'Profoundly affected by the events at Port Arthur in 1996, Tom Holloway (who was 17 at the time) was moved to write this play. Based on in-depth interviews and years of research, the story is set ten years later and celebrates the power of community and recovery.'
Source: Is Theatre website, http://www.istheatre.com
Sighted: 05/09/2007
'When the New South Wales Board of Studies put Tom Holloway’s Beyond the Neck (2007) on the list of prescribed texts for the Year 12 Verbatim Theatre elective, they seemed to be wilfully ignoring the playwright’s statement that the play is not verbatim. On the one hand, the lack of vernacular speech and characters that correspond to real-life people would seem to confirm Holloway’s argument. Conversely, the play’s reliance on interviews, community consultation, bottom-up history and mode of diegetic theatricality would seem to support the Board of Studies’ decision. This article argues that this difference of opinion is due, in part, to a difference of definition: whereas Holloway conceives of verbatim as a genre, the Board of Studies sees it as a practice. To contemplate verbatim as a practice opens the way for new research across theatre, performance, dance, television and film.' (Publication abstract)
