Applied Theatre In Our Country's Good By Timberlake Wertenbaker

Applied Theatre "can be fashioned into a tool designed to re-educate, re-socialise, and 'rehabilitate' people" (Balfour, 2004, p.12). Applied Performance has the ability to support individuals particularly in marginalised communities, as it tends to focus on minorities or outcasts unlike a lot of traditional mainstream theatre. Applied Theatre practitioners aim to, "benefit individuals, communities and societies" (Nicholson **). The main focus of this essay will be how far individuals in prison as a marginalised environment can benefit from the world of theatre. I feel that prisons are a very extreme marginalised environment where the most dangerous of elements are confined into buildings. Justice is ironically a very blurred concept in a …show more content…
I will be looking at the play, 'Our Country's Good' written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, who focuses on convicts sent to Australia who are made to rehearse and perform a play and comparing this example to real life case studies. (can be double the lenth)

Firstly, I will be looking at a fictional example of the ways that performance has provided beneficial opportunities for characters written by Wertenbaker. Wertenbaker bases his characters on real people and characters based on Thomas Kennealy. 'Our Country's Good' presents theatre in a very conventional manner but in a very unconventional setting. Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote the play in 1988 based on a novel by Thomas Keneally called 'The Playmaker'. Both explore the true story of one of the first ships of convicts that were sent to Australia for colonization in the 1780s who, once in Australia, were made to perform a restoration comedy called 'The Recruiting Officer'. Many of the characters are prisoners convicted of petty crimes such as stealing, who suffer at the hands of sadistic Lieutenants and inhumane living conditions. As the play progresses we see a reluctance from some convicts which weakens. These lower class 'criminals' are asked to perform as …show more content…
When deflected from focusing on themselves and how they only ever robbed the rich, the convicts imagine what they would do if they had money, "if I was rich I'd eat myself sick" (Liz Morden, p.61, Act 1 ) which brings them together. The play means that for once the convicts feel equal to one of the Lieutenants (Ralph) and for a short amount of time they are not treated like animals. In the first act, Captain Phillip says that the play "will remind them that there is more to life than crime, punishment" (p.30), the audience realises here that a potential escape from a very harsh reality for some of the convicts is through theatre *('a play is a world in itself')*. Towards the end of the first act we also see some of the convicts finding both friendships and conflicts through rehearsing the play. One of the characters is arguably the most influenced by the play, Liz Morden. She is the most unlucky and feared convict that plays one of the main characters in their performance of 'The Recruiting Officer'. She is being put on trial and scheduled to be hung for something that she didn't do. She takes to acting very well and it clearly