For the first time, the VCAA is bringing Top Class concerts to regional Victoria. Audiences will enjoy a selection of top performing VCE Drama, Theatre Studies, and Dance students from 2023. 

Concert | Tuesday 16 April | 10am | GPAC Main Theatre | From $12.00

This dynamic concert features breath-taking dances, and original and scripted dramatic monologues that demonstrates the imagination and originality of emerging Victorian dancers, actors, and theatre makers. 

Top Class Regional 2024: Dance, Drama and Theatre Studies is sure to be a mesmerising concert representing young dancers, actors, and theatre makers from across Victoria. The concert features a range of VCE VET Dance styles; both VCE Dance Skills-based and Composition solos; and a range of VCE Drama and Theatre Studies monologues, designs, and interpretations. 

Compered by curriculum experts, the concert provides a range of examples of top performing students and insights into preparing for VCE performance examinations. This is an opportunity to enjoy a brilliant and eclectic concert suitable for all ages. 

Full program will be available in mid February 2024. Visit: www.vcaa.edu.au/seasonofexcellence 

Part of the VCE Season of Excellence 2024, presented by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. 

VCE Inspo Forum | Tuesday 16 April | 12.30pm | GPAC Little Theatre | Free

Want to get your VCE studies off to a flying start? This specially developed forum features guest artist Andi Snelling and a Q & A panel including VCE Top Class alumni and a curriculum expert.    

The VCE ‘Inspo’ Forum consists of an insightful thirty-minute Ted Talk-style session by special guest artist Andi Snelling. Andi will provide specific examples from their own work and crucial strategies to generate, explore and consolidate elite creative ideas from their inception.   

This will be followed by a fifty-minute Q & A session, where students and teachers can directly engage with an experienced panel featuring VCE Top Class student alumni, a curriculum expert, and special guest artist Andi Snelling.   

Facilitator, Andi Snelling:

Andi Snelling is a multi-award-winning performer, writer, director, and dramaturg. She is a gifted creator, physical artist and actor known for her raw honesty, quirky humour, and no-holds-barred performance style. Andi was an Australia Council for the Arts Future Leader 2022 and is a highly sought-after speaker and facilitator. 

Top Class Regional 2024: Music is sure to be an incredible concert representing young musicians and composers from across Victoria. 

Concert | Tuesday 16 April | 4pm | GPAC Main Theatre | From $12

For the first time, the VCAA is bringing Top Class concerts to regional Victoria. Audiences will enjoy a selection of top performing VCE Music students from 2023. 

This dynamic concert features incredible students performing a range of styles, genres and instrumentation. Top Class Music is an opportunity to see and hear some of Victoria’s finest up and coming musicians. 

The concert presents various instruments, interpretations and styles by soloists and groups, as well as original student compositions. Compered by curriculum experts, the concert provides examples of top performing students and insights into preparing for VCE performance examinations. This is an opportunity to enjoy a brilliant and eclectic concert series suitable for all ages. 

Full program will be available in mid-February 2024. Visit: www.vcaa.edu.au/seasonofexcellence 

Part of the VCE Season of Excellence 2024, presented by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. 

VCE Inspo Forum | Tuesday 16 April | 2.15pm | GPAC Little Theatre | Free

Want to get your VCE studies off to a flying start? This specially developed forum features guest artist Dr. Adam Starr and a Q & A panel including VCE Top Class Music alumni and a curriculum expert. 

The VCE ‘Inspo’ Forum consists of an insightful thirty-minute Ted Talk-style session by special guest artist Dr. Adam Starr. Adam will provide specific examples from their own work and crucial strategies to generate, explore and consolidate elite creative ideas from their inception.   

This will be followed by a fifty-minute Q & A session, where students and teachers can directly engage with an experienced panel featuring VCE Top Class student alumni, a curriculum expert, and special guest artist Dr. Adam Starr.   

Facilitator, Adam Starr:

Dr Adam Starr has taught in the Bachelor of Music Degree at Melbourne Polytechnic since 2012, lecturing in Composition, Composition for Media, Music Technology in Composition, Arranging, Performance, Career Strategies in the Music Industry, Ensemble and Guitar. 

A fun and whimsical story-telling workshop, led by acclaimed children’s entertainer Em Chandler, designed to help children develop their imagination.  

Tuesday 9 April | 1:00pm | GPAC Town Hall Theatre

Come fracture, explore, and retell some classic fairy tales through kindness, wonder, and play! Let’s use our imaginations, blankets, chairs, and all sorts of everyday objects to make troll bridges and little pig’s houses! We can be sneaky Goldilocks and Big Bad Wolves with a colander hat or blanket cape. And what happens when we start to change the stories? Are there more than three billy goats gruff? What if they were superheros? An alien invasion, or pig fairy godmothers? Let’s find out together.  

Using a combination of imaginative play, verbal and non-verbal storytelling, music, and ‘following the leader’, participants will retell traditional fairy tales as a group, before ‘fracturing them’/pulling them apart, asking “what if…?” and letting our imaginations guide us. We’ll turn everyday objects into our set and props and work collaboratively to retell a classic fairy tale or two that won’t have been told quite that way before.   

About Em Chandler:

Em Chandler (she/they) is a lauded storyteller, magician, and theatre-maker. With over 16 years of experience working with kids and their adults, Em is a proud queer/trans artist who connects with others through kindness and wonder, bringing her unique repertoire of spells, stories and songs to intimate community events or major festivals. Passionate about social justice, fairy tales, and drinking tea, The Sydney Morning Herald calls Em "pure enchantment". 

A Detective Story, told with Puppetry, where you help solve the case. 

Wednesday 3 July | 10:30am | GPAC Town Hall Theatre

A Little Bit of Blue is an interactive environmental detective story, told with puppetry. As well as unravelling a mystery, it involves learning about the unique habits of an extraordinary Australian animal, the Satin Bowerbird, and their fascination for the colour blue. It is a fun frolicking mix of Detective Noir, slapstick, with some interesting facts thrown in. 

Mavis’s world is turned upside-down by small disappearances. Something has gone missing and is nowhere to be found. Mrs Hooley has been looking everywhere. But it’s not just today. Every day a new thing seems to disappear. Little things. A $10 note. Clothes pegs. A ball of wool. It’s troubling at first, but the thief then takes it one step too far 

Mavis calls in a Detective to investigate.  The Detective, Harry McGee, an adorable fool, makes a mess of the investigation, and the children love always being one step of ahead of him. They set a trap for the burglar. A stake out is required. In the dead of night, and the Detective indeed finds something peculiar.... The children’s role is to help him solve the case. 

Jenny Ellis, a puppeteer of more than twenty years, weaves the whole mystery together, sometimes playing three characters at once. The young audience will gasp with surprise, sigh with the sadness, shout in outrage, cheer with triumph, and dance with joy as they follow the sneaky bowerbird on his journey to find love. 

A delightful show! Very clever and amusing – both for young and old. Jenny Ellis is clearly a very talented performer! Congratulations to all involved and thank you for a wonderfully engaging performance. 

~ Max, audience member, Northcote Kid’s Festival 

An elegy for the future we’re yet to inherit, World Problems is both comical and terrifying, gripping and cathartic.

Friday 7 June | 1pm | GPAC Main Theatre

A woman summons up her childhood with an intensity so visceral it seems to be playing out in front of us. But as her memories draw closer to the present, the space between the personal and the speculative grows ever more blurry. Where do you end, and everything else begins?

An elegy for the future we’re yet to inherit, World Problems is both comical and terrifying, gripping and cathartic. A solo time capsule catapulting across the ages, it seamlessly merges the most private and intimate reflections with a world-spanning perspective.

Theatre maker Emma Mary Hall has cemented a reputation for herself as one of the most astute and insightful observers of the shape of things to come, blending a poetic sensibility with rigorous attention to global and historical matters.

Performed with vivid physicality by Carly Sheppard, directed by Cassandra Fumi (Associate Director, A Very Jewish Christmas Carol) and designed by Dann Barber (Bloom), World Problems trains a microscope on one soul to chart the future of all humanity.

World Problems features on the 2024 VCE Drama Playlist and is suitable for school years 9-12. 

Keeping Aussie kids fit and heathy! An interactive and fun performance for children and families!

Tuesday 9 April | 11am | GPAC Little Theatre

Snowy is becoming more beautiful every day and The Wicked Queen is not happy! She has decided to send Snowy away, to get rid of her, once and for all. 

The Magic Mirror has warned The Queen this is a huge mistake – Snowy is beautiful on the inside and the outside- everyone loves her. The Queen isn’t listening and orders The Hunter from the Palace to take Snowy into the forest and leave her there forever!                  

Meanwhile, the Cool Dudes have decided it’s time they started making healthier food choices and doing some exercise.         

During this interactive production, kids will enjoy the opportunity of role-play as they are invited on stage to become a variety of characters- including The Cool Dudes- that love to rap! The off-stage action continues with singing and dancing for the rest of the audience. 

A timely piece of live theatre about making better food choices, while keeping kids fit and healthy! 

“...It is bright, colourful, happy and my kids were very entertained, they can’t stop talking about it. Bravo to all concerned, one thing-take some ear plugs as the kids become very, very excited”- Adelaide Fringe Festival 

This live edutainment extravaganza is jam packed with all your favourite Pevan & Sarah bangers.

Pevan & Sarah are bringing the joy of their Cub Club music to theatres around the country.

Together, the big friendly tiger and his pocket rocket bestie will rock the house with a performance that’s equal parts musical, educational, hilarious and downright FUN! After two years of being beamed into classrooms and homes for remote learning, Pevan & Sarah are bringing the joy of their Cub Club music to theatres around the country.

Students will sing, learn and laugh their way through a fifty-minute adventure with the dynamic duo as they role play a “typical” day in the classroom. This interactive performance will weave its way through many points of the literacy and numeracy curriculum as well as highlighting key early years experiences such as teamwork, social skills and building resilience.

Prepare your little ones for an excursion like no other and one they’ll never forget. So don your tiger ears, brush up on your favourite lyrics and get ready to rock because Pevan & Sarah can’t wait to see you all!

In a city at war, five young people count down the days before a boat sets sail for a safer place. Who will leave, who will stay, and what will their choices cost them?

Wednesday 7 September | 7.30PM | GPAC Theatre

 

“Perhaps the most important piece of theatre you will see this year.” 5 STARS, The Music



From multiple-award winning playwright Samah Sabawi comes THEM — a compelling tale of survival, friendship, and the things we are willing to do to protect the ones we love.

THEM tells the story of one young family as they face the decision whether to flee their war-torn city. Omar, Leila and their young child are counting down the days. Their friends enjoy fantasies of escape and the arrival of Omar’s sister brings a real chance to get out – but at what cost?

Developed in consultation with people living in conflict zones and displaced by war, the play was first supported by Melbourne Theatre Company’s Cybec Electric program before enjoying a sell-out extended season at the famed La Mama Theatre.

With unexpected tenderness, laughter, and song, THEM takes audiences into extraordinary circumstances to reveal our shared humanity in the ordinary moments that shape our lives.

“A drama dappled with humanity and humour amid the horrors of war [...] The inextinguishable spirit of laughter, of the music of life in the face of desolation, is crucial to both the play’s poignancy and appeal.” 4 STARS, Sydney Morning Herald.

Written by Samah Sabawi

Directed by Bagryana Popov

Producer, Set and Costume Design Lara Week

Lighting Design Shane Grant

Sound Design Elissa Goodrich

Prop Maker Lara Chamas

Production and Stage Manager Hayley Fox Touring

Production Manager Shane Grant

Cast Taj Aldeeb, Claudia Greenstone, Abdulrahman Hammoud, Sahil Saluja, Meena Shamaly, Mehran Tajbakhsh

Originally produced by Lara Week and Samah Sabawi, in collaboration with La Mama Theatre. THEM is supported by La Trobe University, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government initiative, and the Australia Council for the Arts, the arts funding and advisory body of the Australian Government

Join Lab Kelpie for a tailored wellbeing workshop especially for performers

Most of us understand the benefits of stretching before and after we go for a run or hit the gym. So why should the gruelling physical and emotional work of performing be any different? Avoiding pulling a muscle in the gym will mean very little if your mental health is taking a beating in the rehearsal room.

Whether you’re rehearsing a demanding theatre scene or playing the romantic lead in the musical; whether you’re performing the work yourself or witnessing it as a crew member or creative – never underestimate the emotional and mental toll that inhabiting or exploring other characters and stories can take.

In this hands-on (and eye-opening) workshop, we take participants through practical warmups and focus activities, exercises in meditation and mindfulness, and cool-down and “deroling” techniques. We will also share invaluable tips on navigating onstage intimacy and violence, discuss stress and work-life balance, and leave you with resources, tips and tools with which to tend to and maintain mental health and safety in the theatre – both yours and others’

A hands-on theatre workshop for budding actors and theatre-makers.

Two of the Lab Kelpie team will take students through the creation and themes of Become The One with a 90-minute, hands-on workshop exploring the structure and style, casting and character dynamics, performance, and how to touch on serious subject manner in a real and accessible way.

Perfect for amateur thespians, budding playwrights and directors, or behind-the-scenes voyeurs! Includes handouts and further resources. Covering the page-to-stage process of presenting Become The One and including practical exercises and group work, this class is run by two of our team and it’s designed to educate, entertain and enhance the experience of the performance.