In the first week of the April school holidays, Ocean Manutulila and myself travelled up to Hawkes Bay all by ourselves to attend the National Youth Drama School.

 After our spots being saved for over a year due to COVID-19, we finally got to meet our homegroup tutors and peers. Ocean and I both got accepted into the musical theatre homegroup. However if musical theatre doesn't spark your interest there are many other home groups to choose from like stage combat, advanced acting, screen acting, shakespeare and plenty more!! 

Over the course of a week, as a team we put on a 15-20 minute performance to showcase at the ‘Friday night sharing of work’ at the Opera House in Hawkes Bay. Our musical tutors, Trace and Dani chose the musical ‘Come From Away’, this musical focuses on the importance of kindness surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how a whole town of 9,000 people in Canada managed to help over 7,000 stranded people from all over the world. 

As well as homegroups, everyone gets to be in a ‘taster class’ and the opportunities to try completely different things! Examples of taster classes include circus, drag, makeup, poetry performance, songwriting and advanced acting. I chose screen acting to be my taster with the amazing Will Wallce. 

Over the week, we worked in small groups memorising lines and working with Will to get a better understanding of what the TV/film industry is like behind the scenes.

Personally my favourite memory from this crazy week was all the cool new people I got to meet (especially the crazy energetic kids from the hostel!) Other key moments were the student and tutor nights, celebrating both good deeds and mistakes with chocolates and a rubber chicken called Chopsticks, meeting awesome tutors who have traveled the world with their amazing talents and watching Wills 5 minute video of all the cool ‘badass’ roles he's played on screen.

During the week we were surrounded by constant positivity, music, cheering, dancing and laughter. Definitely one of the best weeks of my life so far!! For anyone interested in the arts I HIGHLY recommend attending NYDS, this week made us both realise the paths we want to take in our futures and we created some of the best memories and friends along the way!