Sydney Theatre Company Education
Tracy Ellis catches up with STC Education Manager, Helen Hristofski, to preview the year ahead.
The Sydney Theatre Company’s extensive education program could loosely be divided into four main components – staging productions for young audiences, conducting workshops and resource kits for teachers and students, making the theatre more accessible to a broader audience, and developing new talent through the annual Young Playwright’s Award.
It’s an innovative and quite extensive program that has become part of the fabric of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and surprisingly, they receive no financial support – all funds are raised internally. This year, STC’s education program will stage four new productions specifically for young audiences. ‘When possible, we program plays HSC drama students are studying, in order that they experience the play as intended – through live performance,’ says Hristofski.
The first, ‘Ruby Moon’, is directed by Andrew Upton, soon-to-be co-Artistic Director of the STC with Cate Blanchett, following Robin Nevin’s retirement in 2008. ‘Ruby Moon’, written by Matt Cameron, is a popular contemporary Australian play, widely studied by senior drama students. ‘It’s great that we’re able to offer students a fully produced show, which is shaping up to be a very different interpretation to the original,’ says Hrifstofski.
The 2007 season will also bring a new production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ aimed at middle school students. It’s ‘a really good introduction to Shakespeare,’ says Hristofski. ‘It’s cliché to say it’s a battle of the sexes, but I think that makes it even more perfect for teenagers.’
Lowdown previously reported on STC’s commission of Zeal Theatre for the production of ‘Gronks’ and that partnership also continues in 2007 with Zeal commissioned for two new works. Zeal focuses on group-devised physical theatre about current issues, and their work can apply across many curriculum subjects, not just English and Drama. STC will bring Zeal together with international artists Bheki Mkhwane and Ellis Pearson for the collaboration, ‘Australia vs. South Africa’. The two companies, both ‘international heavy-weights of theatre for young people’, have known of each other’s work for some time.
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Lulie the Iceberg, produced by Kim Carpenter's Theatre of Image - Carclew, South Australia
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