Unit 2 – Area of Study 1: Exploring modern theatre styles and conventions

Outcome 1

Identify and describe the distinguishing features of theatre styles and scripts from the modern era.

Examples of lear​ning activities

• Discuss ways in which the context and content of scripts from different movements in the modern era can shape the form and style of a performance, e.g. political influences on the works of Bertolt Brecht.
• Research how actor–audience relationships have evolved in the modern era, e.g. Musical theatre to Theatre of the Absurd to Verbatim theatre.
• Discuss how audience configuration and staging variations have developed through the modern era, e.g. proscenium arch, fourth wall, arena, theatre-in-the-round, traverse, thrust, unusual or unique contemporary variations such as site-specific settings or found locations such as factories, underground car parks or quarries.
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  Research the development of a particular theatre style of the modern era, focusing on contexts and cultural origins; present findings to the class as a documentary-style performance that incorporates techniques and conventions of the chosen theatre style.
• Research the historical, social and cultural factors that have influenced different movements from the modern era, e.g. how political factors affected the development of post-World War II Music theatre or Butoh.
  
• Consider the portrayal of gender in modern era plays, e.g. compare the works of playwrights Patricia Cornelius and Andrew Bovell or David Williamson and Joanna Murray-Smith.
• Explore a current social or political issue and discover how this issue has been presented in a theatrical context; create a list of texts that have been created for performance around this issue; e.g. LGBTQI issues presented in the play Angels in America by Tony Kushner and the musical Rent; or rights of Indigenous Australians presented in Stolen by Jane Harrison and Casting Doubts by Maryanne Sam.
• Research how the conventions of a modern theatre style have become commonplace in contemporary Australian theatre, e.g. how Brechtian conventions have influenced contemporary Australian theatre.
• Research the development of contemporary Indigenous theatre in Australia, e.g. create a timeline of Australian Indigenous theatre productions and document against each of the significant texts the elements of theatre composition that are featured and how they are expressed.
• Explore how Musical theatre has created innovations in production areas in modern theatre, e.g. the use of the double revolve in the original production of Les Miserables.
• Examine how the relationship with the audience is impacted by the presence of a puppet in a narrative, e.g. in War Horse or Love Suicides; consider how puppetry might be applied to interpret texts such as Buchner’s Woyzeck or Euripides’ Medea.
• Develop a file focusing on the history of an aspect of theatre from the modern era, for example:
  
  • a production area including a timeline of major developments, e.g. the use and development of sound or lighting FX
  • a theatrical style including a timeline of major developments, e.g. Musical theatre including the developments on Broadway in New York City, the West End in London, and European traditions
  • key works and major theatre practitioners of the modern era.
  Present your findings electronically, e.g. using PowerPoint and incorporating visuals and sound.
• Use a data storage program to create a glossary of modern-era theatre terms; add visual illustrations to your glossary and illustrate meaning with appropriate play extracts, e.g.Theatre of the Absurd accompanied by a production still and extract from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot; present the glossary as a poster prepared using desktop publishing software.

 

​​Detailed example

Research the evolution of mime 

Students use physical and digital resources to research the role of mime from the earliest records through to theatre movements of the modern era. An example of stages in the evolution of mime that reflect its cultural origins and production roles are the:

• role of gesture in ancient civilisations such as Egypt and the Aztecs; gestures of rituals and ceremonies from such countries as Japan, China, India and Egypt; first recorded use of mime such as the pantomime actor, the Greek Telestes; Roman pantomime using burlesque and tragic mime; strolling jongleurs and Plautus’ use of mime
• influence of Roman and Greek pantomime on Commedia dell’Arte and the traditional dumb shows of 18th- and 19th-century French and English melodrama
• influence of Commedia dell’Arte on French mime – from Harlequin to the Pierrot of Gaspard Debureau and Jean Louis Barrault, to Etienne Decroux and contemporary practitioners such as Jacques Lecoq and Marcel Marceau, through to Pierrot-influenced white-faced characters such as Bip
• mime featured in modern theatre, e.g. Steven Berkoff’s ‘total theatre’
• possibilities of where mime may proceed in theatre in the future. 

Students present their findings as a documentary-style performance that incorporates a range of mime techniques and conventions.