School’s Innovative, Inclusive Location Theatre

How to make your school/venue the ultimate walk around set AND save money AND blow everyone away AND how to write a play for 150 people. Drama teacher Donna Prince shares her secrets.

I am in a pretty amazing situation. I have a school that trusts me to break out of the norm and do different things. I have a supportive staff ready to give me a hand and I have 1100 acres in which to play. I teach at Candlebark School, an independent school in the Macedon Ranges run by John Marsden. We have another campus; it’s called Alice Miller. It opened this year with a focus on the arts. It’s pretty exciting too.

So about me, I am a Drama teacher who has been employed to teach English. Let’s face it, my minor at uni was religion and I have over the years taught Economics, Biology and IT, thus proving my ability to act!

When I took the job at John's school, I had done some writing, I've written a novel actually, and some scenes for plays and what not, and led students in the process for their own devised work.  But you don't rock up to a famous author’s school and go 'yes, I am a writer' - well I don’t anyway! So I said that I'd 'give it a go' with as much bravado as I could muster. They let me write the most pop culture referenced play that has ever lived. It was called Doctor, The Musical! It coincided with the 50th anniversary of Dr Who, so it was BIG! It ripped off ah... ‘was influenced by’ Dr. Who, Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

The hands down BEST scene I have ever written was for the whole school, all 130 odd students in an epic fight scene that raged through the audience.

It was hectic.

I believe that Drama is for everyone, so my challenge this year was to write a script with roles for 160 people.

So I wrote a script for 140 kids. The other 20 kids will be our crew; there are always kids who prefer that role. My Year 9's were pretty keen on not being seen. Plus they already wore a lot of black...

So my next crazy Idea was to have the whole school perform for smaller audiences progressively, like a progressive meal or in a round. It's essentially location theatre. So I had 14 Valeries and 14 Gabbys, all playing their locations simultaneously. This solved the problem I had with the last show. We only got to do the last show once. So there was only one chance to get it ‘right’. In this new show the students performed their scene five times.

I’d better fill you in on the plot.

Our main character Valerie is sent off to yet another boarding school. Weird things keep happening to her and she honestly can’t help it. Poor kid. Her school of last resort belongs to her aunty, Mrs Crabtree - she’s an evil principal - I know I know, how clichéd. I couldn't help it; I couldn't think of a better solution.  On the annual beach trip Valerie, our reluctant hero, finds a magical egg in a public toilet. It hatches into a magical condor that quickly grows up to be a giant magical condor. Her evil auntie/principal is after her magical giant condor as whoever controls the condor rules the world, so Valerie and her best friend Gabby have to hide the baby giant condor as it grows rapidly (again, magic). They have their fair share of moral dilemmas and a fight but all is forgiven when Gabby is kidnapped by the evil aunty/principal, who forces Valerie to give up the bird. Mrs Crabtree gets her comeuppance at the end as all good villains should and all is right with the world again.

So the budget came to around five hundred dollars. You’d think alternative private school, famous principal, must be a budget of thousands, right? So a MAJOR plus in doing a show this way is the cost cutting. I’ve already saved us at least 4 grand this year. Not that it would be an issue, but if it IS an issue for you this is one way to save that moolah. My other advice is to recruit your music teacher. Writing your own story/ music equals not having to pay for rights.

The costumes are just normal clothes, colour coded, so that is also a money saver. Plus it means that parents can head to the op shops and you won’t need a costume person. Double win!

I am also a HUGE fan of making the students do it. I’m a huge fan of making the students do everything actually. Everything that they can handle.

A location theatre school show really does involve everyone. This helps with staff morale too; we really feel like we have achieved the impossible! Theatre creates the kind of camaraderie that cannot be found anywhere else, but if you’re reading this magazine then you probably already know that!

“But Donna!” I hear you ask. “How can that possibly work?” Given that there are about a billion moving parts to this thing and then an audience thrown in on top of that?? It’s OK! Here is the rundown.

In the beginning, our eager audience, the Candlebark parents (always an adventurous lot) arrive in the car park. We block off the whole car park so the audience doesn’t go wandering through the school. We firstly need to separate our parents into groups; we have chosen to do this using grades. So Prep group arrives first and is then taken by their tour guides to the first location.

This location is at the back of the art block cottage, a nice small, dare I say intimate, area that has 50 seats arranged in a semi circle, very traditional. The challenge with this location is the stage area; it is set under the trees so even though it is quite an intimate audience the actors still need to project, project, PROJECT!

Location two is basically a driveway; the seating is weird, deliberately so. I want the audience not to be too comfortable here; it's here we find out that Valerie is really not normal and she finds the egg. The action doesn’t move sequentially from left to right and the whole location is a little topsy-turvy. The challenges here, apart from the crunching gravel, is that the actors are so spread out … again, project, project, PROJECT!

Location number three is in our meeting room, a long room that can be darkened as it will still be daylight at the other locations (which means I could use only the lights we had without hiring lights for other locations saving MORE money). This is probably the most 'theatre' we get. A special on each scene that flows from one snapshot to another to show the progression of time, oh, and we end with a kidnapping! 

Location four is tricky again. It is in our library. The challenge here is that the audience has to move from inside to outside to around the top to the other side fairly quickly and quietly. 

It’s an hour show but it’s staggered so the first group will have quite a long wait. So we have supper on the basketball court. After we have all been through, we will gather the audience on the tennis court and sing one last finale medley.

So there you have it, that’s how we did it, it worked brilliantly and the parents were all gushing, the students were ecstatic and the staff exhausted!

Donna has been teaching for 11 years this year and as well as writing school musicals she enjoys producing The Renegade Teacher podcast and acting with Sunshine Community Theatre.