Year 12 ATAR Drama students hit the city of Sydney in the April holidays to participate in Drama workshops at NIDA – one of Australia’s premier drama training universities. The tour involved almost 60 students from Perth schools participating in the NIDA workshops with tutors who are all working actors who shared their skills and knowledge with the students. The finale of the course was a performance by all student participants which was received very well by the teachers. A special treat for the Mercedes students was catching up with Hannah Anderson (2017), a current NIDA Acting student, who was able to share her experiences of the course and the audition process.
In the evening there were trips to the theatre from the Sydney Opera House to Belvoir Theatre. A highlight was seeing Saturday Night Fever at the Lyric Theatre. All of the performances created earnest discussion and ideas for the students to think about using in their own work back at school.
Students returned to classes with new ideas to implement into their course work and a greater understanding of the roles of actor and director. There was also time for sightseeing and shopping, but everything came back to drama, drama, drama!
It was all drama, drama, drama at NIDA!