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Learning Resources:
The Secret River
Capabilities: Literacy, Numeracy, Critical & Creative Thinking, Personal & Social
Capability, Ethical Understanding, Intercultural Understanding Cross Curriculum
priorities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture, Asia and
Australia’s Engagement with Asia, Sustainability
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Contents
........................................................................................................................................ 2
The Secret River at Adelaide Festival ........................................................................... 3
About Neil Armfield ...................................................................................................... 5
Show notes and learning resources ................................................................................ 6
From the Playwright .................................................................................................. 6
Synopsis ..................................................................................................................... 9
Characters ................................................................................................................ 10
Themes and ideas ..................................................................................................... 13
Literary/Theatrical Devices ..................................................................................... 13
Activities .................................................................................................................. 14
Discussion Questions ............................................................................................... 14
Skeletons are Out – an article from The Age by Jane Sullivan ................................... 15
Essay Questions ........................................................................................................... 22
Essay Writing Tips ....................................................................................................... 22
Review Writing Tips .................................................................................................... 26
Use some new words ................................................................................................... 28
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The Secret River at Adelaide Festival
Adelaide Festival in association with State Theatre Company South Australia presents
Sydney Theatre Company’s The Secret River
After sell-out seasons around Australia and unanimous critical acclaim, The Secret
River, Neil Armfield’s landmark theatrical Sydney Theatre Company production, will
make its Adelaide debut at the 2017 Adelaide Festival in an epic new open-air
performance staged in the Anstey Hill Quarry, presented in association with State
Theatre Company of South Australia.
Based on the international best-selling book by Kate Grenville and adapted for the
stage by award-winning Adelaide based playwright Andrew Bovell, The Secret River
marks Armfield’s and Rachel Healy’s first year as Artistic Directors of the Festival.
With all-new staging set in the breathtaking natural surrounds of the Anstey Hill
Quarry in Tea Tree Gully, this monumental show under the stars will be the first time
a major theatrical production has been performed in the quarry since the legendary
Mahabharata at the 1988 Adelaide Festival.
Originally produced by Sydney Theatre Company, The Secret River was a sold out
smash hit when it premiered in 2013, earning a rare full house standing ovation on
its opening night, followed by seasons at the 2013 Perth Festival and the Canberra
Centenary celebrations.
It has since won six Helpmann Awards including Best Direction for Armfield, Best
New Australian Work and Best Play, and most recently earned rave reviews in
encore seasons in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. It makes its Adelaide premiere
as a key work of Armfield and Healy’s first Adelaide Festival, and is set to be one of
the major highlights of the 2017 program.
Armfield says The Secret River is one of Australia’s most significant stories.
"The Secret River addresses the contradiction at the heart of our society. It
acknowledges truths that have been hidden for generations but have created the
country that we live in today. Wherever we have performed this play, there has been
a palpable sense in the audience that ‘at last this story is being told’.”
Based on Grenville’s Man Booker Prize and Miles Franklin nominated novel of the
same name, The Secret River tells the story of two families divided by culture and
land. William Thornhill arrives in New South Wales a convict from the slums of
London. This new land seems to offer him something of which he hadn’t dared
dream: a place to call his own. On the banks of the Hawkesbury River, he plants a
crop and lays claim to the soil in which it grows.
But the Hawkesbury is already home to a family from the Dharug people; a family
whose existence depends on that land. As Thornhill’s attachment to the land
deepens, he makes a terrible decision.
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The production stars Nathaniel Dean (Candy, Somersault, TV’s Anzac Girls, Puberty
Blues, Underbelly) as William Thornhill, and Ningali Lawford-Wolf (Last Cab to
Darwin, Rabbit Proof Fence) as Dhirrumbin, as well as stage and screen legend Bruce
Spence (The Cars that Ate Paris, Mad Max II, Finding Nemo, Star Wars) as Loveday.
State Theatre Company South Australia Executive Director Rob Brookman was the
Associate Director and Administrator of the Adelaide Festival when the
Mahabharata was staged at Anstey Hill Quarry in 1988, and will once again be part
of presenting a landmark theatre event for Adelaide.
Mr Brookman said: “The presentation of Peter Brook’s two seasons in 1980 and 1988
in an abandoned quarry at Anstey Hill were two of the greatest theatre experiences
ever seen in Adelaide. The combination of great theatre, a natural environment, the
spectacular space and brilliant acoustic created by a monumental rock wall and
warm summer nights was magical. It is an exceptional production that risks
comparison with these experiences but The Secret River is one such exception.”
Adelaide Festival Co-Artistic Director Rachel Healy said, “It’s thrilling to recall Peter
Brook’s iconic Mahabharata staged in the quarry adjacent to Anstey Hill, but the
opportunity to present a singular Australian story of first contact between black and
white in the cradle of this awe-inspiring landscape promises an experience like no
other. It is a privilege to stage this unforgettable production on Kaurna land, and to
bring theatre of such power and rich theatrical imagination to Adelaide audiences.”
State Theatre Company South Australia Artistic Director Geordie Brookman said:
“It’s taken us three years to get this incredible production to Adelaide and we are
thrilled to do so in such a unique setting. I’m delighted to bring a production of Neil’s
to the Company and to continue our important relationship with one of our great
dramatists, Andrew Bovell.”
The 2017 Adelaide Festival season of The Secret River promises to be one of the
theatre events of the decade. Tickets are on sale now.
Sydney Theatre Company’s THE SECRET RIVER
by Kate Grenville
An adaptation for the stage by Andrew Bovell
Director Neil Armfield
Artistic Associate Stephen Page
Set Designer Stephen Curtis
Costume Designer Tess Schofield
Lighting Designer Mark Howett
Composer Iain Grandage
Sound Designer Steve Francis
Cast includes Georgia Adamson, Joshua Brennan, Shaka Cook, Nathaniel Dean,
Frances Djulibing, Jennifer Hagan, Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Bruce Spence and Matthew
Sunderland
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Previews: Tue 28 Feb – Wed 1 Mar, 7.30pm
Thur 2 Mar–Sun 5 Mar, 7.30pm
Tue 7 Mar–Sun 12 Mar, 7.30pm
Tue 14 Mar–Sun 19 Mar, 7.30pm
The Quarry, Anstey Hill Recreation Park, Perseverance Road, Tea Tree Gully
Duration: 2hrs 50min, including interval
Tickets: $40 - $99, on sale Friday 23 September 2016 via BASS 131 246 or
adelaidefestival.com.au
“.
“The best live theatre you may see this year... Unmissable,” ★★★★★ – Herald Sun
“Andrew Bovell’s adaptation is set to become one of the great Australian plays:
not another night at the theatre, but something like a civic ritual that enacts the true
history of where this society comes from,” – The Sydney Morning Herald
“This great tragedy is told with such heartbreaking eloquence and humanity that
there is no doubt it will become a classic of the Australian theatre,” – The Australian
About Neil Armfield
Neil Armfield AO is an Australian director of theatre, film and opera. He was Artistic
Director of Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney from 1994 to 2010, and was awarded an
Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007 for service to the arts, nationally and
internationally.
Armfield has directed for all of Australia’s state theatre companies, Opera Australia,
The Welsh National Opera, The Bregenz Festival in Austria, Zurich Opera, Canadian
Opera, Houston Grand Opera, English National Opera, The Lyric Opera in Chicago
and the Royal Opera House, London. He has toured the world with his operatic
adaptation of Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet; dazzled Broadway with Exit The King
starring Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon; and is currently directing Opera
Australia’s production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
Recipient of two Doctorates of Letters (University of Sydney and UNSW) Armfield has
also received many awards including the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for
Outstanding Achievement in the Performing Arts; the Sydney Theatre Critics’ Circle
Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre; Best Production at Dublin
International Festival of the Arts for Cloudstreet; co-winner of the 1998 Barclay’s
Award in London for Billy Budd and a record six Dora Mavor Awards including Best
Production and Outstanding Direction of a Musical in Canada.
Armfield directed his first film in 1985, Twelfth Night, which was based on his South
Australian stage production. He directed the feature film Candy (which he also cowrote) in 2005, starring Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish and Geoffrey Rush, which
screened in over 20 international film festivals and won an AWGIE and AFI Award for
Best Adapted Screenplay. His latest feature film, Holding the Man (based on Timothy
Conigrave’s 1995 memoir of the same name) was released in 2015.
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He is dedicated to the development of works of Indigenous theatre: memorable
productions include Jack Davis’ No Sugar, John Harding’s Up The Road, Dallas
Winmar’s Aliwa! and the one man show Gulpilil.
Show notes and learning resources
The Secret River is an adaptation of Kate Grenville’s award winning novel of the same
name (2005). Directed by Neil Armfield, Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival, The
Secret River tells the story of two families divided by culture and land. A convict from
the slums of London, William Thornhill arrives in New South Wales greeted by his
family. Confronted by an unfamiliar land and harsh climate, Thornhill is offered
something he had never dared to dream of: a piece of land of his own.
Thornhill plants a crop and lays claim to the soil from which it grew on the banks of
the Hawkesbury River, however the land was already home to the Dharug people,
whose existence depends on that land.
As Thornhill’s attachment to the land and possessiveness of his surroundings
deepens, he becomes involved in a situation that will haunt him for the rest of his
life.
The Secret River was winner of six Helpmann Awards, including Best Play, Best
Direction and Best New Australian Work.
From the Playwright
(credit to STC’s On Cue)
The arc of Kate Grenville’s novel, The Secret River is epic. It tells the story of William
Thornhill, born into brutal poverty on the south side of London in the late 18th
century, his place in the world already fixed by the rigidity of the English class
system.
In 1806 he is sentenced to hang for the theft of a length of Brazil wood. Through the
desperate efforts of his wife, Sal, his sentence is commuted to transportation to the
Colony of New South Wales. In this new land he sees an opportunity to be something
more than he could ever have been in the country that shunned him. He sees “a
blank page on which a man might write a new life”.
He falls in love with a patch of land on the Hawkesbury River and dares to dream
that one day it might he his. After earning his freedom he takes Sal and their children
from Sydney Cove to the Hawkesbury to “take up” 100 acres of land only to discover
that the land is not his to take. It is owned and occupied by the Dharug people. As
Thornhill’s attachment to this place and his dream of a better life deepens he is
driven to make a choice that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Sometimes the best approach to adapting a novel is simply to get out of the way.
This proved to be the case with The Secret River. The novel is much loved, widely
read and studied. It has become a classic of Australian literature. My task was simply
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to allow the story to unfold in a different form. It took me sometime to realise this.
Initially, I favoured a more lateral approach to the adaptation. I wanted to project
the events of the novel forward in time and place the character of Dick Thornhill at
the centre of the play. Dick is the second-born son of William and Sal. Arriving on the
Hawkesbury he is immediately captivated by the landscape and intrigued by the
people who inhabit it. With a child’s curiosity and open heart, he finds a place
alongside the Dharug and they, perhaps recognising his good intentions are at ease
with his presence among them. Unlike his older brother, Willie, he has no fear of the
Dharug and seems to recognise that they understand how to live and survive in this
place. He learns from them and tries to impart this knowledge to his father.
William Thornhill’s failure to learn the lesson his son tries to teach him is central to
the book’s tragedy. When Dick discovers that his father has played an instrumental
role in the massacre of the very people he has befriended he leaves his family and
goes to live with and care for Thomas Blackwood who has been blinded in the course
of the settler’s violent attack on the Dharug.
One of the most haunting images of the book is contained in the epilogue. Thornhill,
now a prosperous and established settler on the Hawkesbury sits on the veranda of
his grand house built on a hill and watches his estranged son passing on the river
below onboard his skiff. He lives in hope that one day Dick will look up and see him.
But Dick never does. He has made his choice and keeps his eyes steadfastly ahead
refusing to acknowledge his father and all that he has built. Perhaps I was drawn to
Dick because I’d like to think that if I found myself in those circumstances I would
share his moral courage and turn my back on my own father, if I had to. I would hope
that I too would refuse the prosperity gained from the act of violence and
dispossession that the novel describes. I suspect though, that like many at the time I
would have justified it as a necessary consequence of establishing a new country and
found a way to live with it by not speaking of it. I would have chosen silence as so
many generations of white Australians did. It was here that I wanted to begin the
play; on the moment of Thornhill watching his estranged son passing on the river. I
created an imagined future for Dick.
The novel reveals that Tom Blackwood had an Aboriginal ‘wife’ and that they had a
child together. The gender of this child is not specified but I imagined that if she was
a girl that, once grown, she and Dick might have ‘married’ and eventually had
children of their own. So, whilst William Thornhill and his descendants prospered on
the banks of the Hawkesbury and became an established family of the district,
another mob of Thornhill’s lived a very different life up river, like a shadow of their
prosperous cousins. I mapped out a life for these two branches of the same family
over several generations until I came to their contemporary incarnations. One family
was white, the other black. I wondered whether they would be aware of their shared
past and how the act of violence which set them on their separate paths would be
carried through each generation and whether reconciliation was ever possible
between them.
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I imagined the story of Australia being revealed through the very different stories of
these two families who shared a common ancestor and a dark secret. Importantly, in
my mind was the idea that through the generations of Dick Thornhill’s descendants,
Aboriginal identity had not only survived but had strengthened. My collaborators
Neil Armfield and Stephen Page and the Artistic Directors of the Sydney Theatre
Company, Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett, heard me out but encouraged me to
return to the book. They were right to do so. Perhaps by inventing this other story I
was simply delaying the inevitable confrontation with the material at hand. Besides,
Kate Grenville answered my curiosity about what happened to Dick Thornhill in her
sequel to the novel, Sarah Thornhill. However, reaching beyond the source material
into an imagined future was an important part of the process for me. I was trying to
come to terms with the legacy of the violence depicted in the novel. I wanted to
understand how this conflict is still being played out today. When a connection is
drawn so clearly between then and now, history starts to seem very close. I think this
is one of the novel’s great achievements. In William Thornhill, Kate Grenville has
created a figure modern audiences can recognise and empathise with. He is a loving
husband and father, a man who wants to rise above the conditions into which he
was born and secure a better future for those who will come after him. This
aspiration seems to me to be quintessentially Australian.
Once Grenville has placed us so surely in Thornhill’s shoes, she leads us into moral
peril for we find ourselves identifying with the decisions he makes. We may not
agree with them but we understand them. And so we come to understand that the
violence of the past was not undertaken by evil men, by strangers to us but by men
and women not unlike ourselves. That’s the shock of it. Grenville wasn’t writing
about them. She was writing about us. Above all I wanted to retain that sense of
shock.
A number of key decisions started to give shape to the work. We decided to use the
device of a narrator. This allowed us to retain some of Grenville’s poetic language.
We gave the narrator the name Dhirrumbin, which is the Dharug name for the
Hawkesbury River. In effect, she is the river, a witness to history, present before,
during and after the events of the play. She knows from the start how the story ends
and it falls upon her to recount the tragedy of it. This quality of knowing gives
Dhirrumbin a sense of prophetic sadness. As well as performing the classic task of
moving the narrative forward, Dhirrumbin stands apart from the action and is able to
comment on it. Even more importantly, she is able to illuminate the interior worlds
of the characters, particularly the Dharug, and hence act as a bridge to our
understanding of their experience.
Building the Dharug presence in the play was fundamental to our approach and
became one of the key differences between the play and the novel. Grenville chose
to keep the Dharug characters at a distance. They are seen only through Thornhill’s
and the other white character’s eyes and their actions and motivations are explained
through the white character’s comprehension and often misinterpretation of them.
In part, Kate chose to do this for cultural reasons. She felt there was a line that as a
white writer she couldn’t cross and that it was not possible to empathise with the
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traditional Aboriginal characters. We didn’t have that choice. It’s an obvious point to
make but in transforming words on a page into live action on a stage we rely on the
work of actors. And we simply couldn’t have silent black actors on stage being
described from a distance. They needed a voice. They needed an attitude. They
needed a point of view. They needed language. We assumed that there wasn’t one
available to us. We thought that the languages spoken around the Hawkesbury had
largely been lost.
For a while it seemed like an insurmountable problem. And then Richard Green, an
actor and Dharug man, joined the project. We put the problem to him. He laughed
and opened his mouth and spoke and sang in Dharug. It was, he argued passionately,
a lie that the language didn’t exist. If it had been lost it had now been re-found,
rebuilt and reclaimed. It was a living language. And no white academic was going to
tell Richard that he had no language. He enlivened the rehearsal room with his
presence and gave us the confidence to find the voices for the Dharug characters. He
translated the language and made it fit the needs of the production and he taught
the ensemble how to speak it and sing it.
We began by giving the Dharug characters names in their own language; Whisker
Harry in the book became Yalamundi in the play, Long Jack became Ngalamulum,
Polly became Buryia, Meg became Gilyagan and Blackwood’s unnamed wife, Dulla
Dyin and so on. In this simple act of naming the characters the Dharug world began
to live on stage.
The task of representing a traditional Indigenous point of view in what is a white
narrative about history is fraught with difficulty and cultural sensitivity. Even with
the best intentions and thorough research and consultation a number of
assumptions are still made. I wrote a line for Garraway, one of the children. “I hate
snake,” he says as his mother is preparing a meal in the same way as a contemporary
child might say, “I hate broccoli.” Richard pointed out that there was no word for
hate, as such. But even the idea that a child in a traditional Indigenous context would
express dislike for a food central to their diet is an assumption we can’t really make.
This is perhaps the greatest challenge for white storytellers in this country – how do
we make sense of what Indigenous peoples thought and felt about the arrival of
Europeans in this country. Even first-hand accounts from the time have been written
down and interpreted by European writers. We can only be led by contemporary
Indigenous people who with great generosity show us the way back so that we may
begin to reconcile with our past.
Synopsis
(Credit to SYC On Cue)
The play is set on the Hawkesbury River between September 1813 and April 1814.
The Dharug people who lived there at this time called the river Dhirrumbin.
PROLOGUE
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William Thornhill is an English boatman. Having committed a crime of petty theft, he,
his wife Sal and two sons, Willie and Dick, are transported to Australia.
ACT ONE
William receives absolute pardon for his crime and William and Sal discuss how they
can make enough money to return to England. The Thornhills set up camp along the
Hawkesbury and encounter the Dharug family who live there. Tensions between the
two families escalate around access to the land. The Dharug children and Dick
Thornhill become friends and play with one another. Sal reveals she is pregnant.
William purchases a rifle.
ACT TWO William gives his son Dick a beating for swimming with the Dharug
children. Time passes. The Thornhills’ crop of corn has grown successfully. They
trade with the Dharug family. Sal becomes seriously ill. Another Englishman, Thomas
Blackwood, brings his Dharug wife, Dulla Dyin, to help Sal recover. Tensions increase.
William visits the camp of Smasher Sullivan to buy dogs. He finds that Smasher has a
Dharug woman held against her will. Violence breaks out repeatedly on both sides.
Smasher urges the settlers to attack the Dharug’s camp. William agrees and together
with a vigilante group they go to Blackwood’s camp and massacre the Dharug people
living there. Everyone is killed except Ngalamalum. Blackwood is shot trying to
defend the Dharug people and loses his eye.
EPILOGUE Ten years later. Ngalamalum, meets William on the same spot by the
Hawkesbury
Characters
(Credit to STC On Cue)
WILLIAM THORNHILL
William Thornhill is a former convict who discovers at the beginning of the play that
he has been granted an absolute pardon for his crimes. He is determined to make
the most of his freedom and realises that his social status, once fixed in place by the
rigid English class system, is now a malleable thing. He is ambitious and regards the
establishment of a farm on the Hawkesbury as a chance to overcome the poverty of
his past.
As a father to his two young sons, Thornhill is patient, affectionate and motivated by
the desire that they will inherit the fruits of his labour. Thornhill and his wife Sal have
a relationship defined by honesty and loyalty, and he is often influenced by her
opinions.
Initially, Thornhill’s interactions with the Dharug people are characterised by sheer
optimism – he believes he can persuade them to move on from the land. He is
influenced by the advice and approaches of Blackwood and his son Dick, who respect
and admire the Dharug people’s way of life. Although he witnesses, and is horrified
by, various atrocities committed against the Dharug people, he does not take action
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on their behalf. Instead, driven by his fear of losing his family and newfound
freedom, he eventually makes a terrible decision that will haunt him forever.
Thornhill’s moral failing is that when he finally decides to take action, it is against the
Dharug people rather than in their defence. This decision changes Thornhill
irrevocably, and while in time he grows richer and more elevated in social status, he
damages their relationship and loses the love of his younger son Dick, and becomes
a harsh, mistrustful man.
SAL THORNHILL Sal is a strong, resourceful woman who followed her husband to
Australia when he was convicted of a petty crime, raising their two sons alone while
waiting for his freedom to be granted. She is better educated than Thornhill, can
read and once taught her husband to sign his name. As a young woman in London,
she was known as a local beauty and was friendly to everyone. She fell deeply in love
with Thornhill and remains fiercely loyal to him. She is perceptive and assertive,
seeing an opportunity for their family to make enough money to return to England
with dignity. While she is initially overwhelmed by the isolation of their new life in
the Hawkesbury, Sal makes the best of it, marking off the days on a tree and singing
nursery rhymes to her sons as a way of keeping her dreams of London alive. From
the outset, she is wary of Thornhill’s assertion that land is available to be owned
without challenge.
Sal instinctively believes that they should treat the Dharug family with respect and
co-exist with them as Blackwood and Mrs. Herring have done. She establishes an
economic system of bartering with the women of the Dharug family, and eventually
comes to see them as friends. Her strong and assertive character is epitomised when
she insists to Thornhill that she will take their sons and leave the Hawkesbury, with
or without him, as tension between the settlers and Dharug people escalates. Sal’s
yearning for London keeps her going, although by the end of the play it is evident
that she has given up hope of ever returning
DHIRRUMBIN – THE NARRATOR
Dhirrumbin is the play’s Narrator. Her name is also the Dharug word for the
Hawkesbury River. According to playwright Andrew Bovell, “In effect, she is the river,
a witness to history, present before, during and after the events of the play”.
Dhirrumbin speaks the first words of English in the play and is almost constantly on
stage, watching the action unfold and illuminating the interior worlds of the
characters in the play, particularly the Dharug family. Her poetic language reveals an
omnipresent perspective that is cognisant of the impending tragedy. The actor
playing Dhirrumbin also embodies Blackwood’s wife Dulla Dyin at various points, a
character who is also a begrudging witness to the massacre of the Dharug people.
This dual role emphasises her status as witness to history. The haunting notes of
Dhirrumbin’s mourning song close the play, suggesting that the psychic wounds of
what has occurred will stretch across time.
WILLIE THORNHILL
Willie is the eldest son in the Thornhill family and from the beginning displays a
wariness of the Dharug family. He disapproves when his younger brother Dick
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befriends the Dharug children, although it appears he wishes he could do the same.
His wariness evolves into fear and he encourages his father to purchase a gun and
move the Dharug people from the land by force.
DICK THORNHILL Dick is the younger and more playful son in the Thornhill family. He
instinctively understands the Dharug family, warning his father that they shouldn’t
dig up the ‘taters’ on the land. While Thornhill and Willie are away in Sydney, Dick’s
curiosity blossoms into a playful friendship with the Dharug children. He enjoys their
company, begins dressing similarly and admires their skills, especially making fire
from sticks. Dick’s openness with the Dharug family challenges his father to consider
whether the Dharug’s approach to life on the Hawkesbury may be better. His
innocence and adoption of the Dharug’s ways point to a better course of action than
that of the adult settlers. However, Thornhill ultimately fails to learn the lesson Dick
tries to teach him. When Dick discovers his father’s actions, he leaves the family
shack.
THE DHARUG FAMILY
The Dharug family are deeply connected to the land, understanding how to thrive in
a landscape while also caring for it. Their connection with the land on the
Hawkesbury contrasts to that of Thornhill, who applies English farming techniques,
and Smasher, who wastes natural resources. Unlike Kate Grenville’s novel, the
Dharug family are an immediate and vocal presence in the play. As playwright
Andrew Bovell describes, “They needed a voice. They needed an attitude. They
needed a point of view. They needed language” (Sydney Theatre Company Program,
2016). Members of the Dharug family share common experiences with the
Thornhills, such as when Narabi and Garraway play with Dick, and Buryia and
Gilyagan exchange food for clothing with Sal. Although Sal and Dick attempt to build
relationships with the Dharug family, they remain essentially unknowable to them.
While Sal gives Buryia and Gilyagan the English names Polly and Meg, they do not
respond to her cries of hello. At times the Dharug family seem to look straight
through the Thornhills without seeing them. While they burn parts of the landscape,
the stagedirections read “It seems as though the part of NSW on which the
Thornhill’s hut was built is invisible to them.” The final lines of the play, spoken by
Ngalamalum, communicate the essence of the play – the land and the importance of
land to Aboriginals: “This me... My place.”
THOMAS BLACKWOOD
Thomas Blackwood is a reclusive settler who gives William Thornhill valuable advice
on how to interact with the Dharug people with whom he shares the land. Unlike the
other white settlers in the area, Blackwood believes that while the Dharug people
need nothing from the settlers, the settlers need something from the Dharug people.
Blackwood provides a stark contrast to Smasher and his violent approach to the land
and the Dharug people. His philosophy of ‘give a little, take a little’ encourages
Thornhill to attempt to negotiate with the Dharug family over the use of the land.
Blackwood is an obvious outsider to the settler community in the Hawkesbury, and
his suggestion to share out their crops is met with scorn. Blackwood has learned
parts of the Dharug language, in which he converses with his wife, an Aboriginal
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woman who is embodied on stage by Dhirrumbin (the Narrator). While Blackwood is
concerned about keeping this relationship a secret, he also acknowledges to
Thornhill that she is a better wife to him than any he had in London. Although
patient and reserved, Blackwood is moved to action in the final scenes of the play,
fighting for the Dharug people. Despite his being an outsider, Blackwood represents
a noble alternative as he respects and learns from the Dharug culture.
SMASHER SULLIVAN Smasher is an alcoholic, erratic and cruel settler who admits
that the silence of the Hawkesbury has probably driven him crazy. Smasher was the
youngest child of six and was starved as a child in order to fit inside chimneys to
work as a sweep in the East End of London. He commits the first act of violence seen
in the play when he whips Braniyamala, unprovoked. His brutish manner and violent
actions contrast with the Thornhill’s tentative attempts to make their way in their
new home. Smasher becomes talkative in the company of other settlers and enjoys
spinning a yarn. While Smasher is proud about his claim to the piece of land he calls
Sullivan’s Creek, his treatment of the land is as brutal as his treatment of the Dharug
people. He has cleared his block of timber and wasted many of its resources,
including oysters that have been in the river for over a thousand years. He trains his
dogs to attack the Dharug people and, to Thornhill’s horror,brutally rapes and
enslaved Indigenous woman. Smasher’s malice and fear-mongering eventually brings
about a brutal massacre.
MRS. HERRING Mrs. Herring is a pragmatic and wry settler who has survived on her
own since her husband’s death. She is unafraid of her isolation and gives valuable
advice to Sal on settling into life on the Hawkesbury and letting go of her dreams of
returning to England. Mrs. Herring has established a peaceful relationship with the
Dharug family, as she chooses to turn a blind eye when the family take some of her
food. While she does not pursue violence like Smasher or integration like Blackwood,
her way of life on the Hawkesbury indicates that there may be a middle path of
mutual tolerance available to the Thornhills. However, when tensions escalate she
understands that the cycle of retribution will continue, warning Sal that things are
not likely to settle down.
Themes and ideas


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




Cross-cultural relationships
Ownership/Possession
Relationship to place
Conflict
Family
Loyalty
Reconciliation
Intergenerational relationships
“Give a little, take a little”
Literary/Theatrical Devices

Personifying the river (narrator)
13




Overlapping of Aboriginal song and English nursery rhyme
The use of the Anstey Hill Quarry as the setting
Dialogue
Costume
Activities











There have been accusations of generations past ‘whitewashing’ history. Find
out what you can about what happened to Aboriginal people during
European settlement.
Research three different groups of Aboriginal people from around Australia.
Devise a scene where one character owns something but another character
wants it. Reach a solution through improvisation.
Devise a scene where two characters have different languages and cannot
communicate. Find a way of reaching a solution to a problem through
gestures, sounds and actions.
Write a letter from one character in The Secret River to another.
Create a diary entry from Sal, Dick or William.
Write an essay answering one of the below essay questions.
Write a review of the play.
Write a monologue from the point of view of a narrator that is an object
personified (e.g. from the point of view of the sun, the house, a bird, fire).
Prepare a news article or broadcast about a scene from The Secret River.
Write a narrative which follows the theme of possession and ownership.
Discussion Questions

Kate Grenville reflects on the process of writing fiction based on fact:
“Above all, I wanted to know the individuals, to get into their heads and their
hearts. In all their variety of personalities, they must have been like people I
knew and like myself - not heroes and not devils, but just human beings,
stumbling from one small decision to the next and in so doing, without really
planning it, creating the shape of their lives. As I wrote, I kept coming back to
the central question: what would I have done in their place?”
(Source: http://kategrenville.com/The_Secret_River_Readers_Notes)
Discuss the value of historical fiction. What are the challenges of creating this
type of work and what does the text have to offer for modern audiences?

Consider how the novel has been adapted for the stage. What changes have
been made? How successfully has the story been rendered?

Research the concept of Terra Nullius and the laws of settlement in colonial
Australia. Discuss how this relates to events depicted in the play.
14
Skeletons are Out – an article from The Age by Jane Sullivan
July 2, 2005
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/skeletons-out-of-the-closet/2005/06/30/1119724752099.html
Page T ools
"A Deadly Encounter". H. Calvert, 1870s. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. Picture has been digitally
coloured.
The history wars could flare up again, Jane Sullivan reports, with the publication of
a new novel by Kate Grenville.
It's 1814, and the handful of pioneer settlers on the Hawkesbury River in New South
Wales are in the Thornhill family hut listening to the governor's proclamation in the
local gazette. It says that if any natives come "armed, or in a hostile manner without
arms, or in unarmed parties exceeding six in number" to any farm belonging to
British subjects, the farmers may first ask them "in a civil manner" to leave. And if
they stay, "they are then to be driven away by force of arms by the settlers
themselves".
Loveday, the reader, stops and looks around at his audience. "Put plain, you may
shoot the buggers any time you get the chance," he says.
Smasher Sullivan is way ahead of the law. "Think I need any bit of paper from the
damned Governor?" he says, and pulls a package out of his pocket. It is a pair of ears,
"dark brown, hacked off rough". Horrified, Mrs Thornhill tries to stop her children
from seeing them.
Mr and Mrs Thornhill, Loveday and Smasher Sullivan are fictional characters in Kate
Grenville's new novel The Secret River. But the governor's proclamation is real, and
plenty of settlers interpreted it as a licence to "shoot the buggers".
You might think Smasher's gruesome package is a bit of licence on a novelist's part.
Until you come across real-life accounts of people such as Jack Watson, head
15
stockman at Lawn Hill station in the Gulf country, who in 1885 had 40 pairs of human
ears nailed to the walls of his hut.
Since the "history wars" of two years ago, frontier violence in the early days of
European settlement has become one of the most contentious aspects of the
Australian story. Passions flared when Keith Windschuttle launched his challenge to
the prevailing view in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. He went back to
the original sources for recent histories of first encounters with Aborigines in
Tasmania, and found errors. Then he used these to attack Henry Reynolds and other
historians, whom he accused of distorting the facts to favour their "black armband"
view of the past.
Debates between Windschuttle and his opponents drew the kind of audiences and
media coverage you might expect for a sporting clash. Whole books were written
and essays were collected to refute his claims. In the tabloid press, historians who
rallied against Windschuttle were called a moral mafia and white maggots.
Ask historians where all that kerfuffle has left us today and they will reply: stalemate.
The two sides have retreated to their trenches, where they prepare for the next
bout. Historians have become more cautious, double-checking their figures and
sources and making more qualified claims. "Genocide" and "massacre" have become
words used with extreme care.
La Trobe University politics professor Robert Manne, who edited Whitewash, an
essay collection challenging the Windschuttle view, fears that the history wars have
left most Australians "troubled and annoyed, even quite deeply irritated" when they
are told about dispossession and violence during the first 100 years of settlement.
He thinks Windschuttle's intervention has had a profound effect on public opinion,
creating a sense of division, "muddying the waters" and leaving many with the
impression that the Left has got control of history and has grossly exaggerated the
dark side of what was essentially a friendly and innocent society.
Windschuttle remains committed to his views. "There's an adversary culture in the
Australian tertiary-educated, middle-class left, who really want to believe that
Australia committed genocide," he says. "They believe that Bush and Howard are evil
men and that Australia is a terrible place, and the Aboriginal story fits into that. For
30 years, people who all think the same way have all researched similar things and
have come to the same conclusions. I have shown that with a bit of determined
footnote checking, it was a sham. But these people won't change their minds on the
basis of evidence."
Stuart Macintyre, dean of arts at the University of Melbourne and co-author of The
History Wars, says that Windschuttle's claim of an orthodox school united in
denigration of the nation is ill-founded: "There were and are many historians who
continue to explore a far more complex relationship."
16
Meanwhile the mysterious and often murky world of the frontier continues to
attract researchers, most of whom are not seasoned warriors in the history wars.
More and more material, much of it highly disturbing, is emerging.
Henry Reynolds, an Australia Research Council senior fellow at the University of
Tasmania, says that if anything, controversy has stimulated research. "There's been
so much work by so many people that has never been mentioned in the history wars
debate: at least 50 scholars have written books or articles or theses. The more
deeply people go into research, the more it confirms what has been said, and in the
long run that weight of material will prevail."
He believes that his own estimate of 20,000 Aborigines killed in conflict with
Europeans, dismissed by Windschuttle as a gross exaggeration, will be vindicated,
and may even turn out to be on the low side.
Now fiction is entering the fray. Our dark past has already featured in such novels as
the 2005 Miles Franklin winner Andrew McGahan's The White Earth; Alex
Miller's Journey to the Stone Country; Kim Scott's Benang; David
Malouf's Remembering Babylon; and Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmy
Blacksmith and Bethany's Book. This month sees the release of a book where, for the
first time, an award-winning novelist has taken for her subject what happens when
the settlers and the local Aboriginal people both want the same bit of extremely
valuable land.
"I'm not a person who likes conflict or public debate," Kate Grenville says, "but I feel
very passionately that this book is probably as close as we are going to get to what it
was actually like.
"This is a story that absolutely needs to be told. We are ready for it, perhaps for the
first time."
The starting point for The Secret River was Grenville's great-great-great grandfather,
a convict who was transported to Sydney, became a free man and "took up land" on
the banks of the Hawkesbury. She visited his house, now a hotel, and was surprised
to find a fortress. It was surrounded by a high wall, and the original building had no
windows or doors at the back or sides. What, she wondered, was he so afraid of?
Then she went on a reconciliation walk, came face to face with an Aboriginal woman
among the onlookers. They exchanged smiles. It was a warm moment. What would
her ancestor have thought at such a moment?
Grenville set out to imagine her hero, William Thornhill: not a nasty bit of work like
Smasher Sullivan, but an ordinary upright fellow with a wife and children, who has
been through tough times, with a dream of land of his own. She imagined him a king
on his land, a mysterious place where every tree might hide a man with a spear.
What are the pressures and choices he faces? "Thornhill is just like us, but we are
lucky enough not to have to make these choices."
17
In five years of researching and writing, she discovered things about Australian
history she had never learned at school. "I wanted the book to be based at every
point on whatever historical veracity I could find. I haven't made it up, I just put a
novelist's flesh on the bones of the documents."
When she began, she had no idea where Thornhill's story would go. But as she
worked through his encounters with the local Darug people, based on real encounter
stories, she realised that this series of misunderstandings, with moments of fear and
hostility and isolated killings on both sides, could only have a grim ending. Somehow,
the sympathetically portrayed Thornhill slowly becomes the kind of man who can
ambush and murder sleeping men, women and children.
There are no records of such a massacre on the Hawkesbury. But there is no doubt
that punitive raids against Aborigines took place all over Australia, although there is
fierce debate about their extent and nature. "The evidence of widespread killing of
Aboriginal people is overwhelming," Grenville says.
She took as her model the Waterloo Creek massacre of 1838, the largest known
slaughter of Aborigines in our history, when troops shot and stabbed an estimated
300 people (some estimates of the dead are at least 1000). Unusually for the times,
the case was well documented: "there was a paper trail I could follow". And the
story had been researched and described in meticulous detail in Roger Milliss' 1992
book Waterloo Creek.
Waterloo Creek and Myall Creek, where there is a monument to the 31 dead, are
two of the few massacre sites where we have detailed knowledge of what happened
because the government tried to punish those responsible. Seven men were hanged
for murders at Myall Creek. Most other killings were simply not recorded. But more
evidence is coming to light all the time, once people start looking for it.
"We know about a few massacres almost by accident or by luck," says Melbourne
historian Inga Clendinnen. "The records are thick with tones of voice references,
assumptions, casual remarks that chill our blood. It didn't chill their blood."
While Grenville was working on her novel, an amateur self-taught historian was
coming to the end of 30 years of research into the wild frontier of the Gulf country.
Tony Roberts was a public servant and at one time a departmental adviser to the
Aboriginal Affairs Minister on land rights issues in the north. He became interested in
the huge tract of outback country around Borroloola, and decided to write a small
history of local identities.
Then he came across odd references to massacres in the papers he consulted.
Curious, he expanded his search. He looked up every record he could find in national
and state archives, unpublished diaries and letters, and collected oral histories from
white and Aboriginal people in the area. "All of these sources painted a similar
unassailable picture," he says. "They were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that was taking
on a gruesome shape."
18
Roberts' modest project grew into a two-volume history of the Gulf country. The first
volume, Frontier Justice, published last year, covers the period from first contact in
the 1870s to 1900. He estimates that the pastoralists who settled in the area in the
Northern Territory alone killed at least 550 Aborigines, or about 20 per cent of the
local population. The local people killed 22 settlers. So Aborigines were killed at a
rate of 25 to one "against a backdrop of tacit approval by the government of
Adelaide, complicity by officials in Darwin and applause from the Territory press".
There were four reasons why Aborigines were killed, Roberts says. They were
punished for attacks on white men, or cattle, or horses. They were punished for
being cheeky. There were pre-emptive attacks on Aborigines painted for important
ceremonies, because the settlers thought they were performing war dances. And
most disturbingly, on some stations the land was simply cleared of "wild blacks",
until only women and girls remained.
Roberts discovered stories of girls as young as eight who were kidnapped and raped
and infected with syphilis. Teenage girls were kept for sex and chained up at night to
stop them running away. One group of girls was held in a chicken wire enclosure.
One massacre, at Malakoff Creek in Gudanji country, was described in detail in the
1930s by the Northern Standard. In 1886, Charley Gaunt joined a party of 22 police
and stockmen on a reprisal raid for the murder of local drover Ted Lenehan, who had
been killed and dismembered during an ambush. (At the time of his death, Lenehan
was himself on a raid to punish a "cheeky" Ngarnji man whom he found standing in
the moonlight in the doorway of his hut. The man was most probably the father or
husband of a girl Lenehan was living with).
In his account, Charley Gaunt said the men crept up before dawn on a camp of
sleeping Aborigines. They began to fire, and pandemonium broke out. At the end of
the melee they counted 52 dead and mortally wounded; "for mercy's sake", they
dispatched the wounded. Another 12 dead were found at the foot of a cliff,
"fearfully mangled".
The dead must have included women and children. Gaunt describes shooting "one
big Abo, over six feet" who rushed towards him. Later he found the body "and was
astonished to find, instead of a buck, that it was a splendidly built young lubra about,
I should judge, 16 or 18 years of age. The bullet had struck her on the bridge of the
nose and penetrated to the brain. She never knew what hit her".
Roberts used to wonder if Gaunt was boasting or exaggerating in his newspaper
account. But in his book he details how he checked with several different sources
that all seem to bear out Gaunt's story.
Henry Reynolds describes Frontier Justice as "an extremely impressive piece of work.
It's a quite devastating account of the incredible violence of that frontier. Although
people say 'Oh, it's up there', everywhere was Borroloola once. These conditions
were common from the Hawkesbury out."
19
La Trobe University historian Richard Broome, author of the new book Aboriginal
Victorians: A History since 1800, says that in early Sydney and Melbourne there were
friendly relations between the newcomers and the original inhabitants, who saw
each other as curious and exotic. Aboriginal people came to Melbourne in the first
few years of settlement to collect cast-off food from the bakers and butchers, and
groups of up to 300 camped by the Yarra for weeks at a time.
Broome points out that friendly relations did continue in some cases, and the
violence has to be seen in that context. But clashes began as the Europeans moved
out into the bush and claimed land as their own, without seeking permission.
Aboriginal people killed their sheep, seeing it as a food resource like kangaroo. To
the whites, this was stealing. These and many other cultural misunderstandings led
to distrust, fear and violence on both sides. Broome estimates that in the period he
studied, there were possibly 80 white deaths and 1000 black deaths from violence,
or a ratio of 12 to one (earlier estimates were much higher).
Fear was a constant for men in small, isolated groups in unfamiliar country, with
weapons that before the days of the repeating rifle were very unreliable, compared
with the spear. "They came with the idea these people were savages - ferocious,
unpredictable - which made their fear more intense. And I'm sure Aboriginal people
were very fearful, too, of people who could shoot lightning out of their eyes with a
stick."
While some historians are researching various areas on the frontier, others are
working on the bigger picture. Melbourne historian David Day's Conquest: A New
History of the Modern World, out this month, is a global study in which the British in
Australia take their place alongside the Normans in England, the Spanish in Mexico,
the Japanese in Korea, the Germans in Poland and the Chinese in Tibet: all places
where societies have moved into land occupied by others, and then try to reinforce
their claim of ownership, often with bloody results.
Australians, it seems, are not much better or worse than any other society when it
comes to such histories. "It's a relentless story of the overpowering of indigenous
people and doing whatever it takes to get hold of the land - and then creating all
these fictional stories to try and strengthen your hold," Day says. "The sort of liberal
ideas Captain Cook and Governor Phillip had didn't exist on the ground.
"We really do have to confront and come to terms with our history, and at the
moment we have shoved it back in the shadows. It can be unsettling, reading about
your past. But it doesn't have to be."
Yet another perspective comes from indigenous activists who do not want to see
their ancestors stigmatised as victims of violence. Melbourne musician and writerdirector Richard Frankland wants a memorial tribute to honour the Aboriginal
warriors who fought and died in the frontier war, much as we now honour soldiers
20
who died defending Australia in wars against other countries. "If we stop listening to
the nursery version of history, we'll be a better country," he says.
What do historians think of fiction writers who dare to tackle these themes? On the
whole, they approve, at least in principle. Inga Clendinnen, who wrote Dancing with
Strangers, a study of first contact between blacks and whites in the Sydney area up
to 1800, has read The Secret Riverand finds it "a sympathetic reconstruction of the
extremity of the situation of these individuals". She thinks Kate Grenville is doing
what good historians do: "to imaginatively create the plausible circumstances of
what it was to be a convict becoming a settler".
The historian in her gets pernickety about the novelist's licence with detail, but she
understands that is a legitimate tool of fiction. "It's the enterprise I think that is
good. I would like to think it will extinguish the history wars, to a degree."
Keith Windschuttle, however, is not enthusiastic. He hasn't read Grenville's book, but
"I think the topic itself sounds strange. The issue has gone beyond a case where a
fictionalised account is going to make any impact. Those people who now believe the
story of guns and violence against Aborigines will be comforted by a book like that.
Not one mind will be changed".
Fresh battles in the history wars will no doubt break out when Windschuttle
publishes his next study, an analysis of New South Wales frontier history. It's part of
a political clash that goes back to earlier "wars" between the supporters of Geoffrey
Blainey and Manning Clark, and there will be no easy resolution.
In the meantime, Robert Manne laments that no one has yet attempted an
overview, a multi-volume history of dispossession, along the lines of governmentsponsored histories of world wars. "It would be a great thing for reconciliation, but
the sources are pretty elusive, so it's a very hard history to write . . . I read books and
books and books, and still you come away wondering."
Kate Grenville is bracing herself for a backlash to The Secret River. "I know there are
people for whom the book will be quite confronting - it was confronting to write,"
she says. "But I now feel a great sense of relief I've taken the skeleton out of the
cupboard. The kind of paralysis we've been in over what we should do about our
Aboriginal heritage can be opened up, and we can move on. There's a chance for
something better to happen."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/skeletons-out-of-thecloset/2005/06/30/1119724752099.html
21
Essay Questions

Discuss the significance of setting in developing the central ideas of The
Secret River.

How does the author of position the audience towards certain characters and
actions in order to develop the central ideas of The Secret River?

To what extent is The Secret River a text about conflict of one kind or
another?

Discuss the significance of the relationships between generations in The
Secret River.

How The Secret River explores the idea of cross-cultural relationships.

Choose one or two of the following elements of the production and discuss
how they are used to develop ideas:
- Narration
- Minor characters
- Set design
- Dialogue
- Costume
Essay Writing Tips
Writing an essay can seem like a huge task, but with a bit of organisation, a plan and
a breakdown of the essay question, an essay can become a manageable assignment.
Here are some tips to help keep the stress levels down and assist you to write an
essay you can be proud to submit.
Choose a question:

Choose a question you are interested in finding out the answer to.

Define your purpose. Is your essay to inform or persuade? Once you have
determined your purpose, you will need to start breaking down the question.

Highlight the key words in the question. These will become the focus of your
essay. These highlighted words will become the focus of your plan. Highlight
words that might narrow the argument down, for example, “between
chapters 1 and 3”, “during the 19th century” or “with reference to the minor
characters”. Use a dictionary to look up any words you don’t understand.
22

Highlight what the question is asking you to do. Is it ‘discuss’, ‘argue’,
‘explain’, ‘compare’? Does the question ask for personal opinion or
experience? Make sure you keep coming back to these instructions to make
sure you are meeting the criteria.

Don’t Google the question! There may be plenty of answers to the question
online, but that doesn’t mean they’re good/right.
Prepare an outline or diagram of your ideas.

In order to write a successful essay, you need to organise your thoughts.
After you’ve highlighted the key words in the question, jot down your ideas
around them. You can do this either in a mind map, spider diagram, or
whatever way your planning works best. By taking your ideas and putting
them to paper, you will be able to see links between your ideas more clearly,
and this will help to flesh them out with examples and evidence.

A good way to organise the essay is to divide your answer to the question
into three parts. If you’re having trouble finding points ask yourself, ‘what are
three good reasons this answer to the question is the right one’. Those three
reasons become your main points to answer your topic and the ones you will
back up with quotes from the text or examples from the performance.

Note some quotations that may be useful, but also jot down the page
number, so you can ensure the source of the quotes is acknowledged and
referenced if they're used.
Write your thesis statement.

Once your ideas are sorted into relevant categories, you can create a thesis
statement. Your thesis statement tells the reader the point of your essay; it
answers the question. To discover your thesis question, look at your outline
or diagram.

Your thesis statement has two parts. The first part states summarises the
question and the second part answers it, presenting the point of the essay.
Write the body.

The body of your essay argues your answer to the question or topic. Each
main idea from your diagram or outline will become a separate section within
the body of your essay.

Each body paragraph will have the same basic structure. Begin by writing one
of your main ideas as the introductory sentence. This topic sentence should
23
have impact, so make it strong. Under your topic sentences, write each of
your supporting ideas in sentence form, but leave three or four lines in
between each point to come back and give detailed examples to back up your
position. Fill in these spaces with relative information (quotes, examples,
evidence) that will help link ideas together. Use words like ‘however’,
‘moreover’, ‘in addition’ to link to the previous paragraph.

Always begin your paragraph with a topic sentence to make clear what the
paragraph is about. For example:
“Playwrights often present similar ideas in different ways. Williamson’s
interpretation of Hamlet is no exception to this.”
“The death of Tom Robinson can clearly be linked to three people.”

Explain your point and give a clear example from the text or production to
support.

Finish each paragraph by linking the idea back to the question.

Embed your quotes effectively and intelligently. Don’t include a quotation for
its own sake, or one that floats amongst your sentences. Integrate them into
the paragraphs with context. For example:
Richard III defends his actions, believing that, “Conscience is but a word that cowards
use” (Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 3, p14). 
versus
Richard III defends his actions. “Conscience is but a word that cowards use”.
(Shakespeare, Act 5, Scene 3, p14). 

Avoid passive language or sweeping generalisations. You should use strong,
impactful sentences backed up with relevant evidence.
Add an introduction.

Now that you have developed your thesis and planned the body of your
essay, you can write your introduction. The introduction should attract the
reader’s attention, show the focus of your essay and answer the question.

Make sure you name any texts to be discussed.
Write the conclusion.
24

The conclusion should do just that: conclude. No new information should be
brought up in the conclusion and you should avoid using quotes or evidence
in this part. The conclusion brings closure of the topic and sums up your
overall ideas while providing a final perspective on your topic. To write a
strong conclusion, simply review your main points and provide reinforcement
of your thesis.
Polish your essay.

If this is a draft, it is important you are submitting your best work for drafting.
Your teacher should not be seeing the first draft of your work. You should
proofread (reading your essay aloud will help you to find errors) several times
and make sure you are giving a draft that is free of errors. If your teacher is
spending their time adding or subtracting apostrophes, correcting spelling,
telling you to reference or adding inverted commas to quotes, they will not
be paying close attention to the content, which is where the good grades are.
Help your teacher to get you the best grade possible by submitting your best
work for drafting.

Check the order of your paragraphs. Your strongest points should be the first
and last paragraphs within the body, with the others falling in the middle.
Make sure that your paragraph order makes sense and you have effective
linking sentences.

Read the question again. Have you answered it?

Read the assessment criteria. Have you met the requirements?

Have you ‘discussed’, ‘explained’, ‘analysed’, ‘compared’ as the essay
question asks you to do? Have you included personal experience or opinion
in every paragraph (only if the essay question indicates)?

Delete anything irrelevant and stick to the word limit.

Read your essay again (and then maybe again!).

You are ready to submit!
25
Review Writing Tips
While there is no perfect formula for review writing, there are some basic
techniques you should consider in order to write an effective, engaging review. A
review is both a report of an event and an appraisal of it. As a report, it should give
basic factual detail, such as the place and date of the performance, the full name of
the company and the name and author(s) of the text (and the text it is based upon, if
applicable). It is also important to credit the director, costume, set and lighting
designer(s) and actors. Make sure to access a program, rather than try to improvise
without one. Programs often include all the facts you need, as well as directors’
notes, which might help you get an idea of the company's objectives and viewpoints.
When you attend the event you are going to review, make sure you get there in
comfortable time, get your program and get settled in. Look around you a bit; take a
look at the set, if it's visible. See who the audience is and get some sense of their
reaction to the show. Take notes if you can, but you may discover it isn’t easy writing
in the dark. The important thing is that you note your impressions, themes,
moments when the show comes to life, or times when it is unsatisfying.
Prepare yourself beforehand. If it is a classic work, like Richard III by Shakespeare or
an historically recent work like Waiting for Godot- read the play, or at least become
familiar with it. You are not there for the suspense and titillation of the story; rather,
you want to know what they have done with the original production.
In the review itself, don't get caught up retelling the plot - we already know what
happened to Macbeth and Hamlet. But, in the case of a new play, you will need to
give a synopsis of the plot as part of your information. Having said that, the synopsis
should only be brief, and not a bunch of paragraphs recounting the narrative.
Your review is a personal piece and can be in any sequence you wish, but it might be
advisable to start factually and work your way gradually to the evaluative comments.
A sequence like the following works well:

An introduction indicating the name and nature of the production.

A paragraph or two briefly outlining what happens.
26

A paragraph on the director's role - what styles has he/she used, what
interpretation has been imposed?

An account of the performances, the design (costumes, set, lighting) and how
well these aspects highlight the ideas and themes in the work.

Don't generalise - superlatives or condemnation are not much use without
examples. Always try and find an instance which illustrates your point. Don't
just say it was ‘wonderful’ or, worse still, ‘boring’, without accounting for
yourself.

A conclusion appraising the success of all these elements.
Remember that the production sets its own terms of success - within budget,
expertise, the quality of the concept, whether it’s a touring company etc. Be
reasonable within those terms. Be gracious. You are assessing a production, rather
than writing an essay arguing why the company did or didn’t ruin Romeo and Juliet.
You can be honest, but not insulting. You’re not a sit down comedian and your
review shouldn’t be full of clever one-liners. Your task is to give a clear and vivid
account of the performance.
It helps to read other reviews, but not ones on the show you are covering. You
either end up feeling you can't repeat ideas or that you are in a debate with another
reviewer, or sometimes you might inadvertently take those ideas and use them as
your own. Trust you own judgment, it doesn't matter what the others are saying. If
you want to read reviews to get an idea of how some good ones are written, though,
look in The Australian, The Adelaide Review, The Guardian, New Yorker, etc.
Theatre reviewing will help you develop your understanding of drama and the
theatre. It will improve your theatre literacy skills. The task of reviewing will make
you more responsive to what you see and improve your creative and critical thinking
skills.
Theatre reviews should:
 Give an accurate impression of the performance for someone who has not
been there
 Convey a considered, personal judgement of the quality of the experience
 Consider how a text was interpreted.
Here are some other things to mention:
 What kind of play is it? What is it about? Mention the genre and style of the
piece. Is it dance, drama, music? Is it absurdist, realism or contemporary? Is it
elaborate, simple, rough, naturalistic, or a mixture of styles?
 What is the nature of the theatre experience? You must note your own
responses, but as theatre is a public event, you should make mention of how
others respond, the atmosphere of the evening, and the social context.
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Style guide:
This will vary from teacher to teacher, publication to publication, but here are some
things to note
 List the details of the show, theatre, date at the top of the review
 Use the full names of the author, playwright, crew, actors, director in the first
instance. Subsequent mentions must be referenced by surname.
 Use title case and italics for the show name
 Use short paragraphs
 Don’t use too many gushing superlatives (‘amazing’ is way overused. Try
something different – there’s a list below)
 Check your facts: spelling, grammar, dates, names, historical references etc.
 Talk about all of the aspects of theatre (set, costume, design, lighting, script,
direction, music, sound, acting, theatre)
Use some new words
General adjectives associated with performance:
Outrageous, shocking, persuasive, compelling, inspiring, affecting, absorbing, daring,
provocative, obscure, delightful, captivating, morbid, surreal, challenging, nostalgic,
complex, spectacular, chilling, foreboding, enchanting, astonishing.
Words to describe the mood or tone:
Entertaining, facetious, sensational, didactic, bombastic, forceful, servile, persuasive,
chauvinistic, nostalgic, querulous, guarded, indifferent, sensible, earnest, fervent,
wistful, embittered, detached, sincere, tolerant, jocular, cautious, pensive,
thoughtful, passionate, conservative, arrogant, critical, ponderous, antagonistic,
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ardent, admiring, disrespectful, bitter, cynical, satirical, sardonic, sarcastic, quizzical,
ironical, anxious, resentful, disappointing, cautious, neutral, despondent, pessimistic
Words to describe the direction:
Skilled, purposeful, exciting, clever, thought-provoking, challenging, stimulating,
visually exciting, aesthetic, earnest, cautious, sincere, sensitive, sensitive, aggressive,
theatrical, dynamic, confident, bold, adventurous, conservative, lacklustre,
predictable.
Words to describe the set:
Elaborate, realistic, understated, rough, skeletal, simplistic, minimal, abstract,
naturalistic, unrealistic, cubist, surreal, stylised, traditional, representational,
imaginative, lush, dense, open, vivid, jagged, symbolic, shiny, lavish, detailed, sparse,
functional, elegant, delicate, durable, romantic, impressionist, expressionist.
Words to describe costumes:
Outrageous, transforming, flattering, stylish, elegant, chic, bright, dull, plain,
elaborate, ornate, evil, revealing, tailored, period, symbolic, ornate, vivid, lavish,
stylised, colourful, extravagance, simplistic, beautiful, dainty, alluring, luxurious.
Words to describe the makeup:
Skilfully applied, realistic, period, fantastical, shocking, simple, elaborate, vivid,
stylised, abstract, traditional, clever, minimal.
Words to describe sound:
Menacing, rhythmical, repetitive, haunting, eerie, overpowering, complementary,
engulfing, pulsating, lapping, trickling, swishing, blaring, lyrical, grating.
Words to describe lighting and effects:
Simplistic, minimal, abstract, eerie, dull, gloomy, bright, majestic, shocking,
forbidding, shadowy, luminous, flickering, twinkling, hypnotic, pulsating, flashing,
thematic.
Words to describe style and/or genre:
Comedy, classical, symbolic, expressionistic, absurdist, naturalistic, representational,
tragic, comic, satirical, melodramatic, surreal, period, traditional, contemporary,
existentialist, avant-garde, romantic, allegorical, farcical.
Words to describe character:
Miserly, clumsy, careless, conceited, cocky, ambitious, mean, merciful, confident,
generous, gracious, greedy, gregarious, garrulous, noble, needy, humble, grotesque,
irritable, lazy, loyal, patient, pragmatic, placid, serious, eccentric, quarrelsome,
industrious, petulant, enlightened, reliable, determined, cruel, arrogant,
sophisticated, slovenly, vivacious, cantankerous, fussy, obsessive, unpredictable,
neurotic, uncouth, vicious, mature, shrewd, insular, feminie, effeminate, calculating,
callous, self-indulgent, flippant, jaded, compassionate, zealous, brash.
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Words to describe performance:
Dynamic, disciplined, pedestrian, uninspired, complex, flat, skilful, agile, versatile,
emotive, compelling, surprising, delightful, demanding, under-stated, lively,
energetic, restrained, inspired.
Words instead of ‘good’:
Capable, quality, fine, adept, accomplished, masterly, skilful, seasoned, vigorous,
adept, high-standard, superior, skilled, proficient, choice, sound, supreme,
prominent, pre-eminent, potent, important, distinguished, illustrious, influential,
awe-inspiring, grand, splendid, majestic, monumental, resplendent, brilliant,
impressive, magnificent, imposing, enjoyable, profound.
Words instead of ‘effective’:
Powerful, practical, emphatic, moving, affecting, compelling, competent, impressive,
potent, striking, telling, cutting, penetrating, sharp, successful, efficacious.
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