NAPA News - Week 8, Term 1, 2024

Dear NAPA Families,

A big thank you to all who sent Laurie and I such heartfelt messages in response to our retirement email. Your words mean so much to us and we are extremely grateful to have received them. It is so hard to retire but we will never leave the NAPA family completely as we will continue to support our students and staff in any way we can.

Wizard of Oz Cast Announcement

Congratulations to the Cast of the Broadway Tweens’ production of The Wizard of Oz. We are so proud of the way our young performers conducted themselves throughout the audition process, and cannot wait to see this production come together.

Picnic at Hanging Rock Cast Announcement

We are excited to announce that we have been granted the License to perform this classical play on the 23rd and 24th August. This will be performed by our Senior Tread the Boards and directed by Cilla Scott. Cilla has cast the play as follows:

Seussical Jr Auditions

We had our first audition day for Seussical Kids! Each and every student did an outstanding job of getting up on stage and singing their hearts out. Bravo! We will continue with the singing auditions this Saturday as well as have the students perform their individual monologues and the dance routine they have learned. As the students didn’t get a chance to practice the dance portion last Saturday please hop on to the online portal this week where you can find the choreography. Happy Practicing!

Congratulations Evie Tonkin

Evie, who is only 7 and in Broadway Kids, recently completed filming for a mini online comedy series. This is a huge achievement for her and her younger brother Billy as they both play the lead children in this series. Well done cherubs!

The show can be followed on Instagram @planted_show and the link to the series is:

PLANTED TV SERIES ON YOUTUBE

Beautiful Feedback

Just wanted to share this beautiful feedback. A guest teacher, Tiana Pinnell covered Tahnee's ballet classes last week and sent us this lovely feedback regarding our students – we feel very proud of them as this behaviour is what we work hard to achieve.

“I just wanted to say the students were an absolute delight to teach. I just wanted to pass that on and say I’ve never taken a cover class before in which the students were so polite, respectful, talented and engaged the whole lesson, and it was a privilege to cover teach for this studio.”

— Tiana Pinnell

P&F AGM

Nominations have now reached the cut off date. We will be in touch with those who have been nominated to confirm their roles on the executive committee. The AGM is on Monday, 25th March at 5pm. If you are keen to help support the P&F in some way we would love to see you at the AGM. We are looking for volunteers to run the bar, or help manage the fundraising activities to support the executive committee. Without the P&F we wouldn’t be permitted to run the bar and we would not have the funds to provide the resources we do to support the wonderful experiences our students have at NAPA. Staging productions and running a theatre is so expensive, without the P&F support we would have to charge a lot more for tickets to break even, so the P&F helps with this as well. We appreciate all the incredible people who help in this way.

A Message from Miss Kim for Dance Students

Recently I was lucky enough to visit both the Sydney and Melbourne productions of Wicked, and in my time, I had the opportunity to chat with industry professionals around the direction of current industry training and employment. One thing that was spoken about frequently amongst creatives was that young performers coming through now have a lack of style and struggle with picking up choreography. This is a trend that I have also noticed and have been trying to rectify with our own students by bringing in guest choreographers to our Friday Dance Extension Program. This is something I would like to continue to do in Term 2, to ensure our students are meeting the demands of relevant industry expectations.

My vision for our dance program has always been one of balance between technique, competition and performance experience and exposure to different genres and styles. Our current performance teams and recreational classes have a great balance of technique training and performance experience, so our Friday Extension Program will now focus on giving children exposure to different genres and styles of dance, from choreographers and teachers who will help them gain the relevant skills necessary to be an employable performer.

We already have some fabulous teachers lined up to work with the students in Term 2, so if you’re interested in joining this class, please enrol before the beginning of Term 2, as we will have a maximum number of places available in these classes.

End of Term

We usually finish terms on a Saturday but with the Easter weekend starting on Friday 29th March, our last classes for Term 1 will be held on Thursday, 28th March and our first day back will be Monday 15th April. Please check lost property before the term finishes as anything left on the racks will be rehomed at the end of term.

Have a fantastic week everyone

Best wishes,

Lynn & the NAPA Team