Something serious is happening at the Australian National Playwrights' Conference at the ANU Arts Centre. Most of it is hidden, for very good reasons, behind closed workshop doors, but you can be an outsider looking in, alongside the insiders looking out, by going along to workshop presentations starting on Thursday October 3.
The public program at a glance:
Thursday Oct. 3:
8.30 pm: Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (a realistic social exposé of an Aboriginal experience of football and love).
9.30 pm: Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Cassandra, the prophetess destined to tell the truth but not to be believed, appears at significant moments in history leaving warnings for the future - including ours).
Friday Oct. 4:
2.00 pm: Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (a strong psychological drama).
4.00 pm: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (an epic humorous treatment of Tasmania's history as an island of freaks).
7.00 pm: Kingalawuy by Ali Arjibuk (a story of Aboriginal people coping with traditional legends and rituals in the face of white colonisation, from Darwin).
8.30 pm: Into the Fire by Deborah Baley, visiting writer from USA (about a woman in Alaska, unable to cope with the isolation).
Saturday Oct. 5:
1.00 pm: Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (a radio play about a girl and boy forced to become prostitute and pickpocket after the violent expulsion of the population of their village by a militia in the Philippines).
2.30 pm: The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (moral dilemmas faced by the NSW Governor and his children at the time of Federation - with implications for 2000 and The Republic).
4.30 pm: Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (a humorous play with music about the loneliness and hardship of the women on the rodeo circuit).
Each of these plays is in a different stage of development and some writers will be feeling quite vulnerable in the public gaze. However, discussion after each presentation is the usual thing, so be prepared to watch, listen, learn and have your say with care, knowing that your responses will become part of the final product on a stage somewhere in Australia - or overseas.
The Chair of the ANPC, well-known playwright Stephen Sewell, is working - with students from the Centre for Performing Arts, Adelaide - on finding the right approach for creating a community based musical making the Australia-Asia connection, probably to be performed in a Hindley Street takeover, which should revitalise multiculturalism despite the current political correctedness. There will be a presentation and forum on Thursday at 7.00 pm, though this work is not part of the main conference.
This represents a serious change from days of yore when writers were under contract to come with a script, watch, listen and re-write, while directors and actors got on with the work. Now the actors' responses to Tear from a Glass Eye have sent the writer back to the computer; while for the Filipino bilingual writer Merlinda Bobis, Rita's Lullaby actors are having Tagalog language classes.
Lafe Charlton, Aboriginal actor from traditionally a fishing culture on Stradbroke Island, is facing the harsh realism of the inland NSW experience in Blackgammon, switching to a Kungarakantj traditional man's role from south-west of Darwin in Kingalawuy (while on the side he is involved with Seven Stages of Grieving [by Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch] to be presented at the Performing Arts Market after the Conference).
In Rodeo Noir, Valerie Bader is busy learning to yodel; Daynan Brazil is working with director Yaron Lifschitz adding scenes to Cassandra; Odile Le Clezio is studying how to be a 19th Century Tasmanian hermaphrodite called Hercules for Transylvania; in The Governor's Family actors and director are reading to discover all the levels of meaning in the script; and Deborah Bayley has found that Australian actors understand the open spaces and isolation of Alaska better than actors from New York.
The Conference is all about diversity of approaches, celebrating differences, exploring possibilities with actors, directors, dramaturgs and writers working in community. It is a model of the very multiculturalism which Sewell's new musical envisages. If you can get to see some of the presentations, you'll be sure to sense the new directions and the excitement of the ANPC 1996.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 30 September 1996
Wednesday, 25 September 1996
1996: Report article on Australian National Playwrights' Conference
The Australian National Playwrights' Conference, running this week and next at the ANU Arts Centre and Burgmann College, is like one of those wooden interlocking puzzles: even worse, it's spherical - not just a simple cube - and even has spheres within spheres.
I disturbed four of the pieces on Wednesday - Canberra actor Mary Brown; Sydney writer Beatrix Christian; May-Brit Akerholt, Artistic Director of the whole conference; and Carol Woodrow who directs the Delegates' Program. My interference didn't actually cause the whole conference to fall apart (which is what happens when I just glance at the wooden puzzle on my bookshelf) but my brain was truly glowing with incandescence as I struggled to understand how these pieces all fit in such a complex arrangement.
Mary is enclosed in the innermost sphere where eight new Australian plays and one from Deborah Baley, a guest from New York, are being workshopped for presentation next week. Mary emerged from Tear from a Glass Eye (by Victorian Matt Cameron) almost inarticulate with intensity. After performing in Charlotte's Web for Company Skylark for many weeks, Mary is inspired by the rehearsal work on this strong psychological drama which raises disturbing ethical questions, re-igniting her enthusiasm for writing which had been put aside for the sake of regular acting work.
The image of getting a tear from a glass eye made me wonder if for an artistic director the conference might be like getting blood from a stone. But for May-Brit Akerholt, who is directing the conference for the fourth time, the stone is a jewel of "generosity, goodwill and passion". She is the outer sphere - the geodetic structure which is stable and secure within which new constructions can be put together in safety. Somehow, May-Brit knows what is happening in all the workshops, senses if someone is uncomfortable, is open to everyone. She provides her expertise directly as a dramaturg for Beatrix Christian, so she is both outside and inside the real work of the conference. To help her do all this, of course, there must be creative (that means very efficient) administration - by General Manager Kate Riedl.
Another sphere - another unit of construction - is Carol Woodrow who is working with the Delegates. These are would-be writers who pay for the privilege of having their script ideas workshopped with actors and developed with dramaturgs. Carol works flexibly so that each writer can take their script through drafts with or without practical workshops as they feel the need. Like May-Brit, Carol seems by some almost paranormal insight to know where each writer is up to, what their needs are, who would be the right dramaturg or the best actors. This is a delicate shell within the total structure, where as yet untried writers are encouraged, guided and given the confidence which may lead to their work being supported next year in the main program.
And, indeed, this is what has happened to Beatrix Christian's The Governor's Family. This play, about the family of the Governor of NSW at the time of Federation; about revolution and reconciliation; a metaphorical piece with resonances for the year 2000 and the possibility of an Australian Republic - began life at last year's conference as a longish one-acter. May-Brit has worked with Beatrix through the year and now it is being presented as a full length play. Beatrix was happy that the first reading has confirmed that the structure works and the language is both actable and meaningful, while May-Brit sees more to be done on the final section.
Discussing building her play, Beatrix supplied the construction image which finally helped me put together all the pieces of this conference puzzle. She explained that writing a play is like writing a functional brief for a house, becoming the architect and turning out the blueprints. But this work always needs to be done keeping in mind that real people will live in the house when it is finally built. This is what the Playwrights' Conference is for: the dramaturg is like a people-sensitive engineer who makes the architect face reality, modelling the construction with real people - the actors - until the plans are ready for sale on the open market.
And this is why writers keep coming back to the Playwrights' Centre and to the annual Conference. Plays which survive this rigorous development have a proud record on the professional stage. Only at that point is the puzzle complete.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I disturbed four of the pieces on Wednesday - Canberra actor Mary Brown; Sydney writer Beatrix Christian; May-Brit Akerholt, Artistic Director of the whole conference; and Carol Woodrow who directs the Delegates' Program. My interference didn't actually cause the whole conference to fall apart (which is what happens when I just glance at the wooden puzzle on my bookshelf) but my brain was truly glowing with incandescence as I struggled to understand how these pieces all fit in such a complex arrangement.
Mary is enclosed in the innermost sphere where eight new Australian plays and one from Deborah Baley, a guest from New York, are being workshopped for presentation next week. Mary emerged from Tear from a Glass Eye (by Victorian Matt Cameron) almost inarticulate with intensity. After performing in Charlotte's Web for Company Skylark for many weeks, Mary is inspired by the rehearsal work on this strong psychological drama which raises disturbing ethical questions, re-igniting her enthusiasm for writing which had been put aside for the sake of regular acting work.
The image of getting a tear from a glass eye made me wonder if for an artistic director the conference might be like getting blood from a stone. But for May-Brit Akerholt, who is directing the conference for the fourth time, the stone is a jewel of "generosity, goodwill and passion". She is the outer sphere - the geodetic structure which is stable and secure within which new constructions can be put together in safety. Somehow, May-Brit knows what is happening in all the workshops, senses if someone is uncomfortable, is open to everyone. She provides her expertise directly as a dramaturg for Beatrix Christian, so she is both outside and inside the real work of the conference. To help her do all this, of course, there must be creative (that means very efficient) administration - by General Manager Kate Riedl.
Another sphere - another unit of construction - is Carol Woodrow who is working with the Delegates. These are would-be writers who pay for the privilege of having their script ideas workshopped with actors and developed with dramaturgs. Carol works flexibly so that each writer can take their script through drafts with or without practical workshops as they feel the need. Like May-Brit, Carol seems by some almost paranormal insight to know where each writer is up to, what their needs are, who would be the right dramaturg or the best actors. This is a delicate shell within the total structure, where as yet untried writers are encouraged, guided and given the confidence which may lead to their work being supported next year in the main program.
And, indeed, this is what has happened to Beatrix Christian's The Governor's Family. This play, about the family of the Governor of NSW at the time of Federation; about revolution and reconciliation; a metaphorical piece with resonances for the year 2000 and the possibility of an Australian Republic - began life at last year's conference as a longish one-acter. May-Brit has worked with Beatrix through the year and now it is being presented as a full length play. Beatrix was happy that the first reading has confirmed that the structure works and the language is both actable and meaningful, while May-Brit sees more to be done on the final section.
Discussing building her play, Beatrix supplied the construction image which finally helped me put together all the pieces of this conference puzzle. She explained that writing a play is like writing a functional brief for a house, becoming the architect and turning out the blueprints. But this work always needs to be done keeping in mind that real people will live in the house when it is finally built. This is what the Playwrights' Conference is for: the dramaturg is like a people-sensitive engineer who makes the architect face reality, modelling the construction with real people - the actors - until the plans are ready for sale on the open market.
And this is why writers keep coming back to the Playwrights' Centre and to the annual Conference. Plays which survive this rigorous development have a proud record on the professional stage. Only at that point is the puzzle complete.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 22 September 1996
1996: Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love by Brad Fraser
Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love by Brad Fraser. Directed for The Company by Catherine Mann. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Sunday September 22, 1996. Professional reading.
Living as I do in a quiet cul-de-sac of the Bush Capital, this play about the failure of love in alienated city life, the revelation of a serial killer, and the discovery of love in cathartic horror, was not my usual fare at dinner time on Sunday. If a reading of this play can be so affecting, I'd hate to see a full production.
In fact with the high quality of direction and acting, I found myself quite able to imagine what was not explicitly presented. The play has a surprising structure. Beginning with disparate (indeed desperate) elements displayed as if on film, in a kind of abstract expressionist style, the first Act approaches a weird sort of unity. Act Two takes up the thread and weaves it into a thick rope of fear. Only when this is broken can some understanding and a semblance of human love remain.
The play, from Canada, has been filmed as Love and Human Remains (directed by Denys Arcand). I haven't seen the film, but I sense that detailed realistic shots crossfading from scenes of gritty ironic humour - powerful though I can imagine them to be - might not be as frightening and embarrassing as their live representation on stage, especially in an intimate theatre like the Currong. I think we need the personal confrontation of real people, a short distance away, to bring us up short against the truth of our confusion of love, sexuality and aggression which is the core of this play.
I have only one point of criticism. Killers of the kind that Bernie is, have no remorse and seem to believe in their immortality even within earshot of the police sirens. When he is given the gun, I think it is more likely that Bernie would shoot David than himself. But this is an argument with the playwright. This reading, the four already presented and the six more to come this year constitute a stunning program. Don't miss it. Ring 247 1561 or 247 4000 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Living as I do in a quiet cul-de-sac of the Bush Capital, this play about the failure of love in alienated city life, the revelation of a serial killer, and the discovery of love in cathartic horror, was not my usual fare at dinner time on Sunday. If a reading of this play can be so affecting, I'd hate to see a full production.
In fact with the high quality of direction and acting, I found myself quite able to imagine what was not explicitly presented. The play has a surprising structure. Beginning with disparate (indeed desperate) elements displayed as if on film, in a kind of abstract expressionist style, the first Act approaches a weird sort of unity. Act Two takes up the thread and weaves it into a thick rope of fear. Only when this is broken can some understanding and a semblance of human love remain.
The play, from Canada, has been filmed as Love and Human Remains (directed by Denys Arcand). I haven't seen the film, but I sense that detailed realistic shots crossfading from scenes of gritty ironic humour - powerful though I can imagine them to be - might not be as frightening and embarrassing as their live representation on stage, especially in an intimate theatre like the Currong. I think we need the personal confrontation of real people, a short distance away, to bring us up short against the truth of our confusion of love, sexuality and aggression which is the core of this play.
I have only one point of criticism. Killers of the kind that Bernie is, have no remorse and seem to believe in their immortality even within earshot of the police sirens. When he is given the gun, I think it is more likely that Bernie would shoot David than himself. But this is an argument with the playwright. This reading, the four already presented and the six more to come this year constitute a stunning program. Don't miss it. Ring 247 1561 or 247 4000 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 20 September 1996
1996: Princess Ida by Gilbert and Sullivan
Princess Ida, or Gilbert and Sullivan meets Germaine Greer. Queanbeyan Players at Queanbeyan Bicentennial Centre, September 19-21 and 26-28, 1996. Amateur.
The astronomer Mary Whitney wrote in 1882: "We are forced to admit that in spite of the wonderful enlightenment of opinion which the last half century has produced in the public mind in reference to women's ability and position, there is still considerable unreadiness to believe that in the higher professions she either can make or will make herself as proficient as a man."
Princess Ida appeared in 1884. She is the daughter of a king who likes nothing but grumbling and insulting people; sister of three stupid war-mongering brothers; betrothed at the age of one to Hilarion, son of another war obsessed king. No wonder she takes 100 intellectually brilliant women into her women-only institution of higher learning.
It was a bold move to update the setting to something like the 1960s, and it was the right thing to do. Mind you, I'm sure Germaine Greer of The Female Eunuch would have found G&S's final argument hard to stomach: Princess Ida has to admit that marriage to men is necessary to propagate the species, though she at least threatens that if Hilarion doesn't treat her properly she will retire once more to her Castle Adamant.
It's hard not to have stars in G&S, and certainly Amanda Stevenson stands out as Ida in singing and acting (culminating in an affecting solo in I Built Upon a Rock), but the production has a well-balanced cast which kept the show moving on the opening night. Timing will settle in as the singers find their way around the remarkable acoustics of the Bicentennial Centre. The orchestra was competent with lively conducting by Geoff Smith. Perhaps two highlights for me were the chorus singing, which always had strength and the necessary G&S vitality, and the clarity of characterisation by Bill Lord as King Gama.
G&S, in the English satirical tradition, maintain all the elements of the romantic form, but on the way create some serious criticism of social issues. I also find their playing with the musical forms of romantic opera amusing and impressive. They can do Verdi or Puccini better than the originals. Queanbeyan Players provide all that is required for an enjoyable evening, making fun of over-seriousness today just as G&S did more than a century ago.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The astronomer Mary Whitney wrote in 1882: "We are forced to admit that in spite of the wonderful enlightenment of opinion which the last half century has produced in the public mind in reference to women's ability and position, there is still considerable unreadiness to believe that in the higher professions she either can make or will make herself as proficient as a man."
Princess Ida appeared in 1884. She is the daughter of a king who likes nothing but grumbling and insulting people; sister of three stupid war-mongering brothers; betrothed at the age of one to Hilarion, son of another war obsessed king. No wonder she takes 100 intellectually brilliant women into her women-only institution of higher learning.
It was a bold move to update the setting to something like the 1960s, and it was the right thing to do. Mind you, I'm sure Germaine Greer of The Female Eunuch would have found G&S's final argument hard to stomach: Princess Ida has to admit that marriage to men is necessary to propagate the species, though she at least threatens that if Hilarion doesn't treat her properly she will retire once more to her Castle Adamant.
It's hard not to have stars in G&S, and certainly Amanda Stevenson stands out as Ida in singing and acting (culminating in an affecting solo in I Built Upon a Rock), but the production has a well-balanced cast which kept the show moving on the opening night. Timing will settle in as the singers find their way around the remarkable acoustics of the Bicentennial Centre. The orchestra was competent with lively conducting by Geoff Smith. Perhaps two highlights for me were the chorus singing, which always had strength and the necessary G&S vitality, and the clarity of characterisation by Bill Lord as King Gama.
G&S, in the English satirical tradition, maintain all the elements of the romantic form, but on the way create some serious criticism of social issues. I also find their playing with the musical forms of romantic opera amusing and impressive. They can do Verdi or Puccini better than the originals. Queanbeyan Players provide all that is required for an enjoyable evening, making fun of over-seriousness today just as G&S did more than a century ago.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 6 September 1996
1996: Feature article on Australian National Playwrights' Conference
The Australian National Playwrights' Conference at the ANU Arts Centre from Monday September 23 to Saturday night October 5, 1996. Public readings on October 3, 4 and 5: ring ANU Arts Centre 249 4787 for details.
Maybe because Canberra has real seasons, the winter wattles are harbingers of the sudden appearance above ground of theatrical annuals in September and October. The first delicate petals are the new playwrights, keeping to the mottled shade of the ANU. These are plants already well-bred but often needing further genetic engineering ready to bloom in the full sunlight in a later season.
The more raucous plants, reaching urgently for the light, appear soon afterwards in the Festival of Australian Theatre. This event is watched with avid interest by a hundred David Attenboroughs, breathily exclaiming oohs and aahs at the Australian Performing Arts Market. Plants from here are exported all over the world, to show themselves from the tropics to the northern snows.
If you want to keep in touch with all the dramatic flowershows in Australia and around the globe, you can't do better than join the International Theatre Institute (Australian Centre). For only $15 a year you get a regular newsletter with absolutely everything about conferences, festivals, workshops, opportunities for theatre work, resource material and information about what theatre people are doing. Write to 8A/245 Chalmers Street, Redfern NSW 2016.
This year's new blooms at the ANPC are nine plays: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (Tasmania); Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (NSW); Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Queensland); Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (Victoria); The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (NSW); Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (ACT); Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (South Australia); Kingalawuy by Allyson Mills (NT); and Into the Fire by the visiting exchange writer from New York, Deborah Baley. Floriade at the Commonwealth Gardens will have nothing on the variety and flair at the ANU Arts Centre. But of course you can see both: Floriade during the day and the public readings of the new plays on Thursday to Saturday October 3 - 5.
Since its inauguration in 1973, the Playwrights' Conference has been a major influence on the growing maturity with which plays are taken through the writing and production process. Katharine Brisbane, long time theatre critic and director of Currency Press, specialising in publishing Australian scripts, has seen the change from the days when writers were uneducated in the craft of play production.
Directors and actors often felt, justifiably, that the writer would only be in the way while they were rehearsing. At the Playwright's Conference, directors directed while writers watched, got some advice from a dramaturg, went away to rewrite, and came back to watch the director direct. Now, Brisbane says, writers are much more familiar with the dramaturgical and workshop process, and are nowadays much more drawn to the centre of the development of their scripts at the Conference. The result is not that the plays which result can be described as "better" than in the past, but certainly plays show a greater understanding of the craft of theatre. By the time they are taken up by the major companies, scripts have been filtered and shaped so that top quality productions are standard today.
But the seedplots in the greenhouse of the Playwrights' Conference not only produce better quality plants, but in recent years have been diversified to provide a wider gene pool. May-Brit Akerholt, the Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre which produces the Conference, is proud of four new tendrils.
Between 1993 and 1996, ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander playwrights have had their work developed at the Conference, with the participation of a large number of indigenous actors, directors and dramaturgs. This has encouraged the exploration of the distinct nature and character of indigenous theatre, but also assists the integration of indigenous artists into main stream theatre.
A mutual exchange has been established between the Playwrights' Centre and New Dramatists in New York. Australian new writers go there and US writers like this year's Deborah Baley come here. The international aspect of the Conference is growing, and links in with the Australian Performing Arts Market.
Then there is the Student Laboratory which brings student directors and writers from the tertiary institutions like the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) to the Conference for professional rehearsed readings and secondments to work with Conference directors and dramaturgs.
And finally there is the Delegate Program which is directed by Canberra's Carol Woodrow, involving emerging writers, drama teachers and students in workshops of delegates' scripts, observing Conference workshops, lectures, seminars and forums and generally mingling with the professionals at work.
This year there will be new development: The Centre for the Performing Arts (CPA) from Adelaide will bring third-year students to perform Stephen Sewell's musical Anger's Love and workshop a new musical by Sewell. The CPA acting students will also take part in Conference workshops and the Delegate's Program.
Directors, dramaturgs and actors, like the playwrights, come from all over Australia to imbibe the intimate, creative hothouse atmosphere of the National Playwrights' Conference - including not only Carol Woodrow but actors Mary Brown and Simon Clarke from Canberra. I asked Katharine Brisbane if "hothouse" meant self-indulgence, but she explained that the dramaturgs have the task - which requires very high level skills combining an academic understanding of dramatic structure with an ability to solve practical craft problems - of providing the objectivity which is needed to produce professional standards.
So this is the Playwrights' Conference - a hothouse, greenhouse, seminal sort of event which is encapsulated by the title of the year-round program run by the Playwrights' Centre, called Fertile Grounds. This provides Master Classes for experienced writers, so when a delicate petal has made it from the seedbeds to the garden, growth still continues. It's not like Floriade, where all those bulbs get untimely ripped out after a month of glorious show: modern Australian theatre is a professionally organised process of development - a continuing growth industry.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Maybe because Canberra has real seasons, the winter wattles are harbingers of the sudden appearance above ground of theatrical annuals in September and October. The first delicate petals are the new playwrights, keeping to the mottled shade of the ANU. These are plants already well-bred but often needing further genetic engineering ready to bloom in the full sunlight in a later season.
The more raucous plants, reaching urgently for the light, appear soon afterwards in the Festival of Australian Theatre. This event is watched with avid interest by a hundred David Attenboroughs, breathily exclaiming oohs and aahs at the Australian Performing Arts Market. Plants from here are exported all over the world, to show themselves from the tropics to the northern snows.
If you want to keep in touch with all the dramatic flowershows in Australia and around the globe, you can't do better than join the International Theatre Institute (Australian Centre). For only $15 a year you get a regular newsletter with absolutely everything about conferences, festivals, workshops, opportunities for theatre work, resource material and information about what theatre people are doing. Write to 8A/245 Chalmers Street, Redfern NSW 2016.
This year's new blooms at the ANPC are nine plays: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (Tasmania); Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (NSW); Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Queensland); Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (Victoria); The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (NSW); Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (ACT); Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (South Australia); Kingalawuy by Allyson Mills (NT); and Into the Fire by the visiting exchange writer from New York, Deborah Baley. Floriade at the Commonwealth Gardens will have nothing on the variety and flair at the ANU Arts Centre. But of course you can see both: Floriade during the day and the public readings of the new plays on Thursday to Saturday October 3 - 5.
Since its inauguration in 1973, the Playwrights' Conference has been a major influence on the growing maturity with which plays are taken through the writing and production process. Katharine Brisbane, long time theatre critic and director of Currency Press, specialising in publishing Australian scripts, has seen the change from the days when writers were uneducated in the craft of play production.
Directors and actors often felt, justifiably, that the writer would only be in the way while they were rehearsing. At the Playwright's Conference, directors directed while writers watched, got some advice from a dramaturg, went away to rewrite, and came back to watch the director direct. Now, Brisbane says, writers are much more familiar with the dramaturgical and workshop process, and are nowadays much more drawn to the centre of the development of their scripts at the Conference. The result is not that the plays which result can be described as "better" than in the past, but certainly plays show a greater understanding of the craft of theatre. By the time they are taken up by the major companies, scripts have been filtered and shaped so that top quality productions are standard today.
But the seedplots in the greenhouse of the Playwrights' Conference not only produce better quality plants, but in recent years have been diversified to provide a wider gene pool. May-Brit Akerholt, the Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre which produces the Conference, is proud of four new tendrils.
Between 1993 and 1996, ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander playwrights have had their work developed at the Conference, with the participation of a large number of indigenous actors, directors and dramaturgs. This has encouraged the exploration of the distinct nature and character of indigenous theatre, but also assists the integration of indigenous artists into main stream theatre.
A mutual exchange has been established between the Playwrights' Centre and New Dramatists in New York. Australian new writers go there and US writers like this year's Deborah Baley come here. The international aspect of the Conference is growing, and links in with the Australian Performing Arts Market.
Then there is the Student Laboratory which brings student directors and writers from the tertiary institutions like the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) to the Conference for professional rehearsed readings and secondments to work with Conference directors and dramaturgs.
And finally there is the Delegate Program which is directed by Canberra's Carol Woodrow, involving emerging writers, drama teachers and students in workshops of delegates' scripts, observing Conference workshops, lectures, seminars and forums and generally mingling with the professionals at work.
This year there will be new development: The Centre for the Performing Arts (CPA) from Adelaide will bring third-year students to perform Stephen Sewell's musical Anger's Love and workshop a new musical by Sewell. The CPA acting students will also take part in Conference workshops and the Delegate's Program.
Directors, dramaturgs and actors, like the playwrights, come from all over Australia to imbibe the intimate, creative hothouse atmosphere of the National Playwrights' Conference - including not only Carol Woodrow but actors Mary Brown and Simon Clarke from Canberra. I asked Katharine Brisbane if "hothouse" meant self-indulgence, but she explained that the dramaturgs have the task - which requires very high level skills combining an academic understanding of dramatic structure with an ability to solve practical craft problems - of providing the objectivity which is needed to produce professional standards.
So this is the Playwrights' Conference - a hothouse, greenhouse, seminal sort of event which is encapsulated by the title of the year-round program run by the Playwrights' Centre, called Fertile Grounds. This provides Master Classes for experienced writers, so when a delicate petal has made it from the seedbeds to the garden, growth still continues. It's not like Floriade, where all those bulbs get untimely ripped out after a month of glorious show: modern Australian theatre is a professionally organised process of development - a continuing growth industry.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 5 September 1996
1996: The Incorruptible by Louis Nowra
The Incorruptible by Louis Nowra. Directed by Aubrey Mellor. Designer: Shaun Gurton. Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, September 4 - 7, 1996.
Don't miss this new production of The Incorruptible. Since its Playbox production in Melbourne a year ago, the script has been tightened, characters have more depth and the humour more edge.
If you ever wondered how Joh Bjelke-Petersen's pilot could have remained so loyal, Rachel Szalay's characterisation of Louise Porter will show you, as she develops from lapsed Catholic cynical realist to follower of the faith, whose eyes are finally opened to a new understanding. Hers is the central role in the emotional interplay between Ion Stafford, the incorruptible loner who is made Premier of Queensland and makes himself Prime Minister of Australia, and Ed Gabelich (Gabo), political wheeler and dealer who shows how the loner's single-mindedness creates corruption and chaos for everybody else.
On opening night John Howard as Ion and Denis Moore as Gabo were so finely tuned in the development of the humour and the bitterness in their roles that they both starred and gave Szalay the support she needed for her quality to shine through in the second act. This was top class ensemble playing which is an absolute pleasure to see.
Louis Nowra experiments with style in each new play, and Shaun Gurton has provided wonderful, huge and colourful back projections and shadows which are a delight in themselves, but especially enhance Nowra's statement "I work by resonance and metaphor". The play is full of laughs which reverberate against reality. Words spoken have different explicit and implicit meanings in public and private responses. Events have the unpredictability of real life in an expressionist setting.
The music includes Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry - this title sums up for me the central theme. Nowra is an original, and prolific writer whose work always has integrity. The earth does cry in this play, though you may be laughing even at the end. I was reminded of a King Lear in which Cordelia is left to face the truth, and Kent clowns for our amusement on a tightrope above filthy sawdust mulch, the blood and bone around the roses, which fertilises our lives. This is an enjoyable, at times unnerving, and satisfying theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Don't miss this new production of The Incorruptible. Since its Playbox production in Melbourne a year ago, the script has been tightened, characters have more depth and the humour more edge.
If you ever wondered how Joh Bjelke-Petersen's pilot could have remained so loyal, Rachel Szalay's characterisation of Louise Porter will show you, as she develops from lapsed Catholic cynical realist to follower of the faith, whose eyes are finally opened to a new understanding. Hers is the central role in the emotional interplay between Ion Stafford, the incorruptible loner who is made Premier of Queensland and makes himself Prime Minister of Australia, and Ed Gabelich (Gabo), political wheeler and dealer who shows how the loner's single-mindedness creates corruption and chaos for everybody else.
On opening night John Howard as Ion and Denis Moore as Gabo were so finely tuned in the development of the humour and the bitterness in their roles that they both starred and gave Szalay the support she needed for her quality to shine through in the second act. This was top class ensemble playing which is an absolute pleasure to see.
Louis Nowra experiments with style in each new play, and Shaun Gurton has provided wonderful, huge and colourful back projections and shadows which are a delight in themselves, but especially enhance Nowra's statement "I work by resonance and metaphor". The play is full of laughs which reverberate against reality. Words spoken have different explicit and implicit meanings in public and private responses. Events have the unpredictability of real life in an expressionist setting.
The music includes Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry - this title sums up for me the central theme. Nowra is an original, and prolific writer whose work always has integrity. The earth does cry in this play, though you may be laughing even at the end. I was reminded of a King Lear in which Cordelia is left to face the truth, and Kent clowns for our amusement on a tightrope above filthy sawdust mulch, the blood and bone around the roses, which fertilises our lives. This is an enjoyable, at times unnerving, and satisfying theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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