Thank you for your interest in the Performance Lab, Grade 7-10 course in 2022.
Entry to this course is by audition only.
We look for candidates who demonstrate passion and commitment to the dramatic arts.
WHAT IS REQUIRED?
All applicants must select and thoroughly prepare and present one short monologue (1½ - 2 minutes) of their choice. We have prepared a list of suggested monologues, but you may present one of your own choosing. Please read the guidelines carefully on the following page.
On the day you will:
• Perform your prepared piece to the director and other students attending your audition time.
• Participate in ensemble and improvisation activities.
Please arrive at least 15 minutes before your audition and wait for your session to be called.
Auditions are conducted in a group – everyone is in the room for the full 3 hours. You are required to stay for the whole audition time. Parents and friends may not join you in the audition.
Things to remember:
• Rehearse your performance before the audition.
• Bring a copy of your monologue, a pencil and eraser with you.
• Wear suitable clothing (non-restrictive clothing that does not limit your movements).
• You may be asked to remove your shoes and work in bare feet during the audition however, we ask that you wear closed in shoes when moving around outside the classroom.
• Use your natural voice; please don’t use accents other than your own natural accent.
• Be open and engaging with the other people in your group. We are looking for people who can work well together, as well as develop individually.
• You may bring bottled water into NIDA’s rehearsal rooms; however, no other food or drink is permitted.
We will contact you before the 26th January to advise you of the outcome of your audition. If we are able to offer you a place in the course and you wish to accept it, you will need to arrange payment for the first semester of the course prior to course commencement.
If you have further questions regarding the audition process, please email us at [email protected] or call 1300 450 417.
The following is a selection of monologues we suggest you use for the 2022 Performance Lab Auditions.
You do not need to use these suggestions, you may choose to use a monologue from a school production or something you have used for a previous audition. Whatever you chose, please ensure your piece runs no longer than 2 minutes. Your performance will be stopped after 2 minutes.
Please don’t perform something you have written yourself or that does not come from a whole stage or screen play (ie: a piece that has just been written as a monologue). We want to see you interpret someone else’s writing in the context of a whole story.
Before you start learning your lines, make sure you understand the given circumstances of the piece (time of day, how old you are, who you are speaking to etc), and understand where this piece sits in the context of the character’s journey. You may be asked to re-present your monologue (or part of it) after receiveing some directing.
During the audition you will be asked to participate in workshop and group activities as well as present your monologue.
Please bring a water bottle, a copy of your monolouge, a pencil and eraser with you to the audition.
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES written by Nancy Meyers & Charles Shyer
CASEY BRODSKY: I'm just a kid, and I don't know what I'm doing sometimes. But I think you should know better when you're all grown up. I think you should know how to act, and how to treat people. And I think if you once loved someone enough to marry them, you should at least be nice to them, even if you don't love 'em anymore. And I think if you have a child, you should treat that child like a human being and not like a pet. Not like you treat your dog or somethin'.
You know, when you have a dog sometimes you forget he's there, and then when you get lonely suddenly you remember him, and you remember how cute he is and stuff, and you kiss him a lot, but then the next day when you're busy again you don't notice him. That's how I've been treated for the past four years, and you don't treat your kid like your dog. It's not right.
DEAD POET’S SOCIETY by Tom Schulman
TODD: You know what Dad called me when I was growing up? "Five ninety-eight." That's what all the chemicals in the human body would be worth if you bottled them raw and sold them. He told me that was all I'd ever be worth unless I worked every day to improve myself. "Five ninety- eight." When I was little, I thought all parents automatically loved their kids. That's what my teachers told me. That's what I read in the books they gave me. That's what I believed. Well, my parents might have loved my brother, but they did not love me.
X- STACY by Margery Forde
BEN: When Stacy got sick that night, I brought her back to her own room. I didn’t wake Mum. I knew she wouldn’t have been able to handle it, seeing Stacy like that. There was spew on the sheets. In her hair. I just sat with her, watching her, holding her hand. Willing her to get better. I even invited God to help, but he must have been busy that day. [Brief Pause] About 5 o’clock in the morning I woke Mum. We called an ambulance and got her to hospital. Then we just waited.
Finally, they said we could see her. She was hooked up to all these machines and tubes and things. She didn’t look like Stace anymore.
SINGLE ASIAN FEMALE by Michelle Law
MEI: The king crab is the best dish on the menu and I really want Lana to try it but I know Mum would never let us have it because it’s so expensive. Also remember how I told you I couldn’t decide between doing English Extension and Ancient History? Well, I’m really glad I chose English because this term we studied the classics and I did Jane Eyre and an ‘A’ for my oral which means that I’m topping that class, so I’m finally beating Katie in a subject.
But the big thing that everyone’s talking about is the formal. There’s going to be a huge afterparty but I bet Mum won’t let me go which is crazy because even Inga the really Christian girl is allowed to go to parties but for some reason I’m not? I haven’t even bothered asking Mum even though it’s like the party and it would just make up for all the other times I’ve never been allowed to do anything... ever. Oh sorry, I’m calling because there’s going to be a part near the end of the night where the mums dance with the guys and the dads dance with the girls, and it would be awesome if you came. If you were free? Dad?
Pause.
Yeah, she’ll be on the same table as you but you don’t have to talk to each other, you can just talk to me!
Pause.
Well, what if you just came for the dinner part?
Beat.
Right now? But I thought you said you were free to talk. Oh, she’s calling you from China, is she? No, it’s okay, You should talk to your girlfriend. Bye Dad. Dad?
AWAY by Michael Gow
MEG: We have a game we play every year. We sneak presents home, we hide them, we wrap them up in secret even though we can hear the sticky tape tearing and the paper rustling; we hide them in the stuff we take away, we pretend not to see them until Christmas morning even when we know they’re there and we know what’s in them because we’ve already put in our order so there’s no waste or surprise. And Dad always hides his in a pathetic place that’s so obvious it’s a joke and we all laugh at him behind his back, but we play along! You knew what was in that box. You left it behind. I want to know why.
MILLIONS by Frank Cottrell Boyce
DAMIAN: It was my first day at Great Ditton School. The sign outside says, “Great Ditton School – Creating Excellence for a New Community”.
“See that?” said Dad. “Good isn’t good enough here. Excellence, that’s what they’re after. My instruction for the day is “Be Excellent”.
One thing about me is I always try to do whatever Dad tells me. It’s not that I think he’ll go off and leave us if we’re a problem, but why take that risk? So, I was excellent first lesson.
Mr Quinn was doing “People We Admire” for Art. A boy called Jake nominated some footballer called Darren Lockyer, but Mr Quinn was still looking around the room. To be educational about it, football was not taking him where he wanted to go. I put my hand up and nominated St Catherine of Alexandria and explained why I admired her. You see, they wanted her to marry a king, but she said she was married to Christ. So, they tried to crush her on a big wooden wheel, but it shattered into a thousand splinters, huge sharp splinters, which flew into the crowd killing and blinding many bystanders. Kind of like collateral damage. After that they chopped her head off –which did kill her, but instead of blood, milk came spurting out of her neck. That was one of her wonders.
Mr Quinn kept saying thank you. He actually said it three times. If that doesn’t make me excellent, I don’t know what does.
I was also an artistic inspiration, as nearly all the boys painted pictures of the collateral damage at the execution of St Catherine. There were a lot of flying splinters and milk spurting out of necks.
Jake painted Darren Lockyer but he was the only one.
CLOUD BUSTING adapted from a novel by Malorie Blackman Monologue 1:
SAM: And he was. My best friend. Not that I ever got the chance to tell him that. I didn’t. In the hospital, Davey nearly left us for good… For a better place if you know what I mean. But he pulled through thank goodness. Not that it made any difference.
Davey’s mum took him out of our school first chance she could and the next thing, they moved house… (SLIGHT PAUSE). I never saw Davey again. He never came back. No one ‘fessed up, no one got punished and that was it. Davey never got the chance to face us. To tell us what he really thought, to tell us all the things we really deserved to hear. I never got the chance to tell him loads of things, like what I really thought of him. What we really thought of him… We couldn’t because we never gave Davey the chance just, well, to be Davey… Imagine it…
Monologue 2:
SAM: It was just a day. Just another ordinary day… Not that I thought it would be any other sort of day – why should I? I didn’t. I did not think when I woke up that morning – that this would be the sort of day when I started to discover… When I started to realise… I just didn’t, you know what I mean?
(A pause)
Life changing days. That is what is so weird about them. They start off the same as all the others. Normal. Head on the pillow normal. Can’t be bothered getting up normal ‘cos the highlight of the next hour is the normal bowl of cornflakes and the normal banana followed by a bus to school normal! Yeah?... Well, as it turned out, this particular day wasn’t gonna be like that. When I got to school it was just a day. The same as any other…
TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN: Film by Stuart Beattie, adapted from a novel by John Marsden.
Edited for NIDA
CHRIS: They day before it all began Mum and Dad left for Saudi Arabia right. So here I am … alone and the power goes off at like 9 or 10. 9. Yeh. Yeh 9. Just trying to think.
So I think I better ring up and find out what’s going on. I’m an idiot (laughs). The phones are down too. Anyway, I walk down to the car and Dad, get this right, Dad has locked the car and taken the keys with him. I just think he’s such an idiot for doing that. You know, like he didn’t even trust me with the car for like one week.
So now I have to walk to the Ramsey’s place. And it is far. Like take what you think is far, times it by like, 10, say, and that’s how far it was. And when I get there nobody’s at home. And it’s like
‘oh great’. Because, like, the next place is even further. Anyway, I walk around the corner and I can see the Ramsays in their truck. And um they’d hit a tree. But … that’s … not what’s killed them. Um .. they’d been shot. They’d been shot. Like, no-one gets shot. And I mean heaps of times.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Mr Ramsay, Mrs Ramsay. So, I think to myself. This isn’t your typical day in Wirrawee.
He laughs and looks around.
Yeh. Um well. I’ve just been by myself ever since really. Just .. chillin out. It’s been nice. Yeah.
Nice.
STUFF by Tom Wells
MATT: Everyone’s always having a go at pandas, in zoos, getting really wound up about pandas. Cos they’re endangered but also they’re just not in a rush. At all. And the zookeepers go on the news saying they’ve done everything they can think of, flown in this panda from a different zoo to try and breed, make a baby panda together, but nothing’s happening. And the zookeepers are all making out it’s really frustrating and that. But I just think: fair enough. There’s loads of things you might be looking for in a mate sort of thing. It’s not enough that you’re just both pandas.