KINGDOM OF EXTINCT ANIMALS
Starring the Rising & Super Stars
5 June 2018
KOEA, featuring Sing’theatre Academy’s youngest cohort of students, opened its curtains to an incredibly supportive house of proud parents at the Goodman Arts Centre Blackbox on 20th May. Nathalie Ribette, artistic director of the Academy, decided to approach this year’s Academy showcase with a slightly different goal in mind: to encourage a creative environment steeped in collaboration among students.
A child’s mind is an incredibly imaginative resource, and thus, heeding this principle, director TJ Taylor led rehearsals with the students of the Rising Stars and Super Stars classes having more responsibility for the creation over the show. They were encouraged to contribute ideas in helping to build the story and in creating interesting characters, while still given enough room to enjoy a sense of play during rehearsals.
Director TJ gave the Super Stars the theme of extinct animals as inspiration, and they created characters, movements and even improvised scenes to bring to life their own chosen animal. It was inspiring to see how many of the students went away and researched their individual extinct animal, and came back to rehearsals bringing so many creative ideas.
The Rising Stars class was also hard at work all through the lead-up to KOEA, with a deeper focus this term at nurturing early acting skills and a simple understanding of character development for the show.
