2010 VCE Drama and Theatre Studies Playlist
Drama Unit 3, 2010 Playlist
The following plays have been selected for study in 2010. This list should be considered in conjunction with the requirements set out in Unit 3 Outcome 3 in the VCE Drama Study Design (2007–2011). Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Drama written examination.
Notes
1. Fat Boy by John Clancy
Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Venue: Red Stitch, Rear 2 Chapel Street, East St Kilda
Season: 17 March–17 April 2010, Wednesday–Saturday 8.00pm and Sunday 6.30pm. Wednesday–Friday school matinee performances are also available at 11.00am subject to minimum attendance.
Tickets: $20 Student/concession, accompanying teacher free for VCE classes or groups of more than 10 students, Adults $34
Bookings and enquiries: Erin Dewar, Company Administrator, (03) 9533 8082
Performance duration: approximately 70 minutes
Script: Samuel French
Schools should note that in Fat Boy a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
Premiered in Edinburgh during 2004, Fat Boy is a new millennium adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s 19th century original Ubu Roi. The play remains true to Jarry’s exposure of the very grotesque ‘eternal … imbecility, eternal gluttony…’ of humanity. John Clancy has captured the same expressionistic storybook-like quality, a caricatured world much like Roald Dahl’s The Twits. Fat Boy explores ways in which humanity remains preoccupied with the same concerns over time. This idea is developed through non-naturalistic performance styles and stagecraft including manipulation of the actor-audience relationship and the extent to which our fourth wall is negated. The play also explores the epic cycle of oppression, power and greed in an ahistorical setting that highlights the theme that ‘humanity’s propensity for grotesqueness is all pervading’.
2. Shakespeare’s R&J by Joe Calarco
The Arts Centre, Melbourne
Venue: George Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre, St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Season: 4–8 May 2010, including 6 weekdays, 1 evening and 1 Saturday morning performance
Tickets: $15 with subsidy available for disadvantaged schools upon application through the Arts Centre’s First Call Fund
Bookings and enquiries: email performances@theartscentre.com.au or phone (03) 9281 8582
Performance duration: approximately 90 minutes plus interval
Note: this production may be touring to regional venues. Schools should contact local Performing Arts Centres to confirm.
Script: Metheun Drama
Schools should note that in Shakespeare’s R&J a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
Shakespeare’s R&J is non-naturalistic, stripped back theatre that isn’t about edgy minimalism and subtext. The audience is asked to consider the confusion of adolescent awakening with the rigid social rituals of Veronese renaissance high society, framed within the equally prescribed conventions of a Catholic boys’ boarding school. The play is about four school boys who become immersed in Romeo and Juliet and brings new life to this well-known story. The drama operates on two levels – a heavily edited version of Shakespeare’s play and the boys’ emotional response to it. The actors are not doing Romeo and Juliet, they are doing R&J playing students who are acting out Romeo and Juliet. The production uses very few props with the actors manipulating everyday items to create their play.
3. 100 by Christopher Heimann, Diene Petterie and Neil Monaghan
Machination Theatre Ensemble Inc.
Venue: Studio 1, Northcote Town Hall
Season: 4–13 March 2010, 2 performances daily 1.00pm and 7.00pm
Tickets: Students $20, Teachers $24
Bookings and enquiries: machination_ensemble@hotmail.com or phone Lucy Morris on 0419 585 720
Performance duration: approximately 60 minutes
Script: Nick Hern Books
Imagine that you must choose one single memory from your life – everything else will be erased forever. That choosing this memory is your only way of passing through to eternity. That you have one hour to choose. Choose now from your whole life, from all you’ve ever done, felt or thought ... what is the one thing you treasure most? This physical and visual ensemble work is presented in a powerful yet simple style. Symbolically dressed in white, the actors are able to move seamlessly between memory and reality using only their bodies and bamboo poles. Time becomes duration in this landscape of reflection and we travel forwards and backwards as each character tries to capture their memory for eternity. The production features use of shadow screen, physical symbolism, ensemble movement and an original sound score. Exploring themes of love, self worth, honour, nobility, sacrifice and dreams, 100 engages with the characters in their search to find what is really important.
4. Ruby Moon by Matt Cameron
Melbourne Theatre Company
Venue: MTC Theatre, Lawler Studio, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Season: 19–30 April 2010, performances 10.30am, 1.00pm, 1.30pm and 7.00pm. Contact MTC Education for full performance schedule or check www.mtc.com.au from January for production details.
Tickets: $21 metro students, $18 non-metro students, one complimentary teacher ticket for every ten tickets booked, additional teacher tickets $28. Travel subsidies available for regional students, contact MTC Education for details.
Bookings and enquiries: MTC Education (03) 8688 0963 or schools@mtc.com.au. On sale from 7 December 2009.
Performance duration: approximately 90 minutes
Script: Currency Press
In Flaming Tree Grove, life appears to be picture perfect. Security and privacy are coveted and seclusion is its own reward, until the day when little Ruby sets off to visit her grandmother at the end of the cul-de-sac and is never seen again. Ruby Moon begins like a fairytale but ends as something quite different. Staged in a timeless, placeless, internal world, a room that evokes the past and dust-covered memory, two actors transform seamlessly to present the host of strange characters who populate Flaming Tree Grove, including the grief-stricken parents that Ruby left behind.
5. Silence by Hoa Pham
A Hungry Ghosts Production at La Mama
Venue: Courthouse Theatre, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton
Season: 19 May–6 June, 2010. Wednesday and Sunday 6.30pm, Thursday–Saturday 8:00pm, weekday matinees on request 11.00am or 1.00pm, preferably on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Tour: Knox Performing Arts Centre, Southern Peninsula Performing Arts Centre, The Potato Shed; details to be confirmed in 2010
Tickets: $22 students and teachers, 1 complimentary teacher ticket with all school group bookings.
Bookings and enquiries: La Mama (03) 9347 6948 (Maureen Hartley, Education Co-ordinator)
Performance duration: approximately 70 minutes
Script: Currency Press, published copy provided with ticket and program notes
Schools should note that in Silence a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
Silence is an Australian play about ordinary Asian migrants with an Australian-born teenager and yet its message is universal. Drawing on Buddhist ideas and ancestral workshop Silence explores how individual suffering needs to be recognised and acknowledged before generational wounds can heal. The play raises issues including trans-generational war trauma, inter-generational differences and the tension between Confucian family values and Australian values. The challenges include women’s oppression and ways of dealing with taboo topics. The non-naturalistic performance style of the work uses Bunraku puppetry, rituals, and soundscape using traditional instruments, found objects and bells. Lighting complements the puppetry to create transitions of place form the real to the spiritual.
Theatre Studies Unit 3 Playlist
The following plays have been selected for study in 2010. This list should be considered in conjunction with the requirements set out in Unit 3 Outcome 3 in the VCE Theatre Studies Study Design (2007–2011). Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Theatre Studies written examination. Teachers should note that this outcome requires analysis and evaluation of ways a written playscript is interpreted in production to an audience.
Notes
1. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
La Mama Production
Venue: La Mama, 205 Faraday Street, Carlton
Season: 28 April–23 May 2010. Wednesday and Sunday 6.30pm, Thursday–Saturday 8.00pm, weekday matinees on request to suit schools, preferably Wednesdays and Thursdays 11.00am or 1.00pm
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours including short interval
Tickets: $14 students and teachers, 1 complimentary teacher ticket with all school group bookings
Bookings and enquiries: La Mama (03) 9347 6948 (Maureen Hartley, Education Co-ordinator)
Script: available from most bookstores and libraries
Waiting for Godot crosses the genres of tragedy and comedy and through its repetitious form and text introduces the key elements of Theatre of the Absurd. Language, space, stillness and silence are used to explore the play’s key themes of hope and despair, companionship and isolation. This production uses a meta-theatrical design overlay; mid 20th century text meets contemporary performance. Meta-theatricality is also evident in the slippage from the ostensible ‘realism’ of Vladimir & Estragon seemingly taking refuge in La Mama, to the overt ‘theatricality’ of their behaviour and that of their visitors Pozzo and Lucky. While ‘nothing’ happens the audience perceives the performance of ‘nothing’ and the creating of ‘reality’ through theatrical conventions of gesture, movement and vocal expression.
2. Richard III by William Shakespeare
Melbourne Theatre Company
Venue: MTC, Sumner Theatre, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Season: 24 April–12 June 2010. General performance schedule: Monday and Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday 1.00pm and 8.00pm, Thursday and Friday 8.00pm, Saturday 4.00pm and 8.30pm.
Check www.mtc.com.au for complete performance schedule.
Tickets: $22 metro students, $20 non-metro students, one complimentary teacher ticket for every ten tickets booked, additional teacher tickets $39.90. Travel subsidies available for regional students, contact MTC Education for details.
Bookings and enquiries: MTC Education (03) 8688 0963 or schools@mtc.com.au. School group bookings on sale from 7 December 2009.
Performance duration: approximately 3 hours
Script: this production will use an edited version of the Arden edition of the play
The civil war is over and everyone can bask in the glorious summer created by the new King – everyone, that is, except Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who is more suited to darkness and chaos. Two elder brothers and two young princes stand between him and the English crown. Yet these barely count as obstacles for one so steeped in cunning. One of Shakespeare’s finest history plays, Richard III will be presented in this production with a contemporary setting, design and performance style. Throughout the play, the convention of soliloquy is used to build a rapport between Richard and the audience, and to highlight the disparity between the title character’s true nature and the way he presents himself to the world. Richard III raises interesting questions about the notion of free will versus the forces of fate and provides the opportunity to study an antihero-centred narrative.
3. Cosi by Louis Nowra
HIT Productions
Venue: touring to Drum Theatre Dandenong, Whitehorse Centre Nunawading, St Martin’s South Yarra, The Captial Bendigo, Wyndham Cultural Centre Werribee, Kingston Arts Centre Moorabbin, Cardinia Cultural Pakenham, Wesley Performing Arts Centre Horsham, Hamilton Performing Arts Centre, Portland Arts Centre, Warrnambool Entertainment Centre, Latrobe Performing Arts Centre Traralgon, Wonthaggi Community Arts Centre, Karralyka Centre Ringwood, Harrison Theatre Swan Hill, The Paramount Echuca, Benalla Performing Arts & Convention Centre, Colac Otway Performing Arts Centre, The Potato Shed Drysdale, Westside Performing Arts Centre Shepparton, Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre.
Season: 18March–3 May 2010, contact venues for dates at each location
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours 15 minutes including interval
Tickets: contact venues, prices vary from about $20 to $25
Script: Currency Press
Schools should note that in the play Cosi a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
Lewis, a young director and a university drop-out, takes a job in a mental asylum working with patients who are interested in the dramatic arts. He thinks his work will involve staging a small variety show with the group, until long-term patient Roy hijacks the show and insists that the production be nothing less than a grand staging of Mozart’s opera Cosi Fan Tutte. An ambitious thought to say the least! After all, none of the patients can speak Italian, nor sing and the cast is made up of aging nymphomaniacs, obsessives and pyromaniacs. Lewis is faced with the daunting task of drawing performances from a disparate group of people brought together by their individual needs and desires. By contrasting the passion and fervour of the anti-Vietnam movement with a world of isolation and control behind closed doors, Nowra allows all the characters in his play to find fulfilment and humour in the making of a piece of theatre. Lewis’ life is touched by these extraordinary people as his operatic production lurches forward. We learn, along with Lewis, that when chasing your dreams it helps not to be too attached to reality. This production will feature heightened dramatic and comedic performance styles.
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Australian Shakespeare Company
Venue: Royal Botanic Gardens
Season: 21 December 2009–13 March 2010 (no shows 25–27 Dec; 1 and 26 Jan), Dec/Jan: Tuesday–Sunday 8.30pm, plus Gala 21st Anniversary performance on Monday 21 December
Feb/Mar: Tuesday–Saturday 8pm, plus Valentine’s Day Sunday 14 February
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours
Tickets: Friday/Saturday/Valentine’s Day: Adult $40, Concession $35, Group of 10 or more $35, Child $25, Melbourne metro school groups $20 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students), Regional school groups $15 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students). Booking fees may apply.
Sunday–Thursday: Adult $35, Concession $30, Group of 10 or more $30, Child $25, Melbourne metro school groups $20 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students), Regional school groups $15 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students). Booking fees may apply.
Bookings and enquiries: Australian Shakespeare Company (03) 8676 7511 or admin@shakespeareaustralia.com.au
Script: available from most libraries and bookshops as well as online at http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-a-midsummer-nights-dream.htm
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy with a Shakespearean plot involving four young Athenian lovers, a group of amateur actors, the Duke of Athens – Theseus who is preparing for his marriage to the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta and the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. Confusion, cross-purpose and argument abound before all is happily resolved. The play explores many themes including filial obedience, mistaken identity, magic and make believe, revenge, mayhem, friendship and the mysteries of love. This production accentuates the comic, the physical and the dynamic text and takes advantage of the natural surroundings. The costumes are modern dress and the cast add contemporary references, songs and asides to Shakespeare’s poetic, comic verse.
5. ELIZABETH – Almost by Chance a Woman by Dario Fo adapted by Luke Devenish and Louise Fox from a literal translation by Silvia Frassoni Kantor
Malthouse Theatre
Venue: The Merlyn Theatre at The C.U.B. Malthouse, Sturt Street, Southbank
Season: 2–24 April 2010
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours
Tickets: metropolitan students $21.50 with one teacher comp for every 10 student tickets booked, regional students $19.50 with one teacher comp with every 10 student tickets booked
Bookings and enquiries: (03) 9685 5165 or 03 9685 5164 or education@malthousetheatre.com.au or schoolbookings@malthousetheatre.com.au
Script: copies of ELIZABETH – Almost by Chance a Woman by Dario Fo, adapted by Luke Devenish and Louise Fox, from a literal translation by Silvia Frassoni Kantor will be available to order through Malthouse Theatre Education & Youth Access Program
Schools should note that in the play ELIZABETH – Almost by Chance a Woman a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
ELIZABETH – Almost by Chance a Woman takes place in the boudoir of Queen Elizabeth I of England. In the midst of political upheaval aging Elizabeth is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her lover, the Earl of Essex, who is involved in an attempted coup d’etat against the queen. In order to prepare for this tryst, she has summoned her beautician, Dame Grosslady, who speaks primarily in grammelot. Thematically the play explores power, truth and politics (including sexual politics and racial politics). It also explores the relationship between empire and dominion whilst examining the idea and consequences of the ruler/monarch/emperor/tyrant/government becoming bigger than the country they rule. This piece is about the creation of government and other systems of rule to control the people, yet is being played to be answerable to the people. This savage and hilarious production targets high and low, saving its sharpest blows for the conventions of theatre itself. This queen is not amused, and heads will most certainly roll.
6. JERSEY BOYS, The story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, Music by Bob Gaudio and Lyrics by Bob Crewe
Venue: The Princess Theatre, 163 Spring Street, Melbourne
Season: January to April 2010, Tuesday 7.00pm, Wednesday–Saturday 8.00pm, Wednesday 1.00pm, Saturday 2.00pm and Sunday 3.00pm; May–June check website for details
Performance duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Tickets: School bookings available via the Group Bookings Department – currently selling to 11 April 2010, Tuesday 7.00pm and Wednesday matinee student price $50
Bookings and enquiries: On sale via the Ticketek Groups Department on (03) 9299 9030 or groupsmel@ticketek.com.au For other ticketing options visit www.jerseyboysaustralia.com.au
Script: will be made available, exact arrangements to be confirmed
Schools should note that in the play JERSEY BOYS a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
JERSEY BOYS is described as a ‘play with songs’. This mainstream music theatre work also incorporates aspects of historical and biographical drama, stage musicals and some aspects of ‘Epic Theatre’. The production examines the true story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This story of triumph over adversity, about four boys who grow up in relative poverty and rise to become major stars in the pop music world is an epic tale that spans more than 50 years of American popular music history and examines a range of themes including love, honour, loyalty and betrayal. Theatrical devices used in the production include transformation of setting and direct address. The production features manipulation of tension, conflict and mood with sophisticated use of stagecraft particularly set, sound, multimedia and lighting design.
Theatre Studies Unit 4 Playlist
The following plays have been selected for study in 2010. This list should be considered in conjunction with the requirements set out in Unit 4 Outcome 3 in the VCE Theatre Studies Study Design (2007–2011). Students will undertake an assessment task based on the performance of a play on the Playlist. Question/s will also be set on the performances of the plays in the end-of-year Theatre Studies written examination. Teachers should note that this outcome requires analysis and evaluation of ways a written playscript is interpreted in production to an audience.
Notes
1. Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl
Melbourne Theatre Company
Venue: MTC, Sumner Theatre, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Season: 26 June–7 August 2010. General Performance Schedule: Monday and Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday 1.00pm and 8.00pm, Thursday and Friday 8.00pm, Saturday 4.00pm and 8.30pm. Check www.mtc.com.au for complete performance schedule.
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours
Tickets: $22 metro students, $20 non-metro students, 1 complimentary teacher ticket for every 10 tickets booked, additional teacher tickets, $39.90
Bookings and enquiries: MTC Education (03) 8688 0963 or schools@mtc.com.au. School group bookings on sale from 7 December 2009.
Script: Theatre Communications Group, New York. Available for purchase at Amazon.com
Script may be available from the MTC or an Australian distributor at a later date.
Schools should note that in the play Dead Man’s Cell Phone a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
When the man next to her in a café fails to answer his mobile phone, Jean discovers that he is seriously incommunicado. Feeling some responsibility for the stranger and wanting to offer some comfort to the dead man’s family, what can she do but keep answering the phone? But responsibilities taken up lightly can become burdens in time. A surrealist fantasy, Dead Man’s Cell Phone explores themes of social responsibility and family relationships as well as touching on the ethics of the human organ black market. It also examines the way mobile phones have become part of our personal identity and changed the way we communicate. Dead Man’s Cell Phone is a funny and heart-warming black comedy that uses simple language to explore complex ideas.
2. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Bell Shakespeare Company
Venues: touring to Westside Performing Arts Centre Shepparton (7 July), The Capital Bendigo (10,11 August) , Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat (13 August) , Clocktower Theatre Moonee Ponds (17,18 August), Whitehorse Performing Arts Centre Nunawading (19,20 August), Drum Theatre Dandenong (21 August), West Gippsland Arts Centre Warragul (24 August), Frankston Arts Centre (26 August), Fairfax Studio The Arts Centre Melbourne (from 31 August)
Season: 7 July–18 September 2010, check with venue to confirm performance dates and times
Performance duration: approximately 2 ½ hours with interval
Tickets: check with venue
Bookings and enquiries: contact venues
Script: available from most libraries and bookshops as well as online
Twelfth Night is a Shakespearean comedy of mistaken identity, deception and desire. Orsino is head over heels in love with Olivia, but she's too busy mourning her dead brother to notice. Meanwhile, her steward is trying to run a strict household while grappling with sexual frustration, and her boozy old uncle is chasing the maid and generally causing trouble. Into this mayhem enter the twins – one male, one female – equally lovable but a little too hard to tell apart… In this retelling of the play, Viola has lost her twin brother following a natural disaster but can't search for him until morning. How will she and her fellow survivors get through the night? They’ll put on a show! This production uses a cast of just seven actors. The essence of people reclaiming their lives after their environment has been destroyed by war or natural disaster influences the set and costume design and gives scope to actors playing multiple roles.
3. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and IGNITE
IGNITE
Venue: Theatreworks, 14 Acland Street St Kilda
Season: 4–22 August 2010
Performance duration: approximately 1 hour 20 minutes
Tickets: $20 school bookings, $25 concession, $28 full price. One free teacher ticket for booking of 20 or more students.
Bookings and enquiries: www.theatreworks.org.au or phone(03) 9534 3388
Script: Dover Publications
Schools should note that in the play Hedda Gabler a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
Hedda Gabler is a dark and psychological drama with a powerful and reckless heroine. The play is a tragedy of a woman who despises the world that her class and gender have forced her into and who reacts to it in extreme ways. Her feelings of anger and jealousy toward a former schoolmate and her ruthless manipulation of her husband and an earlier admirer lead her down a destructive path that ends abruptly with her own tragic demise. The production uses the performance styles of hyper-realism, symbolism, naturalism, problem play, nineteenth century theatre, modern tragicomedy, existentialism, and psychological gesture/biomechanics.
4. War Crimes by Angela Betzien and Real TV
Regional Arts Victoria, arts2GO
Venue: touring to Victorian schools
Season: 9–27 August 2010
Performance duration: 50 minutes
Tickets: $8.70 per student based on attendance of 130 students. A ticket subsidy is available for disadvantaged students to access performance at this price.
Bookings and enquiries: arts2GO, (03) 9644 1800 or 1800 819 803 (toll free regional Victoria only)
Script: RAV will make the script available with bookings
Schools should note that in the play War Crimes a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
War Crimes features the beach as its central motif and references landmark historical events such as the Cronulla riots and the ANZAC story to interrogate race and gender relations in contemporary Australia. The play draws correlations between the local and the global, between violence against women and a culture of masculinity and mateship. How does powerlessness breed a hatred of ‘the other’ and what role do governments and the media play in perpetuating xenophobia and misogyny in our community? Performed by an ensemble of five female performers War Crimes reflects the cultural diversity of Australian society, in particular the representation of Indigenous and Islamic Australia is an integral element of the play. The production incorporates rapid transformation, fight and running sequences as well as stylised physical language and heightened rhythmic dialogue. Locking, popping, strobing and crumping are used as a foundation for building character and forming images and movement sequences.
5. The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, adapted by Raimondo Cortese
Victorian Opera and Malthouse Theatre
Venue: The Merlyn Theatre at The C.U.B. Malthouse, Sturt Street Southbank
Season: 28 May–19 June 2010
Performance duration: approximately 2 ½ hours including interval
Tickets: metropolitan students $21.50 with one teacher comp for every 10 student tickets booked, regional students $19.50 with one teacher comp for every 10 student tickets booked, $26 additional teacher
Bookings and enquiries: (03) 9685 5165 or (03) 9685 5164 or education@malthousetheatre.com.au or schoolbookings@malthousetheatre.com.au
Script: the Australian adaptation of the script will be available to order through Malthouse Theatre Education & Youth Access Program
Schools should note that in the play The Threepenny Opera a variety of suggestive and potentially offensive words and phrases are used. They occur with intermittent frequency. However, this language may invite adverse comment from some areas of the community.
The Threepenny Opera incorporates the music styles of jazz, cabaret and vaudeville in a timeless dark humoured allusion to the nature of corruption. This production presents the sordid underbelly of 1920 Berlin as a wild and gritty modern metropolis. The play does not ‘heroise’ the working class in the face of a moralizing bourgeoisie and impending genocidal dictatorship but aims to draw the audience’s own criminal gaze onto the cruelties enacted by the downtrodden against themselves in times of social degradation. The production is reset into a mythic London of the future – the beggars have returned; essentially the 1920s in the 2000s. The overt underworld is present during the time of King William’s Coronation. The production uses aspects of non-naturalistic, opera, epic theatre, music theatre, cabaret and vaudeville performance styles.
For enquiries about this memorandum contact Helen Champion, Curriculum Manager – Performing Arts on (03) 9651 4668 or champion.helen.h@edumail.vic.gov.au