Forever Young... QUIETUS

On Friday night I went to watch Niece Laura's Year 10 Drama Class take part in the Monash University Arts Centres 11th Schools' Theatre Festival.

The Festival is run every year and involves Secondary Colleges from around the State. This year there were 20 schools participating over five nights. Friday night I got to see four of those schools perform.

Each school is given the same 'Starting Point' for their performance. This year the Starting Point was two abstract art works from the Monash University of Art Collection. The idea is that each group draws inspiration from these works in whatever way they can and then create and perform an original piece of theatre based on that. To me, this is incredible in itself because I looked at the abstract art works and said "Yep. They're abstract alright." Yet the four schools on Friday night all managed to build quite remarkable pieces around them. I was in awe, let me tell you.

From what I can gather the students are encouraged to be responsible for all aspects of the performance - writing, technical, directing, etc... The students from Laura's school seemed to have met that challenge head on as in the program it stated that they had Student Writers, Student Directors and Student Crew in addition to the student performers.

The piece that Laura and her class did was called QUIETUS. From the Starting Point they developed the idea that whilst they are alive everyone is different, yet in death everyone is the same. (This is a very simplistic, yet hopefully accurate summary, Lauz. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.) They based the story on a current event that occurred at the time of their initial brainstorming sessions a few months ago and it worked very well to represent the idea and feelings they were trying to portray. The actual performance was extremely engaging and I think most people in the audience couldn't help but be moved by what they saw... even those from the other schools. I know I am a sook, but I admit it, I inked. ("inked" = watering eyes.)

Their piece was ALL good but I'll mention a few highlights:

• Sarah singing Amazing Grace - Way to go Sarah!
• "You know what I'm saying!" - Thanks for the 'point-out' Laura :)
• "Not Cool!" - Funny stuff, Adele. This and the "You know what I'm saying" were - I think - at an ideal moment to provide some necessary humour but not detract from the overall mood of the piece.
• 'Danni' breaking down towards the end of the eulogy - I couldn't tell if Deb was acting or not. She had me convinced.
• Everyone else, of course, was great also.

Gees, just call me a Theatre Critic :) I didn't really mean to write a post like this but I thought it deserved a little something :)

Hope you guys all had fun performing it :) I'm guessing you've all worked very hard on it over the past few months and it's paid off.

Oh, and as for the title of this post... The finale to the performance was the song Forever Young by Youth Group. So, here's another thanks to y'all - This time for getting that song stuck in my head after I'd only just managed to get it out after hearing it every three hours on every single radio station in Melbourne for the past 2 months!!! lol!