“The 2025 Step into the Limelight schools arts showcase invites students to step into new creative territory, celebrating ‘imagination, innovation and the thrill of exploring what lies beyond the familiar’,” writes HELEN MUSA.

Audiences planning to be at the public schools’ gala showcase at the AIS Arena in September should plan on fastening their seatbelts to witness more than 1500 student performers taking a leap into the unknown. 

Enter the Unknown is the theme chosen by student ambassadors from years 3 to 12 for the 2025 Step into the Limelight schools arts showcase.

It offers an invitation for students to step into new creative territory, celebrating “imagination, innovation and the thrill of exploring what lies beyond the familiar”.

The initiative involves students from more than 65 public schools and is paralleled by an art exhibition held at M16 Artspace earlier in the year.

After months of rehearsing and planning by performers and crew, the result will be a variety show involving dance drama, music, circus and new media.

When I catch up with director and production manager Emily Appleton at the ACT Education Directorate’s instrumental music headquarters in Kaleen, I find that this is not a massed military-style operation, but rather a carefully organised artistic endeavour involving extensive auditioning well before the process of rehearsals has begun.

Individual students audition to become members of the Step into the Limelight Performing Company, then take a work of art from page to stage, audition, then gain experience as an artist, a member of the backstage crew or student producer.

This year, Appleton says, there will be two evening performances with identical programs. 

Founded in 2007, Step into the Limelight is determinedly non-competitive. Its focus is on public education and is a way of showing the growth of arts learning in the ACT.

Refurbishment at the AIS Arena meant that last year the showcase was held in Llewellyn Hall, “but the AIS is different, it’s wraparound”, Appleton says, enthusing about the fact that 61 schools out of 90 are participating.

The model of the showcase is ever-evolving. For instance, last year schools could enter whatever they were producing, which was then put together under a theme. But Appleton and her colleagues felt this didn’t offer enough student voice, so the young ambassadors were chosen and came up with some fabulous ideas about circus and magic.

Acting on a directive to create something more akin to the NSW system’s Star Struck, Schools Spectacular, Southern Stars and Pulse Alive, they went on an auditioning round.

Under the auspices of the instrumental music program, they asked for volunteers from schools, but also talked to colleagues in NSW, going through their catalogue and picking up numbers such as My Island Home and the theme from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Other favourites were the themes from the James Bond and Austin Powers movies.

The eclectic program will feature percussionists, a rock band, a classical instrumentalist, poetry read by students, hip-hop, a First Nations dance ensemble and a huge physical theatre item called A Million Dreams, which tries to bring in as many people as possible.

So far as directing is concerned, volunteer teachers have played an important role, teaching singing, co-ordinating online and physical rehearsals, and pulling it all together ready for the gruelling round of live technical dress rehearsals which follow. 

A teacher from Amaroo School has been working with singers and another from Melba Copland Secondary School has been co-ordinating costumes.

The technical side will be handled by Eclipse Lighting and Sound, who have years of experience in large-scale shows at the Arena.

The instrumental music program, out of which the event is co-ordinated, and its principal, Joel Copeland, have had a leading role to play in all aspects but in particular co-ordinating the Limelight Orchestra sourced from all schools, which will be on stage all the time.

Director Appleton, a career dance-drama teacher, considers herself more a producer and says that working with industry professionals such as Eclipse has been amazing for school students.

“The goal is for kids to have a wonderful time,” she says. “How cool is it that our students are having such an experience in the arts?”

Step into the Limelight, AIS Arena, September 11-12.