23 October 2025
In Week 4, our Senior School thespians will take to the stage in a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui – the great gangster spectacle.
The Stage 1 SACE Drama class of 2025 is a small but mighty group of four students. Having established our company, The Fifth Act Theatre Company, and the vision for our work in Semester 1, we have built on our knowledge base of contemporary Australian theatre by exploring one of the foremost practitioners of the twentieth century: Bertolt Brecht.
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is one of Brecht’s master works. Initially written as an allegory for the ascent of Nazism in Germany, this play about a gangster who rises to dominate his city has since become a story that resonates both forwards and backwards in time.
We knew that to take on a play of this magnitude we would need strong support, and we thank our extra cast and crew members from Years 7 to 11 who have stepped forward to work many long hours in bringing it to fruition. With two weeks to go, we invite you to join us as we take to the stage, and ‘see our actors use their art sublime/ to play the giants of organised crime.’
As you watch, we invite you to notice how the work’s critiques of fascism, and the corrupting forces of capitalism, make for a harrowing parody of the ease with which democratic freedom can be taken away. In another, its study of the evolution of the central character Arturo Ui, played with flair by Year 11 student Rowan Clark, offers up a revelatory insight into the power of politics, the theatrics of government and the illusion of the law. Part of the magic of this play is the extraordinary way in which it exposes the construction of the artifice behind political power. Power is so often implied through image, and Brecht’s Ui is more aware than anyone of how to manipulate what people see. One’s appearance and rhetoric – these are theatrical tools, as Brecht so sharply saw himself.
As Brecht warns us all of the threat demagogues pose, he also reveals the type of society that breeds them. Money, greed, ego, fame, fear: they dance like a devilish chorus line through this play. The question is: do we join in? Or do we stop the music?
Performances:
Tues 4 Nov, 7pm
Wed 5 Nov, 1.30pm
Thurs 6 Nov, 7pm
Tickets can be booked via Humanitix.
Ms Paula Little
Director
