Teens, drinking culture and theatre as awareness-raising: findings from research conducted on the audience of Phunktional theatre company's regional performaces of Love Drunk - interim report April 2016

This report examines the impact of Phunktional Theatre company's regional performance program

Teens, cyberbullying and theatre as awareness raising : interim findings from research conducted on the audience of Phunktional Theatre Company's regional performances of 'who stole the sole?' (October 2015)

This report describes the effectiveness of Phunktional's regional theatre performance program

Sayonara interviews: android-human theatre

Featuring a life-like humanoid robot, Seinendan Theatre Company (Japan) brought their performance Sayonara: Android-Human Theatre to Melbourne in August 2012. Geminoid F, an android, starred alongside Canadian actress Bryerly Long, in a performance that asks the question: What does life and death mean for humans as opposed to robots?

Building audiences for Indigenous theatre : a case study of Kooemba Jdarra

This paper uses audience research data to examine the positioning of Indigenous theatre in the Australian theatre environment. Kooemba Jdarra is an Aboriginal theatre company in Brisbane, Australia, with a distinguished history of developing Aboriginal artists, writers and directors. However, it has struggled to maintain its positioning because of the perceived risks of participation by audiences who prefer to see Indigenous theatre within the program of the mainstream state theatre company. The paper concludes with strategies for decreasing risk for audiences and for greater advocacy by the company in positioning itself in the mainstream Australia theatre environment.

Into the wilderness; Gilgul's 'physical' theatre 1994

Gilgul Theatre was founded in May 1991 by director Barrie Kosky and manager flighting designer Robert Lehrer, who aimed to establish 'Australia's first professional Jewish theatre company'.

'Class' and political theatre : the case of Melbourne workers theatre

Traditionally, class has been an important category of identity in discussions of political theatre. However, in recent years the concept has fallen out of favour, partly because of changes in the forces and relations of capitalist production. The conventional Marxist use of the term, which defined an individual's class position in relation to the position they occupied in the capitalist production process, seemed anachronistic in an era of globalization. Moreover, the rise of identity politics, queer theory, feminism, and post-colonialism have proffered alternative categories of identity that have displaced class as the primary marker of self. Glenn D'Cruz reconsiders the role of class in the cultural life of Australia by examining the recent work of Melbourne Workers Theatre, a theatre company devoted to promoting class-consciousness, in relation to John Frow's more recent re-conceptualization of class. He looks specifically at two of the company's plays, the award-winning Who's Afraid of the Working Class? and The Waiting Room, with reference to Frow's work on class, arguing that these productions articulate a more complex and sophisticated understanding of class and its relation to politics of race and gender today.

An empirical investigation of high relational orientation sport club members

Relationships between businesses, businesses and end customers, as well as between customers are an important area of practical and scientific interest. In the present era, largely due to digital technologies such as the database, public and private networks, and data collection and information distribution via TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) interface tools such as the World Wide Web (Web), the interest in relationships and related aspects such as trust as it relates to Web interactivity continues. An important antecedent empirical study established that arts patrons (customers) of a New York theatre company could be segmented according to their relational orientation, and that this orientation mediated between component attitudes and future purchase intentions. The study reported in this paper employs Web-based data collection and postal data collection methods in an investigation of the mediation effects of these data collection methods used with the same population of a premier football club in Australia. While a future aim is to more closely compare the outcomes established in the arts study with those from a similarly constructed study in the sporting arena, the focus of this initial paper is the differences in response exhibited by online respondents relative to postal survey respondents. The paper reports findings which do not support those of the antecedent arts and entertainment study concerning the weakness of overall satisfaction on the purchase intentions of high relational orientation customers. The paper also reports findings which give confidence to users of online surveys that despite differences in demographic profiles of these respondents and postal survey respondents, there is a degree of similarity in the responses of the two groups on the measures used in this study. The paper also suggests the need for further research into these data collection effects as they relate to relationship marketing.

Class action

Hannie Rayson followed the success of her play Life After George (2000) with Inheritance. It is a rural family saga set in Victoria's Mallee region where two families, headed by eighty-year-old twin sisters Dibs and Girlie, battle it out for possession of the family farm. The play, directed by Simon Phillips, was performed in March 2003 to capacity audiences at the Melbourne Theatre Company, and then at the Sydney Theatre Company in April-May 2003. Rayson's most recent play, Two Brothers, opened at the Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, in April 2005.

Performing arts management in a climate of adjustment : case studies from Vietnam and Australia

This paper presents a series of empirical case studies to discuss impacts of economic globalisation on the development of performing arts organisations in Vietnam (Hanoi Youth Theatre and Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra) and Australia (Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Symphony Orchestra), and focuses on how Vietnamese organisations have adapted to these changes. The paper also identifies cultural policy implications for the development of the sector; for arts management training in Vietnam so that the sector (and more importantly, the artists) may fully benefit from the open market context. The findings indicate that Vietnamese performing arts organisations have attempted to adapt to the new market context while struggling to balance artistic quality, freedom and financial viability in the new socialist regime. The Australian case studies offered a relevant management model to Vietnamese arts management practice and training.

Retrieval

Retrieval was a site-specific performance installation which transformed five floors of the National Library of Australia in Nov-Dec 2010. Devised in collaboration with a team of 30 young performers, the production lead the audience on a quest deep into the library to retrieve priceless cultural memories before all was lost. Louise Morris working in collaboration with co-designer Matthew Aberline and the artistic team created the installed environments for the production. The production won numerous awards including Best New Project- Express Media and Best Original Work- CAT awards.

As if they could be otherwise...finding spaces for creativity in the enacted curriculum

This chapter inquires into four very different Australian middle-school classrooms where teachers are innovating their practices and developing new approaches to aspects of English curriculum. These classrooms from diverse settings (one middle-class urban, one elite private inner urban, one regional disadvantaged, one middle-class regional) have all taken imaginative leaps and reworked their curricula to put the students’ needs at the centre. At one school, Year 8 students design, make and play their own computer games, at another Year 6 students script, design, craft and shoot their own claymation film; at another, Year 9 students use videogames as texts in their literature studies; and at another, a group of Year 6 students work with a theatre company and their teachers to rework Shakespeare into a contemporary, accessible, enjoyable performance. The chapter considers how in each case these different approaches engage and extend the students in meaningful and relevant ways. The chapter includes a mix of teacher and student interview data, principal data and teacher writing. The chapter investigates how each of these projects worked to achieve its aims and discusses how the single national curriculum might be re-envisioned in local contexts.

Teaching and learning in the crucible: Actors with disabilities as experts preparing pre-service teachers to be inclusive educators

Dorothy Heathcote understood teaching and learning to take place in a kind of ‘crucible’ in which participants, who are both teachers and learners, contribute to the mix sometimes resulting in a radical transformation. This paper reports the ways Heathcote’s ideas have influenced both research and practice in the Teaching for Diversity workshop - a drama workshop that brings together pre-service teachers, teacher educators and actors from Fusion Theatre, a community-based theatre company for people with intellectual disabilities.

Class act : Melbourne Workers Theatre, 1987-2007

Celebrates the company's artistic achievements and successes over the last two decades through interviews, essays and high quality images of key productions, and recounts its history, its evolving relationship with the embattled trade union movement, and its on-going engagement with working class, indigenous and migrant communities.