Cosi
Good morning/afternoon HSC students!
Im here today to speak about the importance of personally engaging with the text at a HSC level for the prescribed text for module B: A close study of a prescribed text.
I have personally engaged with the play Cosi- By L. Nowra. The play written in the 1990's but set, 1771, in Melbourne. The play deals with many personal, social and cultural issues.
Two in particular that I would like to discuss today are love, fidelity and loyalty as well as sanity vs normality.
Within the play, Louis Nowra portrays love, fidelity and loyalty through the characters and chooses to juxtapose their behaviours and beliefs towards what was happening around them during the time and setting of the play.
The majority of the characters in the play have contrasting beliefs and values towards the ideas of love, fidelity and loyalty.
Lucy, a character in the play, is in a relationship with Lewis. Lewis is the director of the play
Cosi, he directing a play with patience of a mental asylum. Lucy doesn't understand why
Lewis makes such an effort and dedicates so much time to the crazy people he is working with. Lucy have contrasting views to Lewis about the play, and also love, fidelity and loyalty.
Lewis tells us this through the quote
“She hates talk about love. She thinks its icky.”
This play was written during the Vietnam war. Change, and uncertainty, trust and loyalty were all being challenged. So views that each of the characters had may possibly have been newly developed, or old beliefs altered because of the changes and uncertainty that was evident around them.
Lewis went into the production of the play with the mind frame
“it was just for some quick cash”
Lewis was
“hesitant” and “Uncertain” at the beginning of the play, as he believed the cast he was working with were all
“loonies” in a “funny farm.”
However, he did learn to take time and understand their ways. Lewis quoted
“My grandmother went mad”
Then Lewis told Julie
“I liked my grandmother”.
Cosi establishes a sense of change occurring within Australia's social, cultural and political contexts. Social forces at the time included the anti-war movement, and the feminist movement, led widely by the generational change occurring due to the Vietnam War. A new era of ‘free love’ emerged. However, free love also criticised marriage due to the lack of

emotional involvement, which lead to the question of fidelity and loyalty in committed relationships. Love, fidelity and loyalty are social and cultural values explored in Nowra's play Cosi through its characters. This can be seen by the dynamic nature of the character types in Cosi. For example, Lewis initially sees the opera Cosi Fan Tutte as being unvalued
– “Love is not so important nowadays.” In this view he is really a follower of Nick and
Lucy who are outspoken against the traditional values of society. Lewis ends up playing the part of Ferrando in the production of Cosi Fan Tutte, and falls for Julie, while it’s revealed that his real girlfriend, Lucy, has been having an affair with Nick. Lewis is attracted to Julie because of her passion – “I’ve always thought that love was being foolish and stupid. It’s about being on the edge and I like being on the edge” – and her belief that love is important.
Julie’s character is significant in a number