Throughout the aboriginal research and acting drama course, my drama group and I have made impressive progress as everyone has proven to be an incredible performer. Some of the drama texts we captured and performed mainly consisted of art, music and play

drama performances and learn from the other groups as well. One of the plays we studied and performed was rabbit Proof Fence which mainly consisted of the stolen generation. We rehearsed the scene where the police officer would take away the children; this was a perfect opportunity to effectively use the strategies in order to emphasise the moment. The strategies used were still image, thought track and role play. Still image was used in the beginning of the play and at the end of the play to ensure the audience could understand the scenario; we used different levels to create a greater effect and gestures to show each characters different emotion. Role play was used as we were rehearsing a kidnapping scene with screams and violence to show what the families had to endure. Thought track was used at the very end of the play to show what each person was thinking, for example, sadness horrified, nervous at that precise moment. To ensure this was accurate we used still image to freeze all characters. Later on through the course we used some of the great Dreamtime stories to enable use to understand aboriginal culture better in depth and to perform its magnificent stories. One of the stories we converted into a play was the story of the turtle. This was interesting as we would need to use extremely good emotions of the face and body use because there was no dialogue. The strategies used were narration and role play. Narration was used to guide the characters through the play and to ensure the audience understood each scene. Role play was used as we were performing a story which contained strong emotive body language and violence at some points. The whole group managed to create a fantastic performance by using extremely good emotions. In addition we also used symbolic material to represent different objects such as blue strips and clothing, for the ocean, a tree branch for a wooden log, wooden sticks as spears and brown designed clothing for the aboriginal costumes. All these small symbolic items help create a more real effect on our play and emphasised what really occurred. One other dreamtime story was of the nightjar bird, or in aboriginal language, the Yoorngoo Dagu Dagu. This was a story that really captured us and we managed to respond perfectly. Our plays managed to capture the attention of the audience as it was unique. We used the music in the background of a didgeridoo and a sort of strange dance to represent what was occurring in each scene. Sticks were used to keep the beat of the performance. Each individual text, although they have unique features and storylines, they all have similarities. The story of turtle and the nightjar bird have both animals symbolising the dreamtime. They both also end happily which shows that dreamtime stories are mostly of an unhappy start into a great and happy ending. In contrast, they both have different storylines and