Theatre Makers

The brand-new Theatre Makers is a program open to students in Year 8–12, designed to ignite creativity and amplify student voices through ensemble theatre-making. 

Across five in-school workshops, students will learn from professional teaching artist Ashlea Pyke to explore how to devise their own work. The program culminates in a public performance at The Open House theatre at Geelong Arts Centre, where students will share their original work with a live audience. 

Grounded in the Victorian Curriculum, Theatre Makers supports key learning outcomes in Drama, including manipulating and refining the elements of drama, performance and expressive skills, and exploring style or form. Students will also have the chance to plan lighting, staging and to direct their own work.   

Whether your students are seasoned performers or new to the stage, this program offers a rich, curriculum-aligned opportunity for students to create, connect, and take their work to the stage. 

Workshop 1: Devising and exploring stimulus with improvisation  

Workshop 2: Character development using expressive and performance skills   

Workshop 3: Devising continued – exploring elements of drama and styles and conventions to enhance storytelling   

Workshop 4: Editing: Refining and shaping the work   

Workshop 5: Stagecraft & technical elements   

Click the button below to make a booking.

Ashlea Pyke is a multi-disciplinary performing artist, creative producer & community builder with over 20 years full time career in the arts. She began her professional career performing on stage at 17 in We will Rock You (Louise Withers and associates) and has since toured extensively in commercial musical theatre. Some of her favourite credits include SHOUT! (TML), Eddie Perfect’s Shane Warne the Musical (Token Entertainment), Hairspray (Crossroads live, Australia), ‘Serena’ in Legally Blonde (GFO) and ‘Columbia’ in the Rocky Horror Show (GFO). Ashlea was movement co-ordinator on Arena’s Trapper, choreographer and assistant director on the Spicks and Specks Farewell arena tour Spicks and Speck-tacular (putting on a show at the Hordern Pavillion is no joke) and has choreographed numerous shows for the Melbourne international comedy festival, having a special skill for teaching non movers how to groove, including Judith Lucy and Denise Scott’s award-winning show Still Here. 

Ash has been integral in the adaptation of Alison Lester’s much loved book Imagine as creative development artist and assistant director and has loved preparing the new cast for their upcoming 6 month National Tour. Ashlea’s experience helping to workshop, develop and originate the role of Juniper in the Helpmann award winning Robot Song was an epic experience for her, leading to a life changing, affirming diagnosis as a proudly autistic ADHDer. It has shifted her understanding of the way she moves through the world, and expanded her practice as a professional artist. It saw a shift in the way she engaged with the community and anchored her in a collaborative partnership with Jolyon James and Nate Gilkes that has seen her step away from the cookie cutter model of commercial theatre and step strongly into devising and producing new Australian work.