Otumoetai College is using formal assessments as a creative tool for raising funds to take students overseas next year.

Supportive family and friends have watched drama students perform scenes of chaos, conflict and humour, with another evening of drama to play out from 6.30pm tonight.

Students Logan Gamble and Thomas Bigwood.

Guests on Thursday and Friday evenings will be treated to the talent of dancers.

School head of drama and dance Mandy Rowe says all the funds, collected through donations, go towards next year's 'massive” dance trip to Los Angeles.

The effort staff and students put into this week's presentations has not been merely recreational.

'All of the performances all of this week are all examination assessed performances.”

One of the students, Kristina Sisson, played both a doctor and a wife in an act taken from the play 'Whose life is it anyway?”, which discusses the impact of unanticipated twists and turns on a person's life journey, the value of life, and end of life choices.

Kristina says she was nervous prior to the performance, but the intense preparation on the day, prior to the evening's performance, helped her to relax into the role.

'We did a whole tech run. It was like a whole day practice thing, then my nerves kind of stopped and I was fine.”

Kristina's mother, Tania, noticed that the themes of many of the acts were indicative of issues faced by teens growing up in New Zealand society, today.

'Compared to when I went to school, there's just a lot of what's been going on lately: drinking, all sorts of things, death, there's all sorts of things. It's all related to students, and it comes across really well.

'A lot of the issues around, today, the students are becoming involved in and portraying.

'I think it's good. I think they're doing really well. It's showing them what is happening in the real world and the drama classes here [at Otumoetai College] are fantastic, by doing that, opening it up for them to be able to talk about things, really.”

Tania comments about one of the students, Andre Liddicoat, who performed in two of the acts, the second in place of another student who couldn't make it on the night.

'He was brilliant. He came across really well.”

Andre says the students have been working on rehearsing the shows since the beginning of Term 3, and that learning the script was easy, while introducing comedic pauses, comedy in general, and keeping a straight face while performing is more challenging, 'because comedy is a really hard thing to do.”

He also says it's challenging playing characters who are aged older than his own age, because he's not able to incorporate his own age-relevant life experiences into the background emotions and motivations of the character, 'but I think it's more imaginative.”

'I quite like it, and it really doesn't faze me or anyone else that the [adult] themes are in there.”

Tania and Andre both had praise for Mandy's input into the students' development.

'She's really cool,” says Andre.

'She helps us here and there, gives us feedback when we need it, but then she just leaves us to our own devices to work out, ‘Okay, where does this need to happen? When does this need to happen? What kind of flow do we want, and what kind of vibe do we want the audience to take away?' and stuff like that.”

In terms of specific challenges given to the students by their teacher, Andre says she wanted more depth to the characters, deeper character development than offered in the original script his group used, and a fresher perspective from the characters.

'It was hard to find the depth to the character [I played], because he doesn't even have a name.”

Andre highlights that drama mimics reality as actors portray idiosyncrasies of real people.

'I feel that in real life there is no script. There's no scripts.

'So, if you get a character that just comes out and says something random, as the character itself, then, ‘Bam!': that character's become a real person.”

Entry by donation to the college's performing arts centre includes receipt of a raffle ticket, with $5 tickets for adults and $2 tickets for students.

Performances start at 6.30pm.