Happy New Year and welcome to the Cashmere High School Drama and Dance Department.

2021 is going to be an incredibly exciting and dynamic year full of opportunities for excellence and enrichment for all of our students and wider community. We have spent the break re-working all of the plans and units for our students and we are really excited about the direction we are headed. This year we welcome back Annabel Renall into the fold and are delighted to have her energy, passion and sense of humour again. We have also seen the addition of another Dance class and look forward to the continuing growth of this subject.

As in the past few years we have an exciting calendar of guest tutors and workshops available to our students to enrich and extend their performing arts education. This will begin with two devising workshops facilitated by Jim and Helen from the Te Rakau Trust, where students will be able to experience the process through a Maori lens. This will be available to all dance and drama students and if they haven’t already let us know that they are keen then should do so today. This year we will also be offering students at least three opportunities to attend performance to help prepare them for their exam. In addition, we will look to provide additional opportunities to the wider community to view theatre with their students just for the fun of it.

Families, whanau and the community will also have opportunities to share in the work of our students as each senior class will be offering evening performances of their work, which will include class plays, Shakespeare evenings, Dance Showcases and the Year 13 Comedy Night.

Outside the classroom our students will again be offered a wide range of co-curricular opportunities. We will be entering the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival, hoping for a return to the Nationals in Wellington during Queen’s Birthday Weekend. Students will also have the opportunity to audition for the Show Quest entry which will focus on the theme of ‘Kindness to those in need’. We will also be re-establishing our Theatre Sports program in an effort to reclaim our titles. At the beginning of Term 2 we will be holding auditions for our Drama Production of ‘The Crucible’ which will be a four night event at the end of Term 3 in our Theatrette. This follows on from our successful production of ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ in 2019. In Term 2 we will also work with the Music Department to create a Broadway review night or two, providing our students the opportunity to perform pieces from a range of Musicals.

This year we are also making a push to educate our students about preparing their whole self for a future in performing arts. This means that we would love to see as many of our students as possible take up the singing and choir opportunities provided by the Music Department. They are incredibly able tutors and infinitely cheaper than anything outside of school. For more information please contact the Music Department. In addition, we will be offering mindfulness sessions Mondays before school and ‘Flow and Go’, a stretch and release session before school on a Tuesday to enable students to train their mind and body for performance. To further aid their wellbeing we will have water coolers and fresh fruit available to students, as well as a range of supplies including, first aid kits, sanitary products, spare healthy food, strapping and other safety gear for dancers and advertising of support services within and outside of school.

We are so pleased to be back and look forward to seeing you around during the year. If you have any questions about what’s happening, ideas about what we could do to improve, or have ways that you could help we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to email me anytime at ebs@cashmere.school.nz

Take care and be kind,

Shuan Edwards-Brown

Head of Drama and Dance