Golden Valley | |
---|---|
Written by | Dorothy Hewett |
Characters |
|
Date premiered | 1981 |
Genre | Children's theatre |
Golden Valley is a children's play by Dorothy Hewett for audiences aged 4-14, It is "a free-spirited and distinctly Australian fairytale ", [1] telling the story of a 12-year-old orphan Marigold, who is adopted by a group of bush creatures. They take her to the magical land of Golden Valley, which is under threat from a nasty developer. Together Marigold and the creatures -- including a crane, a mopoke, a possum, a wombat, a feral cat and a shape-changing boy -- battle to save their patch of paradise.
Aunt Jane (the crane): tall gaunt and middle-aged
Aunt Em (the wombat): plump, elderly, motherly and short sighted
Uncle Nee (the possum): short furry faced red-headed middle aged and lame
Uncle Di (the mopoke): elderly, myopic, with a long straggly beard and glasses
- Mining Warden: in shortsleeves and green eyeshade
Marigold: a red-headed 12 year old orphan
Jack Swannell: a villainous landlord/ developer, wearing bifocals
Tib: the feral cat. A beautiful red-headed witch
- Mother superior: a nun with an Irish accent
Nim: a green ragged boy
- Yarriman: a part aboriginal stockman
- The Wishing Tree: a magic tree
- Joe Anchor: the ghost of a long dead miner
This tale of protecting nature, the power of imagination and the evils of usury is loaded with special lighting effects, music and dance.
The four old people, Jane, Em, Nee and Di, sleep out in the open on iron beds with mosquito netting. As they sleep they leap out of bed with giant animal alter-egos projected behind them and dance wildly. As the sun rises they return to bed. They discuss how they need a child. Jane goes to the orphanage and returns with Marigold, who loves Golden Valley. Marigold finds the ragged green lost boy Nim, with his owl and falcon. Jack Swannell arrives threatening to take over the farm, and is chased offstage by Di.
They go to bed with many strange ghostly noises. Marigold hears a trapped animal and frees the red feral cat Tib. In the morning Tib turns into a witch and they fly on her broom.
Later that night, Tib and Marigold go around the bushland creatures, asking how to save Golden Valley. They eventually reach Joe Anchor who tells them to pan for gold in Mopoke Creek. They find a nugget. Jack Swannel offers to swap the mortgage for the gold claim. In town, the Mining Warden tells them it is Fool’s Gold. Marigold follows the track through the swamp to Jack’s, where he has imprisoned Nim’s birds. He says he’ll tear up the mortgage if Marigold will stay and cook for him. Yarriman arrives on a wooden horse to save the day. Jack falls down the well – and sacks of gold and another mysterious skeleton is found.
Nim’s shape-changing secrets are revealed. He tells Marigold “You can be whatever you want to be”.
Public performances are shown in the Ausstage database. [2]
Golden Valley was the first play performed at the new Zenith Theatre in Chatswood. [8] Theatre South was a Wollongong regional theatre company that also produced The Man from Mukinupin. [9]
Perilous Productions was formed to revive the works of Hewett. In the Northcote production, every cast member sang, danced and played a musical instrument. [10]
The fauna of Australia consists of a huge variety of animals; some 46% of birds, 69% of mammals, 94% of amphibians, and 93% of reptiles that inhabit the continent are endemic to it. This high level of endemism can be attributed to the continent's long geographic isolation, tectonic stability, and the effects of a unique pattern of climate change on the soil and flora over geological time. A unique feature of Australia's fauna is the relative scarcity of native placental mammals. Consequently, the marsupials – a group of mammals that raise their young in a pouch, including the macropods, possums and dasyuromorphs – occupy many of the ecological niches placental animals occupy elsewhere in the world. Australia is home to two of the five known extant species of monotremes and has numerous venomous species, which include the platypus, spiders, scorpions, octopus, jellyfish, molluscs, stonefish, and stingrays. Uniquely, Australia has more venomous than non-venomous species of snakes.
The Kosciuszko National Park is a 6,900-square-kilometre (2,700 sq mi) national park and contains mainland Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, for which it is named, and Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. Its borders contain a mix of rugged mountains and wilderness, characterised by an alpine climate, which makes it popular with recreational skiers and bushwalkers.
Yarra Ranges National Park is located in the Central Highlands of Australia's southeastern state Victoria, 107 km northeast of Melbourne. Established in 1995 and managed by the statutory authority Parks Victoria, the park features a carbon-rich, temperate rainforest and a subalpine eucalypt forest on its northern plateau. It is home to large stands of mountain ash, the tallest tree species in Australia and among the tallest in the world. A wide diversity of fauna make their home across the park's 76,003 hectares, including kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, platypuses and 120 species of native birds. Among the conservation challenges facing Yarra Ranges National Park are climate change and invasive species of weeds.
Chatswood is a major business and residential district in the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 10 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district. It is the administrative centre of the local government area of the City of Willoughby. It is often colloquially referred to as "Chatty".
Northcote is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km (4.3 mi) north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Darebin local government area. Northcote recorded a population of 25,276 at the 2021 census.
Mount Kembla is a suburb and a mountain in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia.
Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed through different literary styles: modernism, socialist realism, expressionism and avant garde. She was a member of the Australian Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which informed her work during that period.
The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award-winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day.
Alan John Hopgood AM, also known as Alan Hopwood, was an Australian actor, producer, and writer. He wrote the screenplay for the 1972 film Alvin Purple and made appearances in television shows such as Bellbird, Prisoner and Neighbours.
Patrick Ewart Garland was a British director, writer and actor.
Merrion Frances Fox AM is an Australian writer of children's books and an educationalist specialising in literacy. Fox has been semi-retired since 1996, but she still gives seminars and lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the live performing arts in Australia: performed, written or produced by Australians.
Blackwood is a rural village in Victoria, Australia. The township is located on the Lerderderg River, 89 kilometres north-west of the state capital, Melbourne, within the Wombat State Forest. Blackwood is in the Shire of Moorabool local government area and had a population of 387 at the 2021 census.
Strangers in Between is a two-act Australian play by Tommy Murphy. It won the 2006 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Best Play. It was first staged at Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company in February 2005, where it broke box office records.
Ned Manning is an Australian playwright, actor and teacher. His film credits include the lead role in Dead End Drive-In (1986), and television credits include The Shiralee and Prisoner, and Brides of Christ. His plays include Us or Them, Milo, Kenny's Coming Home and Close to the Bone. In 2007 Manning played the lead in his own play, Last One Standing, at the Old Fitzroy theatre in Sydney.
Currency Press is a leading performing arts publisher and its oldest independent publisher still active. Their list includes plays and screenplays, professional handbooks, biographies, cultural histories, critical studies and reference works.
Albert E. Collins was an Australian painter, teacher and actor born in New Zealand. After a successful career in painting and teaching he joined ABC radio, where he gave pleasure to a generation of children as "Joe" of the Children's Session and the main character in the long-running serial "The Wide-awake Bunyip".
The Dharawal National Park is a protected national park that is located in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The 6,508-hectare (16,080-acre) national park is situated between the Illawarra Range and the Georges River and is approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) south west of Sydney. There are three entry points to the park: from the east through Darkes Forest; from the north through Wedderburn; and from the south through Appin.
The Man from Mukinupin is a musical play by Dorothy Hewett. It was commissioned in 1978 to mark Western Australia's sesquicentenary, and is her most popular and successful play. It is a romantic comedy in two acts covering the periods 1912 to 1914 and 1918 to 1920. The play involves the principles of celebration and reconciliation, providing a "rich theatrical experience with song, dance, humour, and powerful incident."
Bonbons and Roses for Dolly, Dorothy Hewett's fourth full-length play, was written in 1971, soon after The Chapel Perilous. It begins with the rise to riches of three generations of a family, and the opening of their new picture house, the Crystal Palace. Over the years the cinema descends into ruin. The daughter Dolly inherits the decaying theatre. She symbolically shoots her grandparents and parents, then herself, as her dreams crumble.
Dorothy Hewett (1985). Golden Valley; Song of the Seals . Currency Press.