Drama News

The Audience                                                                                    

The precarious climate we now navigate has meant that many of our cultural encounters and expressions of art have succumbed to an abrupt stop. Theatres, cinemas and concert halls that hosted vast audience numbers in a shared experience of music and story-telling have fallen dark for the foreseeable future.

The power of an artform relies on its reception. Without an audience to respond it is merely an expression without purpose. The Mona Lisa in an art gallery might only be oils without your appreciation of its line and subject. The drama of Blanche DuBois is only hysterics without your empathy for her theatrical journey. Beethoven’s Ninth is a beautiful collaboration for the musicians of an orchestra but is so much more, when invested with your time, focus and aural embrace.

As physical distancing constraints begin to ease, a growth in the permitted size of public assemblies  is occurring. However, these numbers are understandably cautious and far from the previous numbers that society enjoyed, allowing us to gather in venues around Sydney. I sympathise for the artists around Australia, and the theatre companies, music venues and entertainment centres who have been prevented from expressing their art through to its complete realisation. To play to an audience concludes the transaction.

We see a plethora of artists moving to online platforms to make art and share it with an audience. Online choirs, play-readings, filmed stage productions, DJs spinning discs, tik-tok dance and music collaborations look to be the only way for us to access art. Our souls yearn for it. It gives us the emotional nourishment we crave. Artists have always been driven to find outlets for their creativity and vast imaginations. It has been reassuring that these urges still exist.

I’m sure positives will come out of this forced pause. Creativity is an element within all of us. Thinking “outside of the box” is essential in these challenging days. As I look online and hear stories of the arts and artists, I am distressed at the predicament their industry faces. I also watch them in awe as they find new ways to express their art and find an audience.

Let’s hope we can gather together as an audience and share in the communion that is live “theatre” before too long.

St Peter’s Players

Circumstances required us to move the after-hours Drama experience of the St Peter’s Players to an online platform in recent weeks. Many of our girls embraced the experience and the challenge of finding new ways to create, perform and appreciate drama via the Zoom technology.

A huge thanks to our tutors, Jodine Wolman and Romy Bartz, who led the classes and made the “at-home” engagement a fun and informative one.

The Primary and Secondary classes will now resume on-campus.

Production at SCEGGS

We were greatly disappointed to cancel the production of Ladies in Black that was scheduled for production in early June at The Eternity Playhouse. The cast were well into rehearsals and having a very rewarding time. Shut-down requirements meant that rehearsals could not take place, and our performance venue also ceased operation. I would hope that one day we might see this musical appear again as a SCEGGS production, but presently it is not possible to say when or how.

It is with much regret that I inform you that our November production of Pretty.Strange has been postponed. The school had commissioned old girl Olivia Satchell to write the play. She has been in workshops with students over the past year. As recently as week 2, we conducted a play-reading of the final draft, via Zoom, with students from the Year 11 Drama class, the Director Ms Rodda and the playwright. All agreed it has been a terrific project, resulting in a super play.

I know our school community and many keen students will be disappointed at this news. It is a decision we have contemplated at length. We consider it important to give the production the fanfare it deserves as a new Australian work and a world premiere. The COVID-19 situation would make it a challenging production time with so many outcomes unknown.

We look forward to presenting Pretty.Strange in 2021.

It is important that we do embrace a creative project. And strive for an audience engagement. A performance outcome will replace the Pretty.Strange production. It will be more manageable and will allow for the elements of surprise that lurk. Students will have the opportunity to contribute to and audition for a project that is presently in development. An announcement will be made in week 7.

Stay tuned.

And now we have arrived at this great fermata – a pause of unspecified length with no clear promise of what is to follow. Even the sound of a live orchestra, that enduring symbol of collaborative human potential, has been subdued.

Benjamin Northey
Principal Conductor in Residence – Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Peter Eyers
Head of Drama