What is TRUTH? “Truth” can be very many different things to very many people. It can be universal or believed by some and not by others; it can be inevitable or hidden away from; denied or accepted and even warped.
Concordia College’s Year 11 Drama Teacher, Daniel Lynch, believes in student led productions – i.e. devised, designed, directed and overall created by the students under his supervision. This term, he challenged the students to go that one step further and write their own two one act plays using the theme of Truth. They came up trumps with both plays, in the writing, creating and performing arenas.
“Our Way Of Life” written by Neeka starts quite abstractly with the cast (Matilda, Yolanna, Portia, Alex and Nick) moving from chair to chair reciting platitudes to the audience, except for one mysterious character standing appropriately above the rest bearing the unusual name of Zendax. As the play progresses, Neeka and Directors Talia and Rebecca give the audience little morsels of hints to what is really happening, or the “truth” of the story if you will. One of the big clues are the appropriately evil and disturbing smiles that they have given their cast. We are transported to a Cult who believe the “truth” that the world outside of their society has been destroyed – think M Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” merged with Hulu’s series “Paradise”. This play however, gets to the point succinctly giving us a clear non-believer (she reads!) almost immediately. As the programme lists only the players and not the characters they play, it is impossible to single out individual performances. (This holds true for both casts). The overall ensemble feel is impressive. The male playing the mysterious Cult leader, Zendax is particularly menacing and unsettling helping to give the storyline the appropriate feel.
“Our Mother’s Grave presents Ash to Ashes” by Zoe and Lani is an excellently written piece examining the “truth’ and inevitability of Death. We all handle Death various ways. According to psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross there are 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Zoe and Lani examine these feelings using the passing of friend “Ash” and coining a beautiful phrase “Hiding isn’t healing” – a remarkable and mature philosophy coming from young minds that shouldn’t have to deal with such things at this stage in their lives. The cast (Rex, Keziah, Jem, Elizabeth and Lani) individually tackle a different ‘grief’ very clearly and well. There are some strong topics here such as anger, depression and alcoholism that are handled extremely well and sensitively by the writers, Director Hannah and all the cast.
Concordia and Lynch deserve to be very proud of their Year 11 Drama class. I reviewed this class once before not long ago and they are just going from strength to strength. Keep just getting stronger and stronger!
