Schools Program 2:

Theatre For Festivals and Weekends

 

Circus Sustainable

Do not miss this Galah show! Focus is energy conservation and climate disrtuption mitigation, featuring the introduction of the most amazing technology ever in the fight to limit global carbon pollution. And it's in everybody's wardrobe. Song, juggling, maybe a unicycle, mega participation and the audience leaves with a smile on the dial and a sense of practical hop and commitment.

Oh yeah. And ther may be an appearance of the KIng at some shows. That's right! Elvis. The King LIves and returns for the Circus Sustainable, sometimes.

 

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Sideshow Sustainable

 

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Shorter Sharper and equally memorable

Circus Sustainable

Flushing for the 21st Century

Chuckin' for the 21st Century

Click on the Community Link for details

The In School Theatre Company Program

In recognition of the higest order approach to learning, namely that cognition is maximised if learning is used to "teach others", this program turns your students into the actors! Street watch, described below is the template, but can equally be about energy conservation and climate repair, biodiversity, waste or whatever.

The Street Watch Model

If we watch the streets, the waterways will remain clean. This program follows a three step process

1. We perform

2. Your students workshop a script and show

3. You perform

A Little Magic Bush
Ages: Littlies
Duration: 1hr
Description: This famous children's theatre performance is a bubbling celebration of nature in which enthusiastic audience participation in the bush symphony orchestra ensures that Wombus and Wobbly find the ancient bush cooker and the secret to returning the magic to the bush.  The secret revealed will bring a wee tear of joy to your eye.
Full of music, slapstick, magic and meaning!
Beach And Marine Shows
A Little Beach Magic
Ages: Littlies (and Families)
Duration: 1hr
Description: A Little Beach
Magic is really beautiful. It’s for the real little children (who wear bird beaks!). The children perform a concert to help bring the magic back to the beach with a Shearwater and a Penguin.  Full of music, slapstick, magic and meaning!
Magic Sea Rovings
Ages: Primary aged children
Duration: 30mins
Description: For small groups of 10 to 20
Magic Sea Rovings is a wonderful interactive tour of the sound, sights, smells and touch of the marine environment. This program helps children to develop a relationship with the beach and its surroundings.
Dr Deepwater Show
Ages: All Ages
Duration: 10-20min
Description: This is a slapstick performance where Dr Deepwater carries out many zany and humorous treatments on his hapless patient.  The diagnosis is that the patient hasn’t spent enough time enjoying the beach.  The show comes to a conclusion that the only cure is for the patient to spend time contemplating, visiting, and admiring the marine environment.

Big Bang To Whimper
From The Big Bang To A Whimper!
Ages: All Ages
Time: ~ 10 minutes: Ideal conference opener.
Description: If the entire history of the evolution of the Planet Earth were converted to more imaginable proportions, say one year, the insights would be instructive. The Planet's five billion year history is presented precisely this way by Vox - with memorable visuals and interactivity. In this proportional representation of the 5,000,000,000 history of the planet, our species shows up late on the second last day of the year. Even more sobering is the fact that the industrial revolution of modern history, in which we've placed so much pressure on natural systems, represents but a fleeting fraction of a second before midnight on the last day of the year - proportionately speaking.

Chucking For The 21st Century
Ages: Upper Primary School
(adaptable for lower Primary and Lower Secondary)
Duration: 45 minutes
Description: The starting line is in the kitchen.
Let the event begin! A funny and highly pertinent environmental theatre show about this century's most important challenge - and a brand new sporting event!  Join Kath Candoo and famous sports super coach - Chuck Best in the Waste Free Stadium. Find out just why Chuck is going for gold. Shake your head at Kath's wasteful, old-fashioned ways. Only your students can help Kath meet the challenge and be ready for the big event - the Chuckin' Olympics! There is no waste in nature - we humans need to learn from our mother, the Earth, that cycling materials around and around and around again and again in the never-ending cycles, which mimic the great systems of this beautiful, magical planet earth is the go.

Circus Sustainable
Ages: From 9 to 90 - and younger and older.
Duration: 20 - 45 minutes (flexible)
Description: An irresistible, lighthearted, zany work full of juggling, magic, climate change and loads of gags.
The spotlight is on one of the most important environmental challenges in history - energy conservation to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.  The Circus stars the incredible Compost Knievel, Bozone Layer, and Mr. Elvis Presley. Yes!  That’s right! You heard it here first! The King lives ... and returns for this one performance only! Also incorporates biodiversity significance in terms of potential impact of climate change, on Alpine regions in the short term. and all habitat niches in the longer term. The audience actually experiences the impact of sea levels rising! Sea levels of course pose huge threat to the inter-tidal zones especially the highly fecund mangrove regions.  This show will explain greenhouse science and provide insight into behavior change in a hilarious burst of zany eco-freneticism. This great piece of performance work was toured through the deserts and cities of South Eastern Australia - from Adelaide to Canberra via Broken Hill - on behalf of the Australian Greenhouse Office as a community and schools education complement to the annual Sun Race solar car event.
Download the Circus Sustainable flyer (PDF format).
Council Of Voiceless Beings
The Forum of Voiceless Species!
Description: Sobering piece guaranteed to demonstrate the impact we humans, just one species, have on the millions and millions of other species. This is a touching, important reminder to all of us that we are but one species among perhaps 30,000 other species and that we need to learn to share.  An extremely pertinent and powerful experience!  For workplace training programs, CSR workshops for senior management or the Board of directors or for programs for inspired teenagers. Inspired by the book, "Think Like a Mountain", by Joanna Macy, and a great saint and an auspicious elder of ecological thinking in Australia; John Seed.

Dr Tree N Shrub N Grass
Ages: All Ages
Duration: 10-20min
Description: This is a slapstick performance where Dr. Tree n Shrub n Grass carries out many zany and humorous treatments on his hapless patient.  The diagnosis is that the patient hasn’t spent enough time enjoying the natural environment.  The show comes to a conclusion that the only cure is for the patient to spend time contemplating visiting and admiring the environment.

Earth Walk
Ages: Primary aged children
Duration: 30mins
Description: For small groups of 10-20 the Earth Walk is a wonderful interactive tour of the sound, sights, smells and touch of nature.  This one is only feasible if there is small patch of nature available.  Even a small garden would do.  It is a great way to show the children what caring for their environment is really all about.

The Great Green Talent Show
Ages: All ages
Duration: Variable
Description: This is a fantastic game show style awards ceremony designed to celebrate achievements and the great things a company, organisation, or school has been doing and rewarding their efforts.

More Than Meets The Sky
Ages: Middle/upper primary school
lower Secondary school and General Community
Duration: 1 hour
Description: A riveting court case - The Earth vs. Con Sumer. The defendant, Con is charged with causing the greenhouse effect. Con is a very appealing, up to the minute character for whom students immediately develop a liking (and relate to). The theatricality of the scene is supercharged with Con’s rap dancing which is then interrupted by the appearance of a mega imposing Supreme Court Judge, Justice Water Table, rising above a bench, which stands three metres above the crowd. Act 2 revolves around the gathering of video evidence by the great Australian Director Chips J Packet!  The Courtroom converts to a film production lot and Con’s early life is recorded for posterity.  The students indeed become the film crew as camera people, sound recordists, and gaffers.  The students absolutely love the participatory nature of this scene and in terms of learning; the film crew is able to record the everyday types of energy waste in which we all engage.  Because it’s the characters and their classmates involved in the film it loses all hint of being a lecture or being preachy. Theatre provides just such licence for the audience to participate and assume a level of personal relevance for which they are ready.  Everybody gets something memorable. The Third and Final Act is where the sentence is handed down and revolves comically around outrageous sight gags that provide pointers to the new lifestyle options to which Con must agree.  The options are everyday and highly accessible to students in the audience relating to simple decisions they can make about hot water use, heating, air conditioning, etc. Full of humor and music, this show is about the greenhouse effect without the doom and gloom! By shedding light on the concept of waste, a positive future is the outcome! This performance is supported by a comprehensive inquiry approach curriculum package called Keep It Cool.

Roving Characters
Eco-Expert Characters
Imagine the effect and power of mixing delicate, common sense esoteric science and ecological insight with humor and eventfulness. Yes, you are right! This is indeed a uniquely powerful formula for bringing sometimes very difficult messages to people without lecturing, hectoring, or soap boxing. Vox Bandicoot has developed a variety of eco-knowledgeable roving characters to interact with the audience on a personal level throughout an event - such as festivals, conferences, weddings, and parties.  Our roving characters include the amazing and famous Eileen Dover, Born Again Greenie, as well as - Con Sumer, Compost Knievel and the amazing clown - Bozone Layer! Any or all will add spice and meaning to your event without allowing the magic to overcome the message. Armed with a depth of knowledge on environmental issues and culture change - these lovables will motivate and inform your audience while they experience uproarious laughter and the consequent flood of endolphins which both improves their health and the uptake, retention and understanding of the urgency of attaining ecological sustainability in our time!

Sideshow Sustainable
Description:
Meet Con/Connie Sumer the world's worst waster - who has been ensconced in the bowels of the Museum in a glass case since being apprehended outside the last ABBA concert in Australia back in 1977. Biodiversitologically of course, waste as a cultural premise is at the root of all aspects of pressure on natural systems including both wilderness and urban habitats and niches.

Surface Circus – Kiss-a-Fish
The Surface Circus & Kiss a Fish Show
Description: Pop Dover has gone fishing, but catches nothing but rubbish.  Hang on! What’s that? Oh no!  At the end of the line is a very sick fish!  Quick!  Dial 000!  It’s time for mouth to gill resuscitation.  The emergency team swings into action and gives this lucky little picesean the kiss of life in a hilarious slapstick sequence.  It’s off to the operating theatre to perform a bags buttsectomy   Oh no!  Will Medicare cover the bill? Of course they will; this is not a platypus.  This is a short, sharp hilarious show, which proves most memorably. If it lands on the surface, it’ll get to the fish!  The Surface Circus & Kiss a Fish Show is ideal when combined with the Reusable Shopping Bag Pledge Ceremony.

The Dream
Amelia Likes To Dream
Description: This is the story of Amelia Stronsky who has come up with an incredible invention to enter the Statewide Pollution Solution competition.  It is based on a story told to her by her grandmother. In the 1950s, there was to be a harmless chemical added to the local swimming pool in case somebody piddled in the water.  If they did, a big purple plume would, very embarrassingly, surround them and indicate their miscreance. Amelia's thoughts and ideas began firing! She has reasoned that because we don’t actually see the greenhouse gases, which are coming from our cars and other places we don’t realise their extent.  She argues that if we could see the pollution like the purple water in the swimming water, we might think twice about how much energy we use.  Amelia invents the Purple Bladderometer and will most certainly win the pollution solution competition except for Brent Fartly who is extremely jealous and wants to win the mountain bike.  So he sets about sabotaging her work. But wait, here comes Corey Carburettor, a silent, mime clown petrol head, who actually develops a crush on Amelia, thwarts Brent, changes his energy hungry ways and ends up being there, holding hands with Amelia as her winning entry is announced.  This play has got it all.  Boy meets girl, subterfuge, and lateral thinking ahead of its time.  The Dream is the finest piece of educational theatre that Vox Bandicoot has ever produced. The Dream is supported by an exceptional curriculum package called Imagine.  Both this material and the performance itself were established in collaboration with a steering committee which included The EPA, ScienceWorks Museum, The Melbourne Zoo School, the (then) Victorian Greenhouse Office and, the Victorian Education Department and the Australian Conservation Foundation. This program has undergone a short hiatus and is seeking sponsorship to get it back "on the road". Please contact us if you wish to see the prospectus.

The Last Shower
Some People Think Water Came Down in: The Last Shower!
Ages: Grade 3 to Grade 9
Duration: 1hr
Description:
EPA Clean Water Award winner 1993
The story begins in the fields of the 1850’s and the town is running out of water. BELIEVE IT OR NOT, your students have the solution in this - the 21st Century! The Last Shower has been described as fantastic, funny, unforgettable, magic, nice, and very pertinent! This performance is about water conservation with an emphasis on cultural and historical changes in our attitude to water usage and quality.  It highlights the importance of these environmental issues in a comedic and interactive performance. On top of that “The Last Shower” stars some of the worlds most talented, expressive and opinionated actors playing the role of members of Parliament ... your students! Scene 1: A Typical Australian Town.  The story begins in a typical Australian Town of the 1850’s. Albie Darned, the notorious bushranger is in town.  Also known as the Lilac Larrikan, Albie has been known to have very long showers. But there are bigger problems at hand!  It is the end of a huge drought and the waterholes have dried up.  Could this be the work of Albie Darned?  Our heroine, Carrie A. Bukett (pronounced bouquet of course) is searching for a solution to the town’s water crisis. Perhaps people from the modern age will have the answer?  Surely the wise folks of the 2000’s will have found clever ways to conserve water? Scene 2: The Kid’s Parliament. The old Australian town transforms into Parliament House, where the House has gathered to debate the merits of the “Value of Water Bill”.  The PM and the Leader of the Opposition are in gridlock; will members of the public accept that water didn’t come down in the last shower?  Is water more precious than gold?  Is hosing down the path a crime? Only with the help of the speaker, party members, and the backbenchers can the dilemma be resolved.  Scene 3: The last scene is a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. In 2002, the future is in good hands with the children of today in charge.  Water Conservation is now a happening thing, as testified by the smash hit Country & Western single; “Some People Think Water Came Down In The Last Shower”. Interactivity.  Vox Bandicoot will require three students to be members of the Water Cabinet in Parliament and one teacher to be the speaker of the house for each performance.  The students will be given their lines before the performance. Promotional Opportunities. Our work is very photogenic!  The local press may like to come along and do a story or take a picture of the show. Notes: Copious and comprehensive curriculum support material will be provided. The number of students attending need only be limited by the space and the acoustics.
Download the Last Shower Flyer (PDF format).

Vox Bandicoot MC
Pumping-The-Vibe! Vox Bandicoot can provide a humorous MC; in character, or a serious MC who can talk to the top end of town, yet break up the event with humor. Or as requested recently for some high gain, elite audience work we did for the ISF at the UTS in Sydney a vibe pumping MC on steroids. Another layer of eventfulness can be provided by our theatre pieces.  Character performers: who might engage the audience and the program, in other ways. Our MC contribution to your program may comprise the following elements:
 - Highly knowledgeable and experienced re: sustainability & culture change
 - Interaction with the audience
 - Introduce speakers & tie it all together
 - Leave the audience with a long lasting open the right brain lateral thinking and fun memory of the event
 - Make them laugh, make them cry and allow a human scale counterbalance to the necessarily technical scientific and official aspects of the event
 - Will give the evening a feel of being different
 - Theatre, arts, humor, and music are known to increase the creativity, energy, cooperation, etc of attendees
 - The character; characters could include the Dover Family; Born Again Greenies; that were present at the 2001 DUAP conference in Sydney and the New Game New Name sustainability conference in the Yarra Ranges, attended by John Elkington - the so called father of sustainability who described our work as the "best he'd seen in the world".

The Vox Bandicoot Christmas Show
Opening this Christmas...
Learn the true meaning of Christmas of how to give without taking from the environment. Fantastic!  For your next; non-consumeristic, Christmas function. A white elephant has never looked so sustainable!

 

Shows About Biodiversity -

for community and school groups

1. A Little Bush Magic "ein klein bush magic"

Focus: Celebrating the bush with positivity, participation and stacks of humour

Suited to: Written specificaly for littles. Ages 2 - 7 ... and up to 107 for the young at heart. Compes with a curriculum support package

CV: Literally hundreds of schools and tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of students have helped Wombus and Wobbly "bring the magic back to the bush".

Wombus J Wombat, the world's first marsupial Yuppie is frustrated because Wobbly Wallaby has not shown up for the meeting in his scheduled on his BlackBerry iPhone device. The situation is dire. It seems that the magic has whooshed from the Bush. If only Wombus could find Wobbly and then, if together they could find the ancient lost bush cooker, which would then of course, become the ancient found bush cooker, because it wouldn't be lost anymore ... and then lastly, if all the bandicoots (the audience) could join in the bush coroboree - well - the magic would surely be returned.

In a riotous blurr of slapstick, the marsupilas at last "run into" each other - and then, only with the enthusiastic, 100% participation of the audience, who become the Bush Symphony Orchestra, the secret to returning the magic to the bush is revealed.

And the secret revealed will bring a wee tear of joy to your eye.

This famous children's theatre performance is a bubbling celebration of nature. Full of music, slapstick, magic and meaning! --------------------------------- A Little Bush Magic is accompanied by curriculum activities unit which enables both pre-visit concept intro activities and dozens of post visit ideas and activities to foster the most important of objectives of environmental education ... building a deep sense of joy love and respect for nature ...

2. Dr Shrub'n'tree'n'grass

Focus:

Suited to:

CV:

3. A Tale of Two Planets

Focus:

Suited to:

CV: