Update from the ‘Respect Yourself, Respect Your Culture’ NiteStar Performing Arts Program:
“Our star players showed up bright and early in Onslow, ready to create! We warmed up with some favourite exercises and took the opportunity to go more in depth with our performance skills as well as the issues we discussed the day before. Our budding performers battled their shame to become stronger at speaking in front of each other. By the end of the morning session we had a wonderful scene to present to the community. The brave crew committed to showing their peers what they had worked on later tonight.
When we arrived at the community hall 30 minutes prior to curtain time, the performers were already there and excited to put up their work. Superbly a large portion of the community, including several of their peers, began filling the performance space to see their work.
While David and Carla took the older youth back stage to prepare, Marri and Ariana showed the community some of the work we had done with our younger performers. We saw a noticeable shift in energy from our teenage performers when their peers showed up. They vehemently expressed that they could no longer do the performance because of how ashamed they were of performing in front of their friends. A few pep talks later, the group agreed to just go for it and got up on stage to perform their scene.
The personal triumphs we saw within the teens were highlighted by the support that the community gave them in applause. We reiterated how brave it was for these performers to try something different and show their talents. The evening ended on a wonderful high as we could see the pride they felt in accomplishing this task.”
