As I Walked Out...
Our first year National Diploma in Performing Arts students unveiled a stunning piece of devised theatre to a series of small College audiences on 6th and 7th April, and such was its impact, that exciting plans are underway to show it externally. As I Walked Out... was three momentous months in creation and has left a legacy of empathy for all those who invested such time and care in its production or who had the privilege of watching it.
Lecturer, Julia O'Keeffe, who conceived this ambitious venture explained "This project began as four words; 'As I walked out... we asked ourselves what would make someone leave their home, take enormous personal risk, and move to another country? And what would they experience on the journey? We identified three main reasons; opportunity, oppression and occurrences. These became the focus of our ideas and we explored them through improvisation, movement, dance and acting. We wrote monologues and scenes, and created images and movement motifs that tried to capture the essence of human migration.
During the rehearsal process, New Zealand was struck by an enormous earthquake that caused the destruction of much of the city of Christchurch. This was soon followed and overshadowed by the devastating earthquake and tsunami that engulfed Japan last month. Millions of people lost their homes, tens of thousands lost their lives and many thousands are still at risk from radiation sickness after the meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Facility.
These global incidents influenced some of our ideas but the piece you will see is not directly about 
them. As I Walked Out ... is a collection of the responses by a group of young people, in this city, to just four words. We have been asked to consider the decisions and actions of others, to listen to their thoughts and, most importantly, to try walking in their shoes."
As I Walked Out ... was devised, created and performed by: Kayleigh Bloom, Becky Carr, Jack Davis, Alex Garrick, Tanya Gray, Atif Gulzar, Nicole Holt, Kallum Inman, Leanne Kelly, Lisa Kitson, Zaneta Lachowska, Amy Lawrence, Maree McLaughlan, Lauren McNulty, Stephen Maloney, Emma Midgley, Jamie Paige-Varney, Ebony Pearson, Wiwiana Poludniak, Jordan Smith, Ashley Tattersall, Anthony Turner, Siobhan Ullah and Christina Wilkinson, guided by Tutors Damien O'Keeffe, Julia O'Keeffe, Kate Shackleton and Sara Sutton.
Audiences made donations to the Disaster Relief Fund at each performance.
You can see images from As I Walked Out here