05 Sep 2013
Drama students from Dubbo College South Campus have taken some of the top honours from the recent Fast+Fresh theatre festival, supported by the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP). "Inception", a play written and performed by Year 10 students Billie Palin, Brodie Taylor, Ella Bass, Jodi Howard and Destiny Griffiths was selected as the best play and 15-year-old Billie Palin was pronounced best actress.
Fast+Fresh local coordinator Andy Carolan from Western Plains Theatre said students from all schoolsdid a tremendous job as actors, directors, playwrights and stage crew.
"The South Campus play Inception was cleverly written and flowed smoothly from start to finish," he said. "The creators of this play should be extremely proud of their efforts - young comedians in the making!
"I also thought Billie Palin winning best actress was well deserved after witnessing her strong, comedic performance."
The students, part of teacher Jules Marshall's drama class, were given four weeks to write and practice their plays for the festival, but it wasn't as easy as it first appeared, according to 15 year-old Brodie Taylor.
"We actually spent the first three weeks disagreeing with each other about a range of play ideas," she said. "Thankfully our teacher Ms Marshall intervened and helped us. In the end we created a play based around our experience of disagreeing with each other about what to write. The characters were largely based on ourselves, with a bit of exaggeration."
Ella Bass, 15, said Billie's character was a bossy obsessed perfectionist, while Jodi played her role as calm, easy-going and cooperative.
"Destiny was a bit posh, very popular and better than anyone else and Brodie was the caring mother figure in the group," she said. "I was pretty much myself – always distracted by my mobile phone!"
Best actress Billie Palin said she had always enjoyed both singing and acting and was very pleased to take home the award.
"Dubbo College has provided amazing opportunities for me since Year 7 because Ms Marshall always organises specialised drama workshops with the likes of NIDA and ATYP," Billie said. "I am trained as an opera singer as well and I really enjoy performing."