WAAPA YEARBOOK #4

So after the week of orientation it was time for classes to begin.

When in First Year back then, we didn't have any performing opportunities that year. It was time to build on your skills and performance techniques without putting it into public performance.

But the Second Years and Third Years began rehearsing their first shows of the year in orientation week and once classes began they would rehearse them in the afternoons.

The first Waapa Musical Theatre production I saw was the Good Fight (pictured above) written by the late Nick Enright and David King and performed in the studio that would soon be named after Mr Enright. It was an example of where we were as a musical theatre nation, we were making shows about our own life stories and sometimes they became commercial successes and sometimes they remain artistic successes. The Good Fight continues to find an audience with newer productions and from what I can remember it certainly deserves it.

But as for us we were being introduced to the class regime and the lecturers who would see us through the whole year, and whole three years in many cases.

Now unfortunately for me I was a beginner at everything and so Level One for all classes meant that I would have these classes for the whole three years. If you were skilled enough and possessed previous qualifications to support this, you could skip a year or two of some classes and pass the final level or have the whole subject written off with another degree. The people that entered the course at this higher level were, in hindsight, the ones who excelled the most at Waapa and achieved earlier success in the industry.

For a Level Oner like me the subject that this was most important in this regard was Music. It was divided into three sections. Music Skills, Aural Skills and Keyboard Skills. Music Skills was simple Music Theory like you do in school about reading music and writing it and evaluating the terms and the language etc. Aural Skills was about training the ear to recognise pitch and also intervals which I found bloody hard to master. But Keyboard seemed very exciting at first to learn but when you saw all the pieces you had to work on before the next class, it became a hugely time consuming topic for me. I was putting in 8-10 hours a week on keyboard practise in first year and I still struggled with the prescribed "fingering" - let's not go there.

We all had to attend Dance Streaming that first week as well and by putting us through a few simple routines Jenny Lynnd our Dance Mistress was able to place us in the proper levels. In Dance you could begin at second or third level and simply repeat the level three as much as you had to. For me it was a goal to get to level 3 in all dance streams by third year. But you do have to pass the level to advance at the years end. Naturally I was put into level one for all three dance classes, Ballet, Jazz, and Tap.
We did a fourth dance class every week that was called Song and Dance, where you would work on the song as an ensemble and then work on the dance then put it together over a few weeks. The First and Second years combined to do this class together - which was a great way to get to work with the others who had already done a year of the course. Sometimes we would do a mock audition dance call.
I had a very memorable mock audition dance call when I was partnered with Mary Poppins herself and we won one of the dances which was a real highlight of the year for me.

But Music and Dance were only two strands of the course. There was also Acting and in first year we had two Acting Classes a week, two Voice Classes every week, and one Improvisation class every week with the magnificent Chrissy Best who was just brilliant as a nurturer and taught us how to be more generous as actors. Improv frightened me and advanced me in many ways and the atmosphere created in that room was probably the most comfortable I felt to be brave and make strong choices on the floor. I never seemed to have that when dealing with text, not sure why it was like that. Voice though was intimidating, it was everything I always feared about acting classes where you run around the room acting like a demented frog. The very first exercise was Cow and Tree, one person was the Cow, the other a Tree, and the Cow had to rub against the tree and vocalise the enjoyment it felt from the friction.

Yeah...

But there was still more, it was musical theatre so there was also singing and there were two lessons for this every week. Back then, as part of the course, you got a private one hour lesson with your acquired singing teacher, I had Roma Conway. To be honest I think she did more counselling than teaching singing as you tended to take advantage of the one on one rarity that it provided. Also, singing is so connected to your emotions, if you were going to have a break down, it was always going to happen in your singing lesson. I felt sorry for the girls who had to contend with all those chemical imbalances they frequently had to deal with at the same time as well. The other class was Song Rep, where the boys and girls were separated and worked with the head of Music Theatre David King on a song. I kinda didn't hit this class running and it took me a while to understand what it was we were achieving but we all had to learn the same song then one by one we would get up to sing it and sometimes you only did a little bit and sometimes a lot. Some songs were so hard for me, particularly if I couldn't go through it with my singing teacher and I would have to sit it out which was very embarrassing and disappointing.

Other than those classes we also had Dramatic Literature once a week, which would have been interesting if I was actually interested, and we also had Holistic voice where we gained tremendous information about the physicality of our vocal equipment and how things impact on it. Kris Moffat was our lecturer and she put up with a lot of very strange and naughty questions from our class members. One notorious question about the affects that 'deep-throating' had on the vocal folds was very awkward to sit through but extremely well handled by Kris, and hilarious in hindsight too might I add.

But that was pretty much it in First Year from what I can remember, though for half of the year we also had to attend a 3 hour lecture every Wednesday morning for a History of The Arts subject. It was what contributed to the course to make it a BA I guess. Sadly some were able to cheat in the final exam of the year to pass it but kudos to the student who sat for it honestly and failed the exam, only to return to sit it again and pass. Well done for keeping it real. I was happy I got through and didn't have to go through that again.

When I hear how most university students only have about 12 hours a week of classes at uni I can't believe how heavy the workload was for us.

But hey, we were in Perth, what else are you gonna do :-)

There was more to first year than the classes though. More on that next time.

J G S