Bloomshed's Animal Farm Education Resource Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the performance styles, symbols, production areas, character descriptions, and theatrical concepts from the Arts Centre Melbourne and Bloomshed education resource for Animal Farm.

Bloomshed

An Australian theatre company founded in 2012 in a backyard shed, characterised by a flat hierarchy, collaborative devising processes, and satirical works tackling political issues such as corporate greed and class inequity.

Slab text

A massive collaborative drafting document, typically 200 to 300 pages long, created by Bloomshed during the adaptation process to collect every scene idea generated by the ensemble.

Epic Theatre

A theatrical style used to alienate the audience and prompt them to critically reflect on political and social systems rather than becoming lost in emotional illusion.

Direct Address to the Audience

An Epic Theatre convention where an actor speaks straight to the audience, breaking the theatrical illusion to frame the narrative as an urgent, relevant message.

Placards

An Epic Theatre device in the production where the commandments of Animalism are written visibly on Perspex panels so the audience can track and evaluate their progressive erosion.

Song as commentary

A dramatic convention exemplified when Napoleon sings Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams' under bright spotlights while the other animals are exploited in the background.

Political Theatre

A genre of theatre that explicitly adopts a socio-political stance, using the stage to critique and challenge the distribution of power within society.

Political doublespeak

Rhetorical language designed to obscure, disguise, or distort the truth to make oppressive actions sound reasonable, exemplified by Squealer's persuasive speeches.

Melodrama

A theatrical mode incorporating stock characters, mime, exaggerated emotions, and spectacle such as fight choreography and explosions to convey moral conflicts.

Physical Theatre

A performance discipline that places the actor's physical body at the centre of storytelling, utilizing specific movement vocabularies and gaits to convey animal characters without elaborate costumes.

Milk (as a dramatic symbol)

A symbol introduced as a shared resource of the farm collective that represents the gradual corruption and privatization of Animalism as the pigs hoard it for themselves.

Red confetti (as a dramatic symbol)

A visual theatrical symbol deployed through explosions and falls to signify violence, execution, and the lethal cost of the farm's political purges.

The Windmill (as a dramatic symbol)

A key symbol representing utopian revolutionary ideals and demonstrating how visionary goals can be perverted and exploited by charismatic leaders.

The Australian National Anthem (as a dramatic symbol)

An ironic auditory symbol played during Napoleon's final speech to subvert nationalistic pride and reveal how patriotic rhetoric functions as state propaganda.

Multi-tiered horseshoe staging

A set configuration reminiscent of parliamentary benches, fighting pits, and ancient coliseums, used to physically demarcate vertical power hierarchies between characters.

Perspex panels

Four gilt-rimmed transparent backdrops that dynamically function as cages, elite viewing platforms, framing devices, and surfaces upon which the farm's rules are inscribed and erased.

Senate Select Inquiry

The distinct Act II setting conceived by Bloomshed to satirize bureaucratic accountability, corporatism, and modern Australian political inquiries.

Boxer

The naive and diligent cart-horse portrayed by Syd Brisbane, defined by an upright, heavy physicality, unadorned speech, and absolute, fatal loyalty to Napoleon.

Napoleon

The central antagonist pig portrayed by Elizabeth Brennan, whose vocal delivery transforms from authoritative debate rhetoric to effortless, bored dominance as power is consolidated.

Squealer

Napoleon's manipulative propagandist portrayed by Lauren Swain, characterized by rapid vocal delivery, sharp comedic timing, and a persistent smarmy grin.

Snowball

Napoleon's ideological rival portrayed by Laura Aldous, who advocates passionately and urgently for collective advancement and the windmill before being ousted.

Mollie

The vain, impulsive mare portrayed by Anna Louey, characterised by light, flighty movement and breathless speech, who defects from the revolution for sugar and ribbons.

Capitalism

An economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, which the farm ultimately transforms into by the conclusion of the production.