Among them were two Braidwood Central School students, Jessie Kay and Haddie Davies.

A performance of satirical Oedpius Schmoedipus at the Canberra Theatre Centre was the event.

The play is an exploration of how death is portrayed in the western literary canon, particularly the greats such as Shakespeare.

The girls had applied to participate in the play in February, but heard just the day before that they would be performing.

The next day, they headed to Canberra to learn their part with the rest of the chorus, before performing that evening and the following morning.

“We weren’t supposed to have any acting experience,” said Ms Davies. “Mainly because they’d heard Shakespeare described as someone who addresses universal themes, and they were like, it’s never going to be universal, nothing’s going to apply to everyone except for death, because death is the great equaliser.”

Because of the quick turnaround, the chorus runs with a system similar to an autocue. Ms Davies and Ms Kay were assigned to two groups, ‘odds’, or ‘evens’ and a screen flashed up with instructions.

“At one stage we’re just standing in the middle of the stage while these two people are talking and ‘odds bob down, evens bob up’ and it just continues like that for two minutes,” Ms Kay said.

The pair had partly applied because they were studying Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex at the time. In actuality the play had very little to do with its namesake, the title merely referencing its status as the father, or uncle, of modern tragedy.

Referencing classic tragedies such as Shakespeare, however, their experience has helped them to look deeper into their current studies.

“What’s also interesting is that we’re studying a lot of the texts they were joking about, like we’re studying Hamlet in English and they were making jokes about lots of Shakespeare,” Ms Davies said.

“Because in English you’re trying to like the value in everything, and they’re sort of defacing [the texts], but then you have to think about it more: ‘well what is it that makes it?’”

For the two drama students, it was also an invaluable opportunity to meet the professional actors in the two main parts.

Coming from a small school, the running joke among the cast was that half their school would come. 

In the end, the girl’s drama teacher Elisa Bryant, and most of their drama class came to one of the performances.