By Sara Horan
I’m sure every old drama student who has passed through Year 11 understands the suffering, the pain, the excitement and the nerves of the Year 11 Production that is performed every year; a group effort by all Drama students.
This year’s production ‘Journey Through Life’ focused on the journey of a woman’s life. Set at a woman’s 90th birthday party, the production showcases the different stages of her life as well as the concerns and changes of parts of every woman’s life. For example, one of the stages (childhood) focused on the loss of innocence and naivety.
Originally, the idea was to base the different life stages on fairy tales and well-known stories. This eventually did not come to fruition and only some groups took this into their performance. For example, one group had hints of Alice and Wonderland in their piece about helicopter parenting or how my own group based our performance on the Wizard of Oz by using the idea of the Yellow Brick Road for the journey of life, which you can see in the poster.
For all future Year 11 drama students, flexibility is key because original ideas will be taken, cut and moulded into a completely different idea. Sometimes you won’t have perfected your performance until the day before. Right before the performance day, we were still making costume changes and deciding how we were going to apply these into the piece.
Either way, the entire event (while quite stressful on many occasions and required a lot of commitment) is so much fun and is a great experience which teaches you so many skills used for the HSC Group Projects.
As Gabriella Sposari, future Performing Arts Captain for 2019-2020, reflected:
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The Year 11 production ‘Journey Through Life’, occurred on both Thursday and Friday night and saw all the very talented year 11 drama students perform a range of pieces. The production was created purely by the year 11 drama girls and our teachers, Mrs Perry and Mrs Scoines, after many months of work. The production follows the 90th birthday of Dot, and therefore the many groups devised pieces follow the journeys throughout her life from the ages of 0 to 20, right through to 60+, each delving into the issues associated with the age group in a variety of dramatic techniques. The whole process was in fact that, a process. There were many high and low moments, where creativity flourished and tiredness got the better of us, but in all, it was a brilliant experience that saw everyone in the audience home with a feeling of connectedness, humour and a full belly from the birthday cake we shared. Overall, I am incredibly proud of the group of girls and I’m so thrilled to have been given the opportunity to take part in a beautiful production with my drama family. I hope for there to be many more productions not only year 11 production evening, and each girl from every year group has the opportunity to connect with the girls and have an interactive creative outlet.
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A ‘Journey Through Life’ was a great experience to be a part of and I am grateful for the experience, as I’m sure everyone else in Year 11 Drama are. Right before going on stage I wasn't particularly nervous but excited. As I entered the stage, I immediately forgot where I was and snapped into my muscle memory from rehearsing our piece over and over again. Except instead of hearing nothing, you could hear the laughter and energy in the room, and the experience gave me such an adrenaline rush. I am looking forward to seeing what the future Year 11s do with their production. The production really brought the ‘drama family’ all together and I’m so glad to bring these people with me into my scary year 12 year.