The Disability Trust’s drama groups, Mischief Makers and Altogether Drama, are beaming with pride after receiving wonderful ovations after their latest performances at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre in Wollongong.
Mischief Makers staged “In Space No One Can Hear You Sing” while the Altogether Drama group also ventured into science fiction with their play entitled “To Boldly Go!”.
The process of writing, rehearsing and performing each play was enjoyable, though sometimes chaotic.
They were written by two of the participants – Mallee Pike-Wills and Jessica Szulerowski.
Mallee came up with the idea for “In Space No One Can Hear You Sing” when talking with a a group of friends about Star Wars. They somehow got onto the topic of soap operas, and then decided to create a “space opera”.
“When we were talking about what plays to do for drama, the idea came to me and I thought ‘what if we do that?’ I thought it would be a really cool idea for us to try but I didn’t realise how big it was going to get,” Mallee said.
“I have worked with our director and our cast to evolve the idea and to try to achieve the vision which I’ve got for this play.
“We’ve enjoyed working on all the cool ideas, improvising scenes in our Friday classes and everyone working together to make it a really cool play.
“It’s pretty meta, this is one of our most ambitious plays yet.”
Jessica’s inspiration for “To Boldly Go!” came when she thought “what if an actor’s first line was the cue for the tech team?”. That instead of the lights coming on automatically, it was a line that brought them on. Even further, that the light was the sun.
This amounted to a spoof of Star Trek and sci-fi in general.
“I have always loved it when movies or television shows poke fun at certain genres and wanted to give it a go,” Jessica said.
“It is good to have a laugh now and then, and I had a lot of fun writing the show and working out ways to add those laugh-out-loud moments at the expense of science.”
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