Mandurah Baptist College have made the finals for Yoh Fest, the annual ‘youth on health’ festival run by Act Belong Commit, for their group drama piece on the impact of bush fires.
This year’s Yoh Fest theme was ‘resilience’, and during a brainstorming session the MBC year 11 drama students decided a good local example was the bush fires in Waroona and Yarloop.
“We wanted to make something that would move people, something that hadn’t been done before,” year 11 student Texas Reeks said.
Drama student Brooke Hancock said their play showed different groups within the community, and the impact a bush fire can have on them.
“We show the firefighters, and we show the kids, who supposedly caused the bush fire, but we find out later on that they didn’t… we showed the relief workers trying to get donations, and how the town rebuilds themselves,” Brooke said.
The group performs a creative interpretation of a town ravaged by fire, employing wooden frames with positive and negative words written on them as a stage set to show both the buildings of the town, and the townspeople’s states of mind.
After working on the piece for a term, the students made it through the Yoh Fest heats, which included about 200 entries from schools across Australia, to make the top eight.
MBC drama teacher Kylee Retallack said it was very exciting to even make the finals.
“We’re going to be competing against Balga Senior High School, and they’re quite strong, and the Serpentine Jarrahdale high school (sic), so there’s a few different schools from around the state,” she said.
The finals will be held at the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre.
Yoh Fest has four categories: the dance and solo drama finals will be held on Friday October 28; group drama finals will be held on Saturday October 29; and the visual art exhibition will be on show from October 24-29.
