where the scene goes - you just need to embrace what is happening and find a way to build on it. This act of building on a scene has given me the opportunity to be creative in a different way to what would usually be expected in a performance space. Improvisation has taught me valuable skills like quick-thinking, responding to unexpected situations and working in a team. These skills have helped me in everyday life situations, as well as on the stage. Additionally, participating in improvisation has built my confidence when facing these situations.

Lindel Bell

Editor

It is wonderful to see the BSC teams being rewarded with accolades in both divisions at this event! 

These students have competed together over the past two, three and four years - continually working on their individual and team skills - even via remote learning and remote competition in 2020/2021! 

This year's wins were almost inevitable, and are a credit to them all. They have challenged themselves by taking risks within the learning environment and competition, all the time being continually supportive of each other, as well as determined to succeed. 

Along the way, they have been expertly guided and championed by BSC's own improv king, Tim Roach - whose enthusiasm for the sport  is infectious and knows no bounds. 

Congratulations to Tim and the Teams - we look forward to next year!