Catherine Hughes, Science Theatre Coordinator at the Boston Science Museum USA and founder of the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTA) arrived in Canberra yesterday (Wednesday 27/2/02). She is the keynote speaker at the National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions being held at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) from today (Thursday 28/2/02) until Saturday (2/3/02), jointly hosted by NMA and the School of Contemporary Arts, University of Western Sydney.
The Forum is a "self-examination" by museums across Australia of why theatrical performances should be used, what audiences learn from seeing them, and issues about performances such as censorship by funding bodies and sponsors. Institutions represented include Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), Questacon (Canberra), Historic Houses Trust NSW, Old Parliament House, Melbourne Museum and Australian National Maritime Museum, as well as NMA.
Hughes' main theme, based on research into neuroscience and the role of emotions and storytelling in memory and learning, is that theatre-in-education performances should be the core of a museum. Actors may represent conflicting viewpoints relating to museum exhibits, making theatre a "forum for debate, discussion and provocation: a safe place to examine difficult topics." This is in keeping with the new developments in museums, such as NMA whose charter emphasises showing Australian people past and present in the Australian environment.
Featured in the National Forum are well-known local performers John Shortis and Moya Simpson, The Jigsaw Company, Canberra Youth Theatre and Questacon's performance team Excited Particles, as well as CommonGround, Circus Solarus, Epoch Creations and others from interstate.
A key issue for the Forum will be the proper training of theatre professionals for museum performance. Hughes states the need for specialist high quality university courses as strands in drama-in-education and theatre training, to ensure "a more powerful learning experience."
Contact Daina Harvey at NMA for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 27 February 2002
Tuesday, 26 February 2002
2002: Museums: Panacea or Provocateur. Feature article
I went along to the panel discussion Museums: Panacea or Provocateur at the National Museum of Australia last Tuesday looking for controversy. Here were Elaine Gurian, former deputy director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Richard West, director of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian, and our own Dawn Casey, director of NMA. Surely from this mix of Jewish, Cheyenne and Aboriginal, provocation would be the order of the day.
I copped it, from Ms Gurian, who complained that the media only look for the bad news, when there is also small news, big news and especially good news which is news too. This arose from the case of the Enola Gay exhibition which, the Smithsonian was told, should be a celebration, not the horrible truth they had planned on showing. I suppose celebrating dropping an atom bomb on thousands of people is like celebrating the more recent September 11 suicide hi-jack bombs, which also became part of the discussion.
This led to good news indeed: how museums in USA "thought for the first time" that this event "had something to do with them". Gurian explained, as examples, how NY citizens went to see the Islam collection at the Metropolitan and children's museums took on a counselling role, seeing these as a good sign "even if the numbers were small" of change in museums away from places of the fusty dead towards what West called "civic spaces".
Somehow the panacea and the provocative merged into the idea of museums as a safe means for all to "engage in broader discourse", as "forums" which to be effective "need to be inclusive so that everybody should feel safe because this enlarges discourse". The Americans were so nice about it all, even though as West, the Cheyenne lawyer, had previously mentioned, the Bush administration could have consulted the Native Americans "who have a great deal of experience of being attacked in their own homeland." And so our Dawn stirred things up by bringing the issue home: "Some people would argue that this (the NMA) is not a safe place" because they find some exhibits disturbing, or believe the truth is not being told.
The philosophical theme settled on the museum - as educational, entertaining, multilayered rather than linear, catering for all communities and differing world views - as an institution whose object is to open minds, not to be a provocateur for its own sake. As more countries become multicultural, each cultural community needs "a place to stand". Geoffrey Blainey and John Mulvaney were mentioned as reaching agreement that the National Museum of Australia should not give coverage to communities according to how long they had been here, but each should have their own exhibitions. Otherwise, by my calculations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would have 99.6% of the Museum or 99.75%, according to which theory you follow: 45,000 or 80,000 years in Australia.
It was Casey who was upfront: "If we didn't offend anyone, we would be a very bland museum indeed"; and it was an astute questioner who recalled how public perception is still stereotyped, represented by the Prime Minister exclaiming at the opening of NMA "It's not at all like a museum!", which she thought was a "very positive view - for him."
Led by the ABC's Michelle Rayner (hear the full thing on Hindsight, Radio National 2pm Sunday March 13) the discussion ranged over how a "collection" has to be redefined according to who is the authority and who is responsible. When Hopi people came to see their objects in the National Museum of the American Indian, they took the opportunity to ceremonially scatter pollen and seeds, while according to West, two conservators fainted at the thought of mice in "their" exhibit.
In the end this slight representative of the media found the session rather more bland than he had hoped for. As Ms Rayner concluded, it's an "ongoing debate" - except that all three speakers agreed with each other on almost every point. If only there had been someone to stand up for the musty and fusty, for the old-style "cool" museum rather the "hot" modern monstrosity, to defend the ancient and bent researchers of the past who, like some librarians I have known who wouldn't let you touch the books, were described by Mr West as "too proprietary".
So, let the revolution roll on. I wonder if the Prime Minister will go back to see how they treat the Tampa and the "children overboard" episode (as part of the great migration story according to Dawn Casey). And I wonder how they will exhibit the Governor General, the Queen and the special CHOGM goblets. I think I could get quite excited by a "hot" museum, after all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I copped it, from Ms Gurian, who complained that the media only look for the bad news, when there is also small news, big news and especially good news which is news too. This arose from the case of the Enola Gay exhibition which, the Smithsonian was told, should be a celebration, not the horrible truth they had planned on showing. I suppose celebrating dropping an atom bomb on thousands of people is like celebrating the more recent September 11 suicide hi-jack bombs, which also became part of the discussion.
This led to good news indeed: how museums in USA "thought for the first time" that this event "had something to do with them". Gurian explained, as examples, how NY citizens went to see the Islam collection at the Metropolitan and children's museums took on a counselling role, seeing these as a good sign "even if the numbers were small" of change in museums away from places of the fusty dead towards what West called "civic spaces".
Somehow the panacea and the provocative merged into the idea of museums as a safe means for all to "engage in broader discourse", as "forums" which to be effective "need to be inclusive so that everybody should feel safe because this enlarges discourse". The Americans were so nice about it all, even though as West, the Cheyenne lawyer, had previously mentioned, the Bush administration could have consulted the Native Americans "who have a great deal of experience of being attacked in their own homeland." And so our Dawn stirred things up by bringing the issue home: "Some people would argue that this (the NMA) is not a safe place" because they find some exhibits disturbing, or believe the truth is not being told.
The philosophical theme settled on the museum - as educational, entertaining, multilayered rather than linear, catering for all communities and differing world views - as an institution whose object is to open minds, not to be a provocateur for its own sake. As more countries become multicultural, each cultural community needs "a place to stand". Geoffrey Blainey and John Mulvaney were mentioned as reaching agreement that the National Museum of Australia should not give coverage to communities according to how long they had been here, but each should have their own exhibitions. Otherwise, by my calculations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would have 99.6% of the Museum or 99.75%, according to which theory you follow: 45,000 or 80,000 years in Australia.
It was Casey who was upfront: "If we didn't offend anyone, we would be a very bland museum indeed"; and it was an astute questioner who recalled how public perception is still stereotyped, represented by the Prime Minister exclaiming at the opening of NMA "It's not at all like a museum!", which she thought was a "very positive view - for him."
Led by the ABC's Michelle Rayner (hear the full thing on Hindsight, Radio National 2pm Sunday March 13) the discussion ranged over how a "collection" has to be redefined according to who is the authority and who is responsible. When Hopi people came to see their objects in the National Museum of the American Indian, they took the opportunity to ceremonially scatter pollen and seeds, while according to West, two conservators fainted at the thought of mice in "their" exhibit.
In the end this slight representative of the media found the session rather more bland than he had hoped for. As Ms Rayner concluded, it's an "ongoing debate" - except that all three speakers agreed with each other on almost every point. If only there had been someone to stand up for the musty and fusty, for the old-style "cool" museum rather the "hot" modern monstrosity, to defend the ancient and bent researchers of the past who, like some librarians I have known who wouldn't let you touch the books, were described by Mr West as "too proprietary".
So, let the revolution roll on. I wonder if the Prime Minister will go back to see how they treat the Tampa and the "children overboard" episode (as part of the great migration story according to Dawn Casey). And I wonder how they will exhibit the Governor General, the Queen and the special CHOGM goblets. I think I could get quite excited by a "hot" museum, after all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 13 February 2002
2002: Your Slip is Showing by Christa de Jager and Liliana Bogatko
Your Slip is Showing by Christa de Jager and Liliana Bogatko. Empty Spaces Theatre Company at The Street Theatre Studio February 12-14 7pm. 2002 National Multicultural Festival.
What a little surprise! - a kind of light version of Waiting for Godot from a women's perspective with a reverse twist at the end. Called "uniquely weird" in the program, sometimes absurdly opaque like Beckett's play, here are an ex-South African and an ex-Pole waiting for a dream which they can't define.
Is "Mr Man" - in European seductive mode, or as tough Boer macho, or even as Aussie cork-hatted beery couch potato Norm - the dream come true? Well no, not really - just as Pozzo and Lucky can never be Godot, who, as the little boy tells Estragon and Vladimir, will not come today.
But our women tonight, reduced to their underwear by Mr Man's mean saxophone, hear the wind in the fog, and find the gates of emigration and immigration. Only when they understand that they cannot know where they are going, do they pass through the final gate to independence from Mr Man, shuffling him off to a lonely dim spotlight for his last expiration on the sax. Godot comes for these women: maybe this is what Australia offers? The Lucky Country indeed!
Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven - Mr Man - of Dutch-Indonesian origin, says nothing except through mime and his saxophone. His improvisations would do Clinton proud in his relations with Monica, and are certainly a gem to watch and hear. Bogatko is beguiling, extracting a virtual cheer from the opening night audience especially for her vacuum cleaning climactic. While de Jager, always with proper reservations, held the play together thematically with a kind of lean strength.
Termed a "workshopped play", without a separate director, Your Slip is Showing is the first production for this new local company. If a Multicultural Festival draws such people out of our community to explore their experiences in such interesting ways, then it has fulfilled a valuable role. I look forward to more work from Empty Spaces. To rephrase Peter Brook: A woman walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching her, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What a little surprise! - a kind of light version of Waiting for Godot from a women's perspective with a reverse twist at the end. Called "uniquely weird" in the program, sometimes absurdly opaque like Beckett's play, here are an ex-South African and an ex-Pole waiting for a dream which they can't define.
Is "Mr Man" - in European seductive mode, or as tough Boer macho, or even as Aussie cork-hatted beery couch potato Norm - the dream come true? Well no, not really - just as Pozzo and Lucky can never be Godot, who, as the little boy tells Estragon and Vladimir, will not come today.
But our women tonight, reduced to their underwear by Mr Man's mean saxophone, hear the wind in the fog, and find the gates of emigration and immigration. Only when they understand that they cannot know where they are going, do they pass through the final gate to independence from Mr Man, shuffling him off to a lonely dim spotlight for his last expiration on the sax. Godot comes for these women: maybe this is what Australia offers? The Lucky Country indeed!
Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven - Mr Man - of Dutch-Indonesian origin, says nothing except through mime and his saxophone. His improvisations would do Clinton proud in his relations with Monica, and are certainly a gem to watch and hear. Bogatko is beguiling, extracting a virtual cheer from the opening night audience especially for her vacuum cleaning climactic. While de Jager, always with proper reservations, held the play together thematically with a kind of lean strength.
Termed a "workshopped play", without a separate director, Your Slip is Showing is the first production for this new local company. If a Multicultural Festival draws such people out of our community to explore their experiences in such interesting ways, then it has fulfilled a valuable role. I look forward to more work from Empty Spaces. To rephrase Peter Brook: A woman walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching her, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2002: Flowers Aren't Enough by Naomi Ackerman
Flowers Aren't Enough written and performed by Naomi Ackerman. 2002 National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre Studio February 12-14 8pm.
Naomi Ackerman, as an experienced professional actor, was engaged by the Jerusalem Ministry of Welfare to research, write and perform a theatre-in-education piece dealing with domestic violence and abuse. Flowers Aren't Enough weaves together elements of true stories of women in refuges in Israel into the fictional Michal's story of her ideals of love and marriage destroyed by a lover and husband for whom power over her is a social necessity. Verbal put downs, anger and steadily escalating physical violence are played out between bouts of apparently real contrition, promises never to do such things to her again, and loving behaviour which leave her feeling guilty, powerless and finally suicidal.
Only at this point is her plight made visible to her parents, and only because her husband leaves her alone in the hospital for ten days, is she able to think clearly: he has no right to take her life; she has no right to take her life; and she has every right to seek professional help and to escape the cycle of violence imposed on her.
Ackerman's script and her performance of it is rivetting for all its 50 minutes, but she makes it clear, coming back on stage out of character, that the follow-up discussion of the issues in the story is the most important part of the evening. Certainly on opening night there was no limit except time constraints to the questions. In her answers, Ackerman was able to draw on her experiences in performing some 400 times, to women's groups, police, prisoners, high school students in Israel (where she stated that dealing with men's use of violence for power is an "interesting issue"), in USA, in India and now in Australia, with her current tour to take in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hawaii and North America.
She has found everywhere the same conflict over the assumption of power by men over women, with different responses in different cultures, according to the opportunities for women and men to seek professional help, and for women to leave abusive situations. Her work is a powerful and sobering message: respect requires restraint from violence, physical and especially verbal, for "words can destroy your soul".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Naomi Ackerman, as an experienced professional actor, was engaged by the Jerusalem Ministry of Welfare to research, write and perform a theatre-in-education piece dealing with domestic violence and abuse. Flowers Aren't Enough weaves together elements of true stories of women in refuges in Israel into the fictional Michal's story of her ideals of love and marriage destroyed by a lover and husband for whom power over her is a social necessity. Verbal put downs, anger and steadily escalating physical violence are played out between bouts of apparently real contrition, promises never to do such things to her again, and loving behaviour which leave her feeling guilty, powerless and finally suicidal.
Only at this point is her plight made visible to her parents, and only because her husband leaves her alone in the hospital for ten days, is she able to think clearly: he has no right to take her life; she has no right to take her life; and she has every right to seek professional help and to escape the cycle of violence imposed on her.
Ackerman's script and her performance of it is rivetting for all its 50 minutes, but she makes it clear, coming back on stage out of character, that the follow-up discussion of the issues in the story is the most important part of the evening. Certainly on opening night there was no limit except time constraints to the questions. In her answers, Ackerman was able to draw on her experiences in performing some 400 times, to women's groups, police, prisoners, high school students in Israel (where she stated that dealing with men's use of violence for power is an "interesting issue"), in USA, in India and now in Australia, with her current tour to take in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hawaii and North America.
She has found everywhere the same conflict over the assumption of power by men over women, with different responses in different cultures, according to the opportunities for women and men to seek professional help, and for women to leave abusive situations. Her work is a powerful and sobering message: respect requires restraint from violence, physical and especially verbal, for "words can destroy your soul".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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