The Removalists Play Analysis

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Theatre reflects the society in which it springs. This statement accurately applies to theatre within the times of reforming Australia’s identity. The stubborn nature of Australian’s was reflected to us through the character of ‘Norm’ in the 1968 play Norm and Ahmed, and again through all the characters in the 1971 play The Removalists. The thematic concerns in both plays such as the Australian identity myths and limitations, classism, racism, sexism, masculinity and mateship within the plays reflect the similar time period and how an Australian audience responded to change. Throughout the 1960’s multiculturalism started to influx the Australian shores. A predisposed ideal that most Australian’s had was the thought that Australia was a “white” country and any other nationalities including the Aboriginals were aliens. The ideals of being a white Australia caused hatred and racism towards other nationalities. Australia’s racism is portrayed clearly within Norm and Ahmed. Norm plays a stereotypical stock character who interrogates Ahmed who is of a Pakistani background. The entire play is based around the audience questioning Norm’s motifs, and whether his interrogation is morally correct. We see Norm inflict racism on Ahmed in a sly way that…show more content…
After the discussion words that appeared were: sport, beer, competition, women, sex, violence, body composition and independence. We then proceeded to discuss that all of these words have come from our personal context and how we perceive a masculine man, further into the discussion it was noted by a student that all of the words discussed relate to either Kenny and/or Simmonds. This observation allows us to see that the personal concern masculinity is a universal, timeless theme regardless of an individual’s

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