Drama at St Paul’s

Drama at St Paul’s “All the world is a stage” for students at St Paul’s.

St Paul’s is well known for its comprehensive Drama coaching, support and professional productions which engage students across both the Junior and Secondary Schools. From providing solid foundations and fostering raw talent in the Junior School, through to dedicated study and professional tutelage in the Secondary School, students are encouraged to challenge themselves and express their creativity.

However, 2021 made it difficult to showcase the performance arts and teachers, tutors and students have investigated other innovative ways to practice and perform.

In the Secondary School

Jacqueline Tuting, Drama Coordinator

“This year we, like many artists, we have been incredibly adaptable and creative in finding ways to express and provide our art form. I recently heard the phrase “film is the future”- and that has been one of the core ways we continued in this remote time. I have been thoroughly impressed with how students have modified and transformed their works for the camera. In this time, student have not just performed the role of actor, but they have engaged in script writing, backdrops, designed sets and explored different camera angles which has taught them so much about theatrical concepts like point of view, suspense and audience engagement. We have enjoyed many ‘watch parties’ with our popcorn while viewing students work as a class online.

We also had the opportunity to engage with specific theatrical techniques as we have not had a pressing performance to prepare for. So, in this time students honed very technical dramatic skills such as manipulating ordinary props to come to life or forming a simple paper puppet to experiment with micro actions like breathing. As actors, students have additionally benefited from the online tutorage of performance coach Kelsey Murphy, who engaged students in techniques like breathing, articulation, focus, vocal control, and gesture. The impact of COVID-19 and extended lockdowns impacted a range of our projects and resulted in a pause to rehearsals or even cancellation. Particularly, the cancellation of “Bye Bye Birdie” last year was incredibly heart breaking with the cast being so close to a final show ready for staging for the community. However, what all our drama students experienced is very similar to what a number of talented industry professionals had to navigate. It is encouraging to see many shows returning to the professional stage in Sydney, such as Hamilton. We too in the Drama Academy have great hopes and are currently dreaming of our next big show for the St Paul’s stage. So stay tuned!”

In the Junior School

Heather Watson, Junior School Drama Specialist

“In the Junior School, all students are taught Drama for the first semester of the year and this fun, creative learning continued while students learnt from home. Students gradually transition from story-based reflections and replications in their early years to compositions of their own making as they get older. Our focus in the Junior School is the elements of Drama: Tension, Focus, Mood, Contrast, Symbol and Space. We use these to enable students to critique what they see and create.

This year, Kindergarten played with the idea of acting like an animal through stories like “A Rumble in the Jungle” by Giles Andrea, creating masks and recreating the story. Year 1 inquired into the story “Lost and Found” by Oliver Jeffers. They used props to tell the story, emotions to display the characters’ feelings and frozen scenes predicting how it might end.

Year 2 focused on emotions and took an enjoyable journey with the crayons from “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers. They focused on using facial expressions and body language to create characters. The transition into primary in Year 3 challenges students to use inferences in a text to understand characters and make predictions. To connect with their Unit of Inquiry, Year 3 take a look at storytelling through animations and Year 4 worked to create a character through Readers Theatre – a scripted performance.

In Year 5 students begin to use improvisation as a tool to make their performances spontaneous and enjoyable. They played games which encourage group work, quick thinking and lots of giggles! As their final performance, they created an ending to a scripted fractured fairy tale.

As students’ primary school journey with Drama comes to its dramatic conclusion, Year 6 write a script and perform their own creations. This year the stimulus for their script was “change or perspective”. There were lollies which changed characters into evil villains, travels through time and some relationship misunderstandings performed to represent many different perspectives.

We were very thankful that this year our first semester was uninterrupted and all our classroom performances went ahead. We look forward to 2022 where we will no doubt see new creations which spring from the inquiring imaginations of our students!”

Our Crest

Design & Colour

The St Paul’s crest represents the centrality of the cross to the Christian faith and thus mission of our school; profiled by the rising sun symbolising our hope and future in Christ. The crest is made up of the central logo with the name and motto of the school around the diameter.

The logo should not be redrawn, digitally manipulated or altered. No rescaling of the horizontal or vertical proportions should occur.

Colours: Pantone, CMYK and RGB versions of the St Paul’s School crest have been created. The colour values are:

Colour Reverse White reverse / CMYK crest should be reversed out of St Paul’s Blue - PMS541

PMS 294 C C100 M69 Y7 K30 R0 G47 B108 PMS 362 C C78 M0 Y100 K2 R80 G158 B47 PMS 3935 C C2 M0 Y60 K0 R243 G234 B93

Drama Academy

Mono / Mono Reverse To be used when appropriate for non colour reproduction (forms, reversed out of photographic background) or when colour isn’t available.

PAGE 4

BRAND IDENTITY 2016 ST PAUL’S GRAMMAR SCHOOL

The school’s Drama Academy is a co-curricular opportunity offered to St Paul’s students in Years 3 to 12 who are interested in developing their performance skills. Types of activities include focusing and concentration exercises, improvisation skills, play-building self-devised works, group-based performance, developing vocal and physical characterisations and stagecraft. It is fun, builds confidence and gives students a platform to take their skills to the next level.