Turn Around was a site-specific live cinema commission for the South Side Festival, Frankston City Council — a real-time film made with 15 students from Frankston High School, shot, edited, and scored live in the streets around Frankston Arts Centre on the night of 8 May 2026.
The work brought together students from Years 10, 11 and 12 not as performers following a script, but as co-authors of a live cinema event. Over five days of workshops and rehearsals, they explored what their own school building felt like after dark, what the camera could find in a familiar institutional space, and what it means to make something unrepeatable in public.
The audience at Cube 37 watched a live feed of students moving through Frankston High School — transmitted in real time by two roaming camera operators, cut at an edit station positioned at the side of the stage, and scored live by composer Montgomery. The edit station, transmission hardware, and cabling were fully visible. The labour of making the film was the film. Nothing was concealed.
"Everything you are about to see is being made now, for the first and last time."
— Michael Beets, spoken frame delivered to the audience at 19:25The thematic heart of the work was Frankston High School itself — a building the students knew intimately, made strange by being filmed in it after dark. The film's visual grammar asked: what does a familiar institutional space feel like when you are no longer bound by its rules?
Students navigated corridors, stairwells, and outdoor areas around Frankston Arts Centre as camera operators transmitted live footage back to Cube 37. The audience experienced the distance between the theatre and the streets as a live, breathing gap. Frankston High School was not the backdrop — it was a co-author. Its architecture, its atmosphere, and its relationship to the students who had spent years within it shaped every creative decision.
The week-long residency built progressively from trust and presence to full technical and dramatic integration:
Mon 4 May — Actor / Director Workshop. Students were introduced to the live infrastructure and to the Nexus cue system — a custom platform delivering real-time direction to student smartphones throughout rehearsals and performance. The first exercises probed how the body behaves in institutional spaces.
Tue 5 May — Cinematography Workshop. Cinematographer Kristina Kraskov joined to explore the camera relationship — how to be with a lens, how movement reads on screen, and how the spaces of Frankston High would translate as images. Slow cinema duration exercises established the visual register: patient, watching, present.
Wed 6 May — Technical Rehearsal + Full Ensemble. Morning: the team stress-tested the complete signal chain without cast. Afternoon: the first full ensemble run with both cameras and live edit active. A post-session debrief (students absent) produced the editorial map used on performance night — a profile of each student's genuine presence versus managed performance.
Thu 7 May — Dress Rehearsal at Frankston High. The first time the full system ran in the actual performance location. The school environment changed everything. Student-specific cue profiles, built from the Wednesday debrief, were deployed for the first time. Technical lock at 15:30.
Fri 8 May — Performance Day. At 17:00, a single message was broadcast to all 15 students simultaneously: "Tonight is not a performance. It is the last time this particular group of people will be in this particular building together." Performance at 19:30. On-stage Q&A with the audience at 20:30 — the final scene of the work.
The 45-minute performance moved through three phases. An opening of contained, whispered self-consciousness as students navigated the after-dark building. A middle section in which genuine exchanges and unplanned moments surfaced. A final integration in which the edit, score, cue delivery, and student presence arrived at something unrehearsed and unrepeatable.
The Q&A that followed was not a debrief. As the conversation opened, a last cue was sent to all 15 students: "Tell them one true thing about tonight." The system that had shaped the students all week fired once more, publicly, into the room. The audience did not know whether what the students said was directed or genuine. At that point, the distinction had collapsed. That was the work.
Turn Around was made under the formal conditions of Live Cinema — the practice defined and led by Creative Director Michael Beets. No pre-recorded footage. No second takes. The edit station was on stage and visible throughout.