Looking for Alibrandi

Presented by HOTA, Home of the Arts & Brink Productions

Thu 19 - Sat 21 Jun 2025
Looking for Alibrandi

Looking for Alibrandi

Josie Alibrandi is in her final year of high school. Whip-smart and aspirational, she is a third-generation Italian teenager and scholarship kid, with the shadow of a family curse and a penchant for rule-breaking. Juggling grades, boys, and the claustrophobia of an overbearing Nonna and saintly mother, Josie’s life becomes tangled in the webs of class, identity, and family history as she finds her place in a changing world.  

Iconic novel and cult movie, Looking for Alibrandi is the honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective. It defined a generation and to this day resonates with those caught in the stranglehold of identity and othering in this country. 

Award winning director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brought Melina Marchetta’s best-selling novel to the stage for the first time, where Vidya Rajan’s AWGIE nominated adaptation joined three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic. With live passata sauce making, traditional Italian music and a soundtrack of Australian pop classics, Looking for Alibrandi is a vibrant theatrical experience full of passion, laughs, and beauty. 

★★★★★ “Clever, heartening, full of detail and gravitas” Theatre Matters 
★★★★1/2 "A ridiculously enjoyable sunbeam of a production.” ArtsHub
Dates
Thu 19 - Sat 21 Jun 2025
Where
Theatre 1
Warnings
Performance contains haze.
Duration
2 hrs 20 mins (includes interval)
Tickets
Adult $65
Seniors/Pensioners $59
HOTA Member $55
HOTA Artist & Teachers $49
Student $42
Student Group (6+) $38
Times
Thu 19 June - 11:00am & 7:00pm
Fri 20 June - 7:30pm
Sat 21 June - 1:00pm
Credits
Director: Stephen Nicolazzo
Writer: Vidya Rajan (based on the novel by Melina Marchetta)
Set and Costume Design: Kate Davis
Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Design: Daniel Nixon
Musicians: Rosa Voto and Renato Vacerca
Tarantella Choreography: Rosa Voto
Dialect Coach: Paulo Bongiovanni
Cultural and Language Consultant: Lucia Mastrantone

#School Bookings

Please complete the below form to inquire about experiencing HOTA Education Programs.

School Bookings

Links to curriculum:

Year 10 ACARA 9.0 Descriptors and Elaborations:

Drama

Exploring and Responding

Students analyse performances to understand how symbols and movement create meaning. They investigate the collaborative creation and development of drama texts, focusing on how elements and conventions shape meaning and achieve intentions. They explore historical texts and styles from diverse cultural traditions, examining how contemporary performance conventions, such as non-realist or innovative forms, influence meaning. This exploration serves as a foundation for their own creative work.

English

Examine Literature

Analyse how text structures, language features, literary devices, and visual elements, along with the context of their experience, influence audience response and shape interpretations. Compare and evaluate the use of "voice" across different forms to evoke emotional responses and aesthetic qualities.

Health and Physical Education

Personal, Social and Community Health

Analyse and reflect on how values and beliefs shape identities, including how individuals influence each other’s identities and how gender stereotypes affect roles, decision-making, and power dynamics in relationships. Examine the roles of respect, empathy, power, and coercion in developing and maintaining respectful relationships, and evaluate how these factors impact such relationships. Investigate strategies to value diversity and promote inclusion within communities and propose actions for individuals and groups to challenge biases, address stereotypes, and communicate effectively, including managing emotions and negotiating consent.

Drama

Years 11 –12: General Senior Syllabus 2025 v1.1

Unit 1: Share

In Unit 1, students explore the importance of drama as a means to tell stories and share understandings of the human experience in a range of cultures. They begin with a focus on Australian voices and experiences. They will engage with foundational content, skills and processes of drama to explore the diversity of Australian experiences. This will inform how students develop and share their unique artistic voice and develop an aesthetic awareness.

English

Years 11 –12: General Senior Syllabus 2025 v1.1

Unit 4: Close Study of Literary Texts

Students explore the world and human experience by engaging with literary texts from diverse times and places. They explore how these texts build a shared understanding of the human experience and through this become significant to a culture. This unit includes the close study of literary texts to allow students to extend their experience of the world.

General Capabilities:

  • Critical and Creative Thinking
  • Literacy
  • Ethical Understanding
  • Intercultural understanding
  • Personal and Social capability

#Acknowledgements

Looking for Alibrandi was commissioned and first produced by Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir in 2022


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