Community Theatre

Community Theatre is often regarded as a very effective medium in which to portray the challenges and triumphs of a community. Through stories, such as Marmalade Gumdrops, the importance of certain areas of life can be addressed, and by using both physical and visual representations, a community can both create and visualise how challenges can be triumphed.
Throughout history, communities have banded together to create what is now known as community theatre. By using people from the community to create a play for the community, messages and contexts are clear to see. In the case of Marmalade Gumdrops, the play was not created by our community, but it was created for it. Having the importance of keeping your imagination laid out in a simplistic form such as in a child’s bedroom, people of all ages are able to bond and connect with it.
Marmalade Gumdrops, is a play that carries a simple message, in a simple way. Using an open space with minimal props of bright primary colours, and having characters such as desks or a lamps, creates a known atmosphere; a comfortable place that the viewers all relate to. Using simple and sparse props, audiences can see the message that has been created for them.
Showing the relationships that children create between themselves and the sanctuaries they live in, a bedroom, creates a vulnerable, malleable feel to the atmosphere as an audience watches this play. In the community that Mount Isa has, keeping imagination alive is a key issue, because of the way things work. With parents working long hours at the mines, and with not much to do, both kids and adults have to learn to use what we have.
Marmalade Gumdrops uses realistic settings mixed with very unrealistic, extraordinary circumstances and events to broaden and awaken the minds of those who watch it. The relationship between a child and his books, is a rather important one to include within this play. The days of children getting lost in a good book are gone, but by