This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity. Listen to the Drama topics podcast (39:38).

Jackie – The following podcast is brought to you by the Creative Arts Curriculum Team from Secondary Learners Educational Standards Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. As we commence this podcast today, let us acknowledge the traditional custodians of all the lands on which this podcast will be played around New South Wales. Their art, storytelling, music and dance along with all first nations people hold the memories, the traditions, the culture and hopes of Aboriginal Australia. Let us acknowledge with honour and respect our elders past, present and future, especially those Aboriginal people in our presence today who have and still do guide us with their wisdom.

Ravenna – So welcome to the creative cast Podcast series. My name is Ravenna Gregory and I'm one of the Creative Arts curriculum officers with the New South Wales Department of Education. Today I'm going to be talking topics and finding out what our two guests like to teach in stage four and five drama. Our first guest is Sonia Byrnes, who teaches at a school in Sydney's inner west. Sonia is a passionate drama educator with over 14 years experience teaching drama in New South Wales. She has worked extensively in girls' education and is known for her work around women in theatre and diversity of representation in drama. Our second guest is speaking to us from the Northern Rivers region. Lachlan Glasby started his teaching career as founding artistic director of Double Mask, a youth theater company focused on devising musicals and classical text adaptations. His work laid the foundation for his practice as a drama and English teacher at Wollumbin High School in northern New South Wales. Where as Head teacher of Learning, Lachlan is passionate about ensuring that assessment and programs are authentic, engaging and multidisciplinary. When he isn't teaching, he is a dad, husband and the level 14 wizard. Lachlan and Sonia. Welcome to the podcast.

Sonia – Thanks for having me.

Lachlan – Thank you

Ravenna – Lachlan. Can you start us off by sharing a bit more about your school community and the place of drama in the school culture?

Lachlan – So our school community is located in a really vibrant arts community. We have the highest percentage of practicing artists outside of metro areas in Australia, so we're very lucky to have such a wealth of knowledge just down the road. There's an Oscar winning sound guy just up the road. Zac Efron has just moved in. And so we're got this real focus on the arts at the school that I'm in. It's a small school, 450 students. I am the only drama teacher, which is both a blessing and a curse, as we all know, those of us who are the only drama teacher in our schools. When I first started in 2014, we had a class of 13 year eight and maybe a year 11 on every off year, and we've now got a year eight, Stage five and a Stage six drama class that runs concurrently, and we run a season of events, so we try really hard every term. There is a performance at the end of every term, whether it be Year eight and the year 9/10. It's always cross KLA. So, we always jump in with either art or with science or with sometimes maths, dare I say it. So, that's our community, in a nutshell. We're very focused on the arts and we're very focused on implementing the arts within everyday practice in other KLAs.

Ravenna – Thanks. Wow. Zac Efron is down the road. Is this a real thing?

Lachlan – That is, that is a real thing. He just moved to somewhere around the around the area. I joke with the kids that I've seen him, but he hasn't seen me.

Ravenna – So it sounds like you've built a really amazing drama department there on your own, which is fantastic. That is a challenge, I suppose, that a lot of drama teachers face of being alone and building that strength of the department on their own is a really common challenge. I wonder, Sonia, what are some of the particular challenges and highlights of being in your new Inner Sydney school?

Sonia – Yeah, it's really different for me with my changeover. I've gone from building up over 10 years, a drama department in another school to suddenly coming into a school where I'm the sole drama teacher and there's not a whole lot happening with drama at the moment. There is a fantastic history of drama in the school and we are based in the inner western Sydney. So, there is a community outside of the school which is very focussed on the arts and theatre, but within the school itself, there's a lot of growth that can be done. We currently don't have drama in year seven or eight, so we've just got it in year 10, 11 and 12. I've started some extracurricular drama groups in years seven and eight in the hope to get that up for next year. But I think what I've come into is a community where the students really love the arts and their parents have quite a good understanding of the arts. But there hasn't been a lot of opportunity to foster it. I do think as well coming in in 2021, there is definitely the impact of covid on schools in the way that extracurricular groups and things like that couldn't go ahead. And so there may have been the beginnings of a good culture going on there, and it unfortunately just lost its roots during 2020. So, I think a lot of schools are in a similar position to me where we've come back in 2021 we're desperately trying to get that momentum up again and get the community rallying around us so that we have more that we can offer our schools when it comes to drama.

Ravenna – I think that's a really familiar story again for a lot of drama teachers. And I think, arts teachers in general, even at the performing arts high school that I was at before I came to this position, you know, the impact of not having the co curricular running has had a real impact on students. And I guess that kind of leads into quite nicely what we're here to talk about today, which is the topics that you really love teaching and the ways that you get students involved in those topics in Stage four or Stage five. What are the topics that you love teaching the most Sonia?

Sonia – I'm kind of known for my work on women in theatre, and I have to say my most favourite topic to teach is the unit on monologues that I do, which essentially is looking at women in theatre. So, I begin the unit of work by putting into context how little we've heard the voices of women in theatre throughout history, and I started off actually by getting students to find out who was the first female playwright. I asked many drama teachers this and a lot of people don't know. They often say Aphra Behn, which is, I guess, in the Western world, the one that we first know of. But it's actually a wonderful nun called Hrotsvitha, who was the first female playwright in the Western world, at least that we have documented. So, we start off in a place like that where we have a look at what is actually the reality of women's voices in theatre. And then we go on to look at what it is now and what kind of stories are told by women and why these stories might be important. I devised this unit of work well before the voice of women in theatre unit that came out for the HSC. That does have some similarities, but I've made sure that the focus is on the performance of realist monologues, and we look a little bit at Stanislavski within that. When I was teaching at a girls school, I would work incredibly hard to find a range of monologues for young women, making sure that there was a diversity and representation of what it meant to be a woman. I think that unit of work as students started to unfold and as you get into the objectives and the beats and units of the monologue, students slowly started to find themselves being a uniqueness in these expression of story, from female playwrights and from female characters and found within themselves and ability to identify aspects of their own lives, which I think is hugely empowering for young women. Often, they're playing roles in plays, which are from the canon of theatre written by men and with very traditional kind of roles that they might take on. So, when you start to present them a plethora of monologues from contemporary female playwrights who are writing and engaging with what it means to be a woman in this day and age, I saw girls get incredibly excited about that and come to life in a way that they hadn't when dealing with other texts within theatre in the same way. So that's one of my favourite stage five year 10 topics. Look at monologues. Get them excited about what senior drama might look like, give them the skills about how to approach it from a realist Stanislavski perspective. But ensure that I have given them a range of contemporary female voices to draw on in a context and a history that leads into that as well.

Ravenna – Amazing Sonia, and I'm super inspired now. I think I have always had an awareness of trying to make sure that we're including texts that are written by women. And looking at examples, I think, particularly of female theatre practitioners, becomes more and more difficult just because of the sheer amount of resources that already exist around the male voice. I guess what that brought up for me, Sonia, is the way that you approach teaching that Stage five unit. How has that changed in a coeducational context? And has it has it changed?

Sonia – I'm yet to teach it at Tempe, but I do think that I'm going to continue with that unit of work. I'm still going to work on giving the context, but perhaps expand it to not just women but minority voices. I have a lot of students at my school who identify with the L G B T Q I A community. I have a lot of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background, and so I think that unit can easily be expanded to basically give them an understanding of how to perform realist theatre and monologues. But from a contemporary perspective where voices are being heard outside the canon. I think I started that unit of work in an attempt to kind of say to students, we have had a way of teaching drama for hundreds of years now that relies on a certain set of texts and indeed practitioners and a way of approaching things. But drama can look different. And indeed, in this day and age, it needs to look different. And here are some examples that can engage you and help you find representation for other stories that you think might be missing from it. So, I have not taught that yet at my current school, but I am looking forward to essentially taking the blueprint of that work and just extending it to have a look at how have minority voices been looked at over history.

Ravenna – Fantastic. Thank you so much. So maybe a new HSC topic somewhere in that. So, Lachlan, I guess there's a great advantage in teaching something that you're passionate about as a teacher, and I'm interested in hearing about that. What topics are you passionate about teaching in stage four and five, but also what are the topics that students really warm to and really gets them on board?

Lachlan – The very quick answer is that in stage for I do a table-top role-playing game unit, which is all about the voice of the actor. We look at things like critical role and how much Dungeons and Dragons has just become part of the pop culture. And the kids love that. There's a part where they raid the costume room and they put on all their cosplays and we dim the lights in the performance workshop and they absolutely love it. It was really good during covid because we could still do zoom D’n’D. And it was it was really, really, really fun. I enjoy teaching it. But the unit that I think as a school we're very proud of is a Children's theatre unit that actually starts in term one and goes all the way to term three. Because we're trying to think vertically it involves multiple year groups and subjects. So, year seven in art have a mythical beasts unit, and they create their wild beasts and then they go to English and they create a bit of a story, and that's term one. In term one, we have these clay models from art, and then they hand them over to science in Year eight. In term two in science, they create the scientific reasoning whether or not these animals could actually exist in the real world. And then they hand it to us, and we create a Stage five drama. Year 9 and 10 students have all of these clay things laid out and they picked 10 of them to create a walking with dinosaurs type puppet show of these creatures. And then we invite kindergartens, year one and year two from all of our community of schools to come to our school and see these huge big puppets. It brings, I think, so much joy to especially science teachers who don't normally get that opportunity to see the arts in action like that. It's a whole school event because then year 11 actually come in as part of an executive team, and they give feedback to the 9/10 drama students. So, it's a really, really cool unit.

Last year, because of covid, we actually put in a podcast room literally a month before Covid hit. It was it was such good timing we got all the funding in 2019. And so, what we ended up doing was looking at contemporary theatre practice and going well, what's Windmill Theatre doing? You know what is Sydney Theatre Company doing? What's A T Y P doing? What are they doing in this space around Covid? And I said to our drama students, if this happens when you were practicing artists, what are you going to do? How are you going to respond? And so, they created audio adventures and audio packs that they could send to the families who were around. I had one girl come in during this period, and she's like, “well, Windmill Theatre Company are doing this, but they are also thinking about doing this.” And I thought, well, how do you know that? And she had rung up Rosemary Myers and had a chat to her about what they were doing in response to Covid. It was just spectacular to see these kids responding in such a very dark time for them socially to be trying to create something of joy for kindergartens, and year ones. It was really great.

Ravenna – I'm just completely inspired by both of the topics and want to be in both of your classes right now. I'm going back to Stage five drama. Yeah, amazing that both of those are about the thing that engages students, which is the exploration of their world and both of them in really challenging ways. And I think that the wonderful thing about drama students is you throw something and it seems like it might be too challenging, and that's the very thing that engages them in the learning. So wonderful. And I think you kind of touched on this a little bit Lachlan. But you know the core component of play building of group devising. I guess I'm interested in how do you teach this? I think, as a new teacher, a lot of teachers think that play building has to be taught as a discrete kind of topic that you take an approach to play building and play building is what we're studying this term. And I think there were elements Sonia in what you were talking about that are about understanding of how theatre is put together. So that kind of deconstructing and reconstructing is already going to be happening there and then in your unit, Lachlan, that's that lovely kind of cross curricular creative collaboration happening. But how do you Sonia embed those play building skills that you know are going to be needed in the stage six course into stage four and five? Do you have any hot tips or tricks for that?

Sonia – There is a place for sometimes explicitly teaching play building. You know, sometimes we do need to make sure that we are kind of scaffolding, so to speak, for our lower ability students, and it's even proven that all abilities need scaffolding these days with anxiety and things like that. Scaffolding is going to be helpful. So, I do think there's a place for that explicit teaching. But I also think that one of the things that we often forget to do in our day to day practice of drama teaching, and I know I'm definitely a culprit of this, is forget to be the person that can be sign posting what it is that students are doing in our everyday life. A lot of the time things are occurring naturally, intuitively in front of us that we just need to set aside that five minutes right after that activity to make the links for them and to say to them, this is what's going on. You could turn that devised piece into a 15 minute performance or a 10 minute performance just by adding this this and this. And so I think I've started to be a little bit more deliberate in making those connections for my students. I have this sheet that I introduced a lot of my stage four and five students to that says you are a practitioner, and it kind of outlines all the things that are happening in a drama classroom for them, and we start the year by looking at that and kind of saying, these are the things that you need to look out for because you're a practitioner, you're not just an actor. You are going to be involved in the directing and the designing and the dramaturgical decisions and the analysing and critique and all of those different things. And I find by kind of starting the year off reminding them of those things, I remind myself of those things. Then within my units of work, I'm constantly referring back to those roles, but also constantly referring back to the fact that they are practitioners creating and making theatre every single lesson.

I often find that if I give students an assessment notification for play building, they kind of go, “Oh, how are we going to get it done in the time?” And I say to them, you create whole scenes that go for about three minutes in half an hour so you can definitely create a play building piece in the time that I've given you, and just reminding them of the fact. You know as soon as we add pressure with assessment or with the HSC or whatever, a lot of the time that creativity disappears from them and they want that formula. They want that scaffold of A plus B equals my play building perfect piece but essentially what they need to do is draw on all the skills and things that we've already done. If we've embedded theatrical traditions and performance styles into the stage four and five and if we've embedded all those different roles, if we've embedded in our elements in our production elements, then they already have every single skill they need for that play building stuff. And we just need to be the ones who are explicitly showing that popping up in their face and saying, “hey, this is actually the play building that you're doing. It's happening right now and let me explain to you how you can make those links.”

Ravenna – Thanks, Sonia. It is that thing of when they get to the GP time, and suddenly they forget all the amazing work that they've done. So that sign posting is something I'm going to take away with me. Definitely. Lachlan, what's your approach to embedding the play building skills in stage four and five?

Lachlan – I agree. 100% with Sonia about the need to scaffold. The scaffold has to be everywhere. And one thing I'm very conscious of is in Stage five, particularly, is giving them the opportunity to talk as a scriptwriter, to talk as a director. So, what we do at the start of the year is I ask them to pick a role for the full class performances that they devise themselves. You know, if we're doing a bit of absurdism, they'll obviously use some script, but they then choose and say “Alright, well, for term one, I'm going to be a designer so I can learn the language of the designer.” And then you take that approach, that very heavily scaffolded approach, away so that they're blurring those lines. I've got a lanyard with the six thinking hats on it, and my drama kids presented me with the elements of drama cards because, you know, we throw it down in our classroom. I've got the cards on the wall like we all do. We've all got these things on the wall, the elements on the wall. We've got them in cards, we've got them. And I think it's just making that language that they can talk about play building clear. But then scaffolding how to have that conversation because no one is naturally good at talking about how if you manipulate the tension of relationships, you're going to create a wonderful bit of structure, you know, it's that sort of thing. I agree 100% with Sonia on moving it back into Year eight like that stage four. In that year eight, I’m sure we all have an element of drama like unit that we teach first. That's our first unit to introduce them to that. And that's probably my most heavily scaffolded unit because each lesson is dedicated to one of the elements and then they have a stimulus at the start and they see how, by just looking at the performance through a particular element, you can explore so many possibilities just by asking, how can we include tension? How can we include symbol? It just creates this this massive potential to develop that language of play building. So, I think if you can do that, then once you get to stage six, you don't have to try and re teach at all in the first three weeks of year 11.

Ravenna – Yeah. I mean, you're going over there into all of the appreciating outcomes and those being like, really visible in your classrooms through discussion and hopefully as well through some writing. But even listening to you then talking about that idea of, you know, the different hats and looking at it through the different perspective of the director, the actor, the audience member, the designer. That's exactly what's being asked a lot of the time in the written exam at HSC, which is wonderful, that that's becoming so natural in stage four and five. So, I guess I wanted to ask you then about making which I know that in your discussion about play building you know that that's exactly what they're doing. They're making and they're appreciating and they're performing all at once. But the assessment of making, um, I'm interested in how you go about making that explicit and visible to students and how you're assessing the making outcomes in Stage four in five.

Sonia – I do think making is an interesting one. I know that in stage 5, 1 of the things I've introduced as a part of assessment is a post-performance or production question time and that being part of their assessment. The high achieving kids will often freak out with this and try to prepare a speech. So, the lesson after the performance, each group will sit down, and I will give them the set of questions ahead of time. So, on the assessment notification, those questions will be given to them, and they know they could get any of those questions directed to them and I'll direct different students, different questions. Those questions are all about the making because I want them to be able to articulate after the they have performed exactly what it is that they have done to bring it to that moment. And I do find that that has also fostered a really beautiful culture of students in the stage of devising and developing as well. Because they start to talk with the language of the questions they know they're going to be asked, and they start to develop this way, this dialogue around, you know well, we need to make sure that we're integrating this, as you know, from a directorial approach, or I need to, we need to be considering tension in here because we're missing an element, and I'm sure it's tension or those kinds of things. They often will kind of object to it at first. But once you start adding those question times afterwards, as a part of their assessment about the process of making, it develops a real confidence in them as themselves as practitioners as well. And it gives them an ability to be able to reflect on their work in a non-written verbal way.

Another thing I do find that kids often will say that they hate, but in the long run is really beneficial to them, and they always remember is our performance essays. And I do find that those are really good in helping them be able to add that making element kind of into it as well. Because depending on what the performance is, or question is or what you're targeting, you can kind of bring in some of those making elements a little bit more explicitly for them to have to touch on.

Also, I have not tried this idea yet, but I have a class at the moment that is obsessed with tik tok, as they all are. And I have thought about making as a part of an assessment that each student needs to submit a tik tok style video, to explain their process behind their work because I actually think they will engage with that. Really, interestingly, I know when I've been looking at tik tok examples, there are all kinds of videos of, like how to do this or the process I took for this, which lends itself to doing a little kind of snapshot of it. So, I have kind of toyed with the idea that maybe for one of the assessments, I'll set a tik tok video on there, making as well.

Ravenna – Love a tik tok of how to build a play. It's fantastic, wonderful. So Lachlan, how do you go about assessing that component of the syllabus?

Lachlan – About two years ago, I changed the entire assessment schedule. I was quite mad. My head teacher at the time thought I was quite mad, and I had to convince the principal. But what it essentially turned in to is that each term they create portfolio that they are actually collecting their evidence. And they're thinking about what is the evidence of my making? What is the evidence of my footprint on this on this play? So, they are actively trying to each term to collect as much evidence as they can. It's a bit like our accreditation, as teachers, and annotating it. I give them the list. I give them the outcomes, and I'm like, you have to try and meet the 10 outcomes, and you need to try and talk in terms of how do you think you're meeting it? At first, the kids absolutely were disgusted by me giving them this piece of paper. How dare I? Um, that's for you, sir, not for me. But what ended up happening was that over the course of three terms, because it was tied to that performance each term, I saw students who their book work was three pages before for the whole year. And now suddenly they were filling an exercise book every single term because they were actively collecting stuff. Because the logbook was definitely something that was the weakness of the year 11 12, I moved it back into year 8. And so, this portfolio of work really took the emphasis off the fact that it was just a drama room and it was just their work, because now they were sharing bits of evidence. But you could see the highlighter where one of them made sure that this was my idea and this was my idea. And they started to talk in terms of the actual syllabus to me and talking in terms of the making outcomes, which was absolutely fantastic and they were able to connect the making and the appreciating. I think because it has always been that area of weakness for myself., if I'm being completely honest, what do you do apart from a couple of videos here and there. While they're performing, now they are actively using their phones to collect evidence. I know it's one of the most controversial things out there, but their phones become their journal, and they get it out every time to take photos, photos of each other performing. You can see them handing it around. And I have zero issues with phones in my classroom because they know that it's a tool, not an extension of their arm. And so that I think for me has been the biggest shift I've made in making has been allowing them to collect the evidence. We have a discussion at the start of that portfolio process, where they list all the possible different types of evidence that they could possibly collect to show that they have been making a footprint on the play. So, really it's still evolving. It is evolving, every year it is evolving. But the second part of that process is that after their performance, and you generally have block out all of week 10 for this, is every student gets five minutes to essentially justify where they think they're sitting in terms of, especially Stage five, where they think they're sitting on the common grade scale and they go, I think I'm here because of this, and normally they’re correct. I haven't had one student who has been wrong about themselves. So, it was really great to develop that understanding.

Ravenna – Wow, so many amazing ideas. My brain is going crazy at the moment with things that I want to start incorporating. So, that's all about asking students to justify choices and, you know, explain their impact and all that kind of stuff, which is a nice Segway to what I wanted to ask you both finally. How do we justify the choice of drama in Stage five? How do you advocate for this subject and for the learning that happens in drama, and why is it important,? You know, warm fuzzies here. Why is it important beyond that classroom as well as in the classroom?

Lachlan – It was a discussion with my principal when we started to go towards performances every term. Because like many schools, we had one big performance night every year, and that was the extent of our performances. And when I said I wanted to strip it back and have more intimate, more regular performances, it took a bit of convincing. But one thing I was very aware of was that drama has the ability to be a sustainable craft. I talk in terms of a sustainable aspect of their wellbeing that they can continue coming back to these performances. They're not going to remember the tests in 30 years. They're going to remember the experiences they made in drama. I think it's always been the case that drama and music and the arts have always been the big-ticket items with the schools.

To look at what we're doing. When I said that I wanted to move to the term by term thing I said my one promise would be that I'm going to make this a sustainable theatre company within the actual school. So, coming from a youth theatre company background where 300 bucks was a really generous budget for us for that year, it was something I really wanted to pass on also to the kids. Because again, we're the highest percentage of practicing artists outside of metro areas. And so, a lot of these kids parents are artists, are freelancers, are people involved in the industry. Even though our industry can at times be so limiting in what we offer the fact is that our practitioners are wearing many, many hats at the same time is so exciting and the fact that they can create their own opportunities to go out and create performances to go out and help sell science as a subject is amazing. The science head teacher’s working with me in trying to get drama into every single aspect of their science expo. And so, they want drama in there. Then HSIE, they want some drama in there, and so were continually finding those across KLA links. And to sum up, I guess I say that it's the oldest subject that we actually offer in our schools because you know, people didn't write going back all those years, we were telling stories and drama’s all about telling stories. That is what I think has really swayed a lot of people because it has now become a foundation where people are seeing drama with all of these skills, and all this ability to express meaning comes from drama.

Ravenna – I did get the warm fuzzy then, amazing. Sonia, Why? Why Drama? What is there beyond the classroom and in the classroom?

Sonia – Uh, look, I have so much to say about this because I have the privilege of not only seeing drama in the schools that I teach in, but also in my role as president of drama New South Wales. I have just loved seeing how much drama impacts our whole state because it's a ripple effect that kind of works in our little communities, and then you see the impact of it in the larger community as well. I think one of the most important things that we have with drama is the empathy side of things and the emotional intelligence that comes with our subject right now. There is a huge crisis in so many schools when it comes to mental health. And I think part of that reason is that we are forgetting to explore what it means to be a human and to tell the stories of what it means to be human. And drama is the subject that does that. Every single drama teacher can tell you that the kids with mental health issues kind of flock to them in their classrooms because it's a safe space where they are emotionally able to grapple with and work through what it means to live in this world. They're presented with stories of different perspectives and ideas. They have to work in groups and communicate effectively within those groups and be accepting of one another. They have to have a level of vulnerability and willingness. You kind of open up to an experience, and all of those things mean that what we are doing in drama is far more than just teaching fantastic communication skills and confidence and all of those things. They are in fact giving us young people who are going out into the world knowing how to engage with the fullness of what it means to be a human and live in this world. When we removed the arts from stem, what we are left with is formulas and concepts and ideas that are magical and beautiful. But we don't see them because we don't have the storytellers to show us how that scientific idea is magical and beautiful. And so, drama is absolutely integral in that. I also think it's integral in being a safe space for students to find and express their identities. There are very few subject areas that allow for you to kind of play with exploration of identity and drama definitely does that. And I think that that is as well in an ever-changing world where we have much more of an understanding of what identity looks like. Drama is the space that allows us to do that and look, there are studies a plenty and you can go on to different websites like Drama Australia website and find the studies about the academic influence it has and the way it builds community and so forth and so on. But I actually think, look at the state of our world right now and to look at the state of schools and to look at the state of how we are all feeling and coping with everything. In my mind, and I know I'm biased, but the answer is the arts. We have to return to the arts because that is the very heart of who we are as people. And it is that, as Lachlan said, that oldest art form that oldest thing that we return to. What do we do as human beings? We tell those stories of what it means to be human, and we have to come back to that. And we as Drama educators are the ones that know how to foster that and teach that and create students who are going out into the world as those people.

Ravenna – As the two of you were speaking about drama being the oldest form of storytelling, a kookaburra outside my house burst into hearty applause and it happened on cue as both of you referenced that. I had to share with the amazing moment. Thank you both so much for telling us about some of the topics that you love to teach in stage four and five. But most of all thank you so much for sharing your stories with us today. Lovely to speak to you both. And all the best for the term ahead.

Sonia – Thank you very much. I always love getting together with drama teachers, so thanks for the opportunity.

Lachlan – Yeah. Thank you. That was awesome.

Jackie – This podcast was brought to you by the Creative Arts Curriculum Team of Secondary Learners Educational Standards Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. Get involved in the conversation by joining our statewide staff room through the link in the show notes or email our Creative Arts Curriculum Advisor Cathryn Horvat at creativearts7-12@det.nsw.edu.au

The music for this podcast was composed by Alex Manton and audio production by Jason King.

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