The Bell Shakespeare Company has grown four tentacles, two of which reach out to Canberra this week. The main company opens its 1997 tour with The Winter's Tale at the Canberra Theatre on Saturday. The theatre-in-education company, on contract to Young Australia Workshop, is performing Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes at the Albert Hall during weekdays for primary schools.
Bell Shakespeare has taken on a tradition which has a long history in Australia: taking Shakespeare to the people in large and small communities across the country. Their high school education team, Actors at Work, workshops scenes from the Bard with teenage students, following in the footsteps of the Young Elizabethan Players of 30 years ago. The fourth team presents Shakespeare Without Technology, currently performing Macbeth in rural towns. These are minimal productions, rather along the lines of those on the goldfields a century and a half ago.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is the story of Sadako Sasaki who died from leukemia at the age of eleven, nine years after the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Bravery in the face of inevitable death, and the spiritual positives in the Japanese culture, are the themes of Eleanor Coerr's narrative, adapted for the stage and directed by Chris Canute.
The Bell Company decided that Shakespeare should be left to older audiences, but for younger children this play has the same effect as any of his tragedies. Re-telling of traumatic memories can help someone cope with a dreadful past, and theatre can do the same for a whole society. Sadako tries to make a thousand paper cranes before she dies, a task which was completed by the other children in her school. Her statue stands in the Peace Park in Hiroshima. Her mother's haiku poem says:
Out of coloured paper
the cranes come flying
into our house.
The play ends with: This is our prayer - Peace in the World.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment