The theatre production The Secret River, written by Andrew Bovell, interpreted from the novel by Kate Grenville that recognised the Aboriginal massacre that had happened in Australia. Directed by Neil Armfield and produced by The Sydney Theatre Company, was a beautiful but horrific story that showed numerous symbolic and iconic symbols throughout the play and moved the audience from start to finish. The symbols can help you understand and focus the drama, they can sum up the meaning of a performance, sometimes on a hidden level. They can be spoken through the visual imagery of language, movement, gesture, objects, design and staging, helping to reinforce the meaning of the whole experience. ‘The secret River’ show cases the story of two families, an Aboriginal family and a family of convicts from England, how they both survived on the same piece of land, the …show more content…
Its divided so we see the vicious terror of the whites, as they had defended their country or land to murderous heights. While this is happening the men sung “London bridge is falling down”, also have their arms in a position as if they are holding a gun with powder in their hand in front of their mouth, blowing into it making the effects of gun powder from a gunshot. They did this in an attempt to bring their own culture to the new country as if it was theirs. They approached the audience moving downstage making it seem as though they had trekked a long way increasing the depth of the stage. This was symbolic as the song was an old English nursery rhyme with a dark and creepy side to it, as its referring to the actual London bridge and how they had tried using different ways of building the bridge but it kept falling down. This relates to the Thornhill’s and the Dharug people as they attempted to make agreements over many situations, that were thought to be understood by each other, but the potential fell apart and ends in the