1996: The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by Steve J. Spears

The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by Steve J. Spears.  Ian Croker, directed by Colin Anderson, at Cafe Thespia.  Professional.

    "In retrospect, the performance as well as the production by Richard Wherrett probably lulled most of us into overpraising the play when it first appeared. Nonetheless it was a triumphant success on three continents."  (Leonard Radic in The State of Play, 1991).  In Colin Anderson's production there is the same tension between, on the one hand, an immediate audience response to the one-liners, the visuals (including nudity) and the sound effects (everyone appreciates why Robert O'Brien blasts the cuckoo clock) and, on the other, a niggling concern about the artistic truth and (after 20 years) the relevance of the play.

    Laughter abounds through the first two acts, but the final act is only a partial success unless the ever-present sense of danger can be built up from the opening line of the play.  In 1976 the likelihood of homosexual men being murdered was public knowledge, and Spears tried genuinely to re-cast the image of transvestites: O'Brien falls in love with the 12 year old Benjamin but does not act out his sexual fantasy.  But I think Spears missed the point.  The one-liners make the character superficially attractive, but O'Brien holds back not on moral grounds but only because he knows he will be destroyed if the relationship is made public.

     Probably this play helped change attitudes even so: now we have the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and gay rights are better entrenched in law.  However, gay bashing is still common.  On the other hand the World Congress on the Sexual Exploitation of Children currently in Stockholm would show that today Benjamin Franklin, though a 12 year old seducer of middle aged men, is a victim of a "global, multi-billion-dollar industry" (Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF).  I think Spears was ultimately naive in his comic presentation of Robert O'Brien and the play's popularity for a few years in Australia, London, San Francisco and New York is not a measure of its worth in the long run.

    Though you will have a convivial night at Cafe Thespia, and between laughing you will sympathise with Robert, and think about the issues, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin did its bit 20 years ago.  It's hooked to the Skyhooks and the young Mick Jagger, and though it is interesting historically to see a revival, I think it is better to leave it pegged in its place and time.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

1996: Preview article on Neither Here Nor There by Olwen Wymark

 Preview: Neither Here Nor There by Olwen Wymark.  ACT Drama Association, directed by Lynette Wallis.  Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, 8.00 pm August 29-31, 1996.  Bookings: 247 4000.

    The ACT Drama Association is the professional association for drama teachers across the Territory.  Most of its time is spent lobbying for better conditions for teaching and learning drama in schools, being an affiliate of the National Association for Drama in Education (NADIE) and the International Drama Education Association (IDEA), and arranging professional development workshops for drama teachers.  They have Moya Simpson to lead a vocal workshop on September 12 and Bronwyn Vaughan on November 6 teaching the process of theatrical storytelling.

    Organising, teaching, and learning from these practical workshops is not enough: someone realised that The Jigsaw Company could provide the complete professional development by having Lynette Wallis direct drama teachers in public productions.  This is the first - a play about seven institutionalised women, exploring issues of power structures, repressed sexuality and fantasies of freedom.

    This is an important exercise because it provides the teachers with the best form of work experience, as actors and backstage crew under professional direction.  From this experience they can refine the way they teach students in their classes, showing them how to achieve better quality and helping them to be realistic about the world of theatre. 

    Lynette Wallis has found this an enjoyable experience, watching her charges loosen up and behave like actors, rather than teachers.  Under her direction the result is sure to be exciting, judging by her work on Mercury which I reviewed earlier in the year.  Tickets are only $5 for the half-hour performance, but my guess is that you'll get more than your money's worth not only from the show but in the conversation afterwards.  It's an opportunity to support the work these teachers do in the schools, but, just as important, they need you as an audience to test their skills.  It's a risky business putting yourself upfront on stage, even for a professional actor.  For a teacher there is the double jeopardy of having to come up with the goods for the students the next day.  Take the risk with them: I expect it will be a worthwhile learning experience for everyone.
   
©Frank McKone, Canberra

1996: Feature article on Don's Party by David Williamson

 Don's Party by David Williamson to be presented by the Bruce Hall Players, ANU Arts Centre, August 22-23 at 8 pm and August 24, 1996 at 2 pm.

    DON:    Mal: I'd like you to have Kath for the night.
    MAL:    Don: I'd like you to have Jenny for the night.

    In the meantime, of course, Cooley has coolly "had" most of the women at Don's Party in 1969.  How could this happen, and how could Cooley still be the most loved character from this classic David Williamson play now the numbers have turned into 1996?  What could inspire today's students to want to re-create the kind of engineering students' parties of Williamson's university days - when the men's immediate sexual gratification seemed to be their only concern, to the ultimate exclusion of really important matters like who's winning the Federal Election.

    I found some answers when I met, courtesy of Coralie Wood Publicity, not only the producers, director and actors from the Bruce Hall Players but also Coralie's little secret: in this very city, urbane and sophisticated, partner in a well known legal firm, is the very model of the original Cooley - the name slightly re-worked from Crowley. 

    Peter Crowley (even looking a little like John Ewart with whom I identify the role of Cooley from the 1972 NIDA/Jane Street production) is not just a barrister admitted to the Supreme Courts of the ACT, Victoria and NSW and to the High Court of Australia, not just a leading figure in the ACT Law Society and sometime lecturer at the ANU Legal Workshop, but a man of genuine social concern in his work for Open Family Australia and the Multiple Sclerosis Society.  He chairs the local section of the National Gallery Foundation, and admits to a strong and continuing friendship with David Williamson, not despite the creation of Cooley, but indeed because of it.

    In a three-way conversation between the students, Crowley and a telephone, on the other end of which was David Williamson, the timelessness of the characters in Don's Party became the theme.  Director Richard Baxter sees the play as a "photograph" of its time, Crowley backing this view by explaining how Williamson does not present a viewpoint but leaves the audience to make their own judgements.  Williamson recalled how, after a showing of the film to a Marxist Feminist audience in Denmark, women spoke to him, privately, saying that though Cooley was terrible he was also attractive.  This was characterised by Williamson as a tension between their "heads" and their "hormones".

    I wondered, though, whether "openness", "honesty" and "directness", which seemed to attract the men in this discussion, were not simply charming cover-ups for Cooley's chauvinism. 

    One scene begins with Kerry telling Cooley "You would be one of the coarsest, most sex-obsessed persons I've ever met" and ends  with
    KERRY:    Usually it's [going to bed with someone] an organic part of the whole             relationship.
        (Cooley ushers her towards the bedroom)
    COOLEY:    Organ first, relationship later.
    KERRY:    (as she is going)  That's a very interesting philosophical proposition.

     But Kate Barraclough, student producer, sees Cooley as everyone's mate.  The old Australian mateship, originally exclusively a male to male relationship, has expanded, by 1996, to include all.  Now it is common to meet female Cooleys.  Indeed Williamson's character represents the change beginning in the sixties towards gender inclusivity.  Mateship for all is now the reality.  Peter Crowley told how parents are now mates with their adult children, while this was hardly possible in his parents' time.  Kate thought that young people are less promiscuous now than 30 years ago, not because they know more about the risks but because it's now possible for people to be just mates.  Men can now relate to women person to person on many levels apart from sexual power play.  Women can be Cooleys if they want to.

    It's funny, but Federal Elections didn't get a mention.  Maybe it's plays and playwrights like David Williamson that are the vehicles for real change in society, while politicians belong in the back seat.
  
©Frank McKone, Canberra

1996: Lucy in the Leap Year by Nadia Wheatley

Lucy in the Leap Year adapted, from her own novel, by Nadia Wheatley.  Theatre South at the ANU Arts Centre, August 20, 1996.  Directed by Des Davis.  Professional: matinees for school groups and general public.

    I walked beside a green crocodile through the ANU grounds, meeting up with a red crodocodile in the foyer.  Phalanxes were formed by firm Arts Centre staff; disco-ish music rose among the hubbub; "We're right up the top!" exclaimed a large primary boy (a bit like Adrian in the play); while a row of normally polite young ladies did roly poly hand movements in unison, pointing left and right in time to the music, collapsing in fits of laughter every few seconds.

    Theatre South's highly professional team of actors did all the right things, and the staging was made for audience interaction, but something was wrong.  Probably the children felt the problem at a subliminal level, and indeed I discovered the source of my feelings only when I talked with some of the actors after the show.

    Here is a company with a script which has all the right intentions: to entertain while helping children to come to terms with death; cultural diversity; the fears of inner city living; the truth about astrology; understanding adult work and the risk of poverty; nightmares; and finally how everyone can live in a community, even when the family is fractured.  So the nub of the matter is that this is Nadia Wheatley's first playscript, and theatre makes different demands from the discursive novel.  Theatre needs tight focus: in this production the weight of responsibility falls on the actress playing Lucy, continually on stage, the communication link between the fourth wall action and the audience to whom she talks directly. 

    Why wasn't the script pruned, focussed on a unified theme?  The answer is funding. Theatre South had only two weeks' development and rehearsal time.  Any new play needs dramaturgical work and workshopping before design and rehearsal begin.  Here it had to be done all at once, in a short time, and while some of the company were busy earning money in other projects.  Fortunately the professional skills of the director and actors have masked the script's weaknesses very well, and audiences of children and adults will continue to respond to the inherent good intentions.

    But some money is needed to re-work this script if it is to last.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

1996: Feature article on Australian National Young Playwrights' Weekend

Young Playwrights' Weekend.  Director/dramaturg Carol Woodrow. In conjunction with Canberra Youth Theatre, directed by Roland Manderson.  December 1996.

    Synthia: I mean I'm obsessed with other people's problems you know but I don't know why and I mean I put everything into helping people but I'm wishing they'd stay sick and you know I'm all the time dealing  with other people's problems instead of dealing with my own problems so there's just like this ton of problems weighing down on me and I'm sinking deeper into the darkness you know!

    This play, The Maze by Niamh Kearney, was the success story of the Young Playwrights' Weekend 1994.  Every second year Canberra gets a turn, and it's time now for young people under 25 to get their scripts in for assessment. 

    The Australian National Young Playwrights' Weekend is a mini version of the Australian National Playwrights' Conference.  If you've written a script, it's probably not ready to go on stage without improvements - but how do you know what to do?  Leading playwrights like Michael Gow and Dorothy Hewett have had their plays workshopped at the ANPC, and young people can go to the ANYPW.  This is not as scary as it sounds, though if your script really isn't ready you'll find this out at the first assessment.

    If your play, like The Maze, shows real potential, then you will have at your disposal one of the nicest directors to work with, Carol Woodrow.  She'll spend time with you being a dramaturg at first.  This means she works through your script and shows you how to change it to make characters or the action come through on stage.  After that she will work with you and a group of actors from Canberra Youth Theatre, first of all workshopping the script and finally putting on a workshopped reading in December.

    Carol, of course, is an expert at helping playwrights: she directs at the ANPC (held at ANU in the September/October vacation each year) and also directs the ANPC Playwriting Course with Timothy Daly, whose The Moonwalker has recently had a successful run at The Stables Theatre in Sydney.  Roland Manderson, who directs Canberra Youth Theatre, says that it's important for Youth Theatre actors (who usually spend most of their time devising their own work) to learn the skills of performing a script according to what the writer wants.  And, he says, this works best when the writer is from their own generation.  Good pieces don't stop at the workshopped reading: Youth Theatre may take them on to full productions here in Canberra or on tour to other cities.

    So if you have a script under way, finish it off and send it to Carol Woodrow, Young Playwrights' Weekend, ANPC, PO Box 1566, Rozelle NSW 2039.  To find out more details about dates and costs, you can ring the ANPC on 02 555 9377 or fax them on 02 555 9370.

©Frank McKone

1996: Feature article on Canberra Milk High Schools and Colleges Dance Festival

Is the annual Canberra Milk High Schools and Colleges Dance Festival, which began in 1986 with the theme "Peace", still "... In Motion" as the 1996 theme suggests?  Ausdance ACT Executive Officer, Jennifer Kingma says "Yes" with some reservations.  Canberra Dance Theatre Director, Stephanie Burridge, also perhaps the most highly qualified teacher in the schools, seems more inclined towards Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion: the law of inertia, "which states that a body will continue in the same state of motion until it is acted on by a force".

    In her book about God, physics and gender called Pythagoras' Trousers, the Australian science writer Margaret Wertheim discusses how Newton's laws became models for the social sciences: Burridge would like to see the format for the Dance Festival kicked around every few years to generate creativity.  But are the dance crumbs which fall from the great feast table of education so stale?

    Going to the Canberra Theatre on August 29 and 30 may help provide some answers, but seeing dance "... In Motion" at one moment in time will tell little about Newton's Second Law which relates force, mass and acceleration, and direction. 

    Even though dance is still peripheral to the core curriculum in most schools, the Dance Festival is increasing in mass: more schools take part now; more boys take part.

    The direction was set from the beginning, in an opposite reaction (Newton's Third Law) to an earlier dance competition.  This is still a festival very much in keeping with one of Ausdance's aims: "To establish the opportunity for every child to have dance experience." 

    Force and acceleration are the deeper issues.  Even Newton would have found it difficult to express the Dance Festival as a mathematical equation.  The forces for shifting out of a state of inertia ought to be the gradual accretion of experience by the teachers who, one would like to think, have space, time and resources.  But the reality is that the dance-in-schools universe, unlike the one envisaged by Newton, is finite.  As students pass through the schools, we can only expect the newcomer in 1996 to be able to begin dance with more appreciation, more sense of creativity, maybe even more skills than in 1986, if the teachers have had the time to learn from their previous experiences, the space in the curriculum to build on what they learn; and the input from new forces of qualified dynamic young dance-trained teachers.  Our universities, in the post-Einstein space-time universe, are producing some big bangs (in every state except the ACT!), but the ripple effect is marginal in the schools where dance is still in the cold outer reaches. 

    Jennifer Kingma has no doubts about the need for dance and for the festival.  Because the performances are not judged, anyone can take part without fear or favour.  She is certain that this is why the numbers have increased and why more boys, including strong teams from the private boys' schools, are taking part nowadays.  She is certain too that the core learning experience is cooperation, teamwork and confidence building.  This is not only so for the students, but for the teachers who have less need to come to her in fear and trembling about whether their work is good enough as they did in earlier years.

    But creativity is where she has her reservations: it's too safe to imitate the actions of Anna Pavlova or Michael Jackson.  The link between drama and dance - the motivation for the movement - is, for Jenny Kingma, the accelerator pedal.  But if the fuel tank is empty of teaching quantity and the quality is mixed, and the vehicle needs to be four-wheel drive for rough, new terrain - and big enough to carry the masses - then we are forced to accept ten years of inertia.  In this view, the Dance Festival is a holding operation - essential to hold on to until the day is reached when our society comes to understand (and supply the resources) so that a new invigorating dance force emanates from the schools.  She sees the potential in every Dance Festival performance.

    Dance, of course, is the last of the traditional arts to gain a place at the table.  In Australian secondary schools art and music were more or less established by the Whitlam era; drama made its big push from the mid-1970's; media shoved its way in from the outfield in the late '70s; while dance lost its olde-worlde social significance, tripped around awhile in ethnic and folk, and only began in the 1980's to take Martha Graham seriously.  In the meantime, outside the schools the traditionals stuck with ballet, the arty lot went post-modern, while the others went disco.

    Emmy Noether, the great mathematician of this century, who redefined abstract algebra, created the "New Maths" and whose Noether's Theorem relates fundamental physics to mathematical symmetry would have as much chance as Newton if she tried to coalesce dance.  Bringing together the dance trainers and the school teachers; the "disciplined" private schools and the less cohesive government schools; the boys' boys and the girly girls; the experience and the art: even Stephanie Burridge finds this daunting. 

    But Ausdance never gives up, and the Canberra Milk Dance Festival lives on, waiting for the day when dance in education goes supernova.  Can someone choreograph this scenario?  Maybe next year's theme should be some imitation Latin (for the traditionalists): Per Ars ad Astra - "Through Art to the Stars".  And maybe the Festival should be a huge celebration in dance combining all the students in one production.  And maybe this could become the new beginning, with a nation-wide performance at the Olympics 2000.  Make dance an Olympic event.  After all that's where the money is.  Ask the Government!

©Frank McKone, Canberra

1996: Nothing Like the Odyssey by John Eastman and Brendan O'Connell

Nothing Like the Odyssey.  Self Raising Theatre for The Jigsaw Company.  Directed by Lenny Covner. Touring schools Years 7-10, August 12 till September 6, 1996.  Professional. Bookings: 247 2133.

    Canberra is so well served by professional theatre in education that it's hard nowadays to find points of criticism.  This is certainly true of this work by John Eastman and Brendan O'Connell.  Performing in the round in the vastness of a gymnasium floor, they have both re-created the power of the ancient Greek myths and made them immediately relevant to the audience traditionally seen as the most difficult: junior high.

    Using the full gamut of acting skills - voice, mime, evocation of images (the huge Trojan horse), masks and costumes reminiscent of the original Greek - two consummate actors destroy Troy, outwit the Cyclops, and reflect in the River of Death.  They engage in philosophical disputation, having fun with Descartes.  Poseidon: "Where are you?"  Zeus: "Here -- I think!"  Penelope's intelligence outshines an awful suitor; Telemachus grows up a typical teenager, rebellious and yet exactly like his Dad; and Odysseus comes to terms with all the ill that he has caused, though always acting according to reason and acceptable social demands.

    This is where we see the real value of theatre in education.  It's about Junior High coming face to face with violence and cunning, with family obligations, with powers beyond our control, with the excitement of adventure, and with our human inability to fully understand the consequences of our actions until, very often, it is too late.

    Yet don't imagine this is all stiff Greek tragedy.  Self Raising Theatre raises as many laughs as sighs, or moments of fear and wonder.  I felt the rare experience of great story-telling as it must have been in the days of Homer - and as it still is in many indigenous communities today.  In a cold hall full of empty space, I stopped taking notes: the actors' artistry was beyond the realm of criticism and had drawn me into the universal: where men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, defenders and attackers, leaders and followers; where all people, however we categorise ourselves and each other, have the qualities of heroes and the responsibility for our own destinies.

©Frank McKone, Canberra