Solid. A Black N'2 production for Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, October 30 - November 3, 8pm.
"How would you like your tea? Black n'2 like you and me." At this point, the end of Solid, Graham settles down to learn his Noongar language from his Nan in Busselton, south of Perth. In Perth he had been "lost in life", facing loss of country, culture and language with no hope, no apparent way forward. Like refugees everywhere he tried to escape - north - with no clear destination. How could he face his Nan when he had not prevented his heroin-using brother from killing himself; when he was himself using alcohol and speed; when he could not care for wife and children; when no-one would employ him?
Meet Carol from Wankatjunka community in the Kimberley, destined for a traditional arranged marriage. She escaped south to Perth, got herself an education and a job. In the Aboriginal support agency, usually she's the only one actually at work - and it's her reports and submissions that get the funding: for other people's projects, of course, but at least it's a real job. She must go back, though, for her grandfather's funeral, and face the possibility of punishment for not fulfilling her marriage commitment.
Carol faces up to her traditional responsibility, and becomes the model for Graham to face his Nan in a play which reveals the truth about the cultures of the real Kimberley woman, Ningali Lawford, and the real Noongar man, Kelton Pell, two people as different culturally as the English and the French. After all you wouldn't catch an Englishman eating snails, would you?
With Graham, we can learn to see the emu in the dark spaces between the stars in the Milky Way, which bright lights and pollution had hidden from Noongar memory. With whimsy, humour and an ability to capture emotional tension in the turn of a word, Lawford and Pell show us human complexity, and human possibilities, as understandable in Wankatjunka as in Noongar country, in Canberra, or anywhere. This play is about country - our country - seen from the inside. All Australians will savour this cup of tea.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 31 October 2001
Thursday 25 October 2001
2001: Who Cares If I Care?
Who Cares If I Care? by Hidden Corners International, directed by Robin Davidson. Gorman House C Block October 25-27, 7.30pm.
When young people perform I usually look for their sincerity, knowing that for untrained actors it is hard not to pretend to act, rather than really act. If a performance can move me to laughter and tears, make me face reality, and yet still celebrate life, then I know I am not watching a pretence.
Hidden Corners International is a big name for a small group of teenagers who through force of circumstance must care for others - maybe a sick parent, a disabled sibling. Mary Gays from Marymead, aware of the tensions and pressures affecting young carers, asked Robin Davidson to run workshops in creative writing and drama from which grew Who Cares If I Care?, a remarkably strong piece of theatre following George's story dealing with her father's sudden hospitalisation with a brain tumour (while her mother had died when George was young); Kevin's story with a mother who only appears on the end of a phone line while he has to cope with a schizophrenic younger brother; and Claire's story of how angry she becomes with her mother who is disabled with multiple sclerosis.
You can see where the tears come from, but these young people facing such adult responsibilities show us humour with a telling ironic edge, fear without sentimentality, and a wonderful sense of achievement in their lives. The play itself is an achievement of which they can all be proud. The sincerity of their performances, grounded in their real life experiences, has left me wondering how I would cope in their circumstance. It makes me concerned that, though this group have had such a great opportunity in creating and presenting their play, there must be many young - and older - carers who are not given the support they need. Politicians please take note.
Particularly I was worried by the humorous but unpleasant vignettes of a counsellor so concerned with his own childish obsession that he couldn't even listen to his clients' stories, let alone help them. If you would like to help, especially to send Hidden Corners to a Young Carers Festival in UK next year, which makes them International, email Mary Gays at mds@marymead.org.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
When young people perform I usually look for their sincerity, knowing that for untrained actors it is hard not to pretend to act, rather than really act. If a performance can move me to laughter and tears, make me face reality, and yet still celebrate life, then I know I am not watching a pretence.
Hidden Corners International is a big name for a small group of teenagers who through force of circumstance must care for others - maybe a sick parent, a disabled sibling. Mary Gays from Marymead, aware of the tensions and pressures affecting young carers, asked Robin Davidson to run workshops in creative writing and drama from which grew Who Cares If I Care?, a remarkably strong piece of theatre following George's story dealing with her father's sudden hospitalisation with a brain tumour (while her mother had died when George was young); Kevin's story with a mother who only appears on the end of a phone line while he has to cope with a schizophrenic younger brother; and Claire's story of how angry she becomes with her mother who is disabled with multiple sclerosis.
You can see where the tears come from, but these young people facing such adult responsibilities show us humour with a telling ironic edge, fear without sentimentality, and a wonderful sense of achievement in their lives. The play itself is an achievement of which they can all be proud. The sincerity of their performances, grounded in their real life experiences, has left me wondering how I would cope in their circumstance. It makes me concerned that, though this group have had such a great opportunity in creating and presenting their play, there must be many young - and older - carers who are not given the support they need. Politicians please take note.
Particularly I was worried by the humorous but unpleasant vignettes of a counsellor so concerned with his own childish obsession that he couldn't even listen to his clients' stories, let alone help them. If you would like to help, especially to send Hidden Corners to a Young Carers Festival in UK next year, which makes them International, email Mary Gays at mds@marymead.org.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday 20 October 2001
2001: Time Control by Canberra Youth Theatre Company
Time Control by Canberra Youth Theatre Company. Artistic Director: Estelle Muspratt. Workshop Directors: Barbra Barnett, Liliana Bogatko, Emma Bossard, Robin Davidson, Matthew Marshall, Alannah Pentony, Murphy People, Natalie Power, Kelly Somes, Karen Yaldren. October 3-20.
The most important image for me of this presentation of a mythic narrative in 6 chapters, each workshopped independently by Youth Theatre's 8-12, 12-15 and 15-24 year old groups, was a month's worth of applause last Saturday at sundown, and the immediate formation of groups of parents, friends and the actors and crew all talking excitedly about the experience of Time Control.
Each chapter was created in a style belonging to its workshop group. Often work which was focussed on scripted speech seemed to me too melodramatic to sustain the possible depths of the story of Old Timers who are running out of dreams and so devise a Dream Link where they can steal the dreams of the New Timers, making them effectively the Old Timers' slaves. From here a kind of Dr Who story centred on the Supreme Dreamer, the only New Timer who was not affected by the Dream Link, and who devised the way to destroy it.
Chapter 3 was perhaps the most theatrical, with its use of movement and circus, but it was also the least easy to follow in terms of the narrative. The Grand Finale, Chapter 6 at Weston Park, devised by the older group but using all 74 young actors, told its story clearly, taking the audience around from site to site, and with the use of fire the final battle and ceremony of destruction of the Dream Link was quite strong dramatically.
In the end, however, the point is the value of young people devising their own theatre, experiencing how their ideas can be given expression, how to work together, and how much satisfaction there is in completing a project, even knowing that the next project can be even better. Youth Theatre have put together in Time Control a celebration of community, in the long tradition of Canberra groups from Blue Folk to Splinters and CIA.
Authoritarianism, violence, fire and death may seem a lot for young people to bear, even in a theatrical myth - but we only have to look to our Old Timer politicians to see how we all need to retain our dreams.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The most important image for me of this presentation of a mythic narrative in 6 chapters, each workshopped independently by Youth Theatre's 8-12, 12-15 and 15-24 year old groups, was a month's worth of applause last Saturday at sundown, and the immediate formation of groups of parents, friends and the actors and crew all talking excitedly about the experience of Time Control.
Each chapter was created in a style belonging to its workshop group. Often work which was focussed on scripted speech seemed to me too melodramatic to sustain the possible depths of the story of Old Timers who are running out of dreams and so devise a Dream Link where they can steal the dreams of the New Timers, making them effectively the Old Timers' slaves. From here a kind of Dr Who story centred on the Supreme Dreamer, the only New Timer who was not affected by the Dream Link, and who devised the way to destroy it.
Chapter 3 was perhaps the most theatrical, with its use of movement and circus, but it was also the least easy to follow in terms of the narrative. The Grand Finale, Chapter 6 at Weston Park, devised by the older group but using all 74 young actors, told its story clearly, taking the audience around from site to site, and with the use of fire the final battle and ceremony of destruction of the Dream Link was quite strong dramatically.
In the end, however, the point is the value of young people devising their own theatre, experiencing how their ideas can be given expression, how to work together, and how much satisfaction there is in completing a project, even knowing that the next project can be even better. Youth Theatre have put together in Time Control a celebration of community, in the long tradition of Canberra groups from Blue Folk to Splinters and CIA.
Authoritarianism, violence, fire and death may seem a lot for young people to bear, even in a theatrical myth - but we only have to look to our Old Timer politicians to see how we all need to retain our dreams.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday 13 October 2001
2001: Shake. Canberra Youth Theatre
Shake. Canberra Youth Theatre directed by Linda McHugh at Tracking Kultja, National Museum of Australia, First Australians Gallery. October 13-14 and Wednesday October 17, 10 am, 12 noon, 2 pm.
Earlier in the year I wrote about museum theatre - theatre in a museum, that is - at NMA. I hoped that there would be more. Well, there is, and there will be, and there should be, if we take CYT's Shake as a guide.
Daina Harvey from NMA has just returned from a conference of the International Museum Theatre Alliance and is enthused now to use actors to present real characters from our history to bring NMA's exhibits even more to life. In the meantime she helped lead a small group around the opening performance on Saturday of CYT's "street" theatre in 5 vignettes.
Shake runs like a small creek, beginning at a high waterfall of sounds - The Australian Declaration Towards Aboriginal Reconciliation. Then a small eddying pool of movement - Land and Spirit. In a quiet perhaps rainforested section of still water we heard Childhood Stories and saw figures of childhood, labelled like trees in a national park. Water then fell in thin strands in among the audience, with the words of laws about the "Protector of Aborigines" on a teletype ticker tape passing through people's fingers and before their eyes.
On reaching the point where the creek should shake hands with the sea, coming together was as turbulent as peaceful, raising Questions and Answers. Here the non-indigenous people, stood in line, asleep, head on the next person's shoulder. Then one stirs and calls "Wake up!" to the next and so on down the line, until the last says "Sorry", and the word flows back up the line. Isn't reconciliation easy, hey?
But when the indigenous people cry "Wake up!", the one on the end lies dead. There is silence and grieving. To achieve such a powerful and telling image in the Museum, in the First Australians Gallery, cannot fail to wake us, to make us realise past failings and how much must be done to turn the Australian Declaration Towards Aboriginal Reconciliation from easy words into hard reality.
Catch it Wednesday if you can.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Earlier in the year I wrote about museum theatre - theatre in a museum, that is - at NMA. I hoped that there would be more. Well, there is, and there will be, and there should be, if we take CYT's Shake as a guide.
Daina Harvey from NMA has just returned from a conference of the International Museum Theatre Alliance and is enthused now to use actors to present real characters from our history to bring NMA's exhibits even more to life. In the meantime she helped lead a small group around the opening performance on Saturday of CYT's "street" theatre in 5 vignettes.
Shake runs like a small creek, beginning at a high waterfall of sounds - The Australian Declaration Towards Aboriginal Reconciliation. Then a small eddying pool of movement - Land and Spirit. In a quiet perhaps rainforested section of still water we heard Childhood Stories and saw figures of childhood, labelled like trees in a national park. Water then fell in thin strands in among the audience, with the words of laws about the "Protector of Aborigines" on a teletype ticker tape passing through people's fingers and before their eyes.
On reaching the point where the creek should shake hands with the sea, coming together was as turbulent as peaceful, raising Questions and Answers. Here the non-indigenous people, stood in line, asleep, head on the next person's shoulder. Then one stirs and calls "Wake up!" to the next and so on down the line, until the last says "Sorry", and the word flows back up the line. Isn't reconciliation easy, hey?
But when the indigenous people cry "Wake up!", the one on the end lies dead. There is silence and grieving. To achieve such a powerful and telling image in the Museum, in the First Australians Gallery, cannot fail to wake us, to make us realise past failings and how much must be done to turn the Australian Declaration Towards Aboriginal Reconciliation from easy words into hard reality.
Catch it Wednesday if you can.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday 5 October 2001
2001: Demons by Wayne Macauley
Demons by Wayne Macauley, directed by David Branson. A FoCA work in progress. Street Theatre October 5-7, 8.10 pm.
A Festival of Contemporary Arts is only well served when original ideas are tried out. I saw preview night of Demons, but here is a work using a spare but quite intense script, group movement work, imagery on video screens and projections, which takes what to many of us might be Russian 19th Century romanticism (Devils by Dostoevsky) and applies its psychology of the human capacity for self-defeat to characters taking part in S11 demonstrations against globalisation.
The work has been developed so far mainly in Melbourne, but it was artsACT which came up with enough funds for a short workshop and rehearsal period for this production, which is planned to be an early stage of a fully developed work for the Melbourne Festival in a year's time. Hopefully funding will be found for this, because the dramatic structure is largely in place and the theme is certainly relevant.
We begin outside (bring something warm for the first 20 minutes) with a rehearsal by Albert Camus of his 1960 version of Dostoevsky, recreating the exaggerated emotions of romantic drama. An actor, committed to his art, argues the toss with the director and walks out. Camus drives away. And the director takes us to a BBQ where S11 protestors are relaxing after a demo, and where an activist, committed to action, creates a disturbance and perhaps a death.
By now we in the audience are disturbed, feeling uncomfortable, but we are taken into the warmth of the Foyer, into the Theatre, where we are told we are safe, though eerie figures - our mental demons - are outside the windows. We complete the circle out the back of the theatre to our starting point seeing a modern death and a Dostoevsky death on the way, to discover that Camus' play is off because he has been killed in a car smash. We end as uncomfortable as we began.
For an old peacenik like me, it's disturbing to think that Dostoevsky's tragic flaw view of humanity might be right. Making us uncomfortable is a legitimate role for theatre, and Demons certainly has potential.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
A Festival of Contemporary Arts is only well served when original ideas are tried out. I saw preview night of Demons, but here is a work using a spare but quite intense script, group movement work, imagery on video screens and projections, which takes what to many of us might be Russian 19th Century romanticism (Devils by Dostoevsky) and applies its psychology of the human capacity for self-defeat to characters taking part in S11 demonstrations against globalisation.
The work has been developed so far mainly in Melbourne, but it was artsACT which came up with enough funds for a short workshop and rehearsal period for this production, which is planned to be an early stage of a fully developed work for the Melbourne Festival in a year's time. Hopefully funding will be found for this, because the dramatic structure is largely in place and the theme is certainly relevant.
We begin outside (bring something warm for the first 20 minutes) with a rehearsal by Albert Camus of his 1960 version of Dostoevsky, recreating the exaggerated emotions of romantic drama. An actor, committed to his art, argues the toss with the director and walks out. Camus drives away. And the director takes us to a BBQ where S11 protestors are relaxing after a demo, and where an activist, committed to action, creates a disturbance and perhaps a death.
By now we in the audience are disturbed, feeling uncomfortable, but we are taken into the warmth of the Foyer, into the Theatre, where we are told we are safe, though eerie figures - our mental demons - are outside the windows. We complete the circle out the back of the theatre to our starting point seeing a modern death and a Dostoevsky death on the way, to discover that Camus' play is off because he has been killed in a car smash. We end as uncomfortable as we began.
For an old peacenik like me, it's disturbing to think that Dostoevsky's tragic flaw view of humanity might be right. Making us uncomfortable is a legitimate role for theatre, and Demons certainly has potential.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 3 October 2001
2001: Via Dolorosa by David Hare
Via Dolorosa by David Hare, performed by Patrick Dickson. Directed by Moira Blumenthal at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, October 3-6.
I have had occasions in my teaching past when a top-class student, on whose assignment I had written Excellent A++, would approach me crestfallen. "You haven't told me why! You wrote such a long comment on Jane's, and she only got B. I need to know what you really thought about my work."
It was difficult to know how to tell such a student that her work outstretched my capacity to criticise, even constructively. David Hare's play about Palestine and Israel is in this class. I find it hard to imagine how he could have gathered so much detail from questioning and listening to so many people, holding the diversity of conflicting beliefs in his head all together, and shaping the experience of his travels into a kind of documentary drama in which he makes himself the central character on stage.
And then the writing is so good that an excellent actor like Patrick Dickson has no trouble convincing us that he is David Hare the playwright, who acts out for us politicians, theatre directors, taxi drivers, British Council "minders", US and Canadian Jewish settlers, Palestinian intellectuals with the dramatist's tendency to satirise, and his sense of despair. Using a simple set and easy transitions in lighting and sound, Dickson's timing was excellent, framing the visit to a country where political argument is rife - and 100,000 have died since the Oslo peace agreement - between the quiet bookends of Hampstead Heath, in a country where political argument seems to have lost its point.
Prime Minister Blair follows the popularity, Hare says, but he doesn't tell us what he really thinks. "Send your Blair over here, please" cries a Jewish or Palestinian from the back of the crowd in a land where everyone knows what everyone thinks, and divisions between the religious and the secular, between the principled and the corrupt, between those who see the truth and those who hypocritically refuse to look, not only divide Palestinian from Israeli, but Palestinian from Palestinian and Israeli from Israeli. And Christian from Christian.
Via Dolorosa has humour, weighs all sides equally in the scales of justice, engages our passions yet leaves us to think more clearly than we might expect since September 11: Excellent A++.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I have had occasions in my teaching past when a top-class student, on whose assignment I had written Excellent A++, would approach me crestfallen. "You haven't told me why! You wrote such a long comment on Jane's, and she only got B. I need to know what you really thought about my work."
It was difficult to know how to tell such a student that her work outstretched my capacity to criticise, even constructively. David Hare's play about Palestine and Israel is in this class. I find it hard to imagine how he could have gathered so much detail from questioning and listening to so many people, holding the diversity of conflicting beliefs in his head all together, and shaping the experience of his travels into a kind of documentary drama in which he makes himself the central character on stage.
And then the writing is so good that an excellent actor like Patrick Dickson has no trouble convincing us that he is David Hare the playwright, who acts out for us politicians, theatre directors, taxi drivers, British Council "minders", US and Canadian Jewish settlers, Palestinian intellectuals with the dramatist's tendency to satirise, and his sense of despair. Using a simple set and easy transitions in lighting and sound, Dickson's timing was excellent, framing the visit to a country where political argument is rife - and 100,000 have died since the Oslo peace agreement - between the quiet bookends of Hampstead Heath, in a country where political argument seems to have lost its point.
Prime Minister Blair follows the popularity, Hare says, but he doesn't tell us what he really thinks. "Send your Blair over here, please" cries a Jewish or Palestinian from the back of the crowd in a land where everyone knows what everyone thinks, and divisions between the religious and the secular, between the principled and the corrupt, between those who see the truth and those who hypocritically refuse to look, not only divide Palestinian from Israeli, but Palestinian from Palestinian and Israeli from Israeli. And Christian from Christian.
Via Dolorosa has humour, weighs all sides equally in the scales of justice, engages our passions yet leaves us to think more clearly than we might expect since September 11: Excellent A++.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday 2 October 2001
2001: Canberra Youth Theatre - 21C Happenings. Feature article.
Watch out for young artists all over town for the next 4 weeks.
Canberra Youth Theatre kicks off with Time Control Chapter 1 (Gorman House 6 pm Wednesday October 3). The very young can Write Your Own Adventure with Jackie French (at National Museum 11 am Thursday October 4). Philosophy with bubbles is at Currong Theatre in The Clockwork Divide. And this week also sees young filmmakers on the Big Screen in Garema Place (Friday and Saturday 8.30 pm); Time Control Chapter 2 on Saturday; and Demons exploring Dostoyevski Thursday to Sunday at The Street 8 pm.
In following weeks CYT's Time Control goes through all 6 chapters; the ACT Writers Centre shows 8 - 14 year olds how to illustrate stories at the National Museum; art installations by Ken Lee will appear somewhere yet to be announced; the Choreographic Centre's youth will take a Quantum Leap into Transdance 3091 at The Street. At Tuggeranong Arts Centre, NUTS will show Picasso and Einstein being intuitive in Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin; at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka (and on a nature strip in your suburb soon) Daniel Maginnity's Urbane Mosaics will materialise; and Canberra College photographers will be Extraordinary at Gorman House.
And where else but North Canberra Bowling Club would you expect to see a four-piece funk band called Baron Samadhi and Others? Dickson College goes Train Surfing at Currong Theatre; and ACT Playgroups have a big festival at Corroboree Park, Ainslie 10 am - 2 pm October 23.
And that's not all: there's the Tuggeranong Rotary Youth Arts Awards; Theatre in Decay from Melbourne Kissing the Ground Goodbye; Canberra College being Artrageous; Marymead with Who Cares If I Care?; Famillease directed by Eulea Kiraly; Ethnic Schools Languages Day; Silhouettes for massed recorders and prerecorded tape; and maybe a couple of other things which aren't yet finalised.
Checkout the Canberra Youth Theatre Company's web site for details. They did all the work drawing together 21C Happenings, to show the whole city what the youth of Canberra are doing this October. www.cytc.net will get you there.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Canberra Youth Theatre kicks off with Time Control Chapter 1 (Gorman House 6 pm Wednesday October 3). The very young can Write Your Own Adventure with Jackie French (at National Museum 11 am Thursday October 4). Philosophy with bubbles is at Currong Theatre in The Clockwork Divide. And this week also sees young filmmakers on the Big Screen in Garema Place (Friday and Saturday 8.30 pm); Time Control Chapter 2 on Saturday; and Demons exploring Dostoyevski Thursday to Sunday at The Street 8 pm.
In following weeks CYT's Time Control goes through all 6 chapters; the ACT Writers Centre shows 8 - 14 year olds how to illustrate stories at the National Museum; art installations by Ken Lee will appear somewhere yet to be announced; the Choreographic Centre's youth will take a Quantum Leap into Transdance 3091 at The Street. At Tuggeranong Arts Centre, NUTS will show Picasso and Einstein being intuitive in Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin; at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka (and on a nature strip in your suburb soon) Daniel Maginnity's Urbane Mosaics will materialise; and Canberra College photographers will be Extraordinary at Gorman House.
And where else but North Canberra Bowling Club would you expect to see a four-piece funk band called Baron Samadhi and Others? Dickson College goes Train Surfing at Currong Theatre; and ACT Playgroups have a big festival at Corroboree Park, Ainslie 10 am - 2 pm October 23.
And that's not all: there's the Tuggeranong Rotary Youth Arts Awards; Theatre in Decay from Melbourne Kissing the Ground Goodbye; Canberra College being Artrageous; Marymead with Who Cares If I Care?; Famillease directed by Eulea Kiraly; Ethnic Schools Languages Day; Silhouettes for massed recorders and prerecorded tape; and maybe a couple of other things which aren't yet finalised.
Checkout the Canberra Youth Theatre Company's web site for details. They did all the work drawing together 21C Happenings, to show the whole city what the youth of Canberra are doing this October. www.cytc.net will get you there.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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