Once the Embers Settled

In 2017, the College and its wider Sacred Heart community mourned the loss of a central school building, which was burnt to the ground overnight by fire. This significant moment in the school’s recent history became the impetus for the Year 11 & 12 Drama students’ production of “Once the Embers Settled”. The play’s script was developed using verbatim transcripts as its basis, compiled from interviews with those directly affected in our community.

Through the new Ministry of Education initiative of Creatives in Schools, Drama teacher Zoe Fleetwood and local creative Cian Parker won a fully funded position to have Cian work as the selected Creative In School to produce the show across 100 hours and ten weeks. This was an exceptional opportunity for our school to be a part of, connecting students with a local, inspirational award-winning writer, producer, and theatre practitioner.

“Once the Embers Settled” was due to be performed in 2021 on the fire anniversary, precisely four years to the day. However, In the performance’s final stages of development, the country moved into lockdown, resulting in the last show being unable to be performed in front of an audience.

The video was produced from interviews with our creative Cian alongside student perspectives of the process and sections of performance from rehearsal. It is not the finished performance due to the unprecedented times. Instead, this video reflects the journey taken to produce the show and represents the exceptional experience these students were a part of thanks to the new Creatives in Schools initiative.