Australian Theater Ruby Moon and Stolen

Contemporary Australian theatre mainly focuses on the reflection of the ‘real’ Australia and communicating to the audience real and modern issues/ideas that respond to the social climate and community. Australian theatre practitioners use various performance styles, techniques and dramatic conventions to help portray their ideas to their audiences and make them feel a particular way to the ideas presented in a play. Without the use of these styles, techniques and conventions it wouldn’t be possible for the practitioners to emphasise their ideas.

Ruby Moon, a mysterious and eerie play written by Matt Cameron explores presentational theatre aspects and elements of absurdism. Cameron has used dramatic forms, performance styles, techniques and conventions such as symbolism, a setting that is everlasting, transformational acting and more. The use of these techniques explores the social and personal issues of suburban paranoia, identity and grief/loss. Cameron uses many elements to portray the ‘fairytale image’. “Ruby Moon is about a little girl who sets off to visit her grandma, just like a fairytale, but never arrives”. Through this, it shows that Cameron has used elements of other fairytales, but in a distorted manner which challenges the audience’s perception of ‘the perfect story’. Cameron also involves the question of ‘How well do we know our neighbors, especially living in suburbia.’ “Who would you trust with your child?” Techniques such as symbolism, metaphors, lighting and sound can support his message of suburbia being the dangerous, eerie place that Cameron portrays it to be

The play uses a non- naturalistic style that brings an eerie, strange and disturbed sense to the set. The set becomes the end of a cul-de-sac know as ‘flaming tree grove’ a symbolic name that creates a visual image of a fiery hell. The set is complete with gutters and storm water drains and a hills hoist sitting centre stage which is an iconic symbol of Australian suburbia. This design