EDUF3034: Australian theatre, film and learning

Mediated reflection on theatre performance

WINDMILL BABY

This mediated reflection on theatre performance will be about the play Windmill Baby, written by David Milroy and directed by Kylie Farmer.

Windmill Baby is play about an Indigenous Australian woman, returning to an old pastoral station where she used to work, recreating scenes of the past. The play was performed by Roxanne McDonald, at the Belvoir theatre, located at Surry Hills. When I first walked into the venue, there was an overwhelming feeling that made me feel as if my small group of friends who were attending Windmill Baby and myself, did not seem to fit in with the demographic which we suddenly found ourselves surrounded in. The venue itself reeked of prestige and Caucasian wealth, where the patrons waiting for both the showing of Windmill Baby at the downstairs theatre and the other play upstairs, were all dressed in clothing that seemed expensive and eclectic.

Playing the traditional aboriginal musical instrum...

Noel Pearson

Action from the 2005 TIFL Grand Final between Puma...

It is a common conception that those who attend theatrical productions are generally those with enough affluence to do so, where the mostly older patrons did not seem to veer from this notion. I believed that the architecture of the venue largely conveyed a formal audience experience that aimed to give the impression of informality. As a result of these observations, my own expectation of the play was that it would be a formal, distanced-from-audience type of performance. I would later be proven wrong.

The set of any theatrical performance has significance, and would have had much thought poured into its creation, where I believe Windmill Baby's set was no different. As mentioned by Shit On Your Play (2011), the designer of the Windmill Baby set ensured that the essence of the great Australian Outback was captured through...