1998: Black Elk Speaks by Christopher Sergel

Black Elk Speaks by Christopher Sergel.  The Company at Weston Park.  Follow the red and black flags.

    Black Elk Speaks has been postponed until Tuesday January 27 at 6.30pm at Weston Park.  The wind and rain coming across the lake today (Sunday) would have made the dialogue impossible to hear, but the plans for the choreography look interesting.  A large crowd turned up, even though the weather was truly black, bearing down on Black Mountain from the Brindabellas, but Black Elk was unable to speak today.  We will need an un-rain (and un-wind)dance for Tuesday.

The Review

 Black Elk Speaks by Christopher Sergel.  Reading directed by Telia Nevile for The Company.  Weston Park, January 27, 1998, only.

    Someone must have danced, and danced well, after Sunday's wind and rain postponement.  29 degrees, gentle wafts, green pines, blue sky, sun setting as Black Elk spoke.  Traffic on the parkway across the lake was an almost soothing distant reminder of modern living.  In our little amphitheatre among the pines, symbolic of Pine Tree Ridge and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1876, people were quiet before the play began, maybe a little nervous of their sense that the earth should not be disturbed.

    As Black Elk told his story, in simple pictures so we could understand, the Tuggeranong Parkway became, slicing through Aboriginal land, like the road to the goldfields murderously forced through Cheyenne country.  As the story of Tambo, taken to America as a circus exhibit, currently on display at the National Library, indigenous people in the 19th Century were effectively seen as more animal than human.  "Before the road signs were erected to their memory, these were people" says Black Elk, an old man remembering what he saw at Wounded Knee.

    "What about the human beings who already live here?" asks a person ordered to leave her country in favour of the settlement of US citizens.  "You're not citizens" is the government official's reply.  "Red skin people are not mentioned in the Bible, which raises the question of whether they are actually human beings."

    This play is a pageant of the invaders' hypocrisy and betrayal of the American indigenous peoples.  As Marlon Brando mentions in his autobiography, almost 400 treaties were signed, but all were broken "with the blessing and sanction of our courts".  Among the pine trees, the rocks and ridges, if this had been not merely a reading but a fully costumed production, it would be powerful theatre in education indeed.  Despite the devastation of more than two centuries, Black Elk concludes: "We offer you the wooden cup filled with water.  It is yours. We have spoken."  He turned, an old man, to climb the final ridge. The audience remained silent, respectful of the earth and indigenous history.  A fine moment of reconciliation for Australia Day.

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

1998: A Streetcar Named Datsun 120Y by Mary Brown; I Am The Shark, You Are The Prey by Kurt Shean

A Streetcar Named Datsun 120Y by Mary Brown; I Am  The Shark, You Are The Prey by Kurt Shean.  Directed by Iain Sinclair for Elbow Theatre Company at the Currong Theatre, Gorman House.  Season: January 22-24 and 28-31, 1998.  Bookings: 6230 4828.   
    Critics are justifiably loath to enthuse too much, even about excellent work, in the knowledge that the future can so easily prove them wrong.  There are times and places in history when theatre suddenly flares with imagination.  From often small sparks, like Melbourne's La Mama 35 years ago, smouldering embers become continuing sources of heat and light.

    Canberra's theatrical fire has glowed with occasional sparks for more than 25 years: what I saw at Elbow's preview on Wednesday was a jet of flame in comparison. 

    Simon Clarke's movement, voice and characterisation perfectly presented all the details of Kurt Shean's storytelling, so we came to understand the nature of myth.  In Mary Brown's horrifyingly funny study of Rex (seen last year in Pig Biting Mad, now in the complete version), Kenneth Spiteri had me on the edge of the seat ready to run if his insanity became seriously dangerous.  Two Canberra writers, two Canberra actors and two pieces of modern theatre you cannot afford to miss.

    Before and between the plays are songs by Lonesome Fred Smith, sung with Fiona and Heather Bolton, in the form of satirical ballads, in which absurdities become both humorous and telling.  It's sad to find ourselves laughing at society's inhumanity, even though it's educational to perceive hypocrisy.

    Elbow Theatre is on the edge, or rather presents us the double-edged sword of humour in inescapable truth.  The quality of their irony is not strained: a compliment to the intelligence of the writers, performers and director, Iain Sinclair.  I feel I have been waiting for this to happen in Canberra.

    The show goes from here to the Adelaide Festival Fringe.  Other new plays are in the offing.  The company will offer workshops.  I sense that this new theatre is at the right time and place.  This is capital city quality firing up in our very own capital city - but the actors can only afford to stay here if you give them an audience.  You won't be disappointed.

© Frank McKone, Canberra