This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at USC (AU) chapter.
We love the guys and girls and PAK so much we decided to speak to Tara about the upcoming new musical, “In The Heights”! Tara will be directing the musical after a four year hiatus. How exciting!
HCUSC: Tell us about your next production, “In the Heights”!
Tara: We are holding auditions in Week 3 on Tuesday at the Sports Stadium for out musical, “In The Heights”. Again, it’s really exciting, PAK’s always looking to do something that accommodates the uni students and looks at the things we are going through in our personal experiences. It’s a play set in Washington Heights in America and is based on uni age students coming into the fruition of the rest if their lives of not having enough money to go to uni and working stupid hours! We picked that production because it is what it’s like to be a uni student. It’s cool too because it’s not your average musical. It was initially made in 2008 by a university student. There’s a lot of street dancing and hip hop and there’s a guy that raps everything he says! It’s again going to be something really different that our university had never seen before.
HCUSC: For each production do you get different directors, producers etc.?
Tara: Yes we do. We are part of the Sunshine Coast Theatre Alliance and because we are such a new company, a lot of the company’s under the theatre alliance have been around for 70 odd years and there sort of a mentor board with us. We do have a lot of string support with Peta Beattie and Robert Earnst who directed Yougn Frankenstein for us. But we’re always looking for new people to come in and help so we are always progressing and moving forward and the opportunity came up for me to direct and I haven’t directed for about four years now. We’re progressing slowly but it’s very exciting.
HCUSC: Do you know much about the new Drama course offered at USC?
Tara: We’re starting to get a little bit more student retention on campus. A lot of people wanted to study drama and the performing arts and now USC gives them that option to merge it with a business degree or another degree so they can progress further and do it outside of university and it’s helps PAK in the same regard as we have a lot of the drama students come and help us and try to out what there learnt in class into action!
HCUSC: Is the Drama course similar to PAK or is it completely different?
Tara: PAK is slightly different form the drama program. I did do a drama subject and it was really really fun but PAK works on the basis that you can be anyone. I hate the term, “you have to become your degree” and I think it’s really important that you still hold close what you valued before you came to uni. PAK gives everybody the opportunity for all to be involved in theatre. But just because you can to uni to study engineering doesn’t mean your not a great singer or not have the passion for music or performing anymore.
Thinking about doing Drama but not quite sure where to start? Then join PAK! Get in touch with Tara or another PAK member through the Performing Arts Kollective Facebook page.