Midyear Independant Reflecive Study- Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a well-loved Australian book, written by Joan Lindsay in 1967 and film, directed by Peter Weir made in 1975 based at the real geographical location of Hanging Rock in Victoria. The story tells the journey of a group of private school girls who, along with their teachers, take a trip up to the rock. Unfortunately for the school group, the day takes a turn for the worst and results in great trouble for the college and everyone involved in the mystery. Our theatre class were lucky to have put on a stage adaption of Picnic at Hanging Rock for our midyear show. We performed this in the Launceston College drama rooms on May 15-16. The show was a great success due to the amazing work put in by all actors and technical crew, and our director; however there was a lot of individual work that we each had to do to ensure our success in our characters performance. I played the character of Marion Quade, who is among the 3 girls to go missing at the hanging rock. Marion was a fairly difficult character to portray due to the circumstances and setting of the play. Marion was unlike any character I’d portrayed before which was an exciting experience because rather than focusing on how hard it was, I focused on growing my abilities and exploring something new. To create this different character and achieve a successful performance I explored my vocal work and the use of my voice, my physical work and the use of my body and body language and my characterisation in my understanding of my character. I combined these with the technical design of the show and the performances by the other actors to contribute to the success of the show.

To perform the character of Marion I firstly had to work on how Marion spoke and how I portr...

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... were able to find what worked and how the audience would react and match the two together nicely.

Picnic at Hanging Rock was a challenging piece of theatre and Marion a challenging character due to the era and setting of the play. I believe that I personally overcame the challenges of the play and worked to the best of my ability to portray Marion through my use of voice, my physical body and my characterisation and created a successful character in Marion Quade. I believe that the combined work of our ensemble and our ability to work comfortably with one another, our constant dedication as a team and our willingness to take advice from one another and help each other’s performances, along with the incredible efforts put in by our director and technical team came together perfectly and allowed us to put on a very successful performance of Picnic at Hanging Rock.