Jennifer De Reuck

There is something strange happening on Leighton Beach in Western Australia. A little toy zebra has washed up on the shore and Chitty-Chitty, the Willy-wagtail, has heard his child crying for him. With her friends - the forgotten toys in the Museum, Hanneen, Mous and Pauline, and an unexpected arrival, Raggedy Annie - Chitty-Chitty embarks on a journey to save him and return him to his child before the magic fades and the toys must return to their long, deep sleep. The Great Snottygobble, whose powers have summoned them all, has given them a difficult task to perform and they’re not sure they are up to it. For, alarmingly, Mugga, the Tasmanian Tiger, is on the loose, also summoned it seems by the Great Snottygobble. With the magic fading fast, they have to rescue the little zebra … but can they do it in time?

This article offers a reading of John Webster‟s masterpiece, The Duchess of Malfi (1614), as an exemplification of an „aesthetics of sacrifice‟ in which human agency is first presented – in the character of the widowed Duchess – and then radically undermined. The reader/receiver of the text, it is argued, rather than encountering the ultimately positive, secular humanism that many critics have discerned in the play, is left with an impression of the dramatic world as devoid of purpose, its central character denied subjectivity as the playwright traces the tight arc of the Duchess‟s trajectory from the laughing decider of her own destiny in Act 1, to her abjection and death at the instigation of her murderous, controlling brothers in Act 4. In support of this reading of Webster‟s vision, the paper draws on the work of the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden‟s insights into the construction of the literary work of art, adapting his constructionist view of such works to the drama. Close textual analysis – augmented by the experience of two exceptional recent productions of the play – offers a rationale for a reading of The Duchess of Malfi as the depiction of a world ultimately devoid of meaning. While this chimes with early modern theorists‟ notions of „the‟ Jacobean world-view as nihilist, what is offered here is an explication of the underlying (dramatological) mechanisms that infuse and construct the reader/receiver‟s response to a work in which the central character retains a fascination for audiences, arguably equal to that usually reserved for the best of Webster‟s more famous contemporary, Shakespeare.

This paper comprises two inter-related parts. In the first section I discuss the development of the empathetic imagination in young people through the medium of drama. Referring to a selection of plays I have written, directed and published as e-books for theatre in education projects, I will examine how the narrative situation of such theatre-work, both facilitates and invokes the meaning structures through which a young person’s empathetic imagination can be epistemically and ethically schooled. Pre-given identity formations and socially endorsed ‘ways of seeing’ dictate the untutored imaginations of young people. This paper will argue for the value of generating an epistemically informed, empathetic imagination, as an ideal towards which theatre for young people should strive especially when its form is shaped into contemporary adaptations of the Shakespearean text or popular entertainment, which attract significant numbers of young viewers. The second section of the paper interrogates the design and representation decisions taken for an adaptation of Macbeth which imported Asian performance and visual arts traditions in an attempt to offer both student performers and audiences a thought-provoking perspective on traditional western interpretations of the play. Central to such an undertaking, I contend, is the ethical reconstruction through dramatic presentations of regimes of value reception. Cognitive respect for the young mind, together with a commitment to supporting the emerging autonomous judgement of the young viewer or performer requires the framing of the dramatic treatment in such a way as to present stage characters whose vulnerabilities resist marginalization through uninformed manoeuvres of exclusion. By questioning unreflexive, encultured identity formations, theatre for young people, I suggest, can enlarge the empathetic reach of the ‘youthful imagination’ and provide a justifiable ‘way of knowing’. Ideologically undistorted dramatized encounters - joyous and sad by turns – invite young actors and audiences to embrace differences with enlightened generosity.

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the challenges we confronted when bringing to the stage in Perth, Western Australia, an all-female production of Titus Andronicus in 201!. Aware of the strengths of a group of professional female actors whose gender denied them the powerful roles of the Shakespearean canon and infused with a vision to showcase the group's abilities Titus Andronicus was selected for the inaugural performance of H. I. V.E. (Her Infinite Variety Ensemble) Perth's first all-female performance group. The director and filmographer of this production revisit the conceptual and visual material that this complex process generated in order to address some of the significant questions it raised about cultural assumptions within audiences that make up the contemporary theatrical community in Western Australia, specifically regarding the production and circulation of the Shakespearean text. We explore the limits and possibilities of performing against conventional notions of gender and power relations when the iconic Shakespearean text is adapted for audiences today. The exquisite lyricism and dramatic scope of the lines provide a verbal feast for any actor and in the hands (or mouths) of powerful performers, we suggest, gender becomes immaterial. In this adaptation the actors were permitted to play not just 'the woman's part', but the parts, too, that have traditionally been denied them. The challenges of this experiment in transgressing the conventional boundaries of performance revealed some disturbingly entrenched parameters within which the actors were ostensibly constrained; nevertheless, as this paper demonstrates, the liberating potential of the ensemble's work allowed for a reinvention of (and refocussing upon) the brutality and violence of the dramatic world of this play. The outcomes endorse the view of the "infinite variety" of the Shakespearean text: a fitting insight for the ensemble's inaugural production.

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the challenges we confronted when bringing to the stage in Perth, Western Australia, an all-female production of Titus Andronicus in 2011. Aware of the strengths of a group of professional female actors whose gender denied them the powerful roles of the Shakespearean canon and infused with a vision to showcase the group’s abilities Titus Andronicus was selected for the inaugural performance of H.I.V.E. (Her Infinite Variety Ensemble) Perth’s first all-female performance group. The director and filmographer of this production revisit the conceptual and visual material that this complex process generated in order to address some of the significant questions it raised about cultural assumptions within audiences that make up the contemporary theatrical community in Western Australia, specifically regarding the production and circulation of the Shakespearean text. We explore the limits and possibilities of performing against conventional notions of gender and power relations when the iconic Shakespearean text is adapted for audiences today. The exquisite lyricism and dramatic scope of the lines provide a verbal feast for any actor and in the hands (or mouths) of powerful performers, we suggest, gender becomes immaterial. In this adaptation the actors were permitted to play not just ‘the woman’s part’, but the parts, too, that have traditionally been denied them. The challenges of this experiment in transgressing the conventional boundaries of performance revealed some disturbingly entrenched parameters within which the actors were ostensibly constrained; nevertheless, as this paper demonstrates, the liberating potential of the ensemble’s work allowed for a reinvention of (and refocussing upon) the brutality and violence of the dramatic world of this play. The outcomes endorse the view of the “infinite variety” of the Shakespearean text: a fitting insight for the ensemble’s inaugural production.

Matilda and her puppets are trying to save the animals in Papa Gorgonzola’s circus from their life of misery. The plot takes the audience on an imaginative journey from Italy via Africa (to capture the fabled “Gorilla in the Mist”) to Kuala Lumpur! Matilda will need the resourcefulness of the Malaysian animals and birds she meets as well as the help of the people of Kuala Lumpur if she is going to be able to give the circus animals their dignity, and if they’re all going to take part in the Brickfields’ Carnival of Freedom. The show is aimed at children, especially those in primary school, as well as the young at heart! Murdoch University is offering a multimedia experience in TFA’s Shantanand Auditorium, with a magnificent set, spectacular puppets, lavish costumes, original music by Malaysian composer Nick Choo, and a script that blends physical theatre with an appealing storyline.