Junior Ensemble (5 to 17 years). Tantrum offers the young people of Newcastle their best chance to creatively express themselves in a fun and safe environment through our after-school drama workshop program. Participants will increase their performance skills, develop their confidence and make new friends! All young people are encourgaed to attend, regardless of experience or ability to participate.

Senior Ensemble (18 to 30 years). In 2011 Tantrum returns to offering a weekly workshop program that focuses on character building and working on scenes and monologues. The workshops are an exploration of drama skills styled to the experience and interest of the group. If you are new to drama and just want to have a go then we will be gentle; however if you want to expand your skills and be challenged then you will be challenged! Either way this will be a chance to play.
 

Written by William Shakespeare

Adapted and Directed by Carl Young

A collaboration with Newcastle L!vesites

Newcastle’s parks will come alive under the stars in February with this exciting and romantic production of Shakespeare’s classical pastoral comedy. As You Like It is a whimsical play full of humour, cross-dressing, family tensions, love at first sight, mistaken identities and hilarious clowning, and features the famous “all the world’s a stage” speech.

Adapted and directed by Carl Young, one of Newcastle's brightest young talents, this very Australian As You Like It will entertain and delight audiences of all ages in the open-air at two of the city’s favourite relaxation spots. Bring a rug, and join your family and friends in this joyous celebration of life and love.

This production runs for approximately two hours, with an interval.

Following on from the overwhelming success of their inaugural event in March 2010, Treasure Hunt is back by popular demand. With clues created and performed by Tantrum's outstanding 15-17 year old participants in collaboration with their workshop facilitators, this hunt is one you won’t want to miss!

Part performance, part adventure, this event will see teams traverse inner city Newcastle seeking clues to lead them to the ‘treasure’. Treasure Hunt will exceed all expectations as it takes participants on a journey of discovery through the city they think they know well.

Treasure Hunt will be a fun and fanciful Sunday morning event for anyone who enjoys a challenge in the sun! This event will run for between one and two hours, with ample opportunities to take a break along the way.

SUITABLE FOR: Family and friends of our 5-17 year old participants

SUITABLE FOR: Audiences who are young and young at heart

SUITABLE FOR: People of all ages, particularly those who love cinema!

SUITABLE FOR: Please see our website in October for the age appropriateness of each performance within the festival. Needless to say – it will cater for everyone!
 

SUITABLE FOR: Family and friends of our 5-17 year old participants

Tantrum is committed to providing hands on experiences for young and emerging artists. Building on our successful 2009 mentorship program, Tantrum will offer young artists at various stages of their professional development mentorship opportunities with the company. Mentorees will assist and observe their mentors on the first two productions of 2010 before making their own mark and trying out their new-found skills with a curated performance season arising from the Emerging Writers Program.

The mentorships on offer will include Direction and Design, and additionally Tantrum’s General Manager will mentor a young arts worker in Arts Administration.

Two young directors were selected in January 2010 to participate in this inaugral program. Carl Gregory and Greg Gorton were selected to participate in this new program, which is designed to complement our Emerging Writers Program (currently in its second year), and has been developed out of a need expressed by young local directors who need outlets to help them bridge the gap between interest and experience.

Tantrum's after school drama workshop program is designed to offer young people the opportunity to creatively express themselves through performance in a fun and relaxed environment. Participants will increase their performance skills, develop their confidence, and make new friends along the way. We encourage all young people regardless of experience or ability to participate.

Workshop facilitators are professional artists and arts practitioners. In 2010 the entire Junior Ensemble will work towards two major events: Play Time in term 2 and Wild Things in Term 4.

Tantrum Theatre will be delivering an innovative drama workshop program in local schools to promote community awareness, multiculturalism and anti-racism.

This program entitled Rights, Respect and Responsibility will be delivered over a nine week period in Term 2 to schools with a culturally diverse demographic. These hands-on workshops will use drama as a tool for exploring attitudes towards other cultures and will use participants own experiences as a starting point from which to explore multiculturalism and community. And will also use role-play to help students understand the value of getting along, respect, tolerance and helping others.

Blackrock by Nick Enright
It's Toby Ackland's birthday party down near the surf club - and that means alcohol, drugs and fun. But by the morning a young girl is dead - raped and bashed with a rock. What is the aftermath? Who is responsible? How can such violence be understood? Based on events that transpired in our town twenty years ago, the play deals with the unthinkable murder of a young girl at a party and the repercussions for the people involved as well as their families and the wider community.

Tantrum presents the first local production of Academy Award nominee Nick Enright's Blackrock since its Newcastle premiere in 1996. Featuring some of Newcastle's finest young actors accompanied by a blistering original score performed live, this production will open the Civic's 2010 Inspirations Playhouse season.
Director - Brendan O'Connell
Cast - Rod Ansell, Dean Blackford, Sarah Coffee, Ben Feeman, Erika Gelzinnis, Cordelia Hamilton-Russell, Steffen Hesping, Rachel Jackett, Dean Johnson, Karen Lantry, Bradley McDonald, Cheryl Sovechles, Brittany Turner and Daniel Yaxley
Composer and Musician - Zackari Watt
Lighting Design - John Zeder
Sound Design - Kieran Norman

Play Time is our all new showcase performance night that is an opportunity for family and friends to see exactly what our youngest emerging performers have been doing at Tantrum throughout Terms 1 and 2.

These short plays are devised in collaboration with the workshop facilitator, and each young person will have their moment on stage to shine! Join us for what is sure to be a night filled with surprise and excitement, and see the exciting crop of young artists that Tantrum is nurturing.

Performers - Junior Ensemble (5 - 17 year olds)

Following on from Tantrum's groundbreaking Peepshow in 2009, our Senior Ensemble will create Dreams of a Forgotten City, a new site-responsive performance that promises an imaginative theatrical exploration of a found space located deep within the bowels of our industrial home town.

Highly innovative and richly theatrical, Dreams of a Forgotten City will present a complex tapestry of the past, a collage of memories and dreams. Fragments of lives and echoes of the other times will be illuminated in this highly visual new work that will explore the interplay between live performance, music and film and take audiences on a theatrical journey like never before.
Director - Brendan O'Connell
Performers - Tantrum Senior Ensemble (18 - 26 year olds)

After a successful showcase of their work in Act One at This Is Not Art in 2009, the writers in our Emerging Writers Program return with three short plays designed to be performed by everyday members of the public.
People will have the opportunity to take part in this exciting 'performance' either with someone they know, or someone they don't! Come take a seat in a cafe, put on a pair of headphones, and listen to a play unfold as you are given directions to speak what you can hear. In this thrilling new mode of performance, there are no actors and no audience - just you! As Oscar Wilde remarked, "experience is one thing you can't get for nothing..."
Writers - Dean Blackford, Penelope Kentish, Brad McDonald

Tantrum Theatre and acclaimed Newcastle playwright Carl Caulfield come together for the first time with an exciting new collaboration to close out the Civic's 2010 Inspirations Playhouse season.

2039 is an edgy, satiric, black comedy that looks to the future to examine the present. Directed by Brendan O'Connell, this dark, dystopian political thriller will use eye-catching multimedia techniques, including the intergration of film and movement.

Featuring the diverse acting talents of Tantrum's Senior Ensemble, this new play by one of Newcastle's most popular dramatists will explore ideas about religion, freedom, uses of technology, surveillance, terrorism, celebrity, and notions of reality.
Writer - Carl Caulfield
Director - Brendan O'Connell
Performers - Tantrum Senior Ensemble (18 - 26 year olds)
Dramaturg - Timothy Daly

Wild Things will bring together Tantrum's entire Junior Ensemble for our final production of 2010, in which they will explore the wild world of the animal kingdom.

Devised by our youngest members in collaboration with professional theatre artists, Wild Things is a cheeky extravaganza filled with mask, mime, puppetry and dance that will playfully examine that critical age when the opposite sex is the most frightening thought imaginable and when all you want is for your parents to stop being so embarrassing. Audiences will follow the exploits of a wild menagerie of animals as they deal with the everyday dangers of being a young creature growing up in today's world.
 

Wild Things will be filled with colour and delight as our resourceful troupe of young performers join forces to create a carnival of animals in a magical performance that will remain in your hearts and minds long after the final image has played out.

Performers - Junior Ensemble (5 - 17 year olds)