A new drama is about to unfold at the Australian National University. Senior Lecturer and Convenor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Dr Geoffrey Borny, has taken advantage of the restructuring of the University - so much a matter of contention especially in the Arts Faculty. Drama is on the move.
Theatre people are nothing if not eclectic gatherers of any opportunity. Drama began at ANU some 10 years ago when a position became available in the Department of Modern European Languages. "Post-Modern" was in the offing, and semiotics, including the semiotics of theatre, was all the go. Therefore Theatre was a Modern European Language! Especially when there was a job vacancy in that department, but not in the English Department. So Professor Stephen Prickett, Head of English at the time, put up a third of the cost, while MEL paid the rest. The Drama job was supposed to be a kind of service provider to literature and language courses so that students reading plays would learn something about how play production worked. ANU was just catching up with the movement to study the practice of theatre which began in the late 1970's in other academic institutions.
Until Borny arrived in 1991, the purpose of Drama at ANU was a matter of fuzzy logic. Coming from 3 years as Head of Theatre Studies at University of New England, Borny fitted easily into the culture of an Australian university town. Dr Borny prefers to be known as Geoffrey, being open to all students with an interest in theatre from the shy introspective theoretician to the budding professional practitioner. His egalitarian attitudes have seen the enrolments in Drama at ANU increase over the years as the total university enrolment has decreased.
Within the Modern European Languages Department Borny has had independence as the only expert in theatre, building up a small department of his own with Lecturer Tony Turner and part time staff Cathie Clelland, Hilary Taylor and Eulea Kiraly, all well-known locally in their own right. Why should he move?
ANU's internal politics in a time of cuts, especially in the climate of the new ideology which sees building up Business Administration (with an emphasis on Asia) as essential but Arts and apparently Modern European Languages in particular as expendable, have fortuitously re-directed Borny's attention to an English Department which now includes three expert theatre academicians: Professor Iain Wright, Dr Gillian Russell and Dr Jacqueline Lo.
The agreements are in writing and shortly we will see a new Department of English and Theatre Studies. For Geoffrey Borny this is a step in his plan to create at ANU a high profile, firmly based Theatre Studies institution.
This amalgamation offers students a wider and deeper range of opportunities at undergraduate, honours and doctoral levels of study, on the understanding that ANU does not pretend to be a training institution in professional theatre. Borny sees three equally important focusses in theatre studies. Professional training is highly technical, for the few who are sincerely dedicated to the practice (and who can expect to take up the limited employment opportunities). At the theoretical end is the study of texts and texts in production for the themes they explore: literary themes, sociological ideas, philosophies.
Borny takes a middle way, the crossover focus examining the conventions of theatre. He takes his students through the production process as they study a text, using the Drama Lab and the mainstage at the ANU Arts Centre, and putting on productions for the public through the vehicle of Papermoon Theatre, always with both the engagement / entertainment values of theatre and an educational purpose in mind. Often research into a past theatrical convention is tested on a modern audience: does Tennessee Williams' use of visual projections still work in The Glass Menagerie; or the use of direct address to the audience in Othello? Genre studies can mean studying farce via Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear. The need to see important plays which no-one else would present in Canberra led to the production last year of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts.
Now Drama at ANU has a clear logical place between the experience of secondary college drama and mature age training at institutions like NIDA. Dr Borny offers to develop the knowledge base and depth of understanding required of the modern actor or the modern drama teacher. There is a parallel with the new approach to medical training: take a degree first and then add the training. The result should be more erudite professionals, but, Geoffrey Borny will insist, never at the expense of the enjoyment of theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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