Welcome and good evening. My name is Ada Stephens and I have been asked to talk on the behalf of Nick Enright, author of the play Blackrock. Blackrock as you know is currently a Year 12 text study at Charles Campbell Secondary School. It has come to mine and other teacher’s attention that Blackrock has become a matter amongst our student’s parents. Charles Campbell has had numerous complaints about Blackrock being taught to Year 12 students as an English text production, and majority of them have been about the plays language and graphic sexual references. Others have concerns about the objectification of women and the way the children are being portrayed. I am here today not to alter your thoughts and opinions of the play but to address your concerns and hopefully give you all an understanding as to why our school believes it is an appropriate text to teach.
For the people who did not know, Blackrock is based on the true rape and murder of the teenage girl Leigh Leigh. It happened at a local beach party in Stockton in New South Wales in 1989. However in July 1991 Brain Joyce, whom is the director of Newcastle’s Freewheeler’s – theatre-in-education company, approached Nick Enright. Joyce made a suggestion that Enright should conduct this play for young audiences. He said that the play would specifically represent society’s reaction, grief, anger, and pain to the incident, not the death.
Blackrock is a play that gives us a chance to have an outlook the community’s views and shame to such a crime, things of which that have never been vented. Initially Enright knew that the play would have its apprehensions, one being the personalities and histories of the events real protagonists. Therefore the play would encourage discussions as to why would any group of boys abuse any girl and how they come to do it. This is what we here at Charles Campbell try to get teenagers to think about. Local parties and binge drinking is occurring in society repeatedly and is being...