There we were, in the shimmering light of a freezing Canberra sunrise, knee-deep in Kambah Pool, holding onto the camera for dear life. Jack, lead actor for this year’s 40 Hours of Film competition, walked, fully clothed, into the lake, with only one chance to make this take work….
If the previous year of Arts at Burg was characterised by thinking outside the box, the first semester of 2021 saw the whole of Burgmann plunging, literally, into the depths of College experience.
The semester started with a packed-out Open Mic Night during O-Week—an event so popular, 30 people listened from outside the Dining Hall when the crowd reached capacity.
Soon after, was the first Interhall Arts Committee (IAC) event for the year, the trivia competition. In true Burgmann spirit, both teams were a mix of new residents and hardened trivia veterans. And in even truer Burgmann spirit, we smashed the other halls and college out of park, ensuring our first event victory of the year.
Following the trivia was a valiant effort in debating, where our dedicated team argued about everything from teaching classics in high school to using technology as a means to tackle climate change.
Yet, IAC events weren’t the only thing going on. During this time, we had a wildly successful Paint n Sip in a packed out Le Chat Noir; a quarter of the College read Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo for Book Club; and a Dead Poets Society type poetry club was established.
Then there was 40 Hours of Film. About 30 people—from screenwriters to background actors to animators to crew—joined together to make a film in, you guessed it, 40 hours. The author of this article slept for a grand total of four hours during those 40.
Our final product, The Sesame Street Cartel: Adventures in Juvenile Organised Crime, was a resounding hit at the 40 Hours Film Festival and within the College, earning us a long-awaited 40 Hours of Film victory.
Could you believe this was all in the first term of Semester 1? After mid-semester break, our Burg Arts teams came back more ready than ever. Our Golden Girls’ theatre sports team improvised their way to a 3rd place finish in the IAC theatre sports competition, playing every type of character from alien to CEO of an ASX 500 company.
Next up, due to an unforeseen scheduling error, we had a unique chess competition, falling on the College’s most important day of the year, Burg Day. Amidst the wild celebrations on back lawn Burg Day ‘dancefloor’, our chess team played some of the brightest minds from across the undergraduate interhall community, narrowly missing a match up with the Grandmaster Anton Smirnov himself.
We left off the semester on a high, harmonised note, finishing 2nd in the IAC choir competition. Singing Billie Eilish’s Some Nights with the energy of a 1960s travelling folk band, Burgmann blew the socks off the audience on the Bruce/Wright hall lawns.
As big as Semester 1 was, Arts at Burg is not slowing down. We have our inspired production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, filled with paper trees, bathtubs and fairies coming up, and our Big Night Out band is gearing up for a return, which promises to be the biggest night out since before the days of the pandemic (a time fairly few residents remember).
Come see the show
If you are based in Canberra, ticket information for Midsummer Night’s Dream will be released soon, pending the lifting of COVID restrictions for our Sydney-based cast members.
William Salkeld & Poppy Thomson
Arts Reps
