Drama Department News
Past Students Return for Drama and Media Masterclass
Students of VCE Drama from Years 10, 11 and 12 participated in a Devising Drama Masterclass with performer and independent theatre director, former Girtonian, Blake Barnard (2009). Blake quickly captured the attention and the imaginations of the keen drama students with his rapid fire delivery, his humour and his ability to get young performers to be bold in their creative choices. In Blake’s words, “if you’re too worried about failing you can’t create good drama.” The masterclass modelled some new ways of approaching the task of devising scenes from scratch, which Unit 1 and Unit 3 students are grappling with right now as part of their subject outcomes. Here is some of what the students had to say after the class:
“I really appreciated how Blake lead us through a step by step process of building a scene. He encouraged us to improvise spontaneous actions which resulted in effective scenes which were sometimes quite unexpected.”
Georgia McMillan
“The exercise we did using dramatic tableaux was great. It showed me how we can create a story from a series of “living and breathing” images.”
Douglas Andrews
“I was so impressed that Blake got us to create a storyline from starting with just a single word. Also, I loved how he encouraged us to put all of our ideas out there, there’s nothing too stupid to work with if you have the guts to go with it.”
Lucas O’Brien
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Students of VCE Media had not one, but two, former Girtonians visit to share their combined experiences of taking Media as a subject to the next level. Nikki James (2017) has completed first year of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts and Andrew Ayres (2009) is partway through his Bachelor of Film at SAE Creative Media Institute. Both Nikki and Andrew were able to provide the students with insights into the demands of their courses and what they have learned as young screenwriters and film-makers. They were also interested to hear what media products the current VCE class are planning to make and gave some advice about how to transfer creative ideas into an achievable short film. Some strong messages that came through are quoted by students here:
“It was interesting to see where media can take you after school in terms of tertiary courses and real life job situations.”
Dominique Cox
“ They helped me to see how I can approach a couple of difficult challenges I have with my own short film. Andrew got me thinking that I could use technical codes of sound and lighting to create my antagonist, “anxiety” rather than an actor.”
Kate Douglas
“Both Andrew and Nikki told us to “keep it simple” when we are thinking of creating a low budget student film. It made me realise that sometimes I overthink my ideas when they are probably going to work better if I pare it back.”
Jacob Schober
Click on the above images to view the gallery