Hello, I'm Mel Gibson, and if you're watching me right now, I'm in your living room, and I'd like a cup of tea, and maybe...maybe a biscuit or something. No, I'm just kidding. I'm really rich and I don't need your charity. But, I would like to talk about something - I was at a difficult time in my life - late teens, I really didn't know what to do, and I needed some direction. I actually went to school, and I went to a place that gave me the tools to, explore my own creativity. And I'd like to talk about that place tonight. It's, Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, where I was imprisoned for three years. I look at, all the young Australians who've been through NIDA and are doing so well, and it gives me a lot of heart. And tonight's Australian Story is about NIDA and some people who've made it what it is.

ELIZABETH BUTCHER: We have the most incredible alumni. Every year, we produce the most wonderful actors.

TONY KNIGHT: Over the last 40-plus years, it's actually produced some of the best actors, designers, directors, writers now.

SACHA HORLER: It's like this vacuum. I remember going in, auditioning, getting in, and I remember auditioning just as hard to get out and get an agent. What it doesn't do so well is prepare you for the real world.

MEL GIBSON: It certainly left its mark on the industry and...and to a degree, the world.

ROBYN NEVIN: All drama schools are fraught with...with politics and difficulties because they're filled with fragile people. Young, fragile, ambitious people who don't know who they are yet. So, it's a difficult thing to run a drama school.

JEREMY SIMS: If you are an ambitious young actor, the bottom line is that one place has a little more kudos than anywhere else. That's just the way it is.

MEL GIBSON: They gave me tremendous freedom, and they gave me the keys and the tools to explore what little talent I have. You know, to sort of get it out there, and utilise it.

TOM LONG: I think I was an atrocious actor when I got out, when I finished NIDA. I think I was a bit of a mess.

RICHARD WHERRETT: Many of those golden moments would have been part of somebody who probably went to NIDA. That's a great legacy, I think.

TONY KNIGHT: NIDA's a theatre training school, as well as training also for film and television. The actors work with voice and movement and music, history of theatre, history of film. That's the type of training the actor should have, a holistic one.

JOHN CLARK: It's a simply wonderful atmosphere to work in. Things are happening every day and every hour of the day, and the people one's working with, be it either staff or students, you know are the most phenomenally talented people in the world.

TONY KNIGHT: NIDA can't cope with lazy students, point-blank. Undisciplined, unprofessional, selfish egotists - they're the type of people that will not have a successful time at NIDA. What I'm looking for is young people who take their art seriously.

ELIZABETH BUTCHER: NIDA puts on, I would say, about 22 plays a year, designed by students in the design course. They're built by students in the production crafts course, and, of course, stage managed, lit, sound - all those other things - by students in the technical course.

TARA MORICE: Well, it's well known to anyone ever wanting to get into NIDA that there are thousands of people who audition across Australia and how difficult it is to get in. So, in one sense, that's a great challenge. In another sense, it's a great fear.

ROBYN NEVIN: The audition for entry into NIDA was very, very frightening. It was in 1958 or 1959, I've forgotten which year, and I was a very shy, unsophisticated 16.

MEL GIBSON: You know, I was just some surf dude that was hanging around who knew a couple of speeches and I was going to, you know, spew out my stuff, as raw as it was, and see if I could get a place there.

ROBYN NEVIN: I chose Cleopatra's dying speech from 'Antony and Cleopatra', in a tweed suit that I'd borrowed from somebody.

TOM LONG: I remember leaping like animals, or something. But you know, like a gazelle across the room or something.

MEL GIBSON: And they knew we were raw. But that's what they were looking for was raw. They didn't necessarily want to see anything too polished.

JOHN CLARK: In 1959, when I was teaching in Hobart, I was offered three jobs, one of which was from a new organisation called the National Institute of Dramatic Art, and then in 1962, NIDA had been given the ex-racecourse totalisator building, hence the 'Old Tote', which was later turned into the 'Old Tote Theatre Company' and the jockeys' changing room, from the old Kensington racecourse.

MEL GIBSON: It was a bare boards production - old, windy sheds, It was kind of decrepit, but it was a space, and it was an empty space, and it was, sort of mirrored the space between my ears at the time.

ROBYN NEVIN: It was an uncomfortable place to be, incredibly unattractive, ugly buildings. Um, as I say, the only relief was really the boys in the architecture faculty and they'll know who they are, if they're watching.

GARY MCDONALD: Ah, and they were very, very hot. I mean, very hot in summer, extraordinarily hot, and, you know, after you'd gone and had a counter lunch at...(Laughs) A couple of schooners. It's terrible, it's pathetic. My first year was pathetic, really. I'd run off to the pub. I mean, I wasn't even old enough to be drinking and I'd run off to the pub and I'd have a pie and then I'd have a couple of beers, and I'd fall asleep in the afternoon sessions. It was all about, sort of...For me, NIDA, first-year NIDA, was all about having a good time, getting laid, you know. And that was...that was all I was there for.
TARA MORICE: The toilets were very exciting though, 'cause there was lots of graffiti on the walls, about 'Mel' - Mel Gibson - and all sorts of people. So it's... I wonder if those toilets are still there, 'Cause those walls are probably covered in very interesting, you know, National Trust graffiti.

File Footage
Reporter: All they're actually doing is practising the extreme control of the breathing that's necessary if one is to be an accomplished actor.

ROBYN NEVIN: The physical training was really rigorous, and very, very, fine. And the voice, the vocal training, was also very good.

File Footage
Reporter: All the students hope to become professional actors.

ROBYN NEVIN: And I learnt about texts, dramatic poetry, and I got up and did plays. So, I was...I was made more confident.

JOHN CLARK: In 1969, the job of director of NIDA became vacant, and it was offered to me at the age of 36 and I grabbed it.

ELIZABETH BUTCHER: Back in those days, I did everything. I was the theatre manager, and I sold the tickets before the show began, and then I sold the drinks at interval. And then my title changed over the years. Now I'm called the general manager, but it's all pretty much the same, but enlarged in a job.

ROBYN NEVIN: I don't think you can say 'John Clark' without saying 'Elizabeth Butcher' in the same breath. They seem to go together. It's perceived as a very successful partnership, and they've been highly successful in lifting the profile of NIDA.