User:Yokhanan/Australian Plays - Perspectives and Reviews

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Boy Girl Wall

by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard

Synopsis

Side by side in a leafy suburb, Thom lives in one flat, Alethea in another. It's pretty clear that their respective, unsatisfying lives would improve enormously if they just met each other. But with a wall literally between them, this seems highly improbable.

Then there's the building's Power Box, having an existential crisis about the eventual collapse of the universe, and the super nova from five thousand years ago. Then there's time travelling on an equation for the speed of light and too much sugar. There's demon magpie attacks, laptops in love, cats dancing to Prince and sock puppet nightmares. And a tiny prayer by the Wall, hoping that all of these pieces can come together for one magical moment of love.

Perspective

In all the incredible theatrical offerings available from which one must make choices, there are sometimes occasions where you seriously regret not having seen one show in particular because of the buzz that continues to exist around the production, long after its final blackout. Such ongoing interest is the case with the Matilda Award winning BOY GIRL WALL, a contemporary Australian play, a one-man-show co-written by Matthew Ryan and Lucas Stibbard.

Originally produced by The Escapists for the Adelaide Fringe Festival and a return season at Metro Arts in 2010, BOY GIRL WALL was then produced for mainstage seasons at La Boite Theatre Company and Hot House Theatre in 2011 and enjoyed ‘must see’ sell-out seasons. It was presented as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s Lawler Studio Season and as a National Australian Tour (through Critical Stages) in 2012. How did anyone miss it? A fair question, but if that is the case, or indeed if seeing the comic genius Stibbard bring to life some two dozen characters inspired you to explore the hilarious production further, here’s the good news – the published script is now available. Not only that, but so is its accompanying classroom resource, “Devising an Original Performance: boy girl wall”, suitable for students in Years 9-12.

Here’s the really good news – it includes a filmed version of the entire production with Creator/ Actor Commentary. And the best news of all? The DVD resource provides access to website resources around the creative development process in devising new work, including Teachers’ Notes for suggested activities and assessment tasks, and a chance to meet the creatives as they discuss key stages in the writing and producing of this new work. Whether or not you missed the performance, this playtext and DVD will have obvious appeal.

Genre: Drama, Comedy, Physical Theatre Duration: 70 minutes

Black Box 149

by Rosemary Johns

Synopsis

A fictionalised account of a true incident the grounding of British Airways Flight 149 at Kuwait International Airport during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Black Box 149 explores the impact of war and terror on the lives of civilians.

Perspective

“This is your captain. This is your captain. This is an emergency. Leave your hand baggage. Evacuate the aircraft immediately. I repeat. Evacuate the aircraft immediately.”

A living nightmare: a fictionalised account based on a true incident – the pilot of British Airways 149, his crew and passengers taken hostage and as ‘guests’ became human shields when stranded, as Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait on August 2nd 1990, the day that started two Gulf Wars.

This is a play for two performers, one who plays the Pilot, and the other, The Man – multiple characters developed from people sharing their life, times and stories with “courage, honesty and commitment” (Acknowledgements page). It is non-naturalistic in style and minimalist in design. The play is richly textured in metaphors; the setting is the mental landscape of the Pilot. He is trapped in a black box, a symbol of the claustrophobic imprisonment of the Pilot in Iraq and in the rural hideout. Matches and candles become a single lighting source, the boxes of matches becoming a metaphor for the shared stories between the characters, memories stored in a box, illuminating the truth, but also thrown away, discarded, burnt.

The story is realised through the Pilot’s memory fragments as told to his daughter in a last will and testament. The Pilot realises he was betrayed at a fundamental level – both then and now - by the duplicity of the West.

Though told in English, it is a story from a Language Other Than English. Arabic can be found in the Appendix and the script is very flexible dependent on the skill sets of the actors’ language, music and accents. The brutality of the time is reflected in the dialogue and as such, this is a challenging text, suitable for Senior students*.

Angela’s Kitchen

by Paul Capsis and Julian Meyrick

Synopsis

In 1948, Angela left Malta. Having gathered up five children, she sailed out on the Strathnavar, leaving poverty and the war behind.

Her destination: Australia. In Surry Hills, she could build a bright new life.

If only she could first learn the language, finish shoring up their dilapidated house, find new friends, get the racist neighbour off her back and keep her son away from sly grog queen Kate Leigh's kids.

Back in Malta, someone else has made a journey. Making his way along Kalkara's glistening harbourside, a young man with flowing black hair has returned to claim his past. Paul Capsis is walking home.

A journey that begins at a kitchen table becomes a sprawling family history and a fitting tribute to a much-loved matriarch.

Perspective

Paul Capsis is the writer of this autobiographical theatre piece and he was performer in the staging of Griffin Theatre Company’s 2010 smash hit, the impetus for a national tour. It is about his own grandmother, Angela, who in 1948 sailed away from the poverty and war of her island home in Malta for Surry Hills, Australia. “The most important thing for me was my grandmother, the most important thing of all.”

Angela and all the other marvellous characters are played by the one performer. There are audio/visual projections of Malta: postcards, the bombing, and the Grand Harbour and Maltese language phrases are woven logically into the text, their meaning clear in context. The text is divided into scenes of stories and moments told from life: The Hair Story; Angela in Australia; Going back to Malta. Though ostensibly a play about the shape of a woman’s life, it is a play about our belonging and our connections – to a grandmother, a family, Australia, immigrant culture. The narratives which play out in this particular story have meaning for us all.

In the Director’s Note in the return season of ANGELA’S KITCHEN, Julian Meyrick wrote, “Where do people ultimately belong, culturally, spiritually? For Australians this is not a simple question. Family histories bob and weave across centuries and catastrophes. Angela, Annuciato and Paul’s story is just one strand in this collective tale. But it is an emblematic one, resonating with the love, loyalty, hilarity and tragedy that ultimately conditions all our lives.”

The Pink Twins

by Sue Rider

Synopsis

The Pink Twins is an eclectic contemporary play which draws on the rose-coloured lives and work of Brisbane's O'Brien sisters to explore eccentricity, the bond between twins and belief in the power of love to transform lives.

Identical twins Dorothy and Moyia dress in pink, drive a pink car, live in a pink house and fight for thirtry years to maintain The Sunshine Welfare and Remedial Association for people with disabilities. When Dorothy has a stroke and dies, Moyia alone for the first time in eighty years, has to come to terms with living without her sister. Distortions of memory and moments of fantasy take her back through her life on a journey of questioning ('Am I still a twin? 'Why pink?) and she learns that the philosophy of resilience and thinking 'outside the square', which she has always given to others, must also apply to herself.

'The Pink Twins' play text is also a companion resource to the secondary Drama educational unit 'Outside the Square' by Melissa Newton-Turner.

Perspective

Sue Rider has created another great Australian work true to her particular interests in recognising women’s achievements and sharing the stories about people not usually represented in the mainstream. So it is with THE PINK TWINS, a play about the lives and work of Dorothy and Moyia, Brisbane’s eccentric and energetic O’Brien sisters. The production of THE PINK TWINS was performed in a season at the Cremorne Theatre, Brisbane, in 2009. It traces the unique relationship these women enjoyed as identical twins, spanning 80 years, the selfless love they developed and shared with others, and their determination over thirty years to maintain the Sunshine Welfare and Remedial Association (SWARA), a day centre they had set up for people with mental and physical disabilities. Not only is the published play text of THE PINK TWINS now available, but it was launched jointly at the Delve 2012 Drama Australia Conference with its companion resource, a senior secondary Drama educational unit, ‘OUTSIDE THE SQUARE’ by Melissa Newton-Turner, including a live recording of the show’s premiere production.

Sue Rider, a multi-award winning director, writer, dramaturg and actor, knows the art form she practises: she has created a remarkable contemporary theatrical event in the telling of this charming story. The pivotal subject of the play is the shared life of these extraordinary women, (who weren’t always the Pink Twins - ‘turning pink was the best thing we ever did’), who devoted their lives to caring for others. She has chronicled and honoured the important achievements of these recognised Brisbane eccentrics - their dreams and compromises, their gusto and giving. At the heart of this play is their devotion to embracing, nurturing and developing those with differences. The twins are revealed sensitively as very human characters, certainly generating comic moments in the play, yet without being depicted as mere symbols of peculiarity or absurd caricatures. Rider’s writing and direction balances the tension between the dynamic theatricality of live performance and the simple and clear truths the sisters held fast – that everyone has a spark, you just have to find the spark and fan the flames – and which the play explores, that we can make our world a better place through enduring values: ‘the Religion of Love, the Language of the Heart and the Race of Humanity’.

The live production used a simple raked stage set with some aerial rigging and a large screen. This enabled an impressive yet uncomplicated form of storytelling - choreographed performances enhanced by lighting, sound and movement. The production is eclectic in style, at times physical and stylised, using song, chant, circus, some puppetry, and lighting and projection effects. These non-literal elements are balanced with a predominantly linear narrative about Moyia’s memory of her shared journey with Dorothy, as she learns to come to terms with life without her sister. ‘But are we still a twin when the other is no longer there?’

Though it has many elements of multi-arts, THE PINK TWINS retains some of the poetics of traditional form and exploits the power of live theatre in telling a story. ‘Pinkness’, ‘twinning’ and transformation are pared down to essential elements in a performance which is alternately vigorous and gentle. Maude and Annie Davey play Dorothy and Moyia with focus and stamina. Having the filmed recording of the live production (available on disc within the companion teaching resource) offers the opportunity to study the range of approaches employed both in the writing and direction: the twins’ varying proximity on stage, dialogue spoken simultaneously or solo; delivered sometimes at high tempo or arranged alongside trance-like physical expression. At times, action is accompanied by a complex and mesmerising vocal score, composed by John Rodgers, further enhancing the audience appreciation of story, themes and character.

There is ample scope in this play worthy of examination, not just the extraordinary physical performances, but also the vocal work or the symbolism. As The Traveller, Dan Crestani performs numerous roles in his distinctive and appealing style of interpreting ideas in movement, and two female singer/musicians play a considerable accompaniment to the action. Significantly, the production brought together the abled/disabled communities to engage meaningfully in this music theatre piece under the conductor, Rob Eastcott. The musical direction is an evocative blend both of sweet, soulful harmonies and the joyfully discordant SWARA Choir, amplifying the theme of being ‘the same but different, but together we are one’. Just lovely - this engaging play is a meeting place of biography, celebration of difference and sameness, and never giving up on your dreams. Moyia finds she can and will survive without her twin by applying to herself now their philosophy of resilience and thinking outside the square.

For the Drama curriculum, this text provides rich material for analysis of so many theatrical components within any of the aesthetic processes of forming, presenting or responding. The script and live recording of THE PINK TWINS combined offer excellent opportunity for Senior Drama students to use the dramatic languages of scriptwriting and dramaturgy, direction and design, characterisation and acting, oral history, verbatim and physical theatre. It is a delight to learn the story of these sisters, Dorothy and Moyia O’Brien and their special life – simply, there is a lot to love about THE PINK TWINS.

Cast :1M 2F 2Musicians

• These are contemporary plays for the stage – please check their suitability for your own school's context.

Further Reading

1. Book Nook - Australia's Performing Arts Bookshop
2. Currency Press - the performing arts publisher
3. Playlab - dedicated to the "development" of and promotion of new Australian playwriting
4. doollee.com - the free online guide to modern playwrights and theatre plays