Drama

I normally start planning a show a couple of years before we open, but seldom have I had such an extended and challenging rehearsal process as we have had for this show. Auditions for Urinetown (a very clever and funny ‘meta’ musical) happened in November 2019 and we cast some incredibly talented young performers, looking forward to another CGS CGSC partnership. Work commenced with a series of singing workshops, organised by Mr Bishop, and comprehensive design meetings where the creative titans Mrs Jennifer Bennie and Mr Mark Wager helped fully form my interpretation of the show. It was an auspicious start. Term 1 2020 launched our usual busy rehearsal schedule as we created and refined our show. Ms McDonald created some truly fantastic routines, and our guest choreographer Jack Migdalek brought the Fiddler on the Roof inspired number at the beginning of Act Two to energetic life. Mrs Bennie and her assistant Breanna Handfield made and adjusted costumes creating characterful individual and group looks. Our Production Coordinator and Assistant Director Ms Jess Doutch filmed rehearsals both on and off stage as has become traditional keeping footage for a cast memory documentary of the process, as well as keeping an archive for those who missed rehearsals and for checking choreography later in the process. Mr Mark and Thomas Bevans built, painted and textured the physical world of the play. Mr Bishop pulled the chorus and numbers together in his forensic, fun and energetic manner. Drama classes continued as normal and Ms Wood continued to

plan the Middle School Play and audition roles for The Great Gatsby.

VCE Theatre Studies students were given their assessment plays and some workshops by the inspirational Emily Godard who shared her passion for the highly physical and satirical clowning theatre style of Bouffon. Year 11 developed an interpretation of Agamemnon set in an aged care facility, and Year 12 interpreted A Clockwork Orange with great physicality and dynamism relishing Burgess’ highly mannered language and confronting tale. Public performances of these pieces were heartbreakingly cancelled due to the first of the pandemic restrictions. Themes of state control and aged care resonate in retrospect.

Worldwide lockdown arrived with the Senior School musical about two thirds developed needing a tantalising few weeks of work to complete. The uncertainty of when public audiences might be allowed led us to move both the musical and the Middle School Play to later in the year, and the difficult decision was made to change the House Play Festival into a House Film Festival as Term 4 looked to be filling with rescheduled events. Drama classes went online into theory, the viewing of the many fantastic live captured streamed dramas from around the world, and to monologue and storytelling pursuits.

We experimented with Zoom rehearsals for the musical but the cast found them initially unappealing and plans for a couch choir version of one

of the numbers was shelved. Those that did attend seemed to enjoy themselves, but before we consolidated our virtual position we were back to school, back to face-to-face rehearsals (albeit with some distancing), the Middle School Play started rehearsals (with energetic Charleston workshops on Sundays from Tim McDowel) and we were full steam ahead. We wisely continued the video sequences after mid-year exams from the show but made special efforts to run some in full costume and make-up photographed as well by Ken Nakanishi (1996).

Three rehearsals later new rules came into force and Years 6 to 10 returned to distance learning. The Middle School Play had to cancel the now forbidden Sunday dance rehearsals and Ms Wood took her rehearsals online. In the Senior School we continued to rehearse with boys and some girls.

Into Term 3 we continued with Year 11 and 12 boys only now and girls joining us on Zoom. It continued to amaze me how dedicated everyone remained to the shows.

As we continued through the term the Heads of Houses decided reluctantly to make House Films a voluntary project with no points being awarded for the Prefects’ Cup this year.

Stage 4 sent us into a tailspin and the Middle School Play was rescheduled to the end of Term 1 2021 with its dedicated 2020 cast. It became abundantly clear that we were going to either limit our work on Urinetown to a documentary memory video shared with the cast with no performance at all, or seek unlikely streaming rights for a YouTube production. Unlikely because streaming had developed under COVID as live capture performance rather than montage, and the latter was all we had!

Zoom rehearsals continued and Ms Jess Doutch put together a complicated overview of all previously filmed video footage with the plan to create a more comprehensive documentary of the show charting our journey from audition to cancellation!

Without much hope I wrote a letter to Music Theatre International explaining our position and pleading in the name of our talented and dedicated cast (especially the Year 12s) that we might be allowed to present the show in video montage online. To my grateful surprise after MTI (AU) approached the authors who approved the license for streaming for us and all other schools currently producing the show!

We then went into overdrive collecting footage, capturing Zoom rehearsals, and getting the cast to record themselves in a couch choir manner to provide Ms Jess Doutch with what she needed to edit the complete show. Mr Feldt applied himself to post-production, Mr Bishop and Mr Campbell Phillips to mixing audio, and, when we found the orchestral tracks we had hired had totally different tempos to the rehearsal tracks we had used to record vocals, Mr Johnston (a veritable wizard of digital audio workspaces) edited practically every bar of the whole score for our use over many tens of hours.

The Senior School Production opened on 9 September and could be viewed online across four separate evenings with our unfinished found and foraged footage film montage. I think the authors would approve.

Next year’s shows will need to be COVID compatible, but ‘the show must go on’. Mr Andrew Stocker, Head of Drama

Urinetown Review

I’d like to pass on my congratulations to the cast and crew of Urinetown. Speaking as both a former CGS student, and an active member of Melbourne’s theatrical community who has done this show previously myself (UMMTA, 2016), they all did a terrific job in scraping together a cohesive video of the show from the recordings of a few scenes, rehearsal choreography videos, and post-lockdown Zoom calls. While I do not feel it is appropriate for me to comment on the hilariously over-acted performance of my brother as Lockstock (Rhys Denison, Year 12), I will congratulate all the other leads on some very strong performances. Harmonies from Bobby (William Lewis, Year 11) and Hope (Josie Parton) at the end of Follow Your Heart were amazing, and Cladwell (James Thorn, Year 12), Pennywise (Grace Edge) and Little Sally (Mia Suda) were excellent, creating characters that really lived. I’ll also give a massive congratulations to Hot Blades Harry (Thomas Ng, Year 12) for nailing the choreography as the one guy in the Snuff That Girl dance break. The potential for this show was clearly visible for all to see, and it’s such a shame that due to the virus outbreak and associated lockdowns, Urinetown was – like so many other productions this year – unable to go ahead on stage. Especially as for many of us in the theatrical community, school musicals were our first exposure to performing onstage, and that the payoff of seeing and hearing an audience enjoying the show you are performing is a big part of why we keep on showing up for weeks if not months of rehearsals. One of the hardest things to deal with in the early days of the lockdown must have been the fundamentally wrong feeling of putting so much hard work into a show only to have it all pushed back months just before it opens. That you pushed through to the end is a testament to the evident passion of performers, production crew, Music and Drama Departments and to the school. Thanks for entertaining us all in such difficult times.

Brent Denison

(class of 2012 and cast of CGS’ Lord of the Flies 2008, The Producers 2010, and Sweeney Todd 2012).