2011 VCE Drama and Theatre Studies Playlist
Drama Unit 3, 2011 Playlist
The following plays have been selected for study in 2011. 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
- Schools should note that in Random, 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.
Whilst the VCAA considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes are explored. Before selecting plays for study teachers should make themselves aware of these issues and themes prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript, for example by reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company and/or attending a preview performance. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide.
For VCE Drama Unit 3, students are not required to study the playscript.
1.Random by debbie tucker green
Melbourne Theatre Company (in association with Brisbane Powerhouse and Sydney Opera House, presenting a Real TV production)
Venue: The MTC Theatre, Lawler Studio, 140 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Season: 3-13 May, 1:30pm and 7pm daily (Monday to Friday)
Tickets: $23 metro students, $20 non-metro students, 1 complimentary teacher ticket for every 10 tickets booked
Bookings and enquiries: MTC Education 03 8688 0963 or
Performance duration: approximately 60 minutes
Script: Nick Hearn books, distributed by Currency Press. The script can be purchased through MTC Education (contact: ).
It starts as an ordinary day, full of ordinary stuff you’d forget pretty quickly. You don’t want to get out of bed, your Mum burns the porridge, and your stinky little brother does something that drives you spare - nothing new. But later on this ordinary day comes a message: ‘Get home quick’, and suddenly the day’s not ordinary any more. It’s now a nightmare day, wretched and strange, and you look back at every ordinary, boring detail for the slightest sign that everything was forever about to change. But there are no signs, because chance, blind chance, has done its evil. It’s meaningless … stupid … random. In this one person show, the actor switches from role to role to deliver multiple perspectives on a family and a community pulled apart by a senseless and random act of violence. A taut, wrenching tragedy, debbie tucker green’s Random is a poetic gem, full of horror, humour and, ultimately, hope.
The work is a non-naturalistic text-based solo performance, written in imperfect verse, and featuring transformation of character, time and place. Some of the dialogue is written in broken, dialectical and heavily accented English.
Schools should note that Random includescoarse language and implied violence.
2. The Soul Miner by Ray Swann with Andreas Litras
Identity Theatre Company
Venue and Season: 4-10 April, Malthouse Theatre, Southbank, 8:00pm daily with 4 matinees at 1:30pm
Tickets: Students $23.50 (+b/f) Adults $35 (+b/f); VCE Drama teachers at student prices Bookings and enquiries: C.U.B Malthouse 9685 5100 (select 2 when prompted to go to Box Office)
Script, Educational support and DVD enquiries:
The Soul Miner is a non-naturalistic solo performance. It is the story of Jim, a Gallipoli veteran, who becomes trapped in a mine with another young miner, Alfie. To keep Alfie alive whilst they wait to be rescued, Jim begins to unravel stories from the war – which are initially very comical. As their predicament worsens, the audience hears more of Jim’s story and his secret grief with what happened at Gallipoli. The Soul Miner includes aspects of Poor Theatre, Physical Theatre, Epic Theatre and Comedy.
3.Beneath the Floorboardsby dir. Damian Alexander Bernardo and writer Charles Mercovich
Company White Wolf
Venue:Broken Mirror Studios;Level 1,2C Staley St, Brunswick.
Season: 22 – 26 March, 28 March – 2 April; Shows 1:00pm and 7:00pm daily.
Tickets: $20 students/concession, $25 teachers/adults
Bookings and enquiries: Halide Huseyin, Company Administrator0424283433or
Performance duration: approximately 70 minutes
Script: Company White Wolf
Ben is a teenager. He has an otherworldly friend only he sees, a mother who covers up a crime with small talk and make-up, and a stepfather who buries his feelings in the backyard. But as memories and desire rise to the surface, secrets don’t stay that way, especially on the day of the funeral.
Beneath the Floorboards is a non-naturalistic piece of physical, transformative and image-based theatre. The production features physical symbolism, ensemble movement and original music composition. Using disjointed time sequences, transformation of place and heightened symbol, Beneath the Floorboards engages the audience in Ben’s search for freedom.
4.Lloyd Beckmann Beekeeperby Tim Stitz & Kelly Somes
A Two Blue Cherries and Soulart production
Venue: La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton
Season: April 27 - May 15
Times: Weds & Suns at 6:30pm, Thurs – Sats at 8:00pm, Matinees: Weds (not April 27) at 1p.m & Thurs at 11a.m; extra matinees as required.
School Tickets: (tbc) $25 students & teachers (incl. performancescript)
Bookings and enquiries: Maureen Hartley, La Mama Theatre (03) 9347 6948
Performance duration: approx 65 minutes (tbc)
Script : incl in school ticket price; extra scripts available through La Mama Theatre
Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper is a solo non-naturalistic performance that uses impersonation, heightened performance, direct address to the audience, breaking of the fourth wall, transformation of character and object, and sensory immersion – smell, taste, and touch. Weary from a day tending his beehives, Lloyd blusters into his fernery and happens upon a bunch of eager beekeeping enthusiasts. He invites them into his modest granny flat. The audience enter a world of clutter. Lloyd’s guests are offered refreshments, taste his honey, listen to his favourite tunes and smell the heady mix of baby powder, cologne and overripe pawpaw. Lloyd settles into his armchair and recollects the first time he noticed a honeybee as a four year old. Lloyd’s grandson, Tim, comes to visit, and questions Lloyd about their family's past.
- Six Characters in Search of an Author, a new translation, based on the original work by Luigi Pirandello
Venue: La Mama, 205 Faraday Street, Carlton
Season: Wed May 11 - Sun May 29
Times: Weds & Suns at 6:30pm, Thurs – Sats at 8:00pm, Matinees: Weds (not May 11) at 1p.m & Thurs at 11a.m; extra matinees as required.
School Tickets: $15 students & teachers
Bookings and enquiries: Maureen Hartley, La Mama Theatre (03) 9347 6948
Performance duration: approx 2 ¼ hours (incl interval)
*Scripts: It is recommended that school groups attending this production should be familiar with the original Pirandello script. An emailed scenario and notes for this production will be available for schools, once booking confirmed and payment made.
This production of Six Characters in Search of an Author is a contemporary interpretation of an old classic, incorporating Improvisation, Puppetry and stylised performance, in a site-specific performance that goes beyond the staged ‘revelations’ of the original, and questions the truth of its own theatrical presentation. The audience is invited to a ‘rehearsed reading’, an ultra-realist illusion combining scripted drama and improvisation, where the ‘Director’ and his small cast attempt to present an open rehearsal of segments of the play. This ‘presentation’ is, of course, interrupted by the ‘Characters’ from the play itself, as happens in the original work, and the ‘realities’ continue to intertwine from there. Development of this meta-theatrical paradox will involve cast and audience in an attempt to uncover the reality within the ‘characters’ and their situation as well as that within the narrative of the production itself.
6.A Commercial Farce by Peter Houghton
Regional Arts Victoria
Venue and Season:Arts Centre Warragul 22-23 February, Wyndham Cultural Centre 25 February, Westside Performing Arts Centre Shepparton 19-20 April, Geelong Performing Arts Centre 28-30 April, Hume building Society Butter Factory Theatre Wodonga 3-7 May
Performance times and tickets: contact local venues
Performance duration: approximately 75 minutes
Script:available through Regional Arts Victoria
Bill is an experienced Theatre Director on the verge of a nervous breakdown. There are less than 24 hours until the curtains go up and the production is unravelling … fast. Jules is a fresh-faced television star and without him the show is doomed. But when Jules fails to perform the simplest of acting tasks, Bill’s raison d’être becomes teaching his young pupil the very meaning of farce.Writer Peter Houghton has created a modern-day farce for a contemporary audience that uses a number of theatrical elements to explore this rarely performed genre. A Commercial Farce is a Malthouse Theatre production thatuses non-naturalistic performance styles including physical theatre and heightened language.
Schools should note that A Commercial Farce includes smoke effects, strobe lighting and loud noise.
Theatre Studies Unit 3 Playlist
The following plays have been selected for study in 2011. 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
- Schools should note that in the plays The Laramie Project – 10 Years Later, An Epilogue, Next to Normal 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.
- Whilst the VCAA considers all plays on this list suitable for study, teachers should be aware that in some instances sensitivity might be needed where particular issues or themes are explored. Before selecting plays for study teachers should make themselves aware of these issues and themes prior to students viewing the play and/or studying the playscript, for example by reading the playscript, talking with the theatre company and/or attending a preview performance. Information provided in this notice about themes and/or language used in specific plays is a guide.
- Students study both the written playscript and the performance for this outcome.
1.The Laramie Project – 10 Years Later by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project, Australian Premiereat Red Stitch Actors Theatre
Venue: Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda East
Season: 27 April-28 May, Wednesday – Saturday 8:00pm and Sunday 6:30pm, additional matinee performances Wednesday – Friday at 11:00am and Saturday at 2:00pm available subject to minimum bookings.
Performance duration: approximately 90 minutes
Tickets: $20 metro students with 1 complimentary teacher ticket for every 10 tickets booked, additional adult tickets, $34
Bookings and enquiries: Red Stitch Actors Theatre (03) 9533 8082 or
Script: available through Red Stitch, details for distribution to be confirmed early in 2011.
On October 6th, 1998 Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. His murder became a watershed historical moment in Americaand throughout the world that highlighted the violence and prejudice lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face. A month after the murder, the members of Tectonic Theater Project travelled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town to create the highly acclaimed The Laramie Project, one of the most performed plays of the last decade. The original creators returned to the town exactly ten years later to see how this event, which had rocked a town to its core and polarised its population, had affected Laramie. What they found defied all expectations. The result is a new play about how the murder continues to reverberate in the community and the very nature by which we construct our own history.
2.A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Australian Shakespeare Company
Venue:Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, check for exact location in gardens
Season:21 December 2010 – 12 March 2011 (no shows 25-26 Dec and 1 and 26 Jan),8:00pm Tues – Sunday during December and January, 8:00pm Tuesday – Saturday during February and March plus Monday 14 February at 8:00pm
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours including interval
Tickets:
Fri/Sat/Val. Day: Adult $40, Concession $35, Group of 10 or more $35, Child $25, school groups $20 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students). Booking fees may apply.
Sun-Thur: Adult $35, Concession $30, Group of 10 or more $30, Child $25, school groups $20 per student (1 teacher free per 10 students),. Booking fees may apply.
Bookings and enquiries: Australian Shakespeare Company 03 8676 7511 or
Script:is available from most libraries and bookshops as well as online.
This production of Comedy of Errors is abstract and places the action in a non-naturalistic setting creating the first layer of a surreal world for the characters to exist in and tell their story. Against the black and white pop culture cartoon set come vivid coloured costumes to adorn the actors and define their characters in a fusion of Elizabethan style and haute couture that adds the second layer of this surreal world. The performance style draws on commedia dell’arte with cleanly defined movement and diluted use of gestures. Masks are also used. The play is a joyful journey of chaos and confusion caused when two sets of identical twins, separated at birth, end up in the same town. Unbeknown to each other they are also in the same town as their estranged father and mother. Shakespeare starts them apart and brings them all together in the course of one day.
3.Next to Normal- Music by Tom Kitt, Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Melbourne Theatre Company
Venue: the Arts Centre, Playhouse, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Season: 28 April - 28 May (including previews),
Performance duration: approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes including interval
Tickets: $30 all students - Wednesday matinee performances, $50 all students - all other performances. 1 complimentary teacher ticket for every 10 tickets booked. Check for details of other ticket prices
Bookings and enquiries: MTC Education 03 8688 0963 or
Script: Theatre Communications Group, distributed by Readings. The script can be purchased online at
A musical for a life out of tune - Preparing for just another day, suburban mother Diana Goodman makes the family’s lunches and cannot stop. The piles of sandwiches signal her gradually loosening grip - on her life, on her family, on her sanity. Soon, there is a doctor, a diagnosis and a course of treatment, yet the cause of this case of ordinary madness lies beyond medicine and therapy. Next to Normal is a musical about a woman lost to herself and her family. This work contains elements of black comedy, rock musical and magic realism.
Schools should note that in Next to Normal, 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. Themes explored in the musical include grieving a loss, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and suburban life.
4.I Take Your Hand in Mine by Carol Rocamora
Australian Classical Theatre (formerly Petty Traffikers)
Venue: Fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane,Melbourne
Season: 15 March at 2:00pm, 16-18 March at 10:00am, 21 March at 1:00pm and 6:30pm, 22-24 March at 10:00am, 25 March at 2:00pm
Performance duration: approximately 74 minutes, no interval
Tickets: $18 students, 1 complimentary teacher ticket for every 10 tickets booked.
Bookings and enquiries: 45 Downstairs,
Script:Smith & Kraus Pub Inc, available from online booksellers
Two actors, one male and one female walk on stage scripts in hand and start the narrative, seamlessly they become Anton Chekov and Olga Knipper as they read from their personal letters. We see Olga adopt the characters of the plays she is performing in and Chekov works through the characters he is creating. This work explore the theatrical idea of suspending disbelief as we don’t have to pretend ‘what if these characters existed’, they did.The play explores a wide range of themes using non-naturalistic performances styles including transformation of character, use of music, minimal set and costume, place conveyed through word alone and direct address.
5. Sanctuary by Chris Dickins
Alchemy Community Theatre Inc.
Venue and Season: