Links to Curriculum: Years 7–10 Drama & History | ACARA 9.0

Students explore drama and history through contemporary and Indigenous perspectives, examining how theatre reflects Australian identity, resilience, and lived experiences. They investigate and explore social, cultural, and environmental issues. Drama skills focus on collaboration, performance, and critical analysis, including understanding global trends and how contemporary visceral physical theatre challenges ideas of Australian identity.

Links to Curriculum: Years 11–12 Drama | General Senior Syllabus 2025 v1.1

Unit 1: Share – Explore storytelling and human experiences across cultures, with emphasis on Australian voices, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. Develop foundational drama skills and aesthetic awareness.

Unit 2: Reflect – Examine drama’s power to truthfully represent lived experiences, including those shaped by climate, Indigenous histories, and social displacement. Engage with realist and contemporary dramatic styles to foster empathy and challenge audiences.

Unit 3: Challenge – Investigate how drama questions social, political, philosophical, and economic issues, using published and devised texts, including works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creators. Develop skills to create and respond to drama that educates, empowers, and challenges perspectives.

General Capabilities: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, ethical understanding, intercultural understanding, personal and social capability, critical and creative thinking.

Cross-Curricular Links:

Science (environmental impacts, climate change), History (Indigenous histories, displacement policies), English (storytelling, narrative structures), Geography (human-environment interactions, land management).

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land across Australia and recognise their enduring connection to land, waters, skies, and community. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all First Nations peoples today. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

We are deeply grateful to the many generous donors whose support made the development and productions of KOAL possible. While we are unable to name each of you individually, please know that your belief in this work and your contributions were invaluable. Your encouragement helped bring this story to life, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Special thanks to Suli Holum and The Work, gimmick, The Puffin Foundation Ltd., Fresh Ground Pepper NYC, City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, and Rasma and Stephen Yelland for supporting this work from its inception.

This play is dedicated to Marcella, Aiden, Maddox, Ruya, Sonny, Cleo and all that exists in the more-than-human world.