MTC Digital Theatre

The Heartbreak Choir
By Aidan Fennessy
Directed by Peter Houghton

This production contains coarse language, mature themes, references to sexual assault and references to suicide.

Recommended for ages 15+ / Year 10+

Scripted dialogue contains description and physical enactment of the following:

Culturally / religiously sensitive commentary

• Use of the following text: holy crap, hell/damn them to hell/bloody hell, Jesus, Christ/God, far be it for me to step on any religious toes, especially if they're in sandals.
• Barbara states: ‘polite silence has been doing the work of the Catholic Church’

Racially sensitive commentary

• Barbara says (without ill intent): ‘I think I may be too white for that song’
• Aseni recounts the history of Zimbabwe, the arrival of the British South Africa Company and the ensuing division

Child sexual abuse

• Child abuse in the church: Barbara tells the choir about Caro admitting she was abused by the church as a child
• Aseni abruptly states to Peter (Caro’s widower) that she was molested by the priest
• Barabra describes in detail that Caro was ‘raped. Three times. Maybe more. When she was eight... only stopped when she got her period’
• Barbara details how they should pursue ‘the Department of Justice... make a submission to the Royal Commission... Tell [Caro's abuse] story’
• Peter explains he's made a submission to the Royal Commission
• Mack references the church hall where the abuse took place

Sexual harassment / assault / advances

• Mack mentions an attempt of molestation backstage. She escaped with a kick to the assailant’s testicles.

Overtly sexual language / inappropriate comments / innuendo

• Aseni asks ‘What is Tinder? He's making fire?’ Mack replies (tongue in cheek) ‘Depends how fast he's doing it’
• Savannah describes her lips as sealed; Mack replies ‘Ah yes… but which ones?’

Suicide

• Caro was abused by the church as a child and three weeks after divulging this information to her choir group she ‘hung herself from the Coolabah tree in Victory Gardens’
• Peter asks Barbara why the choir split up; he offers: ‘is it because [his wife's] suicide is a sin in the eyes of the church?’
• Peter explains to his son why Caro killed herself: ‘She was in a lot of pain and didn't know how to get out’
• Barbara admits she ‘missed the fault line’ not seeing Caro's suicide coming
• As Peter tries to explain to his son why his mum killed herself he bursts into tears and stands, breathing heavily, trying to squash it down.

Loss of a loved one

• Peter discusses joining the choir with Mack to ‘get closer’ to his late wife
• Beau describes his grief about losing his mum: ‘It's like something big happened… and now there's nothing’
• Peter describes how ‘pissed off’ he is with himself that his wife didn't feel she could tell him about being sexually abused
• Beau admits he burnt the church hall down after learning what happened to his mum

Serious illness

• Barbara’s sister has a terminal brain tumour, which Barbara slowly comes to term with over the course of the play.

Mental health

• Mack takes anxiety medication
• Barbara sympathises with Peter about the challenges of living with someone with mental illness (his wife): ‘[it's] like climbing an Everest that never ends... you were exhausted’
• Barbara describes Savannah's ‘anxiety condition’ where she communicates ‘only to certain people in certain situations’

Fat-shaming / discussions of body image

• Peter and Mack argue about whether either of them is fat, with Mack throwing insults (in jest)
• Mack (in jest) grabs Peter's muffin top singing ‘must be jelly 'cause jam don't jump like that’... there's a feisty standoff between the two
• Mack is rambling: ‘Do you think I'm fat? I'm fat aren't I?... Fat little fingers’ 

SLAP. BANG. KISS.
By Dan Giovannoni
Directed by Katy Maudlin

This production contains coarse language, and references to gun violence and homophobia.

Recommended for ages 14+ / Year 9+

Scripted dialogue contains description and physical enactment of the following:

Violence incl. war/combat

• 16-year-old Immi is on her way home when a security officer stops her to check her bags and ID, a familiar routine that irritates Immi.
• Later, she sees her flag jammed behind bins, and her anger toward her oppressors grows.
• Confronted by a security officer on the street, Immi slaps him.

Depicting fear/humiliation

• Immi’s family are concerned about the repercussions of her actions, and soon she is arrested and imprisoned. Immi’s slap was captured on camera and goes viral.

Direct discrimination towards a character/person

• Leon and Beau, empowered by Immi as a symbol of resistance, plan a protest. Morrie stands up for a stranger being intimated on a train, and Vida comes face to face with a law enforcement officer at a protest.

Distressing/graphic descriptions or references

• 16-year-old Sofia is at school, bored and waiting for the final bell. An alarm sounds, and suddenly an active shooter enters the classroom. Sofia is wounded and some of her peers are killed, including her friend Rebecca.
• At Sofia’s school, she hides in a cupboard and reflects on safety drills, until police escort her out of the school. Overhearing a journalist offering “thoughts and prayers”, Sofia speaks her mind to the camera. Her speech is broadcast widely, prompting Sofia to plan a march for gun control.

Kissing

• In the carpark of a small-town Woolworths, 16-year-old Darby is preparing to break the world record for the longest kiss with another boy from his school, Daniel. Darby’s friend Jasmine livestreams the kiss on her phone.

Struggles with gender identity/sexuality incl. vilification of homosexuals, androgyny etc.

• In the Woolworths carpark, a Slurpee is thrown at the boys from a passing car, along with homophobic slurs, but onlookers gather around Darby and Daniel to protect them. The boys’ kiss attracts a growing crowd of supporters in the carpark.

Shakespeare's
As You Like it
Directed by Simon Phillips

Shakespeare’s warm-hearted pastoral love comedy As You Like It tells the story of two young people who are simultaneously banished by cruel familial betrayals and end up together and in love in the forest of Arden. Pitting the machinations and artifice of courtly life against the natural honesty of the country, As You Like It features Shakespeare’s greatest comic heroine, Rosalind, and some philosophizing by the mournful Jacques. It is at once giddily romantic and deeply humanist.

This production contains choreographed violence, the use of theatrical haze and strobe lighting effects. 

• Strobe lighting effects - a brief moment of 'lightning' occurs approximately 30 minutes into the production

Recommended for ages 12+ / Year 7+

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes
by Hannah Moscovitch
Directed by Petra Kalive

Jon is a prize-winning novelist who wants more out life, most especially some degree of certainty when it comes to ongoing wealth and fame, not to mention just a shot at happiness. His third marriage is on the rocks and he’s moved to a rental property to ride out the storm; but also to give himself time to complete his new novel about the frontier timber industry at the turn of the last century. He’s also picked up some teaching at a good university.

He likes teaching, but finds most of the students dull, until he sees a young woman in a red coat - she’s sparky, ambitious, and imaginative and one afternoon, locks herself out of her place, which is just across the street from his.

Jon relents to an affair with 18 year-old Annie [described] wracking him with both guilt and joy; along with a touch of fear — he could be fired should she complain to University authorities. There are scenes that depict “over the clothes” (kissing, touching) sexual relations between them but this does not go for long in any of the three to four moments, and much more is insinuated than is depicted.

A few months later when his estranged wife wants to meet, he is caught completely wrong-footed — expecting her to demand a divorce and reprimand him for his appalling behaviour, she instead tells him that she’s pregnant with their baby and wants them to get back together.

Annie takes the break-up well; though 5 years later she meets him, filled with guilt, shame and recriminations.

Ten years on she sees him again, and she is a confident, award-winning playwright. Indeed it slowly dawns on us, and him, that she has written this whole evening’s encounter, exposing him and his narcissism to us, leaving him diminished and powerless, at her mercy. This is in fact her story, her portrait of a cruel, careless man, revealing the truth of her struggle, a fight that ultimately leaves him impaled on his own abuse of his power and privilege.

Contains frequent coarse language, sexual references, mature themes and the use of theatrical haze.

• Mature themes – themes relating to abuse of power and privilege and emotional manipulation.
• Mature themes – references to drug use.
• Mature themes – references to grooming behaviour

Recommended for ages 18+
Not recommended for schools

Berlin
By Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Iain Sinclair

Charlotte has invited Tom to crash on her couch for the night. Bartender by night and poet by day, this Berliner has taken pity on an Aussie backpacker with the misfortune to be kicked out of his overbooked hostel.

They met at her bar — one of Berlin’s uber-cool venues — and have just arrived at her bohemian apartment, all shabby chic with one ridiculously large reproduction of a painting by John Constable dominating a wall. They drink, share secrets, flirt and dance around their attraction, until Charlotte takes the reins and kisses Tom.

Later — it is clear that they have now slept together — he is awake and alone and answers a call, terminating it moments later. It was a bad time. Something has shifted. Now he’s romantic with Charlotte, he wants the two of them to flee the apartment, their ‘former’ lives and start it all again, this very second. Charlotte laughs him off — surely coffee is fine for now? Their attraction and the beginnings of what neither can quite believe is love overrides any awkwardness, tension or confusion.

The door buzzer then punctures their bliss. Tom reveals that they didn’t meet by accident. He’s the great-grandson of a Jewish art collector and knows that the Constable is real — that Charlotte’s great-grandfather bought it for a pittance during the Holocaust, having been taken from his family collection. He has come to right the wrongs of the past.

They argue — are they responsible for the sins of their fathers? And if so, how far back? Can we ever really escape the past, do we want to? During this debate, there are references to the Holocaust and related events, such as the gas chambers, Jewish families being taken away to camps and Babbelplatz. [described]

Incomprehension morphs into enmity and hatred, yet still Charlotte abandons the painting and sends Tom out into the darkness of pre-dawn Berlin. Alone, Charlotte digs into a drawer, bringing out a tiny, perfect Klimt. She rushes to her window as the first rays of sun break through it, and calls out to Tom.

Contains coarse language, sexual references, mature historical themes and the use of e-cigarettes.

• Mature historical themes – references to the holocaust are mentioned throughout the play, but particularly in the final third.

Recommended for ages 15+ / Year 10+