WHILE Canberra’s schools grappled with the transition from live to online learning, no area was quite so obviously affected as the performing arts departments.

Some schools responded with streamed versions of conventionally staged productions. Others took to the monologue form as a kind of cross between a practical and academic exercise.

But at Daramalan College, Dickson, they decided to make a movie.

“It might seem a bit strange coming from the drama department and not media studies,” says the head of the school’s arts program (and “CityNews” theatre reviewer) Joe Woodward, when I catch up to find out how it came about.

In 2020 he and his colleagues had been dealing with a swag of cancellations, notably a big production of “Saturday Night Fever” and a season of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. 

In casting around for an alternative approach, the dearth of exciting material in pre-written scripts led him to take a punt and propose a movie instead, as an exercise in what he called “theatre cinema”. 

To his relief, the college said yes (“Dara has always tried new things,” he says) and the result will be Daramalan Theatre Company’s first feature movie, “Under The Light”.

It fits perfectly into the company’s policy and procedures manual, which says: “The underlying rationale is that our arts can be harnessed to focus on the very foundations of what it is to be human beings facing realities that both challenge and reinforce our human and spiritual potential.” 

Apart from the sheer derring-do of putting on a film in a world where self-styled experts are all around to criticise, the original script raises societal issues to do with mental health and has given its writers a real-life lesson in “having to learn to suck up their egos as people tend to over-write”. 

Several years ago, anticipating a move into film, Woodward had taken an industry standard course with American producer Dov Simens, author of “From Reel to Deal: Everything You Need to Create a Successful Independent Film” and the former teacher of Quentin Tarantino and Baz Luhrmann.

Armed with this training and advice from consultant Andrew Scarano, content producer for the Brumbies, he saw a way for students to have more control over their own material.

Charlotte Blackley was line producer and senior students Tim Davies and Isabella Miller were the main writers. Both, he assessed, have a good chance of making it into the Australian Film Television and Radio School next year.

“There were challenges… film is so different… In terms of education, it’s multifaceted and there has been a question about how much to spoon-feed them,” Woodward says. 

“Also, film is so expensive and all the different technical matters, personnel and permits make it even more daunting. 

“We were like guerrillas, buying things like fluorescent lights cheaply… and we didn’t use sophisticated equipment. Just the Sony Alpha A6400 Mirrorless Camera with Ultra-High-Speed AF [4K video].”

The movie is called “Under The Light”, a title suggested by Davies. “Light” is a pun, partly the lights of theatre that create an artificial world, but also suggesting a darker and more substantive meaning. 

The centre of the movie is a struggle between two girls at a fictional school. 

One, the exquisite dancer, Eva, likely to make a career, and the other Dana, a streetwise newcomer forced by her parents into what she considers to be a posh school, who causes Eva injury and disability.

Olivia Smith plays Eva and Amy Goedecke plays Dana, with Daramalan staffer Amy (Dunham) Kowalczuk playing Dana’s mum in key scenes. Male actors include Tim Davies and adult actor Simon Aylott. 

As is usual in the lead up to a Daramalan Theatre Company production, there was a development camp, this time at Burrill Pines, where actors, scriptwriters and the creative people gathered with Woodward and Scarano.

Woodward’s excited about the end result, which features locations including Daramalan and the Queanbeyan Suspension Bridge. They’re not getting it rated, but will have to put a coarse language warning on it.

The other project with a film component is Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to be filmed and live streamed by Peter van Rijswijk from the Canberra Theatre Centre and performed by years 7 to 10 students in the studio in mid-December.

Inspired by the National Theatre’s hybrid film production of “Romeo and Juliet” streamed on iView this year, “The Dream” will have a Hollywood flavour, so that instead of a forest, there will be the clutter of a sound-stage.

With the lights in their eyes, all this is just the start. Former Daramalan students will be coming back for a future production by Woodward of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women” – Afghanistan-style.

“Under The Light” will be posted on Vimeo in late November, when details will appear at business.facebook.com/DaramalanTheatreCompany