Mary Rachel Brown's "Rosieville" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Plays are hard to find for Stage 4. Sunshine Super Girl has been a standout for Year 8 and A Ghost in My Suitcase works well in Year 7 but it’s wonderful when you find a new play that will engage students with humour and heartache and Rosieville really fits the bill.

Distinctive features of Rosieville

• A drama/comedy that demonstrates the value of resilience when dealing with big, life-changing issues
• Short, affirming drama that is brimming with humour 
• Showcases family and neighbours helping each other through hard times
• Set in Canberra where most of the action takes place in the Button Place homes, in the Hair Salon and the Dream World of the pigeon
• Positive characterisation in 11-year-old Rose, her older brother, Xavier, and their mother, Liz, who all find a way through their difficulties, together the wonderful Anika, who supports both her dad and Rose
• Sparking dialogue and clever interactions between the characters reinforce their genuineness and likability
• You will learn many interesting facts about homing pigeons as you act out the play and, according to the playwright, all the facts in the play about pigeons are true
• The pigeon is just fantastic as a subconscious and a character: as the playwright says this is a play “about keeping going when you feel lost so it's a perfect fit” and it's a dream role for an actor
• The playwright’s notes (pages 46-47) at the end of the play are illuminating.

Ways to use Rosieville in the classroom

Context: Introduce the famous Birdman rally 

Every March from 1985 to 1992 thousands flocked to the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to witness one of the more spectacular events on the Canberra Festival program, the Capital 7 Birdman Rally. 

Explain that the play contains references a real event and show the class the footage of the 1987 rally which is available at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA).

Ask them to remember this footage as you act out the play.

Pigeon Facts trivia 

In groups ask students to list the pigeon facts that you learnt by reading/acting out the play. Then compile another list of false pigeon facts. Then test the knowledge of the other groups by asking them to indicate true or false as you read out some true and some false items. Use your knowledge of the play and the internet to help you compile your lists. A useful resource can be found at PETA.org.

Follow your Pigeon Trivia with a group discussion about the character of the pigeon and how the playwright represents this character in the play and what they symbolise.  

About the craft of playwriting

Canberra Youth Theatre interviewed Mary Rachel Brown about her play Rosieville in 2023. You can find the full interview at https://canberrayouththeatre.com.au/mary-interview/

Mary explained in the interview that she likes having surprises in her work. “I like it when the pigeon interrupts a serious conversation by flying into a door. I love a surprise interruption. I always try and write a few into my work.’

In groups discuss the surprises in this play and what effect they had on you as an audience.

The playwright was also asked if she had the chance to be a character in the story which one would she choose and why? She replied:

“The pigeon of course, it can fly and it helps people, those are two very attractive qualities. Close second would be Anika, because she’s cool and unpredictable”

In pairs, pick the characters you would like to be and explain why you liked them and how the playwright made them so likable. Consider the use of dialogue, humour, metaphor and pathos.

Key ideas and messages in Rosieville

Rosieville is about heartbreak and resilience and how humour can help.  Mary Rachel Brown describes it this way: 

“Rosieville examines the nature of waiting and how we hold ourselves together while looking down the barrel of uncertainty. I hope to capture some of the human anxieties, habits, and distractions we create to compensate for things not being how we want them to be. This is a play about how to walk alongside unexpected loss, and how help often comes from where you least expect it,” Mary Rachel Brown in Rosieville a show perfect for school holiday outings

In groups explore the play’s key ideas and messages. Then choose two ideas and craft an individual response of about 300 words on how these ideas are developed in the play.

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Rosieville is a drama text written by an Australian playwright.  It contains intercultural experiences and cultural, social and gender perspectives.
Looking for more classroom texts for Stage 4 students? Browse our Year 7 texts and study guides and Year 8 texts and study guides at Five Senses Education.

Concepts could include Context and perspective • Connotation, imagery and symbol • Representation.

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to read texts that are complex in their ideas and construction EN4-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening skills

• Apply a range of strategies to develop fluency in reading aloud, including an understanding of pace, tone and voice
• Revisit texts to develop a clear understanding of the themes, ideas and attitudes they express

Reading, viewing and listening for meaning

• Explore the main ideas and thematic concerns posed by a text for meaning
• Engage with the ways texts contain layers of meaning, or multiple meanings
• Identify and understand that relevant prior knowledge and personal experience enables and enhances understanding when reading, viewing or listening to texts
• Explain personal responses to characters, situations and issues in texts, recognising the role of written, oral or visual language in influencing these personal responses
• Explain how the use of language forms and features in texts might create multiple meanings

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment

• Read texts selected to challenge thinking, develop interest and promote enjoyment, to prompt a personal response
• Communicate purposefully with peers in response to texts
• Understand the ways reading helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world

Reflecting

• Reflect on how reading, viewing and listening to texts has informed learning
• Reflect on how an understanding of texts can be enhanced through re-reading and close study
• Discuss and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural awareness
• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore universal issues
• Reflect on own experiences of reading by sharing what was enjoyed, discussing challenges to strengthen an understanding of the value of reading

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use of and response to language forms, features and structures EN4-URA-01

Representation

• Explore how language and text are acts of representation that range from objective to subjective and may offer layers of literal or implied meanings, and apply this understanding in own texts

Connotation, imagery and symbol

• Analyse how figurative language and devices can represent ideas, thoughts and feelings to communicate meaning
• Apply knowledge of how different patterns and combinations of figurative language devices can shape meaning throughout a text through established or dynamic associations, and experiment with these devices in own texts

Point of view

• Recognise how texts engage and position the audience to perceive events, characters and ideas using narrative voice and focalisers, tense, sequencing and intrusion, and apply this understanding in own texts

Characterisation

• Analyse how engaging characters are constructed in texts through a range of language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts
• Understand how the interactions of characters, such as protagonists and antagonists, might be perceived to represent aspects of human relationships, and experiment with interactions when composing texts

Understanding and responding to texts B

A student examines and explains how texts represent ideas, experiences and values EN4-URB-01

Perspective and context

• Understand how perspectives are shaped by language and text
• Explore how the perspectives of audiences shape engagement with, and response to, texts
• Examine how elements of personal and social contexts can inform the perspective and purpose of texts and influence creative decisions
• Consider the influence of cultural context on language

Expressing ideas and composing texts A

A student creates personal, creative and critical texts for a range of audiences by using linguistic and stylistic conventions of language to express ideas EN4-ECA-01

Representing

• Compose visual and multimodal texts to represent ideas, experiences and values
• Select modal elements to work together to support meaning or shape reader response
• Use digital technologies where appropriate to compose multimodal texts

Speaking

• Deliver spoken, signed or communicated texts with effective control of intonation, emphasis, volume, pace and timing
• Participate in informal discussions about texts and ideas, including speculative and exploratory talk, to consolidate personal understanding and generate new ideas
• Use features of gesture, manner and voice to signal the progression and development of ideas through language and structure

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting texts