To Kill A Mockingbird Play Analysis

Michael Futcher says, “….the issues explored in this play are important to all Australians, and viewed against the current backdrop of the refugee and immigrant debate, challenge us to question as a society, what we value most.” His interpretation of the classic novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ turned into a realistic play of ‘Tequila Mockingbird,’ interpreted by Shake and Stir, clearly illustrates and develops this idea of what Australians find important and value most in our society of the dark issues of racism, personal prejudice and abuse throughout the demonstration of the conventions of drama. Ross Balbuziente was successful in playing both roles of Joel Abbot and Mitch by the manipulation and enhancement of dramatic language and meaning.

His use of the set also helped in showing that he was a teenager by planking on the benches as if there were wooden seats. His acting as Mitch was good and realistic as he was doing bottle flips, giving unwanted opinions, being rude and playing ‘would you rather.’ An example of his role as a teenager is by saying, “Piss on the garden gnomes” to Marty. Which shows rudeness as a teenager by not caring about what he is instructing for Marty to do because he thinks it would be funny. Tension starts to arise when Mitch is working and Sameer comes in to get some a specific type of rice which they don’t have then Trish is standing behind Sameer and starts to throw racial comments at Sameer. “If you don’t like it you can go home.” This also changes the mood as it was quite light before but then when Trish started making comments it changed to being offensive. His role also as Joel Abbot was highly successful in demonstrating tension, mood and use of space. His demonstration of tension was a big part of his role as Joel Abbot as you can see that he has anger issues and is very abusive physically and vocally, and doesn’t care about Rachel’s happiness. “No one gives a s*** about your job Rachel.” The mood in this scene changed as at first he was all happy was showing a lot of affection towards Rachel as he thought he may have had a job up

Clear examples of this can be shown from an abusive character such as Joel Abbot to not abusive character at all of Sameer. These two characters are very different but Futcher was still successful in making them well developed characters that were convincingly played by Ross Balbuziente and Shannon Haegler. These two actors both did a splendid job in making the audience believe that there are such people out there in today’s society like this, that make racial comments and are abusive, but then it also showed the good in people by offering to walk them home if they are tipsy and not really with