Twice in the space of a week I’ve run into people very familiar to everyone in the theatre world, particularly in Australia.

Last weekend I was leaving a colleague’s birthday party at 1.15 in the morning and as I walked to my car in a nearby side-street, the person who had just parked behind me noticed my crazy car licence plate (DRAMA) and approached me in the dark for a chat.

If you’re a regular reader of The Drama Teacher, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the Melbourne Theatre Company’s current production of the multi-award winning play August Osage County and of Robyn Nevin’s performance, in particular. So, it was perhaps fate that made Robyn Nevin park her car behind mine in that street last weekend!

Then on Saturday night, seeing Robyn in August Osage County for the 4th time, I was washing my hands in the men’s bathroom at interval, only to look sideways at Geoffrey Rush beside me, who must have only just arrived back home in Melbourne. Weird place to congratulate someone on winning a Tony Award for Best Actor, but I went for it, anyway!

A few hours ago I popped in to see the final Australian performance of Billy Elliot at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne and what a special treat it was!

The show began with a few speeches on stage from the overseas producer and directors, including Stephen Daldry, who flew in from New York, London and Tokyo just for the final Melbourne performance.

Then it was on with the show and as you’d expect at a closing performance, there were lots of cast member families, screaming brothers and sisters, and standing ovation after standing ovation.

There’s no need to tell readers what a fabulous show Billy Elliot is, as many of you have seen it once or twice already, I’m sure. But a special surprise for people at the final Australian performance today was an extended once-off 15-minute dance extravaganza of an encore from all of the young boys who played the roles of Billy and Michael.

Excuse me for mixing sport and culture, but the applause and screams from the audience were so deafening at this performance, you’d swear it was an AFL Grand Final … indoors!

Billy Elliot had a wonderful ride in Australia. After a highly successful Sydney run, the show then played to just under 100% capacity for it’s 26-week Melbourne leg and Billy Elliot’s producer and directors asked on stage to thunderous applause “Can we please come back?”, so who knows what the future may hold for Billy Elliot in Australia?

Every 12 months in Year 12 Drama, my students undertake a brief task of constructing and performing a short 2-minute solo performance.

The purpose of the task is for the student to understand the processes involved in the task that immediately follows it, a more demanding 7-minute solo performance examination.

This task, however, is set internally by the teacher, so Drama teachers around Melbourne and regional areas set a variety of different structures for this activity.

I offer my students the opportunity to research a subculture of their choice and perform a typical character complete with language, mannerisms and gestures, vocal expressions and behaviour. They also have to briefly transform into a minor secondary character, and along with this, transform place and object (prop).

The toughest aspect of this task is also where the students learn the most: their ability to successfully edit material. Let’s face it, creating a 2-minute solo performance is not particularly difficult, but editing every piece of content one has originally created is the hard part.

This year, we had another fascinating list of subculture characters and some wonderful performances. Most of my students deliberately avoided cliched subculture characters and many opted for highly unusual choices. We also saw a few historical subculture characters this year, including one from Nazi Germany (Zazous) and another from late 18th century London (Dandy).

Here’s a full list of subculture characters performed in my Year 12 Drama class last week:

• Hip Hop
• Zazous
• Indie Kid
• Riot Grrrl
• Dandy
• You Tube Blogger
• Hardline
• In-Crowd
• Poser
• Surfie
• New Romantic
• Fanatical Football Fan
• Terrorist
• Trekker