THE Hunter Region is producing many of Australia's professional actors and theatre staging teams.
And that's not surprising given the quality of two shows presented by Newcastle high schools this week: Hunter School of the Performing Arts' Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical and San Clemente High School's Cosi.
Matilda the Musical sold out its six performances from Wednesday to Saturday at the school's Hunter Theatre more than a month before the show opened. And Cosi, which had just one show at the Civic Playhouse on Wednesday, was also popular.
Matilda the Musical, which was adapted for the stage by a writing and music team that included Australia's Tim Minchin, had its Australian premiere in 2015.
It was released for staging by non-professional school groups early this year, with HSPA one of the first to apply for the rights.
And the HSPA production, directed by drama teacher Rosie Kennedy, brings out the darkly amusing nature of Roald Dahl's works in an engaging way.
The production has two alternating casts totaling just over 100 students, with the actors playing leading roles in one cast being part of the acting, singing and dancing ensembles in the other cast.
While the Australian professional production that toured to capital cities had bright sets, this one puts the focus in its settings on Matilda's passion for reading.
The background and a platform have structures that look like classic books, with the titles of some of them heard in the dialogue, which is mostly wholly sung.
San Clemente drama teacher Amy Wilde chose Cosi for performance by the nine members of her year-10 class because the play is a classic Australian work with 11 diverse characters and largely reflected the experiences of its writer, Louis Nowra.
Many of the characters are also around 18-years-old.
The title is a reference to the opera Cosi Fan Tutte, which a university student who has just completed his degree course is commissioned to stage for presentation by inmates of a mental hospital to help them return to a normal lifestyle.
And, as the former student, Lewis, discovers while interacting with the cast members, they all have very different natures, ideas and problems.
Nowra gave the main character the name Lewis because it was similar to his name.
And, while the play was written in 1991, it is set 20 years earlier, in the time when Australia was still involved in the Vietnam War, with many people attending protests that demanded that Australia pull out of the conflict.
Cosi's characters are all very different in nature, with those running the mental hospital seen to have as many problems as their patients.
Many of the people involved in the presentation are seen wearing bright garb, which contrasts with the background details, as the show is being staged in a theatre which had much of its interior burnt in a recent fire.
Interestingly, two Newcastle-raised professional actors have featured in major productions of the two shows.
Marika Aubrey was Matilda's mother, Mrs Wormwood, in Australia's first touring production, and Glenn Hazeldine is playing a fragile lawyer whose mental illness means he can hardly talk in a production of Cosi, staged by Melbourne and Sydney Theatre Companies, which has its Sydney season at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre from November 1 to December 14.
