Students discover convicts performed plays during their idle hours.
Student activities
Task no.1
Being idle
Right from the beginning of the colony, Judge David Collins noticed that the convicts had:
a love of idleness…[and] for the most part they preferred passing in idleness the hours that might have been so profitably spent.
And that they liked having:
companions of their idle hours.
Define the word idle.
The word has more than one meaning. Some of the convicts were idle or lazy and didn’t want to work but also First Fleet convicts had a unique convict experience as they had available to them - idle hours or free time and a little break from the drudgery of work.
Answer this question:
What were the First Fleet convicts doing during their idle hours? Have a guess!
Make a list of what you think a convict could do, or was allowed to do, in these early days of the colony. You might be surprised by what really happened.
Some convicts decided to spend their time off work practicing a play. Yes, a play! On 4 June 1789 the King’s Birthday was celebrated with the performance of a play by the convicts.
Read what Captain Watkin Tench said about it:
the play of The Recruiting Officer was performed by a party of convicts.
He was impressed by the:
proper distribution of three or four yards of stained paper, and a dozen farthing candles stuck around the mud walls of a convict-hut,
and attending the performance were:
sixty persons, of various descriptions, who were assembled to applaud the representation. Some of the actors acquitted themselves with great spirit, and received the praises of the audience.
The play was performed for other convicts, marines, officers and even the Governor. Three of the marines who arrived in NSW on the Scarborough with the First Fleet were drummers. With musical sections written into the play it has been suggested that the military band played drums and fifes to accompany the play. The surgeon George Worgan brought his piano to NSW but there is no evidence it was used for play recitals.
Answer these questions:
What is a fife?
If convicts only had the clothes they were wearing, what costumes did they wear?
If many convicts could not read, how did they learn their lines?
If you were a convict, would you have volunteered to be in the play?
Seven years later, in 1796, the first permanent theatre located in The Rocks was managed by Robert Sidaway, a convict who had arrived with the First Fleet.
Read what Captain David Collins recorded in 1796,
Some of the more decent class of prisoners, male and female, having some time since obtained permission to prepare a playhouse at Sydney.
Answer this question:
Considering that there were no phones, television or internet at that time, how did everyone know the play was on?
The theatre created a playbill.
Define the word playbill.
Examine the playbills below. They were printed in 1800 on the printing press that was brought out on the First Fleet.
By permission of His Excellency, at the Theatre, Sydney, on Saturday March 8, 1800, will be presented the comedy of The recruiting officer ... to which will be added a musical entertainment called The virgin unmasked., 1800
By permission of His Excellency, at the Theatre, Sydney, an unforseen accident having intervened, the Play intended for the evening (Saturday April 5) unavoidably postponed till Saturday the 12th instant : On Tuesday April 8 1800 will be presented
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