sugarland what to expect
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What to expect from the production SUGARLAND. Read this resource to prepare your students for the post show Q&A. Become a Critic! Get some advice about writing reviews.TRANSCRIPT
SUGARLAND SUGARLAND SUGARLAND SUGARLAND
SCHOOLS SCHOOLS SCHOOLS SCHOOLS
AUDIENCESAUDIENCESAUDIENCESAUDIENCES
WHAT TO EXPECTWHAT TO EXPECTWHAT TO EXPECTWHAT TO EXPECT
→ Sugarland is an exploration of the
lives of young people living in
Katherine. It is the result of writers
Rachael Coopes and Wayne Blaire
visiting the town over +ve years and
listening to the stories of the people
who live there.
→ In the weeks prior to opening at
ATYP the show was performed in
Katherine for the community in which
it was developed. It also played at the
Darwin festival.
Listen to the interview with our
cast and creatives on radio
national
→ Don’t miss our behind the scenes
experiences: watch the
videos and download our
education resource pack
for ideas about how to
introduce Sugarland to
your class.
https://
www.atyp.com.au/whats-
on/productions/sugarland
→ Sugarland Deals with themes of
SELF HARM
→ Some of the scenes in Sugarland portray a
graphic depiction of the lived experiences of
the young people of Katherine. This includes
a scene in which the characters play a
‘choking game’. The game involves one
person choking the other person until they
pass out, in order to achieve a ‘rush’ or
‘high’.
→ One of the characters in Sugarland self-
harms in the form of cutting her arm. This is
portrayed in the form of make-up scars on
her arm. There is no blood and she does not
perform the cutting on stage.
→ Sugarland contains EXPLICIT
LANGUAGE.
→ The language the characters use
throughout the performance includes
expletives.
→ Sugarland contains DRUG USE.
→ Scenes include characters smoking,
sni8ng, smoking marijuana.
→ TEACHERS we advise that you
unpack these issues both before
and after seeing the performance.
Please use our resource
SUGARLAND: THE BIG ISSUES
To assist you with this.
Please don’t hesitate to contact Adèle or
Lisa if you have any questions or concerns.
→ ATYPATYPATYPATYP LearningLearningLearningLearning
Phone: 02 9270 2400
Fax: 02 9251 3909 or
Email:
www.atyp.com.au
POST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&A When preparing for the Post Show
Q&A it is a good idea to:
→ Read the Program:
Director’s notes give you a nice
insight into the intention of the
piece.
This show is unique, it is based on the
stories of young people in the town of
Katherine NT. One of our writers is an
actor in the show. You will be able to
gain an insight into how the play was
written and developed.
Think about the following topic areas:
→ DEVELOPING CHARACTER
- How did the writers develop the
characters?
- How similar are characters to real
people? How much is +ction?
- How did the cast develop depth of
character?
- Identify two characters
that stood out in your
mind? Why were they so
memorable?
- Do any of the actors identify with
the character they are playing?
Why/Why not?
→ CREATING AN ENSEMBLE
- How did the cast and directors develop
techniques to work as an ensemble?
- What was the rehearsal room like?
- How has being on tour inIuenced your sense
of ensemble?
→ ACTOR-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP
- How did the actors prepare for making
connections to the audience?
- How did the community in Katherine react to
the play?
- What was the role of the audience in the
performance?
→ APPROACH TO TEXT
- How did you approach the text as an
ensemble? What did you do in the rehearsal
room to explore the text? Did the text change
in rehearsal?
→ ask your questions
via twitter
@atyp_theatre
#atyp_sugarland
POST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&APOST SHOW Q&A
ELEMENTS OF ELEMENTS OF ELEMENTS OF ELEMENTS OF
DRAMADRAMADRAMADRAMA
→ SPACE
- Why did the director/ actors use the
stage space as they did?
- What did you think about the way
the space was lit? How did the
designer make choices about the
lighting?
- How does the set trtansform the
space?
→ MOVEMENT
- How eLective was the use of
movement? Why?
→ SYMBOL
- What are the symbolic elements of
the play?
- How we gonna +x
country? What does this
mean?
→ MOOD/ATMOSPHERE
How was sound created for the piece?
How did sound contribute to the
atmosphere/mood of the work?
Where were the high points in the
performance?
→ FOCUS
- How did the director draw your focus to the
action he most wanted you to see?
- How do the actors work to maintain focus
throughout the entire show?
→ THEME
- How did the play explore the theme of loss?
- How was the theme of self harm
approached. Was it done well?
→ ask your questions
via twitter
@atyp_theatre
#atyp_sugarland
WRITING REVIEWSWRITING REVIEWSWRITING REVIEWSWRITING REVIEWS
A review is an important part of theatre
criticism. It gives an account of the
production with the writer's opinion of the
success of the performance.
HOW TO WRITE A REVIEW:HOW TO WRITE A REVIEW:HOW TO WRITE A REVIEW:HOW TO WRITE A REVIEW:
You may wish to approach your review
writing by following guidelines:
− State the details of the production,
where, when, by who.
− A synopsis of the plot (without giving
away the ending!!!).
− Background of the play, importance of
the production (is it the +rst
production of the play? Has it been
performed many times before?).
− Information about the style, genre of
the piece.
− Analysis of the mood and atmosphere
created by the cast/designers.
− Analysis of the choices made by the
director.
− Analysis of the
performances by the actors.
− Analysis of set, costume,
lighting and design aspects and
how these relate to the themes
of the play.
− Your personal opinion supported by
examples to justify your opinion.
− Recommendation and / or overall
rating.
YOU HAVE A GO:YOU HAVE A GO:YOU HAVE A GO:YOU HAVE A GO:
Become an ATYPATYPATYPATYP theatre critic!
Use the scaLold opposite to write a review
of SugarlandSugarlandSugarlandSugarland. Send it to
[email protected] we'll publish well
written reviews on our website.
When reviewing try to:
− Paint an accurate picture of the
production for someone who has not
been there.
− Give a personal opinion about the
success of the performance.
Remember make it concise and clear.
Try to write your review in 300 words
We look forward to receiving your reviews!
Keep reading for more reviews of
SugarlandSugarlandSugarlandSugarland
→ Send your reviews
we'll publish well
written reviews on our
website.
IN a chilly, vast studio at Sydney’s Walsh Bay
Wharf precinct, a group of five young actors are
doing vocal exercises, shaky octaves floating over
the clash and boom of the Sydney Youth Orches-
tra rehearsing next door. Dubs Yunupingu, 17, a
striking teenager and scion of the famous indige-
nous family, playfully swings a booted foot at an-
other member of a prominent Australian arts
family: Hunter Page-Lochard, son of Bangarra’s
artistic director Stephen Page. The pair, part of a
cast of six rehearsing a new play, Sugarland, by
the Australian Theatre for Young People, bounce
around the room like rubber balls, fuelled with
restless, glittering energy.
A sense of playfulness dominates the proceedings —
it’s all fluffed lines, comical faces, and jokey asides
(“Settle,” theatre director Fraser Corfield warns with
a benign smile) but there is gravitas as Yunupingu —
“a lucky accident” in terms of casting finds, says Cor-
field — delivers a solemn, heartfelt monologue about
the past, memory and childhood. She stumbles, and
Corfield steps in. “Come on, you can do it, just like in
the workshops, remember? Pretend we’re children
and you’re telling us a story.”
There’s a lot to be done before Sugarland, ATYP’s
first fully professional production since 1978, is pre-
sented to the community in the Northern Territory’s
Katherine, and then at the Darwin Festival ahead of
its Sydney debut, but Corfield is confident in the
power of his young cast and the story itself.
Sugarland tells the tale of five disparate teenagers and
their lives in Katherine, focusing on the unlikely friendship
between feisty indigenous teenager Nina (played by
Yunupingu) who is on a search for a house of her own (she
lives with 12 others), and troubled white RAAF brat Erica
(Elena Foreman), a new arrival in town. Their social group
includes a cocky, charismatic Iraqi teenager (Narek Ar-
man), a white Australian (Michael Cameron) and an Abo-
riginal youth (Page-Lochard).
Co-writers Rachael Coopes (Art House) and Wayne Blair
(Bloodland, The Sapphires), who created Sugarland out of a
series of residencies in Katherine during two years from 2011,
have seamlessly knitted together vastly differing stories, cul-
tures and topographies: one minute you’re listening to the typi-
cal minutiae of teenage life — -iPhones and social media, Jay-
Z, hip-hop and schoolyard romances — the next you’re diving
down a bleak rabbit hole of poverty, domestic dysfunction, racism and self-mutilation. (“Your whole arm will get infected
and fall off during the Wet,” Nina scolds Erica as she examines
Erica’s angry gashes.)
Overlaying it all is the rich, exotic skin of Australia’s remote
tropical north: all through the play are references to bloated
water buffalo carcasses and crocs, brolga dances and the hu-
mid, clinging creep of the seasonal rains. This layered detail
comes from close observation, says Coopes who, with Blair,
spoke at length to Katherine teenagers, youth workers and
teachers, doing workshops and harvesting “sometimes shock-
ing” real-life stories that found their way into the script.
Perhaps the most enjoyable, if tricky, challenge, she says, was “trying to find the universality of it all” in a wildly diverse
patchwork of subcultures. “Obviously this play is about the life
of a teenager in the Northern Territory, but at the end of the day
they are teenagers who are talking and listening to the same
stuff, who have the same issues — though the stakes are so
much higher — as kids in Brooklyn, or Japan or Sydney.”
Another key challenge was trying to capture the roiling emo-
tional ferment of adolescence. “I think we tend to forget how
big these stakes are when you’re young ... the really huge, hard
stuff happens then, not later.”
Coopes and ATYP director Corfield say doing a work such as Sugarland has focused their attention on the dearth of works
on stage and screen telling stories of a young Australia that
doesn’t fit the usual sanitised, culturally homogenous urban
template.
For Coopes this is where the joy of the project lay, the chance
to present a slice of life — remote, wildly multicultural — for-
eign to most of Australia but that exists, in all its rich diversity,
outside the boundaries of our gaze. “These were kids for whom
English was their third or even fourth language. They were
Katherine kids, kids from Iraq, RAAF kids, all with extraordi-
nary stories and subcultures — this is the Australia we live in,” says Coopes, who drew on her own childhood experiences of
spending school holidays on RAAF bases with her father.
“Katherine is such an extraordinary melting pot of cultures, so
just in terms of indigenous communities, there are saltwater
people, freshwater people, desert people, and then you’ve got
the Indonesian community, and then the RAAF kids, so it’s
very diverse for a town of only 10,000 people,” Corfield says.
“That was the purpose of the show, to show this world.
“ATYP has run programs in indigenous communities across the
country, including at Tennant Creek, Palm Island, Katherine,
the Pilbara, for many years, and people not from there are often
shocked as it’s so different from what they’re used to. There’s a general lack of awareness, and so the purpose is to try to create
a bit of insight into this other Australia.”
Australian Theatre for Young
People targets younger audi-
ences with Sugarland
Coopes says this is “also a story of belonging and how to
find it. There’s this sense of community which you get in
many small towns, a sense of what’s important — when
you’re worrying about how you need a house, you’re not
sweating the small stuff. It’s about family, and being
together at home, in country, whatever that means to
you, wherever you’re from.”
She was keenly aware of the delicate challenge of
portraying teenage life — pop music and social me-
dia, relationship dramas and school politics —
against a wider landscape of deep social dysfunction
so sadly common in communities across Territory. It
could not be ignored, but at the same time she didn’t
want to adopt a heavy-handed, polemical approach.
“Look, it’s the landscape of their lives and it abso-
lutely informs their lives and the decisions they make
and how they feel about themselves and therefore
who they are. But at the same time, I didn’t want to
go in all [heavy]. In effect, however, in trying to
avoid writing a political play, it kind of ends up being
one.”
Corfield, who is co-directing Sugarland with Ban-
garra’s resident composer David Page, has big plans
for ATYP, Australia’s oldest and largest national
youth theatre group with a string of well-received co-
productions such as 2011’s -Silent Disco. Playwrights
under commission or recently produced include Kate
Mulvaney (Medea,The Seed), Ross Mueller
(Construction of the Human Heart), and Lachlan
Philpott (M. Rock). “Building works that can tour
nationally — that’s the next step for us.”
Corfield, who has been ATYP director since 2009, is
also passionate about the need to raise the profile of
youth theatre in Australia: he is frustrated that there
is, in his view, a thriving commercial industry that
supports young audiences and artists working in film,
television, digital media, visual arts, music, literature
and other art forms, but not so much in theatre.
Young adult theatre is marginalised, he says. At a
time when young adult fiction (thinkTwilight to The
Hunger Games), for example, has become a booming
cultural force and growth market in Australia and
internationally, why should it continue to be a poor
cousin?
“I think there is a lack of confidence in the ability of
young people to tell stories in the theatre in a sophis-
ticated way. It’s that old chestnut: when a profession-
al theatre company does a show with a teenage char-
acter, they’ll cast a 27-year-old in the role,” Corfield
says.
Teenage life can be a deep, complex and rich creative
wellspring but too often its stories are dismissed “as teen-
age angst”, he says. If done well, it can resonate with a
vast audience “because we’ve all been there. It’s perhaps
the most powerful time of your life, shaping your hopes
and values and ideals.”
Corfield wants to make theatre as appealing to young
people as live music, film and other forms of entertain-
ment. The first contact with theatre for many Australian
students is being taken to see a Shakespeare play: for
some it inspires, for others, it deadens.
“I think we do a dangerous thing in theatre, we tell some-
one something is a classic, and you know what? There are
pieces of theatre I’ve grown to love since becoming an
adult. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an ex-
ample, but when I was in school I didn’t get it, and if
you’re told that this is the best the art form can be, you
won’t have an interest in it. By contrast, you look at
something like Blackrock by Nick Enright, which is such
a profound piece that continues to be studied in school
because teenagers get the stories and the characters.”
So is there a case for rejigging the curriculum, making
sure that the classics are balanced with contemporary
pieces? “Absolutely. There’s a reason why almost every
teenager loves music — there’s a truckload of music for
them to listen to that specifically speaks to them. It might
not speak to the kind of people leading our major cultural
institutions but it doesn’t need to. It generates a love of
the art form which then extends to different areas. And I
think there’s an opportunity in theatre that we haven’t
seized yet, the opportunity to create a body of work that
speaks to people in their teens and early 20s that can en-
gender a love of the art form.”
Corfield says Australia needs to establish a more dynamic
culture of theatre for, and by, young people that also ap-
peals to a wider market. Good examples to emulate in-
clude Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed, with internationally
successful works created by young people but intended
for adults.
“Australia is taking a while to get its head around it, but
internationally there are companies who do this. We tend
to very much box things — professional theatre for young
people is one thing, professional theatre is another, and
theatre with young people in it is a completely different
thing again. So the idea that you could have a fully pro-
fessional show that engages young as well as adult audi-
ences, and with young people on stage is quite a new con-
cept, and it’s going to take some time to get entrenched.
But that’s the direction for us.”
Sugarland opens at Darwin Festival on Tuesday then
travels to Sydney from August 29.
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