Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 2. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Radiance. May 14, panisafa added it. Nov 01, Ashley rated it really liked it. Read this for our English class. Aug 18, Peter Greenwell rated it it was ok. This was a required text for me for uni, so logically I didn't read this with much enthusiasm. I did try hard though, but although the play is short, it's not very sweet and it's much hoohah about nothing.
The women didn't need to be Indigenous Australians - they could be three women from anywhere really. Same things happen to all people. I can see why the literati admire it, but it'd be a big whoopee do for most other readers, I think. Feb 01, Jessica rated it did not like it. We had to read this in high school for my English class.
I didn't really like it. It irritated me how unnecessary certain scenes were.. I'm not a literary prude - in fact I love erotica but this just had no context. I also didn't appreciate the characters. I know this story had a message but honestly it got lost in all the things I didn't like about this book. Jun 01, Chernyse rated it it was ok Shelves: bad-reads. The book was funny at times, but mostly I found the language quite offensive. And I found the characters very unlikable, especially Cressy.
She absolutely frustrates me because of her childish way of thinking. The storyline was also not very interesting, and the ending was just left hanging, which I didn't like as well. This book captures the lives of an Indigenous Australian family coming to terms with secrets and lies.
May 09, Sam Schroder rated it really liked it. Loved it. What makes them strange to each other? Responses here can be used to inform and develop responses to the Rich Assessment Task Productive for this Unit.
Introduction to Currency Press Edition, p. Other themes at work in the play include but are not limited to loss, grief, accepting responsibility and coming of age, which Nona arguably shows some evidence of during the play. Ask students to find a line of dialogue from any of the three characters that reflect, refer to or illustrate these ideas. Blank spaces are provided for students to locate and explain additional lines of dialogue.
Arrange six different stations around the classroom by grouping desks together etc. Divide class into six groups and start one group at each station. Depending on time allocation within the lesson, students should have at least ten minutes at each station. They should discuss each question and brainstorm some dot points in response to it. They may quote relevant lines from the play or refer to specific incidents, as necessary.
Groups rotate through each station so each sheet of paper has responses from each group. These can be displayed around the classroom to form the basis of discussion and argument. Radiance is structured in two acts and five scenes. The first is shown to be a lie by the admissions of the second.
Ask students to reflect on why Nowra ends both acts in this way, establishing a fiction and then replacing this with a bitter truth. Ask students to consider the significance of these two monologues—the admissions of the second giving lie to the first.
Discuss why Nowra has ended each act in this way. What has happened between the two that allows Cressy to finally tell the truth? Ask students to record their responses to this discussion in their journals. Chronologically the play unfolds in real time, with some leaps of an hour or so between scenes. The action occurs across the period of about a day, finishing late at night. The only flashbacks provided are by the characters in their monologues. Ask students to compare in their journals the ending of the play and the film.
What does each ending suggest for the characters? Ask students to revisit each of the following incidents in the play to examine how Nowra uses them to establish character:. Some additional issues regarding the characters can be explored and discussed:. As suggested earlier, the setting of the play in two locations helps establish a core dichotomy.
Invite students to explore the two settings of the play, the house and the mudflats, in symbolic terms. For Mae especially, the chair in which her mother sat and died has a specific resonance, which arguably is later adopted by the entire house. Ask students to explore in their Journals the role of fire as a symbol—the play begins and ends with fire, with Mae flicking matches at the chair and the destruction of the house respectively. There are several uses of humour and these provide a uniting force that often brings the characters together.
Another example is to establish character. Cressy seems a little more refined, at least initially, perhaps because of her career in opera. Ask students to create an interactive poster that reflects their understanding of Radiance, its characters and issues. Radiance is interesting in that, despite being a play featuring Aboriginal characters, it is not specifically about Indigenous issues.
There are some references to Indigenous practices and ideas in the script, for example, with regard to food gathering and references to constellations. A reading of the play as addressing Indigenous issues is problematic, mostly with regard to the fact that this was specifically not the intention of the playwright or actresses involved in the early development of the script Introduction to Currency Press edition, p. As a feminist text the play takes on some very interesting resonances.
It is arguable that another journey the three women take in the play is a journey away from dependence on men, again symbolised by the destruction of the house at the end of the play.
Among these are:. Radiance emerges from a naturalistic genre of theatre in which realistic situations and characters are portrayed to explore universal themes and concepts. It belongs to a rich tradition of Australian theatre born in the s and Louis Nowra is one of the school of Australian playwrights working in the s and 90s exploring our past, our identity and our nationhood on stage.
Radiance merges several Australian tropes in synthesising a story of loss, identity and acceptance. It takes place on the coast, an important place in our culture for purposes of leisure and relaxation but symbolically providing a border between past and future for the three characters. It deals with family, and to a certain extent with childhood, and how we are defined as adults in our formative years.
For different reasons, the mother is that outsider. There is an argument to make that, apart from the coastal setting and references to sugar cane fields, Radiance could be set anywhere in the world. As a writer, Nowra has never been concerned with specifically Australian themes or issues, in the way that David Williamson has been at times in his career. This also identifies its emotional narrative, its revelations and insights, as universal and all the more compelling as a result.
Carefully and thoroughly revisit, and where necessary revise, work on this character completed during the unit thus far. They can combine creative licence with facts, ideas or anecdotes drawn from the play. For example, she is never named in the play, so this may be the first necessary invention. Refer to the attached rubric PDF, KB for detailed requirements and expectations relating to this task. Consider these insights, offered by Louis Nowra in an interview over ten years before Radiance was written.
Sideways from the Page: The Meanjin Interviews. Fontana Books, Melbourne, Ask students to develop and refine their final journal entry which addresses at least two of these comments in relation to Radiance.
Ask students to choose one of the following and then develop an extended, informed and polished written response. In both cases, evidence from the text must be used to support any contentions.
The core essence of this written response must be distilled and prepared as a three-minute oral presentation to be made to the class. Refer to the attached rubric PDF, 91KB for detailed expectations and requirements relating to this task.
Please note that AustLit is a rich resource for any study of Australian literature or of Australian writers. Talk to your school or local librarian for more information.
AustLit — Louis Nowra. AustLit — Radiance. Wikipedia — Louis Nowra. Thematic focus of family relationships with strong cultural and political underpinning. Comedy mixed with sardonic dialogue and undercurrents of tension. One purpose is to get non-Aboriginal people to identify with Aborigines in a new way through this text.
S- not naturalistic C - emotional texture, explores the jungle of the human mind, the marginalised, damaged and survivors disrupt and question social norms A - narrative driven, social power through imagination S - epic, where the inarticulate and silenced have a voice , comedy used to change I - transformative power of love, resistance, Aboriginal legacy of class inequality, Indigenous disposession.
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