WAAPA YEARBOOK #6

So to wrap up the first year at WAAPA it's fitting to discuss the people who graduated that year because they are the people you automatically looked up to when you were the new students on the block :-)

Of course the biggest export from that class is pictured above, Ms Lucy Durack who has been Australia's Galinda in Wicked and of course just recently completed her run as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. When Wicked returns in 2014 Lucy will be also returning to the bubble once more :-)
Back in 2002 Lucy turned 21 and invited everyone from the WAAPA Music Theatre course to her party which was one of the highlights of the year. She was the first to leave WAAPA that year too after securing a spot in the Australian production of MAMMA MIA.

But there were many others in that year that have gone on to be very successful in the industry and I still enjoy seeing them pop up all over the place.

One of my personal favourites was Kaeng Chan who has done very well for himself.

Most recently I saw him in Jonathan Biggins' play Australia Day and he was very funny and held his own alongside the rest of the brilliant cast.

But Kaeng has gone from Disney to Miss Saigon and has graced many publications with his heart-throb good looks.

But best of all he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet and I am very glad to see him doing so well.

Last year I was lucky enough to see many of these guys in several productions too but noticeably Andrew Broadbent and Natalie Alexopoulos (pictured in Avenue Q) both in South Pacific and Monique Pitsikas in Forum.















Other favourites of mine included David Somerville, Melle Stewart, Hayley Johnson, Dean Vince, Frank Hansen, and Joseph Connell.

Apart from ogling these guys in performance and social events, we also had to do a few performance pracs and it was pretty exciting for us being the only performance we could do that year. Although the boys in my class were offered the opportunity to perform in the ensemble of the Opera course's production of L'Orfeo and we took it up all except one of us. Luckily enough for one of our boys, he got to share the lead role with then student Andrew Moran who is now a regular principal with Opera Australia. My pracs began with Duets, and I performed Sue Me (Guys and Dolls) with a female classmate of mine. I then did a kinda fail with What Kind Of Fool Am I (Stop The World I Want To Get Off), and ended the year with Those Were The Good Old Days (Damn Yankees).

Then it was time to farewell the graduating guys at the end of the year with their Showcase, and then we all had to undergo exams of course.

After that it was time to hear the announcement of the shows and the castings for the following year.

It was announced that the second years, my year, would do an outdoor play called The King Stag, a Commedia dell'arte type of performance, then be the ensemble for the mid-year musical Fiddler On The Roof, and then end the year with a musical review called Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris. I had no idea about any of them except Fiddler but many of my class got very excited at these announcements. Tony Sheldon was announced as directing us in the Jacques Brel one as well so that was pretty exciting for us also. 

I was cast as "The Bear" in King Stag, "Reb Nachum" the beggar in Fiddler, and given the song "Jackie" in Brel.

We sadly lost one of our class mates that year and I regretted not spending more time to get to know him better. He certainly didn't let it beat him though and went on to work continuously in Musicals all over the world. He is always included in our get-togethers and will always be considered one of the class.

But that's a very quick run down of the first year hope you enjoyed a slice of what it was like.

J G S