Ready, Steady, ACT!

Welcome to the MSMC Theatre Studies Class of 2007, tracking our progress across the vast,windswept tundra that is Units 3 and 4 Theatre Studies! It has taken us some time to get ourselves up and running on this site, but here we are.

Who and where are we at? We are a happy gang of eight students with even numbers of both sexes, all in Year 12. I am Scotty, the partially-stressed teacher who is new to this school but already feel like I have been here for ages.

At this moment - the start of week three - we have already achieved a lot. Over the holidays, the team did a lot of research into a range of different plays - all Australian - and upon returning to school, each member made a “pitch” to the group about which play they thought would be most ideal for the group to present. There were many focus aspects including the style and setting of the play, casting issues, production issues and appropriateness issues.

From the inital range of over 20 plays, the team shortlisted 3: “Gary’s House” by Debra Oswald, “Secret Bridesmaid’s Business” by Elizabeth Coleman and “After Dinner” by Andrew Bovell.  After some lively and informed discussion, this list was shortened even further to two plays - “Gary’s House” and “After Dinner”.

 

In the end, the team decided that we would present as our Unit 3 production, “After Dinner” by Andrew Bovell. I’m sure some of the students will comment about the process of selection from their perspective once they crank up their own blog sites related to this one.

 

As this play takes place in a bistro/restaurant, the team decided to choose a company name that reflected this theme. So, borrowing from the current television series involving competing cooks, our production company is titled: “Ready, Steady, Act! Productions.”

 

We have assigned production and acting roles and are ready to go. Our tireless set designer has already drafted a number of designs and our costume and make-up team are also well on the way to discovering the joys of 1980’s style (?!) Our company dramaturg has created a “compost”, which is not as unattractive as it sounds, but I will let him explain that, and our student director is well on the way to developing a nervous condition.

 

So, all is well and truly set in place. We hope you enjoy sharing the journey with us and look forward to reading and interacting with other Vineblog groups as well.

 

Paul Scott-Williams

Theatre Studies teacher 2007.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Production Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.