Scotch College

From Manhattan to the insect world

Jack Fowles takes us through the Drama Department’s 2009 performance program.

Words: Jack Fowles – Drama Captain Photography: Victor Iglesias

The 2009 performance program will take audiences from 1950s Manhattan to the imagery of the insect world, and the imagination of the lost boys to the real world stories of the disenfranchised in our community.

It is going to be a fantastic year for Scotch College drama. We have an extremely exciting array of performances lined up, and the students have already begun the audition process with great anticipation and enthusiasm. This year the Drama Department will present a senior musical, a middle-school play, a Year 7 and 8 play and an exiting new venture entitled ‘The Carrical Project’.

The students were thrilled when it was announced that this year’s senior musical is to be West Side Story. Set on Manhattan’s West Side during the mid-1950s, the show explores the inevitable tragedy of two lovers from different ethnic backgrounds. With music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim it is an ambitious choice, and I speak for all the students when I say that we will welcome its performance early in Term 3 with great enthusiasm. GS

Voices

Scotch is also embarking on an exciting new program as part of the Drama Services sector of the Social Services Program. The program is called ‘Voices’, and it involves students devising a performance tentatively entitled ‘The Carrical Project’, based on the stories of some of the residents at Carrical Rooming House in Mason Street, Hawthorn. We will be working as actors, writers, designers and in marketing/media roles to create a play that tells the stories of these people. The Drama Department is very excited to present this work as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. GS

The Insect Play

The Insect Play by the brothers Capek is this year’s Middle School production with Ruyton Girls’ School. It is a classic, poignant and at times humorous piece of theatre, in which insects serve as metaphors for the same desires that propel people to love, tyrannise and annihilate one another through wars. Whether the play is interpreted as reality, dream or hallucination, I am sure it will spark the students’ imaginations and create an ultimately spellbinding performance.

The Year 7 and 8 play is set in the wonderfully imaginative world of ‘Neverland’ and tells the story of Peter Pan, a mischievous young lad who can fly. Peter has many adventures with his gang of lost boys, Tinker Bell, the Indian princess Tiger Lily, and of course the infamous pirate, Captain Hook. The play was written by Scottish playwright and novelist J M Barrie in 1904, and I am ecstatic that the Year 7s will experience this wonderfully fanciful and fun play as their very first experience of performing at Scotch. GS