THE SCENE PROJECT “RECALIBRATE”

Shock Therapy Arts is thrilled to work with Queensland Theatre on their signature Education offering, The Scene Project. Having toured our own suite of original contemporary theatre shows and workshops to Queensland secondary schools for over a decade, we have long been admirers of The Scene Project and the opportunities its unique model affords to its participants.

When the chance came up to carry the torch and write the next play for the project, we jumped at it. When creating any new work we always search for a central theme that gives us a clear sense of “why this story and why now?”. In this instance, when we started digging, what kept coming up was the age old question “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. There seems to be growing pressure on young people to commit to a particular pathway, seemingly at a younger and younger age. This struck us as something that can be difficult to answer at any age, but particularly when you are still forming a sense of who you are and what your core values are.

We wanted to create a story that explored the idea of “work” and “success”, how it can define us, for better and worse, and how it can lead us to understand what is important to us. A survey was sent out via Queensland Theatre to students and teachers, and some of those responses helped to inform the ideas and questions that we explored in the script. We also wanted the work to explore some broader existential questions around purpose, intention and meaning. We drew on the wisdom of ancient texts like the Tao Te Ching, the writing of Paulo Coelho and many others including old fables and allegories from various cultures to weave symbolism and metaphor into the narrative and help craft each character's journey of self-discovery.

Finding a style of writing that suited the themes of the work was an important consideration for us. Due to the existential nature of the script, we lent into absurdism and science fiction as two styles that we felt would fit nicely. We also wanted to deliver these timeless ideas in a way that felt current, relatable and playful. This led us to draw inspiration from some of our favourite contemporary speculative fiction stories from film, tv and literature, such as Rick and Morty, The Midnight Gospel and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This genre perfectly lends itself to exploring big questions in a way that is creatively free, surprising, at times irreverent, and gives teachers and students lots of scope to have fun and play.

We hope you enjoy working with the text and find many exciting and challenging things in the script to tease out, remix, reimagine and RECALIBRATE.

Sam and Hayden