Question Three. The way a play is staged can have a significant effect on the meanings made by the audience. To what extent have choices n the staging of No Sugar contributed to the meanings you have made concerning ethnicity and identity.
The post-colonialist play No Sugar, penned by playwright Jack Davis in nineteen eighty six, invites the audience to critique (and ultimately condemn) the ethnocentrism and ideologies supported by white Anglo-Saxon Christians in the early nineteen thirties in Western Australia. The play follows the Millimurra family, of the Nyoongah people, as they experience racism within the small town of Northam, and are forcefully moved to the Moore River Native Settlement by non-Indigenous officials. The playwright invites the audience to interrogate the central ideologies supported by these two conflicting ethnicities through the employment of theatrical devices (and staging conventions) performance piece.
Davis conveys representations of two opposing ethnicities in the play No Sugar through dichotomies and binary oppositions conveyed by theatrical devices. Binary oppositions reflect the dominant ideologies of a society, and encourage the audience to consider the treatment of Aboriginal Australians by Non-Indigenous Australians in the play No Sugar. Theatrical conventions used in the play invite the audience to make meanings concerning the ethnicity and identity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups.
Davis invites the audience to valorise the importance placed upon participation and community by the Nyoongah people, while condemning insincere spectacles favoured by Non-Indigenous Australians. The stage of No Sugar is designed for a dispersed setting, to represent an attempt to integrate the audience w...
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...on-Indigenous people’s inability to comprehend their errors regarding the treatment of Aboriginal people.
Davis employs theatrical devices to invite the reader to criticize and endorse certain aspects of the ethnicity and identity of the Non-Indigenous and Indigenous people in the play No Sugar. The post-colonial play presents dichotomies of the markers of ethnicity of each group, and the values each group endorse. The play invites the audience to condemn the ethnocentrism and refusal of Non-Indigenous people to integrate with the Indigenous people. It suggests that the Non-Indigenous people are unwilling to diversify and accept Nyoongahs into their (dominant) cultural identity, despite the Nyoongah characters attempts to integrate with them. Thus it is in these ways that the choices of staging have contributed to meanings made concerning ethnicity and identity.
Bud Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis, takes place in Flint, Michigan and Grand Rapids, Michigan. It took place in the 1920's (during the depression). It is about a boy named Bud Caldwell who is on a search to find his father. He uses lies throughout the whole book to get him where he wants to go. He is 10 years old and his mother died when he was 6. Bud tells everyone she died a fast and painless death.
The compassionate novel Deadly Unna?, written by Phillip Gwynne, creates vivid characters and depicts race discourses experienced by Gary Black (also known as Blacky) in a fictitious South Australian coastal community. The novel portrays a typical coastal town of the 1970s and is set mainly in the Port: the local Pub, the Black family home and the jetty, where the local children play. The story explores the racism between the Nungas (the indigenous population who live at the Point) and the Gooynas (the white population who live at the Port). As Blacky is from the Port, he only begins to develop awareness of the racism around him as a result of his friendship with Dumby Red, a Nunga football player, and consequently stops making racist jokes and comments. Analysis of racist ideas in the town, the marginalisation of the Nunga community, Blacky’s changing beliefs and how it influences and empowers him to respond to the death of Dumby Red, reveals that Gwynne encourages the reader to reject the racist values, attitudes and beliefs of Blacky’s community.
Harrison’s Play ‘Rainbow’s End’ follows three brave Aboriginal women from different generations who fight for their right to be appreciated as the owners of the land and how each of them
Hannie Rayson’s play ‘Hotel Sorrento’ explores the changing nature of Australian cultural identity. Rayson successfully perpetuates and challenges common Australian stereotypes in order to establish how the Australian National Identity has changed over time. She presents these stereotypes through the characters expectations of gender roles, attitudes towards Australian culture and the theme of ownership.
...sed in the first scene; the white family appear more superior over the aboriginal family, music, such as the Celtic music used in early scenes to foreground the idea of white settlement and the reluctantcy to incorporate any values or ways of life that the original inhabitants had. Her powerful dialogue seen in ‘this land is mine’ scene, which significantly empowers to audience to question whether the white settlers have failed to incorporate any of the ways of life and values of the Indigenous people. Finally, Perkins’ fine editing skills allows audiences to physically see the contrasts of the two families and their beliefs, values and ways of life. From the film, audiences can learn, and also forces them to question whether they have failed to learn from the original habitants of the land they live in today.
This powerful film takes us on a journey through the eyes and hearts of four young girls from the Yorta Yorta community. Cynthia, Julie, Gail and Kay shared a love of singing, before Kay was taken away by the government and placed in an institution to learn the ‘the white ways’. The four girls reunited as adults to embark on their own journey through Vietnam, singing as an all Aboriginal girl group
Blackrock was first performed in 1995. The play explores the causes of violence by individuals as well as ideas surrounding mateship and gender. The representations of mateship, masculinity and violence portray Australian culture in Blackrock as dangerous, homophobic and one that is accustomed to gender inequality. Dramatic conventions are employed by Nicholas Enright to challenge the reader or viewer’s view towards mateship, reinforce the idea of masculinity and challenge the idea that Australian culture is safe.
Before we look at whether James Moloney effectively uses characterisation to convey Aboriginal issues we must look at the issues themselves. In Dougy, the issue of black and white prejudice is strongly present in the plot. The stereotyping of Aborigines and white Europeans play an important role in the events and the outcome of the story, as is individuality and the breaking of the stereotypes. The book also touches on the old Aboriginal superstitions that are still believed in by some today, though one of such superstitions plays an important role in creating the mood of the resolution. These issues impact most heavily on the character Gracey.
Werner, Craig, Thomas J. Taylor and Robert McClenaghan. Critical Survey of Drama, Second Revised Edition: James Baldwin. April 2003. .
Throughout the text, the white colonists are very racist towards the Aboriginals. Even cattle, horses and white women are placed hierarchically higher in society than the black people. In response to this, Astley constructs all narrations to be written through the eyes of the Laffey family, who are respectful towards Aboriginals, hence not racist, and despise societal ideologies. By making the narration of the text show a biased point of view, readers are provoked to think and feel the same way, foregrounding racism shown in the ideologies of early Australian society, and showing that Aboriginals are real people and should receive the same treatment to that given to white people. “They looked human, they had all your features.” (pg 27) There was, however, one section in the text whose narrative point of view was not given by a character in the Laffey family. This instead was given by a voice of an Aboriginal woman, when the Aboriginal children were being taken away from their families. By giving voice to the Aboriginal society, the reader is able to get a glimpse of their point of view on the matter, which once again shows that society was racist, and Aboriginals were treated harshly.
In this essay Mura expresses his anger towards the Broadway production Miss Saigon. Mura “protest . . . [actor equality] against the producer’s casting . . . [Mura] felt disturbed that again a white actor, the British Jonathan Pryce, was playing
I think this play is a lot about what does race mean, and to what extent do we perform race either onstage or in life:
... Through the use of story and characterization, Noyce accurately depicts the theme of racism as a prominent element of the film and also shows the audience the deep-seated attitudes towards the Aboriginal culture in Australia in the 1930s.The film convinces us that racism
Throughout both ‘Rainbow’s End’ and ‘The Rabbits’, the audience discovers the plights that the Aboriginal Australians faced, due to discrimination and assimilation, in intensely confronting, yet intensely meaningful ways. We see how the discrimination and forced assimilation of cultures was common in the lead up to modern times because of composers like Harrison, Marsden and Tan reminding us of these events, allowing us to discover and rediscover our past wrongs through their works, in order to pave the way for a brighter, harmonious future. Without these documentations and retellings of events such as these, history would repeat itself, conflicts would be more apparent and we as a species would not be able to thrive and prosper due to our prejudices and superiority complexes.
Krasner, David. Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre: 1895-1910. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1997. Print. Mackay, Constance D'Arcy.