During this next part of your course and throughout the year, you will be allocated scenes from plays, to work on with a scene partner in your Scene Study Module. Scene Study will require you to work intensively on your allocated play, over the course of a few weeks, using Howard Fine’s ‘8 Steps’ to role preparation and script analysis. 

The plays allocated are designed to challenge you and will require emotional availability. Some of the plays deal with strong themes and traumatic experiences (for example, themes of suicide, physical and sexual violence, the loss of a child, loss of a loved one, and drug use). We hold your mental health as our upmost priority. If there are any themes you think may be a trigger for you, please reach out and let us know. Your tutors will be careful to avoid these topics when allocating a play to you.

As Howard Fine describes in ‘Fine on Acting’: “If there are experiences in your life you have never been able to talk about, not to a therapist, not to your best friend, I would advise professional counselling. Do not try to use it for your acting. Make sure that you know that once you touch it, you will be able to come back and be functional and be ok. You have to be very careful because we’re playing with mental health here and actors, I want you to have a healthy life so that you can go to these places, but know that you have a safe place to come back to.”

Rest assured that anything you share with either management or your tutors will be kept confidential and please do not hesitate to reach out to us at any point throughout the year.

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If anything comes up for you in class and you feel like you need some professional advice, mental health care plans are available to you through your GP. If you have a mental health care plan, you will be entitled to Medicare rebates for up to 10 individual and 10 group appointments with some allied mental health service in a year. That means for certain psychologists, occupational therapists and social workers, you are also entitled to Medicare rebates for 10 individual and support group sessions in a year. Your doctor can give you a referral to allied mental health services in your area. Or you can get more information from Beyond Blue, which includes a search tool to locate mental health professionals near you.

Other useful links for information about mental health care plans: 

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/mental-health-care-plans

https://headspace.org.au/blog/how-to-get-a-mental-health-care-plan/