First Cross-Faculty Excursion a Fringe Highlight for Senior Students!
Our Year 11 and 12 Pre-Literary Studies English and Performing Arts students took part in an exciting first for the school — a cross-faculty excursion to the Adelaide Entertainment Centre as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival! The group attended the show Mama Does Derby accompanied by Amy Forester, the English Curriculum Leader (7–12), and Kristen Mallia, the Arts Curriculum Leader (7–12), who designed the experience to highlight the strong connections between English and the Performing Arts. Opportunities like this help students build strong foundational knowledge about storytelling, character, and performance that can transfer across subject areas and support student achievement at a high level.
The show, Mama Does Derby, is a lively and heartfelt coming-of-age story that follows both a mother and her teenage daughter as they navigate the challenges of growing up together and separately. Set against the high-energy backdrop of roller derby, the show explores themes such as identity, mental health, family relationships, and finding your place in a fast-moving world. Through humour, music and energetic storytelling, the production delivered a powerful and entertaining look at what it means to grow up at any age!
Students were highly engaged throughout the performance and were thrilled with the opportunity to experience seeing live theatre as part of the Fringe Festival. It was wonderful to see them responding so positively to the themes of the show and enthusiastically discussing the ideas presented afterwards over lunch and on the bus back to school!
Our students represented the school brilliantly and their demonstration of exemplary behaviour went a long way to displaying them as outstanding role models in such a public setting. Theatre staff were impressed with the mature way they engaged in asking questions about the show after its conclusion, and school staff were very proud of the way they conducted themselves during the performance and the enthusiasm they brought to the day.
This first cross-faculty excursion was a great success, and we hope it will be the first of many collaborative learning experiences for our senior students going forward!
