Background

Joanna Hempel is a graduate from the University of Sydney (Psychology and English) and has a Masters degree in Drama from UNE Armidale. Born in Edinburgh, the daughter of Polish refugees, she was raised in England before coming to Australia. She developed her love of dance and drama during her high school years in Melbourne. She seeks to help each student develop confidence artistically and linguistically.

Now Director of the Attic Studio, Joanna Hempel has many years' experience in teaching drama. The founding director of the Armidale School of Youth Drama in 1980, she wrote many plays which she first workshopped with her secondary and primary school students. Many of these plays were later published and are used continually by students of Drama and English around Australia, in Canada and the USA. To extend her students' skills, Joanna often invited artists from Sydney to share new and experimental ideas from Europe in voice and movement. In the 1990's, she extended her own teaching to include adults and began accepting invitations to schools and colleges in NSW and Queensland to share her expertise.

Returning to Sydney to live, and opening the Attic Studio in Glebe in 2001, she has continued to teach Development through Drama to children, teenagers and adults in smaller groups and individually. Her coaching of individuals meets a new variety of needs: HSC students with drama monologues; actors wanting to hone their skills or prepare audition pieces; people requiring extra presentation skills; and those wanting language and accent coaching.

Joanna Hempel is also a writer. Her many plays and sketches, several of which have been published, are studied in schools by students of Drama and English for HSC and Years 10 and 11. She is currently editing her three fables set in the Australian bush, based on the ancient Greek fabulist, Aesop.

Drama and Language Development

with Joanna Hempel

Background

Drama and
Language Development