Study Guide

Amphibian

Quick links

About this guide

This education resource has been developed for Windmill Theatre Co’s production of Amphibian, within the framework of the Australian Curriculum in the following learning areas: English (years 8 and 9), Health and Physical Education (years 8 and 9) and The Arts: Drama (years 5 to 9). The activities and lesson plans in this guide are aimed at the achievement standards and content descriptions within each learning area as well as the general capabilities.

The general capabilities are embedded within specific learning activities and can be identified with the following icons:

Writer's statement Duncan Graham

Normally it’s hard to say exactly what a show is about, or where the idea comes from. It’s like asking: why did you dream about this or that when you were asleep? You don’t have total control, so it’s impossible to answer. But you know somehow it’s related to what you think and feel at the deepest level.

Our creative minds operate a little bit like dreams. It’s not always reasonable, or political. You follow instincts and intuitions and see where they take you. This is what happened up to a certain point with Amphibian, but there’s another part to the story about this story.

Initially, I was interested in hide and seek as a concept for the show. And there is a bit of that left over. Literally there’s a game of it played; and metaphorically speaking too: the two characters play a game of hide and seek with their emotions, personalities and histories. But before all of that, Director, Sasha and I went out to a primary school and gave some 9-11 year old kids a questionnaire. We asked: What’s your worst nightmare? What matters most to you? What’s your favourite song? (an extremely hard one to answer I find). A whole range of things.

What came back was that most people were afraid of losing their family, or being eaten by sharks. The kids were also very aware of what was going on in the world, and they knew a lot more about the political reality of our time than we had thought they might. We also found they had a keen eye for justice and truth. We stumbled across a thought: isn’t what’s happening to child-refugees all over the world exactly the worst nightmare of children living comfortably in our societies?

Sasha and I then went out into the community and spoke to people who had come to Australia as refugees from Afghanistan. We came across Muzafar Ali and his family, and Elyas Alavi. They are both fine artists and people. In Amphibian, you see reflected parts of their personal journeys.

Their stories are so epic, they are beyond imagination. I could not make it up. They are like your worst nightmare. It’s hard to place these tales of survival, compassion and cruelty into a register of reality. Yet tell these stories we must, with their oversight and permission, and parts of it in their language too (Farsi). Thank you for allowing us to do so. It’s an honour to collaborate.

Director's statement Sasha Zahra

The first seeds of Amphibian were planted when Windmill’s Artistic Director Rosemary Myers invited writer Duncan Graham and me to undertake an initial development to explore the potential of creating a new touring work. With endless possibilities, we began thinking about the work we wanted to create together. As we looked inwardly and outwardly, locally and globally and questioned widely, we began landing on common thoughts, worries and hopes. Looking more specifically at children’s experiences within all these situations, we became aware of the massive numbers of unaccompanied minors in existence across the world, making extraordinary journeys across thousands of miles in search of safety.

With this as our starting point Duncan and I began our shared journey. We undertook research, interviews with school students, multiple developments, community consultation (most notably with Muzafar Ali and Elyas Alavi – two refugees from Afghanistan now settled in Australia) and almost two years on, Amphibian the play was born.

It has been both a challenge and an immense pleasure bringing Amphibian to life.

As the story unfolds, through the eyes of two young people, it travels back and forward in time, to different countries and locations, traversing memory of imagined and dream worlds.

The process has been a collaborative one that everyone in the creative team has contributed to, particularly our cast – Antony Makhlouf and Maiah Stewardson – whose infectious energy, keen instinct and passion for the work was apparent from day one.

As I write this I am reminded of Tim Etchells’ view of cultural practice and his challenge to make performances that matter, that attempt to change things:

“Investment forces us to know that performative actions have real consequences beyond the performance arena. That when we do these unreal things in theatre spaces the real world will change. To me that’s the greatest ambition and the truth of cultural practice…”

With this final thought, it is our hope that sharing Amphibian will stimulate ideas, conversations and action towards a more compassionate future.

Cast and creatives

Duncan Graham

Writer

Duncan is a multi award winning writer and director for theatre, TV and film. His plays have been produced by companies including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Melbourne Festival, Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre and Windmill Theatre Co.

Sasha Zahra

Director

Sasha has worked in numerous areas across the performing arts industry in Australia and overseas in the past 20 years with roles including director, creative producer, programmer, festival producer and theatre maker.

Antony Makhlouf

Performer

Antony Makhlouf is a multidisciplinary creative working as a visual artist, television presenter and actor. He is best known for his role on Get Arty teaching art techniques airing on Channel 7 in Australia and on Discovery Kids in New Zealand and South East Asia.

Maiah Stewardson

Performer

At 20 years old, Maiah resides between Adelaide and Melbourne, working broadly across professional and personal creative projects. Her professional screen debut was in Windmill’s widely acclaimed feature Girl Asleep from director Rosemary Myers.

Meg Wilson

Designer

Meg Wilson is an Adelaide-based interdisciplinary artist who works predominantly with large-scale and often site-specific installation and performance. She aims to provoke imposed perplexity, uneasiness and a sense of drama in the everyday.

Mark Pennington

Lighting Designer

Mark is one of Australia’s leading lighting designers and has worked extensively around Australia with many of the countries leading companies.

Ian Moorhead

Composer

Ian is an artist specialising in music composition and sound design for theatre, dance, film and radio. He has performed around Australia and internationally, including New York, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Wellington, Calgary and Vancouver.

Muzafar Ali

Cultural Consultant

Muzafar Ali is a former refugee from Afghanistan currently living in Adelaide. Muzafar’s incredible journey to Australia is documented in Windmill’s newly produced interactive platform, Muzafar’s Story: Across Land and Sea, which is accessible via the link below.

Elyas Alavi

Cultural Consultant

Elyas Alavi is an award winning visual artist and poet based in Adelaide, South Australia. He primarily works in the forms of painting, installation, video art and performance art.

Characters

Chloe

Chloe is 15 and has recently moved to Adelaide from Sydney because of her father’s work. She is incredibly angry about the move and is deeply unhappy in Adelaide.  

Hassan

Hassan is 15 and a refugee from Afghanistan. He lives with his uncle in Adelaide and has no idea what has happened to the family he has left behind.  

Delara

Delara is Hassan’s loyal and brave childhood friend with knobbly knees. Her efforts to protect Hassan prove in vain. 

 

Janet

Janet is a Case Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Indonesia. She sticks to the rules and shows little empathy for Hassan’s plight to reach Australia. 

Mrs Damascus

Mrs Damascus is Chloe and Hassan’s no-nonsense teacher who wants the truth, and her wallet back.  

Katy Perry

Katy Perry, the American songstress, encourages her fans and the world to unite via the internet against world atrocities.

Shagofa

Shagofa is Hassan’s selfless and courageous mother who puts her son first regardless of the consequences she may face. 

Old Woman/Brazilian Tree Hopper

Old Woman/Brazilian Tree Hopper serves as Hassan’s saviour and philosophical dream creature.  

The Man from the Taliban

The Man from the Taliban is revengeful, brutal and at the centre of Hassan’s family’s disintegration and destruction.  

Themes

Displacement

Both Hassan and Chloe experience displacement when they are forced to leave their homes by forces beyond their control. This disruption, which for both characters is a profound experience, demands that each of them adjust to their new environments and survive as best they can.

Loss

Due to displacement Hassan and Chloe both experience a sense of loss. This includes losing their homes, parts of their identity, and for Hassan, even losing precious loved ones. Both characters feel the impact of leaving their past behind and facing a new life ahead.

Adapting to different worlds

The play explores the characters’ abilities to adapt and change as they attempt to secure a place in new environments. Chloe’s struggle to adapt to her new life is revealed through her friendship choices and pursuit of popularity. Hassan has been forced to come to terms with catastrophic change and has had no choice but to adapt and survive. As their worlds collide, the characters realise they have more in common than they first thought.

Truth

A constant theme throughout the play is truth. Chloe’s actions are driven by the possible consequences she will face if she is accused of stealing. She is more than happy to blame Hassan regardless of his possible innocence. Hassan must repeatedly speak his truth to authorities as he makes his journey to Australia. Circumstances beyond his control stand in the way of having his truth heard and believed.

Choice

Both characters reveal a past where they have not always had the freedom to make their own choices. While there is no clear-cut ending to the play, the choices the two characters will inevitably make, when they step back into the classroom at the end of the play, have the potential to reinforce the current status quo or provide them with a different path moving forward.

Relationships

Relationships are a recurring theme throughout Amphibian and as the play is performed by only two actors, these most often appear in pairs. The relationship between Hassan and Chloe is especially significant as it undergoes dramatic change throughout the course of the play. Some relationships are spoken about and never seen, whereas other relationships unfold and develop in view of the audience. They range from new relationships (new school), friendship (both good and bad), family relationships (especially the loss of) to destructive relationships (the Taliban and authorities). 

Empathy

At the beginning of the play, Chloe is wholly focused on her own unhappiness. She hates being in Adelaide and is terrified of the consequences she will face if her parents find out she’s been accused of stealing. However, as the play progresses and Hassan’s story unfolds, Chloe experiences something of a metamorphosis, developing empathy for Hassan and a willingness to see some things from a new perspective. 

Set and costume design

Meg Wilson’s design is intended to provide at least three distinct locations which can also be read all as one location, therefore reducing the need to move walls or furniture to change the setting.

Colours and materials have been selected that are common between the settings in the play, for example: the bricks and pebbles could be found in a school in Adelaide or somewhere in Afghanistan; the bricks are also a common feature in an interview room. The set is abstract rather than realistic, taking influence from hexagonal tile formations and the feeling of an aquarium. This allows the actors, the lighting and sound design as well as our imaginations, to fully realise the settings and transformations between them. Because the actors are required to switch very quickly between other characters and locations, school uniforms are the base costumes for Amphibian. To change character (or location/age for Hassan), the actors simply take off or put on a jacket or something similar to represent the change.

Therefore, Meg’s costume design is necessarily simple, and easily translates between the schoolyard and other locations in the play.

Costumes

Chloe Costume

Composition and sound design

Ian Moorhead’s rich sound design transports the performers and audience into the various places along Hassan’s journey: From the streets of Kunduz in Afghanistan with the echoes of the call to prayer; to an interview room in Indonesia with the constant circling of a ceiling fan; to a stadium concert in Los Angeles with cheering fans; to a sinking boat off the coast of Malaysia; to a hallucinogenic dreamscape featuring digital glitches and recordings of treehoppers; to the silence of Hassan and Chloe’s school in Adelaide. The sound in Amphibian carries the audience between locations giving weight, adding pathos, invoking memory and imbuing a sense of danger to certain moments in the work.   

As a composer Ian is responsible for writing the musical elements of the work and as a sound designer he is responsible for presenting all of the remaining recorded sound elements. Ian has worked to integrate these two worlds by finding the musicality in non-musical things.

Listen to the background music for Hassan’s journey below. Listen for the sounds of the different locations, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and consider how Ian has used sound to heighten the drama of this sequence in the play.

 

Performance literacy

Students viewing live theatre can experience feelings of joy, sadness, anger, wonder and empathy. It can engage their imaginations and invite them to make meaning of their world and their place within it. They can consider new possibilities as they immerse themselves in familiar and not so familiar stories.

Watching theatre also helps students understand the language of the theatre. It is part of the holistic approach to developing student literacy. They learn to ‘read’ the work interpreting the gesture and movement of a performer; deconstructing the designers’ deliberate manipulation of colour, symbol and sound; and reflecting on the director’s and playwright’s intended meaning.

While viewing the show, students’ responses can be immediate as they laugh, cry, question and applaud. After the performance, it is also extremely valuable to provide opportunities for discussion, encouraging students to analyse and comprehend how these responses were evoked by the creatives through the manipulation of production elements and expressive skills.

Having a strong knowledge and understanding of theatre terminology will assist students with this process. Therefore, before coming to see Amphibian with your students, explore the different roles involved in making a performance happen, from writing, directing and performing, to lighting, projection, set and costume design and construction.

Theatre Etiquette

Visiting the theatre is very exciting. There are some guidelines that students can follow regarding appropriate behaviour in the theatre and during the performance that will allow their visit to be even more memorable.  Prior to visiting the theatre prepare students for what they will experience as an audience member using the following questions:

Where can you sit?

  • An usher (front of house – FOH) will help you find your seat so you need to follow their directions.

How do you know when the performance begins?

  • The lights will dim and/or you might hear a voice-over or sound. That’s your cue that it has begun and it is time to settle and be quiet.

How is going to the theatre different to going to the movies or watching television in your loungeroom?

  • Something unique to theatre is that it is ‘live’ and the actors are real. You can hear and see the actors, and they can hear and see you.

What is the relationship between the audience and the performers?

  • As the actors can see and hear you, your responses to the performance show your appreciation to the actors. So, show your enjoyment!

Final points to remember:

  • turn off your mobile phone (even the vibration of a phone or lit screen is distracting);
  • avoid eating in the theatre and rustling paper;
  • cover coughs and sneezes;
  • don’t film or photograph the performance due to intellectual ownership.


Curriculum links and activities

Acknowledgements

Produced by Windmill Theatre Co. Developed and compiled by Drama Education Specialist Melissa Newton-Turner and Windmill Theatre Co. Additional content and subject material developed by Zachary Von Hoff for English years 8 and 9, and Tim Clark for Health and Physical Education years 8 and 9.

The activities and resources contained in this document are designed for educators as the starting point for developing more comprehensive lessons for this work.

© Copyright protects this Education Resource. Except for purposes permitted by the Copyright Act, reproduction by whatever means is prohibited. However, limited photocopying for classroom use only is permitted by educational institutions.

This resource is proudly supported by the South Australian Department for Education and the Lang Foundation.

  •