Whoopi Goldberg To Host Tony's

Actress and comedienne Whoopi Goldberg will present the upcoming Tony Awards ceremony, to be held at New York's Radio City Music Hall on June 15th.

Nominations for the most coveted awards on Broadway will be officially announced Tuesday morning in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at the Lincoln Center. 

It remains to be seen just how many nominations hot favourite August: Osage County receives. 

Nominations will be posted on TheDramaTeacher.com as soon as they are announced.

Australian Drama

Here's a shopping list or two that may help anyone teaching Australian Drama in their courses.

Notable Australian Playwrights

Ray Lawler

Jack Davis

Louis Nowra

David Williamson

Nick Enright

Andrew Bovell

Michael Gow

Stephen Sewell

Debra Oswald
Alan Seymour

Joanna Murray-Smith

Hannie Rayson

Jack Hibberd

Michael Gurr

John Romeril

Alex Buzo

Peter Kenna

Katherine Thomson

Patrick White

Dorothy Hewett

Alan Hopgood

Matt Cameron

Notable Australian Plays

Gary's House (Oswald)

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Lawler)

Chilling and Killing My Annabel Lee (Aidan Fenessey)

Speaking In Tongues - adapted screenplay became the film Lantana - (Bovell)

Stolen (Jane Harrison)

Summer of the Aliens (Nowra)

Away (Gow)
The One Day of the Year (Seymour)

Blackrock (Enright)

The Club (Williamson)

No Sugar (Davis)

Meat Party (Duong Le Quy)

After Dinner (Bovell)

Cloudstreet (Enright/Mojo)

Cosi (Nowra)

Hotel Sorrento (Rayson)

A Stretch of the Imagination (Hibberd)

Ruby Moon (Cameron)

Children of the Black Skirt (Angela Betzien)

Honour (Murray-Smith)

Holy Day (Bovell)

Notable Australian Theatre Companies (past and present)

Melbourne Theatre Company (oldest in Australia)

Sydney Theatre Company (largest number of subscribers)

The Pram Factory (Melbourne)
Nimrod Street Theatre (Sydney)
Australian Performing Group (Melbourne)

La Mama / Carlton Courthouse (Melbourne)

Belvoir St Theatre/Company B (Sydney)

Black Swan Theatre Company (Western Australia)

Queensland Theatre Company

State Theatre Company of South Australia

Arena Theatre Company (Melbourne)

Bell Shakespeare Company (National)

Malthouse Theatre Company (Melbourne)

Notable Australian Theatre Venues

Sydney Opera House

Victorian Arts Centre

Queensland Performing Arts Centre

State Theatre (Sydney)

La Mama (Melbourne)

The Pram Factory (Melbourne)

Adelaide Festival Centre

Princess Theatre (Melbourne)

Regent Theatre (Melbourne)

VCE Drama & Theatre Studies Student Web Forum

A reminder to VCE Drama and Theatre Studies teachers in Victoria, Australia, that I have set up a web forum (Internet message board) for your Unit 3/4 students to use.

This board has existed in some form or another for a few years now (in its current form for about 18 months) and will prove valuable for your students, in particular when preparing their upcoming Drama Solo Performance Examination and Theatre Studies Monologue Performance Examination.

Because the nature of these exams is a statewide choice of characters from a prescribed list, the message board allows students to create 'threads' under an exam character heading and then discuss it with other students from different schools across the state. Where else could one of your students have a discussion with a student from another school (whom they do not know personally) about their performance exam character?

If 2007 was anything to go by, lots of students from both metropolitan and regional areas used the web forum at this time of the year, helping each other out with creative ideas, ways to tackle the solo and monologue characters, interpreting exam assessment criteria etc.

At the moment, discussion on the board is centreing around character choices, as no one has begun the tasks in class yet, while we do ensembles performances in Drama and play productions in Theatre Studies. But soon the board will heat up!

My own students use the web forum, too, and I'm not fussed where they get their creative ideas from. If you think this may be worthwhile for your own current Unit 3/4 Drama and/or Theatre Studies students, give them the following web address:

http://s7.invisionfree.com/VCE_Drama_Forum (relevant for both DR & TS)

It will take them to a landing page, where they have to create their own board user name and password and input a valid email address. From here, they receive an email approving their application (by myself) with further log on details and they're in! Password-protection and manual approval ensure no spammers.

I personally moderate this web forum to ensure discussion stays on topic and nothing offensive is posted, so its a nice environment for your students to belong to :)

By all means, email me if you have any queries about this student web forum.