Tarneit student Quynh Nguyen, in character as Florence Foster Jenkins, will perform in St Aloysius College’s annual Art and Design festival later this year. 72603 Picture: DAMJAN JANEVSKI
By Alesha Capone
WHILE many secondary students are doing their VCE exams, a talented Tarneit teenager is also preparing for a career as an actress.
Quynh Nguyen, who is in Year 12 at St Aloysius College in North Melbourne, will perform in her school’s annual Art and Design Festival once exams are over.
In addition, while sitting her VCE exams, the 18-year-old will be busy auditioning for performing arts tertiary courses.
“My first preference is to study at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) as it’s closer to home and really prestigious but I wouldn’t mind going to Monash or studying drama at Deakin,” Quynh said.
“Hopefully one day I will be an actress, but first I want to study at university and get a feel for university life and get a part-time job and then start my career in performing arts after university.”
This year, Quynh was also the performing arts captain at St Aloysius College and took part in the school production ‘Honk’.
However, she discovered her love of performing arts while still a young child.
“I guess what I like is that when I was young I used to stutter and wasn’t very confident in myself. But when I perform I feel I have a boost of confidence and I guess that’s why I like to perform, because it makes me feel like a new person,” she said.
“My ultimate dream would be go to Hollywood and meet some big stars, and hopefully one day get a star of my own on Sunset Blvd.”
Quynh said the piece she will take to the stage during the school’s arts festival, is the also what she performed for her VCE Drama exam.
Every year, examiners provide stimulus material for VCE students to base their assessment performance upon, and Quynh said her act was “non-naturalistic and based on comedy, with lots of humour”.
“I picked ‘the Diva’, my character’s name is Florence Foster Jenkins, she’s an opera singer who thought she was very good but really she was very bad. People attend her concerts because she’s so bad, but she thinks she’s so talented,” she said.
