Swans Director

Bernadette Pryde, USQ Associate Lecturer (Voice)  & Director of The Wild Swans is a graduate of NIDA and QUT. Bernadette has appeared in theatre productions for Griffin Theatre, Sydney Festival, Brisbane Festival, La Boite Theatre, Universal Theatre, Dance North, Empire Theatre, QUT, USQ and New Moon Theatre Company. She has extensive experience touring with productions for Young Australia, New England Theatre Company, Canute Productions, Qld Arts Council and Shakespeare Where You Like It. 

Bernadette has co-devised and performed in late night cabaret for Young At Art Theatre Company and co-produced and performed in musical theatre events for The Girls Performance Cooperative.  Her film credits include shorts for Look Productions and QCA as well as featuring in the Shoot Out Festival award winning films Silent Receiver and The Game. Bernadette has been a street theatre performer for Movie World, Expo 88 and the Qld Youth Arts Festivals. She does voice-overs for radio and has worked as a voice and dialect coach for productions at NIDA, QUT, USQ, Soulmark Productions and the Empire Theatre. In the past, Bernadette has directed productions for Actors for Refugees, James Cook University, QUT, and USQ. 

On Directing for the 2007 Children's Festival; The Wild Swans is a group-devised production. This means that every member of the ensemble has been responsible for creating the overall look and feel of the play. What you will notice as you watch the play is that the costumes are bright and the style is very lucid.  This means that there are very few times when the lights have to fade to change scenes, as this tends to interrupt the flow of the story. Rather, you will see that there are set pieces and props that are re-used throughout the play and moved around the stage effortlessly amid the scenes you are watching.  Sometimes they are taken off-stage but they are designed to move almost as if by magic from location to location.