1997: Bod by Elaine Acworth - feature article and review by Peter Wilkins

[BOD was directed by Carol Woodrow.  At the time Frank McKone was Chair of the Board of her company, Wildwood Theatre, and therefore could not review the production.  Peter Wilkins, with Alanna Maclean and Frank McKone were the regular review team for the Canberra Times at this time.]

    Elaine Acworth sat shocked in her small London flat as the stark images of   Chinese oppression during the 1988 Tibetan uprising flashed across her small television screen. Sequestered within the austere gloom of Thatcher’s dismantled nation, Acworth’s political consciousness was vividly ignited into a passion that would inspire a seven year journey to bring her epic tribute to Tibetan courage to the stage. BOD (pronounced “peu” - the Tibetan name for the province of Tibet) was born in the flickering images of extraordinary home footage. “It was unbelievable and the roughness of the quality of the footage added to the feeling of panic and chaos that was happening in the streets. Monks were being beaten; people were being coshed over the heads. Shots rang out as monks, in Buddhist robes, ran for their lives through the streets of Lhasa.”

    The journey had begun for the Australian actor, who had come to London’s E15 School of Acting and discovered, not the fame and fortune of the stage, but the passions and beliefs of the playwright. In front of the horrific images of brutality, and appalled at the news of a monk’s self immolation, Acworth started thinking about the level of commitment and belief that was involved in that ultimate sacrifice. For her, the clergy were actually representing the voice of freedom. The voice of the writer was giving expression to questions that would guide her seven year quest.

    The panoramic themes of her epic were beginning to emerge. The spirit of the Tibetan people came alive in the streets as they struggled to maintain the requirements of human dignity, and regain the ability to live the life one actually wishes to live. “I started getting tremendously interested about what was happening in the country and thinking how people maintain themselves in these circumstances. How do you continue to do things that are important to you? How do you celebrate your religion when you’re officially not allowed to? What happens to your language when it is no longer the currency of education?”

    The burning, universal questions roll off the tongue and fuel the themes of Acworth’s flaming passion. “When Life is your belief, and you face losing it, how do you choose? How do you maintain your own integrity, and the things you believe in against this eternal onslaught?” BOD’s director, Carol Woodrow, adds reverently, “The central question of the play.” She contributes her view on Acworth’s themes. “Life is about hope, rolling with the punches - nothing is fixed, permanent. It is about change. If you cannot practise your faith where you are, then you take it with you.”

    The vast questions of faith, spirituality and myth defied containment in Acworth’s first work - 120 pages long; with 30 characters in 30 scenes and covering 60 years! “This is not an appropriate play,” Acworth thought. “Go away. Put it away. You don’t have enough skill.”

    But BOD refused to go away. In 1991, Acworth visited the western areas of China, bordering what the Chinese refer to as the autonomous province of Tibet. For several months, she steeped herself in the culture and history of the Tibetan nation, discoursing for hours in broken English and sign language with the monks. Gradually BOD  began to metamorphose, enriched by research and informed by Acworth’s quest.

        “Writers have territories that they’re interested in, and they’ll keep revisiting those territories in different forms.. I realized that every play I’d written had a character who’s died in it. My Dad died when I was very young and that is something I keep reexamining.” Acworth perceives events in the context of a continuum and she is interested in the incessant nature of change. BOD reflects the requirement to constantly adapt to new circumstances, new surroundings. The prevailing question drives her inspiration and gives birth to her epic story of a Tibetan village, prior to and immediately after the 1959 invasion of this holy nation by the Chinese. “How do you maintain the existence of what has been valuable here and how do you allow it to come to life and breathe in these new circumstances - the notions of death, change and hope?”

    More reading and research followed these questions. Acworth spoke with Tibetans in London and considered writing a community play, because of a nervousness about writing something that wasn’t from her own culture. However, she soon realized that BOD could not be done as a community play. “Even if the play was not going to be as big as I’d written it, it was still going to be bloody big. It needed performers who could get their heads around story arcs, time shifts and the journey that I was going to ask them to do.

    At about the same time, Acworth was lured home to her native Brisbane by the euphoria surrounding the resignation of Bjelke Peterson. She arrived just as the Queensland Theatre Company was soliciting new scripts. Acworth submitted “Torch”, an urban grunge piece about Thatcherite Britiain. On the basis of this she was commissioned to write her own work, and the fairytale dream became “Composing Venus”, which opened the Q.T.C.’s ‘94 season and won the prestigious George Landon-Downe Award in 1993.

    Fired with enthusiasm, Acworth submitted Bod for consideration by the Australian National Playwright’s Centre. Mae-Britt Ackerholt, Artistic Director of the ANPC wrote back, “Phenomenal writing. Huge! Do you want to come down and do some development work?” This had been the first time that such an offer had been made to a playwright. BOD was emerging from its cocoon.

    Carol Woodrow takes up the story. “Mae-Britt rang me and said, “Look, I have this extraordinary piece of writing. I don’t think it’s somewhere near a play, but I can’t ignore it. I don’t know what you can do with it,but you’re the right director for it.” Woodrow remembers those early impressions: “mind-blowing, impossible to stage but fantastic, just fantastic.” I ask her what she found fantastic about it. “Incredible quality of writing - incredibly poetic, muscular, layered, deep, complex - like no Australian work I have ever encountered - the language itself was like bonfire stuff. I just fell in love with it.”

    After two weeks of round the clock immersion, Woodrow and Acworth felt that they had discovered the spine of this epic of myth, spirituality, history and generational flow. Delegates at the Conference were fascinated by the rough, skeletal outline that was presented.

    “It’s the pull of the play.” explains Woodrow. “It winds people into it. People become passionate and absorbed and committed to it. It feels like climbing Mount Everest, and we have to be very prepared for it.” Acworth adds, “BOD exemplifies that nothing is permanent, and everything changes its course. It (the play) has its own will. It’s the one that’s in charge. I’m just a medium. It runs itself. I don’t run it.”

    I am tugged by the density of the myth and ideas through this layered story of faith, hope, war and compassion. Director and playwright seduce me with their fiery passion. I am filled with curiosity and possessed by a sense of connection with the heart. Woodrow expresses it in words. “The grabbing thing was that you just started to love these people. You laugh with them, around them in this core of humanity. It’s hard to sell the show, because every time you talk about it, it’s so heavy, but it’s so light. People are so rich and truthful and interesting and funny, expressing the huge generous humour of the Tibetan people.”

    I wonder how I will ever express such vast humanity within this deeply layered, intriguing and powerful story in just one brief interview. We’ve already been swept along by BOD’s all-encompassing will for two hours, and so much more remains unsaid. What of the huge presence of the female, or the interwoven symbolism of the Creation Myths or the stories of the characters, the intimate village life, the life of the court, and the history of oppression, invasion and the struggle for survival.

    “Do as little about me as you can,” Acworth concludes. “Concentrate on the play.”

    Muse and myth fuse and reveal a writer of  great humanity and compassion.  Her journey of seven years now draws to a close. The time is right. Playwright and play are prepared to meet their audience.  The spell is cast on an epic scale and the medium prepares to entrance with her labour of love. In a world of incessant change , one thing remains certain. For those fortunate enough to see the culmination of Acworth’s  search for enlightenment, nothing will ever be quite the same.   
   


REVIEW BY PETER WILKINS

    Bod by Elaine Acworth. Directed by Carol Woodrow.  Wildwood. The Street Theatre. May 1-3;6-10, 1997, at 8 p.m. Matinees May 3rd and 10th, at 2 p.m. Professional

    The Street Theatre has launched its premiere season of contemporary Australian plays with the difficult birth of a drama of mythical grandeur, penetrating inquiry, richly textured language and epic narrative. Bod spans the life of  a Tibetan village over 30 years, leading up to the Chinese invasion of 1959 and beyond. It is a tale of struggle against oppression, survival against all odds and the power of faith against adversity. It is the story of Thangme and his training to become a monk It is the moving account of a mother’s resolute will to fight for her family, her village and her way of life. It is the tragic chronicle of invasion and subjugation of an innocent people by the dark forces of  tyranny. It is a metaphor for Life.

     Like a new born colt, Bod totters uneasily upon its infant legs. The first act is overladen with images of myth and ritual, which, although visually striking and atmospheric, obscure the story of  innocent souls, who live out their simple acts of faith and existence beneath Tibet’s lofty peaks. Woodrow’s action is excessively rumbustious as she strives to deal with Acworth’s dense mythology, Amanda McNamara’s magnificently expansive set and Nyree Smith’s evocative lighting. The production elements envelop the Street Theatre stage with professional gloss, but the talented ensemble of  actors struggle throughout the first act to reveal a narrative that will breathe life into their characters and  touch the audience with their story. Only Edward Wightman as the humorous and appealing Small, the Lama’s attendant, and Danielle Antaki in the dual role of Youdan, the mother, and Tag Senmo, the rock ogress, achieve the necessary stillness and depth of characterization.
   
    In the second act, writer and director allow the characters to tell their tale, and the sweeping saga of a people’s spirit begins to move us with its humanity and truth.  Wildwood and The Street Theatre have given this play breath in a new-born production that manifests the promise of Bod’s future life.  
   
   
      
© Peter Wilkins, published here by kind permission.