The annual Artist in Residence program continued last week, with Adelaide-based painter, Hamish Fleming returning to work directly with a range of our art students.

Junior School students involved in the program engaged in activities that encouraged creative and critical thinking, developing their visual literacy skills. Students in the Middle School Art courses were led through the process of arts analysis with Hamish, drawing connections between his work and the work of artists who influence his practice.

Hamish led our Year 10 students in a painting workshop, where they began an underpainting, applying a preliminary drawing using charcoal and oil paint to create the illusion of form to represent a still life.

Similarly, Hamish shared his current work in progress with Year 11 and 12 students, engaging them in a discussion and sharing aspects of the creative process, as they too progress with their own artworks this semester.

Hamish is again exhibiting a new body of work, displayed in our Art Centre gallery, which is used to enrich students’ Art learning this term. Therefore, on display will be some of the students’ responses from their interactions with Hamish. This exhibition will remain in the gallery for viewing for the remainder of the term.

Annual Showcase of Music – 'Pop Through The Ages'

On Tuesday 6 September, the Gym was transformed into a funky performance venue, complete with cabaret-style seating and a massive stage for all of our musicians to take to.

After many cancelled events earlier in the year, for many of our ensembles, this was their first opportunity to perform in 2022! The Senior Choir opened the concert with Australia’s first pop tune, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ featuring our Acknowledgement of Country, complete with Indigenous language of the nature around us.

The night went on to feature 22 of our school’s ensembles (which is, amazingly, not all of them!) and highlights included the Dream Girls’ rendition of Madonna’s, ‘Vogue’; an incredible performance from the Piano Trio with Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’; the Rock Band’s Beyoncé hit ‘Crazy In Love’ – complete with the rap by Year 12 student Olivia Kyriacou – and Big Band 2’s MJ take of ‘Thriller’, featuring two drum kits onstage.

But the absolute highlight of the night was undoubtedly when over 220 of our students came together to perform pop icon Dua Lipa’s hit ‘Love Again’, which featured our String Orchestra, two Concert Bands and all three of the School’s core choral ensembles. Only rehearsed twice beforehand, our resilient and clever girls showed what they are capable of and connected as one to conclude a wonderful evening of music.

A huge thank you goes to all the Music staff and ensemble directors for their tireless work throughout the year in preparing our girls to such a high standard, and to the countless others who assisted in bringing this event to life – my heartfelt thanks.

Anna Lenartowicz
Head of Music

Year 12 Drama Production

On the evenings of Wednesday 31 August and Thursday 1 September, Aspect Theatre presented a moving and dynamic selection of scenes from Top Girls by Caryl Churchill. Set in the UK and written in 1982, this renowned feminist play examines the roles available to women in old society, and what it means or takes for a woman to succeed. By underlining the emotional and social cost faced by women, the play challenges the fact that women have had to mimic the excesses of male behaviour in order to acquire a degree of power and agency. The play is emotionally charged, funny and clever.

Viewed in its entirety, Top Girls depicts the lifestyle and life choices of its central character, Marlene. She is a successful career woman, who has just received a major promotion and has unequivocally fought her way to the top. The play is nonlinear in its structure, highlighting the different sides of being a thriving career woman in the 1980s. As the play moves on, it becomes clear that Marlene’s professional success has irreparably damaged her personal life. Her relationship with her sister, Joyce, is strained and distant, while Joyce’s daughter, Angie, does not realise that Marlene is actually her mother. Leaping back and forth in time, Marlene attempts to make sense of her life and come to terms with the mistakes she has made in the past.

Aspect Theatre aims to ‘provide a perspective on the reality and imaginations of young people’. Therefore, our ensemble of Year 12 students centred their adaptation of the play around the young, lesser character of Angie. In doing so, they shifted the audience’s focus to the experience and perspective of a young teenager who is living with the legacy of feminism during the 70s and 80s in Great Britain.

The performers delved into accent work for the performance, each crafting specific accents to communicate social status and character origin. As a piece of theatrical realism, the play required each girl to access their imagination and connect themselves emotionally to their character’s journey in order to access the moment to moment reality of the world they were inhabiting. They applied specific techniques and approaches to the text in order to achieve this. The resulting performance was strong and moving. The audience was taken to another time and place entirely and went along an emotional journey with Angie, coming to understand how and why she was full of the opposing feelings that fuelled her actions. The show was a brilliant achievement and the girls are commended for their performances.

Jessica Foster
Acting Head of Drama