The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

To great applause the curtain went down on the sell-out performance of Senior TiGAA (Toowoomba Grammar School Acting Academy) ensemble’s production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui staged at the Empire Theatre on Tuesday, 14 September. In what was one of the greatest preforming challenges that Senior TiGAA have presented to date, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, written in 1941 by German political playwright, Bertolt Brecht, who had experienced life under Hitler’s regimen, examines the environment that nurtured the rise to power of treacherous demagogues. To use Brecht’s own words, “The play is not so much an attack on Hitler, but rather upon the complacency of the people who were able to resist him, but didn’t.”

Told through a parallel set in 1940’s gangster America, the play is a highly satirical allegory of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler; his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Röhm, the head of the Nazi brownshirts; Dogsborough representing General von Hindenburg, a German hero of World War I and the President of the Weimar Republic; Emanuele Giri representing Hermann Göring, a World War I flying ace who was Hitler’s second in command; and Giuseppe Givola representing the master propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

The sixteen member Senior TiGAA ensemble was joined on stage by the Year 12 Dance class from St Ursula’s College. Performing in three dance numbers, the Epic style was broken up into short, sometimes contrasting scenes connected by a projection, presenting the audience with relevant information about Hitler’s rise to power in order to clarify the parallels between the play and the actual events in Hitler’s timeline.

Talented Year 10 student, Ben Rosenberg, who is also a member of the Senior TiGAA ensemble, created a series of 30 videos which connected the scenes in the performance. Ben’s talents in creating multi-media content have been recognised on a national level, last year winning the Next Wave Youth Filmmaking Award in the Under 18 category.

The audience who witnessed this incredible collective performance from the Senior TiGAA ensemble was challenged both theatrically and intellectually to realise, through Brecht’s experience, how inactivity when faced with dominant ideologies can alter the course of history.

The following evening, Wednesday, 15 September, saw a return to the Empire Theatre by the Junior and Intermediate TiGAA ensembles. Presenting a more light-hearted style of comedic performance, Junior TiGAA, made up with boys from Year 7 and 8, presented the first act of the farcical play, Cancelled – A Killer Farce.

In this one act farce, set in a studio in a radio station in the 1940’s, the cast of a popular radio show is held hostage by one of the show’s sponsors, Monty Navoli, who is furious that the show has been cancelled, and who also, unfortunately, appears to be a member of the mob.

Following on from this, the second act for the evening was presented by the boys of Intermediate TiGAA – Year 9 and 10 students. The Play that Goes Wrong, an award winning comedy that blends Monty Python and Sherlock Holmes, was created through weeks of hard work by the young men of Intermediate TiGAA.

Intermediate TiGAA productions are the result of a collaborative and creative process with the performance predominantly their own ideas and hard work coming to fruition.

The TiGAA ensembles are an auditioned group of young men drawn from approximately 100 who try out for a place in the ensemble at the beginning of each year. Throughout this year the TiGAA ensembles have run the popular Read My Lips fundraising event, presented the Shakespeare in the Grove performance and participated in the Toowoomba Esiteddfod.

Senior TiGAA Members: Charlie Armitage (TiGAA Captain), Hamish Wells, Harrison Mills, Jack Statton, Tom Sippel, Mac Flegler, Josh Brown, Tom Cocks, Mitch Crooke, Ryan Murphy, Jamie Watson, Aanan Shafiuddin, Ben Rosenberg, Maeve Sloss, Hayley Broadfoot, Ruby Heffernan.

Intermediate TiGAA: Darcy Neville, Tom Knudsen, Ruben Fitton, Ed Rogan, Clancy Wright, Ted Fawkener, Noah Taylor, Nicholas Baulch, Ben Burgess, Juert Eerkens, Alex Chicalas, Jock Dunlop

Junior TiGAA: Roan Bronkhurst, Flynn Sloss, Hamish McCollum, Finn Pickering, Jackson Moriarty, Erik Sheppard, Angus Sands, Zac Brown, Nethal Manamperi, Jack Knudsen, Ben Walker.

Mrs Eylece Blaikie Head of Drama