Last night at The Street Theatre, Tom Murphy of Queanbeyan, a Year 12 student at St Edmunds College, Canberra, was named the Singapore Airlines Young Shakespearean Artist of 1997. The award was presented by Mr Robert Goddard, Sales Manager ACT, Singapore Airlines.
This year the National Schools' Shakespeare Festival has taken a new direction. From the State and Territory finals, 24 outstanding individual performers participated in the National Shakespeare Showcase: five days of workshops and master classes, directed by actor John Turnbull. With designer Rodney Brunsdon, choreographer Delores Dunbar and musical director Ron Creager, the students created dance, music and group movement to link pieces from Shakespeare's plays and poems.
All the actors, aged 12 to 18, played many roles: Murphy was Othello, Romeo, Orsino and Hamlet's Father's Ghost among others. The award is made for the person judged to be the most ready for further training.
Murphy will travel to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London and to Stratford-upon-Avon on a two-week study tour. Wendy Dowd (South Australia) and Louise Tourelle (NSW), winners of the Singapore Airlines Shakespeare Teacher of the Year Award for outstanding professional development proposals, will study Shakespeare in performance and voice development respectively.
The Shakespeare Globe Centre Australia is a privately sponsored charitable organisation with a broad charter to promote Shakespearean arts and education. To provide follow-up opportunities for the finalists each year, the Centre has established Australian Friends of Shakespeare's Globe.
Affiliated with Shakespeare's Globe in London, the Australian Friends program is poised to expand, arranging study tours, conferences, international theatre exchanges and productions. Hugh O'Keefe is Director, National Education Program on 02 9351 5231 (Fax 02 9351 5230).
The National Shakespeare Showcase will be presented at The Street Theatre each year during Floriade. This year the students all showed skill, commitment and sincerity in the work. The Showcase week emphasises the collaborative nature of theatre: their presentation demonstrated the value of bringing students together from across the nation. If Shakespeare be the food of theatre, play on.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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