Contemporary Australian Drama
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Contemporary Australian theatre primarily focuses on the reflection of the real Australia. It communicates to the audience the existent modern issues and ideas that respond to social atmosphere and community. They reconnoiter different ways people cope with certain situations and how they cope when things change or go wrong. Australian theatre practitioners use various performance styles, techniques and dramatic conventions to demonstrate this connotation to the audience and influence them to feel a particular way in accordance to ideas presented in a play. Matt Camerons Ruby Moon and Jane Harrisons Stolen exemplify unique examples of contemporary Australian theatre. Both plays express political, social and cultural concerns that emerge through the use of dramatic meaning and theatrical contexts. These plays represent the constant evolution within Australian drama, hence typifying to the audience how people cope when things change or go wrong.
Matt Camerons Ruby Moon is based on a disgruntled family who loose their daughter, Ruby and ultimately exhibits how main characters Ray and Sylvie Moon cope with their loss. The play challenges the audiences preconceived ideas and beliefs about Australias cultural and social contexts in an attempt to encourage a deeper understanding of how Australian plays explore different ways people cope when things change or go wrong. The theme of performance is evident in the Vaudeville performance style that is embedded in the plays hybrid dramatic form of realism, expressionism and surrealism. This theme of performance is evident in Sylvies routine, an act of denial as she fabricates the truth, as displayed in the prologue where she answers the phone and swears “Its Her”. When Ray, Sylvies husband and father of Ruby, voices the loss of hope in finding Ruby, Sylvie covers her ears. This staging direction highlights her refusal to hear her husband, or the truth, practitioners could exemplify Camerons theme and use this body language as a motif. Portraying how Sylvies character responds to changing circumstances. Cameron employs a transformational style of acting in an episodic form in order to present an array of perceptions and the emotional instability of Sylvie and Ray who begin to question their entire objective, “Was there ever a child?” Typifies how through placing changing circumstances on the stage and portraying the reaction of the characters, propel and challenge the way the audience perceive conventional plots. With this manipulation of Ray and Sylvies sanity that lead to the existential questions in relation to the actuality of a child initially, suggests another aspect of different ways people cope when things change or go wrong.
Jane Harrisons Stolen dramatises the fear, persecution and desolation felt by the children of the Stolen Generations and their families. The five