The prologue to Kristina Ross’ Vogel Award wining debut novel, FIRST YEAR, perfectly prepares you for the journey of seventeen year old Maeve, the youngest student in the current intake at one of the most esteemed drama schools in Australia, a thinly veiled VCA, where the author actually trained.
“The culture of our drama school ws often referred to as cult-like. While I trained there, I ignored the whisperings of mental breakdowns and short lived careers, certain I’d be the exception. Years later, I understood the warnings of our well meaning alumni, and my reverence for the school dissolved. I’d allowed myself to become defined by it: the people, the place, the work.
It was vicious, cutthroat. A class of thirty, representing the best in the country. We were required to offer ourselves up to be dissected in the pursuit of becoming artists. To become malleable to the method. Terrified of being culled, we obliged, willingly donning the lives of others that would never truly leave us. Worth the cost. Or so we were led to believe.”
Encouraged by her high school drama teacher to apply for admission into the prestigious acting academy, Maeve enlists that same teacher to convince her parents to allow her to move from her home in Queensland to Melbourne when she is accepted as a first year student.
“Is she any good?” her father asks.
Yes the drama teacher affirms.
“What a shame” says her mother.
During that first year, it doesn’t take long for her to realise that drama isn’t just the realm of the rehearsal room, that proselytising and predatory faculty are the pitfalls on the path to a profession in the performing arts.
For aspiring actors and those already in the industry, FIRST YEAR has the verisimilitude that will trigger memories, good and bad, constructive and destructive, that come with the calling, a lot of it elitist clap trap employed by bullies that is nothing short of coercive control.
FIRST YEAR is a brave, fascinating and enraging work – a cautionary tale of creative pursuits nurtured or curtailed in hot house environments, navigating a boulevard of broken dreams, exiting, stage left, into nightmare alley.
I look forward to the obvious and obligatory sequel.
FIRST YEAR by Kristina Ross is published by Allen & Unwin
