The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) has marked its 60th anniversary this year by welcoming an influx of drama students keen to begin or advance their dramatic art training.
The arrivals include fresh faces and returning students hoping to achieve Master of Fine Arts or Bachelor of Fine Arts as well as Vocational Diploma students beginning the next stage of their dramatic arts training.
Executive Chair of NIDA, Jennifer Bott told an assembly of students that their capacity as professionals to develop empathy in audiences, to show what it was to be “the other”, was one of the most powerful things they could learn to do to make the world a safer and better place.
She noted that in NIDA’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting) degree, 24 students, selected from nearly 1,000 applicants, were starting their first year.
While the first year actors were beginning a new phase in their creative development, second year students would be working on live productions for the first time, and third year students looked forward to a year immersed in performance.
This year will also see more Indigenous students than ever before enrolled, she said.
“These onboarding students are now part of the 60-year-old legacy of teachers, performers, designers, writers, producers and directors who have experienced NIDA, since the first year of operation in 1959,” Ms Bott said.
NIDA alumnus, Timothy Jones, now Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Seymour Centre, said he auditioned three times to get into NIDA as he was determined to learn acting there.
He urged students to remember the big picture.
“Remember that you are here because you have an interest in participating in an art form that at its best touches the human heart, reflecting the domains and the joys of the human condition, and one that can imagine and present visions of a better future for us all,” Mr Jones said.
