In this episode, designer and drama teacher, Judith Hoddinott, shares her deep knowledge and extensive experience of the plays on the text list for Individual Projects in the 2025–2027 HSC Drama Course Prescriptions, in conversation with Creative Arts advisor, Angus Lamb. 

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South Wales Department of Education.

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Welcome to the Creative Cast podcast series.

My name is Angus Lamb and I'm a creative Arts curriculum advisor with the New

South Wales Department of Education.

In this episode, I speak with Judith Hoddinott about our current HSC

Drama individual Project Text list.

Judith has many years practical experience as a drama teacher.

She's based at Newtown Performing Arts High School.

We discussed the 10 plays on the 2025 to 2027 prescriptions list

for design and director's folio.

I asked Judith not only to give us a sense of each of the plays,

but also to consider how students might approach these plays from the

perspective of a designer or a director.

So Judith, welcome to Creative Cast.

We're going to begin in the ancient world.

So, can you tell me about Antigone by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles?

Yeah, it's a great choice to be on the list

because you can recontextualise it.

It's really a beautiful play.

I think you need to always sort of realise that it's in a war on landscape,

Polyneices and Eteocles have killed each other, and that there is a sense

of a moral world that is clashing.

Creon represents one side of it, Antigone.

Is the other side of it.

There's also the two sisters is Ismene and Antigone, who are different versions

of the female within this world.

One is the conventional, wanting to abide by the law and the other is the radical.

She wants to revenge, in a way, her brother and the fact

that he hasn't been buried.

But it's a play that I think is really important that it's on there because

a student who's thinking at a higher level can actually recontextualise

this in the modern world or in another world that has been war torn.

I just think it's essential that you realise that it is the war landscape

and it is these clashing ideologies.

So from Greece to Switzerland, and one of my favorite

plays, and this is The Visit.

Well, I love this play too, and it's huge this play.

it's 5 acts, and it's a world that I think is just so great for students to embark

and because it's a world about revenge.

And so, Claire Zachanassian arrives back in Güllen with one thing on

her mind, and that is to fill the coffin that she has brought with her.

So, she has a grudge, and she has a grudge against Ill because he, made

her pregnant and he didn't support her and she comes back to this

world that is totally depressed.

And I think with this play, you can set it in the time in which, Dürrenmatt wrote

it, or you can also recontextualise it.

But one thing that I think is essential is that you'd have the 2 worlds, the

worlds of Claire's  Zachanassian and her sophistication, which is also

fueled by huge amounts of money, and also the town that has really got

no moral fibre and no backbone, they need to to accept her billions so that

they can get themselves on their feet.

And I think the designer's challenge there is to show symbolically her

pervading influence throughout it.

So I think it's a great piece.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's such a amazing play with the use of symbolism and such a

rich diversity of characters too.

Yeah it's a huge canvas, with set, with costume,

with directorial portfolio.

It's for a student who really is going to love doing this, non-performance IP.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's a great example of that.

So from Switzerland and then that degree of openness with set and time and place,

we're going to now look at Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, which is, somewhat

more particular in its time and place.

Yeah, I agree.

And you know, I, I thought there was one way to do this, but then I saw the, the

production that was recently in Sydney and suddenly I thought, actually there's

a lot more possibilities to this play.

But it is set in its time.

You can recontextualise it, but you have to be pretty careful

and pretty sophisticated.

This is a play that really relies on detail, and you know, we have

that because you open the play and look at Arthur Miller's detailed

description of what that play is.

And he does it for a reason.

And we really need to look at the detail of the 1940s.

The detail of the idea, you know, because it's also expressionism, you know, their

little house being swallowed up by the skyscrapers around them and it's a world

that evokes so much mood at atmosphere.

You know, you've got the soundscape that is so important and the sense

of the memory and going into that subjective landscape of Willie going

crazy and him looking back and, and seeing himself, and at the end when

he thinks, you know, this false dream.

But as a designer, I think you read the beautiful, stage instructions

you research it heavily and you just look at the big message behind it,

which is this sense of Willie's worth that he doesn't really understand.

And I think it's a beautiful play I think it's a great design

option and directorial option.

Yeah.

Great.

And I absolutely concur.

Looking at a more modern play now in an Australian play.

So, Lachlan Philpott's Silent Disco is very different, but it does have a

lot in it's engagement with a younger audience, so that I think it, you

know, you can actually play with a lot as a director and a designer.

Yes, you can.

And it's a beautifully written play.

And the idea of the silent disco is a great sort of metaphor in there.

And I think what's good about this play is that they can really engage with the

characters of, Squid and Tamara, and really understand who they are, and really

go deeply into what they want out of the world, and there's also Mrs. Petchell

too, who represents the older generation.

But it's also great because it goes into this actual lack of stability in some

families and, the seeking for meaning of seeking through a relationships,

using escapism to deal with the world.

And I think you know, in this area students always love to read it.

It's contemporary language and I think Lachlan Philpott writes

really authentically and truthfully about the world of the teenager.

And I think this is a good play to have on that list.

Yeah, absolutely.

I completely agree.

There's something completely different about the play Tartuffe, again,

we're in a very different world.

We're in many worlds with Tartuffe because it's those themes and those

issues in Tartuffe, which are so amazingly still present in our world of today.

Yes, absolutely.

And the idea of what is truth of what is, you know.

snake oil salesman.

I think it's a good play.

It's a huge 5 act piece, and you've got a huge world there and you can set

it, and we've seen many examples of it being set in Molière's time, and

of course it works beautifully there.

But you can recontextualise it because the basic idea about someone who gulls

a family, pretending he's this religious person who has a high moral level and he's

not, he's the opposite of what he appears.

So it's truth and appearance, you know?

And it's also really good because you've got a broad spectrum of characters.

So you've, you've got a great landscape there of what to deal with.

You know, the idea of evangelism and coming in and taking over, and making

people feel that they need this higher level of engagement and yet having

absolutely base motives for doing it.

So, it's I think it's a great piece and I think people love

engaging with it at a higher level.

Yeah, absolutely, because it really invites that it understanding of

what's actually going on in that society and then transporting that into what's

going on in a more contemporary society.

A play, which is very different again, and I think one which really does need

to be treated with a fair deal of respect as to its time and place, Waltzing the

Wilarra is a wonderful Australian play.

It's amazing as a picture of a past time, but then a more recent past

as it a travels between 2 worlds.

Well, I think we need to keep in our minds that it's a

musical because we sometimes forget that because, it's so sort of naturalistic

and all those details of the time at which it's set sort of overwhelm us.

But we need to, especially if we are looking at something like if

we're doing set design, we need to work out where is the band.

And I think also we need to think when we're looking at it that there is a

music there, an accompanying score.

And to engage in that and to look at the style of the music for that.

But I think this plays great because you do have the context of 1940s post

wall Perth, and you have this idea that there is this area where the black

and white community aren't segregated, they've got common goals and they meet.

And then we have the 40 years later in the reunion.

And the fact in a way that the war hasn't meant that the world is racially a melting

pot and that there is more equality.

It's the harsh reality of what really did happen that once that the black diggers

were back, that the racism reared its ugly head, but I think it's, looking

at reconciliation and I think it looks at the complexity of it, and I think

it's a really good play, a good musical to have on the prescriptions list.

And you do have these 2 timeframes that if you're taking this on as an IP, you

really need to address and look at, because one is where there is a degree of

idealism and possibility, and the other is where the harsh reality has taken over.

Yeah, absolutely.

So those are the six plays we've just looked at, which carried through

from the previous prescriptions list.

So, we're now going to look at the four plays which are new, and they've joined

the list for the HSC class of 2025.

So we're going to begin with my favorite play, Mr. Burns, which obviously

as many people out there have begun to appreciate, evokes a world which

we are all so passionate about.

And that, of course is The Simpsons.

So tell me a bit about Mr. Burns.

Well, Cape Fear, what an episode wasn't it great.

Absolutely.

And I can never forget first time I saw it and just thinking,

wow, this is so fantastic, and I mean, it evokes, you know, the two films of Cape

Fear with that craziness, but also Gilbert and Sullivan, the whole wonder of it.

So, I think one thing to remember about this play is that it's got 3

acts and 3 acts that a progression of an idea, it's a dystopia.

And so, it is this world where, it's about this bleak landscape that humanity

has stuffed-up because of our greed and our lack of respective nature.

And so we start in the first act where they're round the campfire, and

they're talking about cape fear and, but they're these sort of like hobos

and then the next time we see them 7 years later, and they've taken on this

story that gives them hope or just gives them a sense of humor or something

they're starting to mythologise.

I think the play is also fantastic about what cultural aspects we use to create our

stories to create, our myths, our legends.

And of course, it's not looking at Shakespeare or the Greeks, it's looking at

these great, modern masters, The Simpsons.

And then we see them, 75 years later where it's become a theatrical piece,

and I think it's very important for the students to definitely go deep into

the images that are in The Simpsons, but I think it's also a sophisticated

student that uses this as the jumping off point that doesn't use those.

I think a student here is creating their own visual vocabulary in what is this

dystopic world, what is the world that has been left behind that we can scavenge

it's got such deep philosophy behind it.

What makes us culturally as society, but also what is the world of The Simpsons?

What is the world?

We have left.

It's a great choice to be on the list.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now we've got a very different plan in Cyberbile, but equally one, which I think

has a lot of interest in the potential for design and directorial choices.

It's a modern Australian play Cyberbile and it, it is developed in verbatim.

It is, and I think.

Anyone who knows Alana Valentine's plays know that she's using it.

She calls it voice prints or, of people.

So, reading it, it really comes off the page and it, there's an authenticity to

it that I think is really interesting.

And the characters of Oriana, Celine and Terry are relatable for students.

How I would approach it, and I think students would approach it,

is what is the world of technology?

How am I going to show that on stage?

How am I going to create this world out of the technology that we have?

There needs to be sort of futuristic feel to it.

But I think for me, when I read it, is the scene that I would need

to address as a designer would definitely be the matador scene.

Because what is that?

What is the bull fight in this world and how do we create it?

As a designer, you are wanting to solve that and to work out how to

do something imaginative with it.

But I think it's a good play.

I think students will love it.

Like you need to work out what is this world and create that world imaginatively,

consistently and authentically.

Yeah, absolutely.

We also have William Shakespeare returning to the list, but this time

he's returning with The Comedy of Errors.

What can you tell us about the worlds of this play?

Well, the world of this play's, it's a

comedy, it's broad-brush strokes.

I think if you know something about Comedia, you might bring that to bear.

In this set in Syracuse, it's got two sets of identical twins, so it's fast as well.

So, I think what you need to do is to create a world in which the

comedy zings, and which there is this plausible idea of the confusion.

You need to show the social or structure.

There's the bosses and there's the servants.

You could recontextualise it in Australia, you could recontextualise it everywhere.

And you have that doubling up ability too, which really has

that interplay in costume where you actually can really think about the

cleverness of creating characters who are obviously identical.

Yeah, absolutely.

And And also the goofiness of it, the slapstick quality of it.

It's really quite a fun play to do.

Yeah, absolutely now we've got a very different play Girl Asleep.

It is set in an interesting time in the seventies, but then we move

into this sort of dreamscape world as our main character goes to sleep.

Well, it's a good play by Matthew Whittet, and I think it should

really resonate, because it's about going from childhood to adolescence.

It's a play that you can have a lot of imaginative fun with.

It's a world that there are parallels, like the mother becomes the queen, and

people morph into other characters.

It's also about a girl, she's marginalised in her world.

We like the stories of the outcast and the misfit, and she certainly is that,

and you can have her journey there.

You've also got the 1970s world, which is a world that is really beautifully

stylish and colourful, and there's a great scene of the party that she

doesn't want them to throw for her, and that of course then catapults her

into the world of the subconscious.

That it isn't such a benign world.

It's the world of the goblin, the gnome, and the world of the mucus and the world

of all this sort of visceral stuff.

But it's also metaphorical.

We've got that metaphorical, distorted versions of people.

So that's a really lovely design possibility that you have Mum as

one thing, and then she distorts into this other character.

And you've got the sort of idea of feminism, you know, the evolving

feminism of the 1970s, so it's a really great imaginative,

realm that you can enter there.

You're not just in a world of naturalism, you're in a world

which you can really have fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

I really do think you can have a lot of fun.

That's been a great discussion and so many, insights into those plays.

But before we finish off, what I would like from you is just some advice

for a student who is beginning this individual project journey and just

as they open their selected script and begin to engage in it, what

should be going through their head.

I think what should be going through their head is,

this is a play that I'm going to be engaging with for quite a few months.

So I want to enjoy the process and I don't want to shortcut it.

But I think the first thing is to read it and to look at the stage instructions

and just read it for fun, and then the second time is that you read it

with the express purpose of thinking of how I'm going to solve the problem

of doing beautiful costumes, doing a director's folio, doing a set design, a

poster, promotion, one of these areas.

I would then do a breakdown of it.

What does the playwright say they want about the world, about whatever.

I think you could be faithful to what their intention of what they

want, but you don't have to stay religiously to what they want.

Take those directions and write them down and have them as the driving question.

But I also get my students to write in 10 words: 'What's the spine of the play'?

Oh, thank you so much.

It's been so nice to chat with you today, Judith.

Thank you for giving your time to us, drama teachers and students, and you've

been doing that for a long time, and we really appreciate your support today.

Pleasure, lovely talking to you, Angus.

This podcast was brought to you by the Creative Arts

Team from Secondary Curriculum, the Curriculum Directorate of the New

South Wales Department of Education.

Get involved in the conversation by joining our statewide staff

room through the link in the show notes or email Jane McDavitt at

creativearts7-12@@det.nsw.edu.au.. The music for this podcast was composed

by Creative Arts Advisor, Alex Manton.