Bridgetown High School shines at YOH Fest

Bridgetown High School shines at YOH Fest

Bridgetown Year 9 and 10 drama students recently participated in YOH Fest 2024, (Youth On Health Festival). and were awarded for their efforts.

Act-Belong-Commit YOH Fest is a performing, media and visual arts event for West Australian school students. It incorporates the fun of the arts with health education. YOH Fest is a state-wide competition which is partnered with Healthways.

Drama Teacher Meegan Cullen explains about the event, “It is an annual event that has been running since 1998. It provides students with the opportunity to perform, and challenges them to think outside the box to get their message across in an artistic and creative way.

“Thousands of students from primary and high schools across the state participate each year and this year was no exception.

“Students are judged on how well they convey the chosen health message and on the artistic and performance aspects of their piece.

“Students are encouraged to convey a health theme through dance, drama, short film, song and visual arts. The theme for this year was ‘Inclusion’.”

At the South-West heat held at the Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, Bridgetown High School performed a piece entitled ‘Find Our Way’.

“The self-devised fifteen-minute play looked at how humans form groups in order to belong, often to the exclusion of others. It explored inclusion and exclusion and questions what makes us accept some people and not others.”

Meegan continues, “What makes us feel like we belong to one group but not another? Are we happy to be grouped or does it lead to feelings of isolation?

“The play encourages us to be inclusive and to be ourselves.

“The students used coloured costumes to represent different groups and a central white coloured character to highlight inequities and bias.

“The blues wouldn’t accept the white because he didn’t look like them, the pinks didn’t accept that he could do magic because ‘you’re not pink, you can’t do magic’, the multi-coloured group wouldn’t accept him because he didn’t rap like them, the reds don’t accept him because they don’t accept anyone who isn’t red and angry.

“However, we see that people within the different coloured groups are struggling with the idea that they have to be a certain way, and we see that some characters claim to be accepting of anyone, but only if not everybody knows.

“Through the creative use of short scenes and powerful character interactions, Bridgetown High School’s Find Our Way urged the audience to look at our similarities and value our differences and human connectedness -

“After all, aren’t we all part of the same group?

“Judges commented on the creativity of the piece and acknowledged the use of humour, fun, colour and movement, set alongside insightful and thought-provoking moments. They positively commented on the skills of the performers.”

In their heat, Bridgetown High School students were the winners of three awards; They won the 2024 Healthways Award for Effective Exploration of The Theme.

They also won The Karen Lyons Award for Excellence in YOH Fest Etiquette

They were also presented with a YOH Fest Certificate of Merit for ‘An Artistic and Well-Thought-Out Piece’.

Two of the students who took part in the YOH Fest gave these comments;

“It was great talking to students from other schools and it was lots of fun.” Paris Crittenden.

“Everyone at YOH was really nice and it was really fun to watch everyone’s plays and dances. Even if we didn’t get into the final, it was cool we got the best award at Bunbury.” Zaffy Neil.

Meegan concludes with “The students did a fantastic job and worked so well together, they were a wonderful ensemble, which really embodied the message of inclusion. Their performance was excellent and engaging, and they were very professional. They put in the work in development, in rehearsal and on the night. These awesome, talented young people created a really cool play, and the best thing, they had a lot of fun being part of YOH Fest 2024!