A part of the action
By Riley Jeffery, Year 10, St Andrew’s Catholic College
FOR my Year 10 work experience I had a five-day placement at JUTE Theatre Company and was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to work with Mark Sheppard and his team on a creative development.
A creative development is the process of visualising a new production and over the course of the week Mark’s ideas and thoughts gradually developed into something very special.
My expectations for the week were that I would be helping and assisting in the creative process, however they were exceeded tenfold. The entire week was filled with laughter and that just made the experience so much better.
Having never been involved in creative development I finished the week with so much more knowledge about the process even though every creative development is unique, the fundamentals are still the same.
At this point in my life I don’t really know what I want to do once I leave school but work experience gave me an insight into what is involved in the career of acting.
Being asked to help make someone’s simple thoughts and ideas come to life so that they can turn it into a full-scale production is definitely something I could see myself doing again.
As well as being given an insight into the process I was also able to learn how to be a clown — one of my favourite parts of the week.
The clown workshops were awesome.
Everyone got up and got involved and truly embraced (working title).
I’m immensely proud to have been a part of the creative process.
Perhaps the one thing I learned most was an insight into indigenous culture.
Each day I became more immersed in the culture and that is something I am very grateful for, learning about different traditions and their lives in general.
Everyone had different stories to tell and the more I listened, the more I learned. They all had this incredible sense of family and community and I enjoyed being part of it all.
I must thank everyone for teaching me about their culture and so much more — they are all so very, very talented. I loved being a part of the family and what we were able to create in just a week. It was a truly special experience.