Chicago comes back to Brisbane in 2009

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Broadway's razzle dazzle smash hit returns to Australia next year.

The show features Caroline O'Connor (Velma Kelly).

Caroline first performed the role of Velma Kelly in 1998 in Melbourne and then in Sydney in 1999, for which she was awarded the Green Room Award (Best Female Artist in a Leading Role) and Mo Award (Best Female Musical Theatre Performer) respectively. In November 2002 O'Connor proudly made her Broadway debut in the role of Velma Kelly at the Shubert Theatre. Her acclaimed Broadway season was extended until March 2003, and she moved with the production to the Ambassador Theatre.

In 2003 she performed the role of Roxie Hart with the London cast at The Baalbeck International Festival in Lebanon.

The musical theatre career of Caroline O'Connor is both extensive and acclaimed. In Australia Caroline has played the role of Anita in West Side Story (Mo and Green Room Awards), Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, and for the Production Company, Fanny Brice in Funny Girl and Mabel in Mack and Mabel. Her West End productions include Cabaret, Me and My Girl, The Rink, Romance Romance and Mack&Mabel in which she played Mabel (Olivier nomination for Best Actress in a Musical). She starred in UK national productions of A Chorus Line, Baby, Into the Woods, Damn Yankees, Showboat and Talent by Victoria Wood. For English National Opera, she played Mae Jones in Street Scene and Hildy Esterhazy in On the Town.

Her Australian productions include the one woman play Bombshells written especially for Caroline by acclaimed playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. She has since filmed Bombshells for ABC Television and toured the play to sell out performances at the Edinburgh Festival (where she won the coveted Fringe First Award), London's West End at the Arts Theatre (for which she received her second Laurence Olivier Award nomination), and at the World Stage Festival in Toronto, Canada. Caroline played Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow (Best Actress Edinburgh Festival, Sydney Theatre Awards, Helpmann Award®), the title role in Piaf (Mo, Helpmann® and Green Room Awards), and the title role in Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot, a role especially written for her by David Williamson. Caroline has performed with the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, and in 1995 performed for Her Majesty The Queen in a Royal Variety Performance.

Her own show From Stage to Screen has been presented at the Sydney Opera House and was filmed for Australian television. Caroline has recorded four solo CDs and has featured on numerous cast recordings and compilations. Caroline's film work includes the featured role of Nini Legs in the Air in Baz Luhrmann's film Moulin Rouge, and as Ethel Merman in the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely.



From 19 Mar 2009 - Tickets (inc.fees)$69.90 to $109.90 - School Groups of 12+ from $50.90

Farewell Year 12's

It is with great sadness that we farewell the SENIOR DRAMA CLASS of 2008! Over the last two years, this small group of 'survivors' endured all the challenges they were presented with in Drama commendably, and became a tight-knit group of classmates.

Their intrepid teacher will miss walking into the darkness of the Drama room, never really knowing where they are hiding to create TENSION of SURPRISE for her at the beginning of a lesson.

The Year 12 Drama class of 2008 are a bubbly, friendly bunch, and it has been wonderful to watch their talents develop and their confidence grow over their years of studying Drama.

All the best for your future girls!
Aim HIGH, maintain FOCUS, shoot for the STARS!

SHAKESPEARIENCE

"Shakespearience" was a unified performance from Year 11 Drama students of selected extracts from Shakespeare's tragedies. The evening was a wonderful success, as the Drama students met the challenge of their task commendably.

See photos below.

Guess what! - Reading Shakespeare is GOOD for the brain!
Scientists have shown that reading the Bard and other classical writers has beneficial effects on the mind. They say that their research provides valuable lessons for the education system and for all those who want to keep their minds active.

Works from Shakespeare, Chaucer and Wordsworth challenge readers because of their unusual words, tricky sentence structure and the repetition of phrases.

English professors at Liverpool University who teamed up with neuroscientists armed with brain-imaging equipment found that this challenge causes the brain to light up with electrical activity. Professor Philip Davis, who led the study at the university's department of English, said: "The brain appears to become baffled by something unexpected in the text that jolts it into a higher level of thinking."

So imagine if you commit Shakespeare to memory as our Shakespearience girls did, how brilliantly active your brain would be!

Notice the difference in the two brains below!

















Congratulations to all the Year 11 students who participated in SHAKESPEARIENCE.

New La Boite Director

THEATRE director David Berthold is returning to Brisbane to become artistic director and chief executive at La Boite Theatre Company.

From La Boite's site:

David Berthold is one of Australia’s most prominent theatre directors. He was Artistic Director of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company between 2003 and 2006, transforming it into one of the nation’s most visible and successful arts companies. He was also Artistic Director of the Australian Theatre for Young People (1999-2003) - building the company into the world’s largest youth theatre with many national and international collaborations - Associate Director of Sydney Theatre Company (1994-99), and Artistic Associate of the Queensland Theatre Company (1991-94). He has also directed work for Melbourne Theatre Company, Company B at Belvoir Street, the Sydney Opera House, Playbox Theatre, Black Swan, NIDA, QUT, La Boite, Opera Queensland, Auckland Theatre Company, the Royal National Theatre in London, and Theater an der Parkaue in Berlin. He was the Festival Director of World Interplay 2007, the world's largest festival of young playwrights.

Read:
La Boite Theatre Company to be headed by David Berthold

Berthold to direct La Boite

Theatre in Residence Week

Qld Theatre Company's "Theatre in Residence Week" was held recently.
Two of our Year 10 students participated in the course and immensely enjoyed their immersion in drama and theatre.

Shakespeare and language

The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words. See some of his words listed and hyperlinked to his original plays at Shakespeare's Influence.

Examples:
All the words following were created by Shakespeare, never having existed before he put them into his works.


Nouns:
accused, addiction, alligator, amazement, anchovies, assassination, backing, bandit, bedroom, bump, buzzers, courtship, critic, dauntless, dawn, design, dickens, discontent, embrace, employer, engagements, excitements, exposure, eyeball, fixture, futurity, glow, gust, hint, immediacy, investments, kickshaws, leapfrog, luggage, manager, mimic, misgiving, mountaineer, ode, outbreak, pageantry, pedant, perusal, questioning, reinforcement, retirement, roadway, rumination, savagery, scuffles, shudders, switch, tardiness, transcendence, urging, watchdog, wormhole, zany

Verbs:
besmirch, bet, blanket, cake, cater, champion, compromise, cow, denote, deracinate, dialogue, dislocate, divest, drug, dwindle, elbow, enmesh, film, forward, gossip, grovel, hobnob, humour, hurry, impedes, jet, jig, label, lapse, lower, misquote, negotiate, numb, pander, partner, petition, puke, rant, reword, secure, submerge, swagger, torture, unclog

Adjectives:
aerial, auspicious, baseless, beached, bloodstained, blushing, circumstantial, consanguineous, deafening, disgraceful, domineering, enrapt, epileptic, equivocal, eventful, fashionable, foregone, frugal, generous, gloomy, gnarled, hush, inaudible, invulnerable, jaded, juiced, lackluster, laughable, lonely, lustrous, madcap, majestic, marketable, monumental, nervy, noiseless, oscene, olympian, premeditated, promethean, quarrelsome, radiance, rancorous, reclusive, remorseless, rival, sacrificial, sanctimonious, softhearted, splitting, stealthy, traditional, tranquil, unmitigated, unreal, varied, vaulting, viewless, widowed, worthless, yelping

Adverbs:
importantly, instinctively, obsequiously, threateningly, tightly, trippingly, unaware

Professor David Crystal is one of the world's foremost experts on language. Read some of his articles on Shakespeare's language.

FYI - Reading Shakespeare has dramatic effect on human brain

"MAKE 'EM LAUGH"!

YEAR II DRAMA STUDENTS AND PARENTS AND FRIENDS:
Post your comments about your experiences of "MAKE 'EM LAUGH!"

Year 10 "Places of our Birth" Symbolic performance

Year 8F Mime and Movement...in-class exercises

Hamlet

Wikipedia Hamlet
Full summary of Hamlet
Entire script of the play
Olivier's Hamlet - photos




Hamlet - Laurence Olivier YouTube
Hamlet - Mel Gibson YouTube
Hamlet - Ian Holm YouTube
Kenneth Branagh Trailer Hamlet
Hamlet - an introduction by Kenneth Branagh

There are other versions of Hamlet via the links above.

The Globe Theatre

About the Globe, London
Globe Theatre - Wikipedia
Elizabethan Theatre
The Old Globe Theatre History
The Globe Theatre Virtual Tour
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London
Globe Theatre - YouTube

Theatre around Brisbane

Responses are invited from all those who are lucky enough to see some live theatre during the year.

Check out what is on by looking at the following theatre venues.

La Boite
Roundhouse Theatre
Qld Theatre Company/Billie Brown Studio
Brisbane Powerhouse
The Arts Theatre
Nash Theatre
QUT Gardens Theatre
The Loft - QUT Creative Industries
Lyric Theatre
Metro Arts
Twelfth Night Theatre
Centenary Theatre Group
Samford Theatre Group
Harvest Rain Theatre Company
You might consider some volunteer work - Harvest Rain needs “vollies” - for Set Construction, Set Painting, Costume making, Make-up, Stage crew, Lighting, Sound and Ushering, register your details with the company.

Backbone Youth Arts is for 9 to 26 year olds who are interested in drama and performance. Members work with leading industry professionals to develop skills in performance, stage productions and events. There are a wide range of workshops to choose from with small classes ensuring the best experience for everyone involved.
Backbone Youth Art Workshops


Post your theatre reviews here during the year.

Edward Scissorhands

Links:
The Courier-Mail
Musical Tour of Australia
Info about the 1990 movie

The characters and the visual landscape are also a gift for both myself and our designer Lez Brotherston. We have the creepy mansion, the graveyard, snow storms, the colourful suburbia of Hope Springs and of course Edward’s topiary and ice sculpture creations. The costumes too are incredible - from Edward’s ‘scissorhands’ to the sculpted bouffant hairdos of the female townsfolk. We’ll also be packing in a few surprises and I firmly believe that I have assembled some of the finest actor/dancers in the country to realise this unique piece.

Tim Burton, Danny Elfman and screenwriter Caroline Thompson have been fantastically generous in allowing us to take this highly personal creation and make it our own. It’s a creative partnership that promises to deliver a magical and unforgettable night out.” - Matthew Bourne.

Check out the video clips online

Those of you who were lucky to see the musical are welcome to post a response.

Year 9 DRAMA

Evaluate your experience of taking part in the Year 9 PROCESS DRAMA, 'CORAL POINT'.

Year 10 DRAMA - Storytelling

What did you learn from your experience of STORYTELLING for a Year One audience?

Which elements of drama are most important for effective narration to children?

Back to the 80's

CONGRATULATIONS to the cast, crew and staff members who made "BACK TO THE 80's" such a huge success! We are so PROUD of all the girls involved with our College Musical, The time, effort and dedication that was given to this production by all to make the show so energetic and electric was enormous!

To the Cast members: the hard slog of undertaking before-school and lunch-time training, practices, and rehearsals that you committed to so diligently over the months, has paid off!. You have proven yourself to be a 'professinal team of performers' ! WELL DONE ALL!

COREY SNR: "It's funny you know - life moves pretty fast, and it takes all of us along with it. I still love looking back on my High School days. And while they are all distant memories, now, thankfully, those memories of how we used to be at school will be here forever!"

Cast, crew, parent or audience member.......

Comment on what memories YOU are thankful to take with you from experiencing CCC's production of "BACK TO THE 80's".

Please add comments after the following set of photos. DO NOT ADD YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS.
Thank you - Ms Fletcher.

Children's Theatre Photos

Congratulations girls! Thank you for your wonderful performances and the time that you all spent creating, writing and preparing for your performances. Well done everyone!