NIDA - the National Institute of Dramatic Art - comes to Canberra for a week of workshops July 11 - 17. This year they are offering a mix of short courses in the Open Program.
You don't need to be an experienced actor or to have any special qualifications, but you do need some attitudes. Like, be prepared to enjoy yourself while you are working hard. And be ready to learn new and different ways of preparing yourself for a role, letting your imagination work for you, and expressing your character in action.
2 courses are for 12 - 15 years: Acting for Stage and Screen and Acting to Camera. Shakespeare Made Easy is for anyone 15 years and over. For 16 years and over, the choices are Acting, Building a Character, Screen Acting, Auditions and Screen Tests, Acting Intensive, Directing Intensive.
For details check the NIDA website at www.nida.edu.au/short_courses/open/national.
To find out what it will be like I spoke to tutor Simon Bossell. I last saw him as the young man playing opposite Ruth Cracknell in the quirky road movie Spider and Rose. He is one of a large team of NIDA tutors which includes Jennifer Hagan (a famous and early NIDA graduate), Sam Worthington (of Water Rats, Backberner, Blue Heelers, Getting Square and Somersault), Nicholas Bishop (currently playing Detective Peter Baker in Home and Away), Nathaniel Dean (AFI Best Supporting Actor in Walking on Water), Katrina Campbell (All Saints and McLeod's Daughters), Gerard Sont (Double Dare, and the ABCTV's Antenna) and Edith Podesta (Sydney stage director and performer at Belvoir St and Sydney Festival).
The list of NIDA graduates is full of the famous from Cate Blanchett, Judy Davis, Steve Bisley to Miranda Otto. Bossell explained that the short courses will give students a taste of the professional training actors receive at NIDA, but I wanted to know more. He is a film and a stage actor. What do you have to learn, and is acting very different on screen compared with on stage?
The difference is about "filling the space" on stage and "pulling it all back" for the camera. Although stage acting means "finding natural ways of amplifying" and film work means "most of the technique is contained" mainly in your face and hands, both kinds of acting are the same when it comes to your imagination - what's going on in your head. Bossell was taught by the famous director and teacher Lindy Davies, and described one of her methods he still uses, called "dropping in", which he says is particularly useful for classical theatre, such as his performances for Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company in A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear, Titus Andronicus and A Winter's Tale.
First you prepare by going through the script, finding all the images you can see in the words and relating these pictures in your mind to your personal experiences, so they become your images. When you read and rehearse the lines, you "breathe in" each image and then "breathe out" the line as you speak it. Using your breath in this way makes the images real in your imagination so that as you speak the line, you appear to someone watching as if you are the real character. Going with the images, of course, are the thoughts which come to mind. As you work to find the character, you focus on these thoughts, and allow yourself to react and to act outwardly in response.
Working to the camera means you keep your concentration on thinking the thoughts, letting them strike you - this is what is meant by "being in the moment". The expression on your face, where your eyes focus, how you speak and how you move follows naturally, and will often surprise you. This is what the camera records. Some directors want their actors to be self-sufficient, while others take their actors through a process as they film each scene to help create the illusion of real characters on film.
Working on stage means learning to keep focussed on the images and thoughts while making the action and speech fill the space in a theatre. Bossell says many actors find this difficult. It's easy to forget the thoughts and get involved in the big movements and voice, but the trick is that it is really the thoughts and the emotions they create which the audience responds to. What's in the head is what fills the space, not the obvious actions.
So what you can expect from NIDA classes is much more than fun. The work will be satisfying as you learn to take the first steps in professional training - a taste of what is to come if you decide acting is for you.
NIDA Open Program:
July 11-15 Acting, Acting for Stage and Screen, Building a Character, Screen Acting
July 12-14 Auditions and Screen Tests
July 16-17 Acting Intensive, Acting to Camera, Directing Intensive, Shakespeare Made Easy
Venue: Daramalan College
Information and Bookings:
Phone: (02) 9697 7626
Email: open@nida.edu.au
Website: www.nida.edu.au/short_courses/open/national
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 30 June 2005
Sunday, 26 June 2005
2005: The Inside Story: Writers, Manuscripts and the Creative Process. Feature article.
Last Saturday at the National Library a remarkable celebration took place - The Inside Story: Writers, Manuscripts and the Creative Process.
"It's too close for me, too small and too big ... I need to go away." These were the prophetic lines spoken by Peter, the new schoolteacher in a small country town in A Spring Song, the most successful play by Sydney writer Ray Mathew, presented by Twelfth Night Theatre Company in Brisbane in 1958.
Mathew really meant Australia. And leave he did, in 1960 - never to return. After a brief sojourn in Italy and some years in London (where A Spring Song appeared at The Mermaid in 1964), Mathew moved to New York with a friend's introduction to wealthy engineer and businessman Paul Kollsman and his wife, Eva, who became firm friends and literary patrons. Though he continued to write with a distinctive Australian voice (poetry, plays, novels, art criticisms) without ever becoming a household name, his body of work was significant enough for the National Library to begin archiving his papers in 1977. After his death in 2002, Eva Kollsman donated more of Mathew's papers, will make a generous bequest to the Library and has begun already with a major donation for this symposium to discuss the cultural heritage value of original manuscripts and the need to collect and preserve writers' original works - the reason for celebration.
But there was also reason for sadness, for among the prominent writers invited to talk to a full house about their fears and delights in having their manuscripts, diaries, notebooks, hard disks and CDs collected by the Library, Alex Buzo's serious ill health prevented him travelling to Canberra. We wish him well.
John Kinsella has a poem archived which is notable for a mysteriously overlaid policeman's boot print. Chris Mansell explained how preserving her drafts "keeps the writer honest because you can't deny who you are". Jack Hibberd's manuscripts are the result of mental fermentation. He claimed he could put them in order from the tea, coffee, wine and port stains, while guaranteeing there were no stains of self-abuse on his writing. Discussion before morning tea went to "metatextualising" (which none claimed to be guilty of) - that is, the "really unhealthy" practice of writing for the archivist, with only an eye on posterity.
At the other end of the day, scholar-archivist Susan Woodburn walked us through the Library's 13 kilometres of manuscripts and history since the Commonwealth Literary Fund of 1940, when grants were made by a parliamentary committee on which sat both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Henry Handel Richardson's was the first individual collection in 1946. Woodburn concluded that the archive can "convey immortality - your corpus, if not your hand, will be resurrected." This referred to her gruesome discovery in a cardboard box behind a curtain on a window ledge in the manuscript room of a cast of the hand of Henry Lawson.
Other writers, researchers and biographers like Michael McGirr, Nadia Wheatley, Tom Shapcott, Adrian Caesar and Lenore Coltheart agonised over ethical issues, sometimes feeling they were invading the privacy of the people whose papers they studied. But they noted that the discoveries of "who wrote what and when" (in the case of George Johnston and Charmian Clift), how "voice creates character, then character creates plot" (in the changes Mark Twain made as he wrote the first words spoken by Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer), or how only her letters and diaries can tell us not who Jessie Street was but who she is ("the only Jessie Street I - Coltheart - will ever know") keep the public debate and the people from the past alive.
All speakers were received enthusiastically throughout the day, leading to Philip Mead's talking of the manuscript room as "the book of revelations" and Robyn Holmes' demonstrating on screen how original music scores can not only be seen but heard online. But the grandest applause of the day went to old stager Bob Ellis, whose speech was a great example of the writer's art, taking the day's theme into a piece of writing well worthy of archiving.
Ellis told a story starting from Dickens who "believed a writer was also a citizen, with a citizen's obligations to report social evils to the authorities, to make corruption known, and bureaucratic folly lampooned and so reduced".
He proposed that the True Life of John Howard is an Australian story that needs to be told, since "despite 30 years of fame we know almost nothing about him". Did he approve the sending of an envelope containing white powder to the Indonesian Embassy? "He, the Prime Minister, and Alexander Downer were beating the story up when nobody else was too fussed about it ... and for a few crucial days the Wood kidnapping, the Corby sentence, the Leong injustice, the Rau injustice, the Chinese defectors, the coming massacres of whales by Japan, the Georgiou uprising, the Vanstone tailspin, the desecrated heroes' bones dug up to build a carpark on Gallipoli, and all the other instances of his cowardice were, as they say, 'overshadowed' by six or seven ounces of skilfully targeted Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder... If I'm wrong, let him take the lie detector test, or say why he won't."
The story ended "It is only by telling all without flinching ... can you illuminate an epoch, or portray a man ... Only by putting yourself, and him, and what Shakespeare called the very age and body of the time at risk, in peril, can you ever find, and know, and tell, the one thing that it is our obligation to tell: the truth."
This was truly a celebration of writers, manuscripts and the creative process, for which we must thank Eva Kollsman and her friendship for Ray Mathew, home at last in the archives at NLA.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"It's too close for me, too small and too big ... I need to go away." These were the prophetic lines spoken by Peter, the new schoolteacher in a small country town in A Spring Song, the most successful play by Sydney writer Ray Mathew, presented by Twelfth Night Theatre Company in Brisbane in 1958.
Mathew really meant Australia. And leave he did, in 1960 - never to return. After a brief sojourn in Italy and some years in London (where A Spring Song appeared at The Mermaid in 1964), Mathew moved to New York with a friend's introduction to wealthy engineer and businessman Paul Kollsman and his wife, Eva, who became firm friends and literary patrons. Though he continued to write with a distinctive Australian voice (poetry, plays, novels, art criticisms) without ever becoming a household name, his body of work was significant enough for the National Library to begin archiving his papers in 1977. After his death in 2002, Eva Kollsman donated more of Mathew's papers, will make a generous bequest to the Library and has begun already with a major donation for this symposium to discuss the cultural heritage value of original manuscripts and the need to collect and preserve writers' original works - the reason for celebration.
But there was also reason for sadness, for among the prominent writers invited to talk to a full house about their fears and delights in having their manuscripts, diaries, notebooks, hard disks and CDs collected by the Library, Alex Buzo's serious ill health prevented him travelling to Canberra. We wish him well.
John Kinsella has a poem archived which is notable for a mysteriously overlaid policeman's boot print. Chris Mansell explained how preserving her drafts "keeps the writer honest because you can't deny who you are". Jack Hibberd's manuscripts are the result of mental fermentation. He claimed he could put them in order from the tea, coffee, wine and port stains, while guaranteeing there were no stains of self-abuse on his writing. Discussion before morning tea went to "metatextualising" (which none claimed to be guilty of) - that is, the "really unhealthy" practice of writing for the archivist, with only an eye on posterity.
At the other end of the day, scholar-archivist Susan Woodburn walked us through the Library's 13 kilometres of manuscripts and history since the Commonwealth Literary Fund of 1940, when grants were made by a parliamentary committee on which sat both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Henry Handel Richardson's was the first individual collection in 1946. Woodburn concluded that the archive can "convey immortality - your corpus, if not your hand, will be resurrected." This referred to her gruesome discovery in a cardboard box behind a curtain on a window ledge in the manuscript room of a cast of the hand of Henry Lawson.
Other writers, researchers and biographers like Michael McGirr, Nadia Wheatley, Tom Shapcott, Adrian Caesar and Lenore Coltheart agonised over ethical issues, sometimes feeling they were invading the privacy of the people whose papers they studied. But they noted that the discoveries of "who wrote what and when" (in the case of George Johnston and Charmian Clift), how "voice creates character, then character creates plot" (in the changes Mark Twain made as he wrote the first words spoken by Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer), or how only her letters and diaries can tell us not who Jessie Street was but who she is ("the only Jessie Street I - Coltheart - will ever know") keep the public debate and the people from the past alive.
All speakers were received enthusiastically throughout the day, leading to Philip Mead's talking of the manuscript room as "the book of revelations" and Robyn Holmes' demonstrating on screen how original music scores can not only be seen but heard online. But the grandest applause of the day went to old stager Bob Ellis, whose speech was a great example of the writer's art, taking the day's theme into a piece of writing well worthy of archiving.
Ellis told a story starting from Dickens who "believed a writer was also a citizen, with a citizen's obligations to report social evils to the authorities, to make corruption known, and bureaucratic folly lampooned and so reduced".
He proposed that the True Life of John Howard is an Australian story that needs to be told, since "despite 30 years of fame we know almost nothing about him". Did he approve the sending of an envelope containing white powder to the Indonesian Embassy? "He, the Prime Minister, and Alexander Downer were beating the story up when nobody else was too fussed about it ... and for a few crucial days the Wood kidnapping, the Corby sentence, the Leong injustice, the Rau injustice, the Chinese defectors, the coming massacres of whales by Japan, the Georgiou uprising, the Vanstone tailspin, the desecrated heroes' bones dug up to build a carpark on Gallipoli, and all the other instances of his cowardice were, as they say, 'overshadowed' by six or seven ounces of skilfully targeted Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder... If I'm wrong, let him take the lie detector test, or say why he won't."
The story ended "It is only by telling all without flinching ... can you illuminate an epoch, or portray a man ... Only by putting yourself, and him, and what Shakespeare called the very age and body of the time at risk, in peril, can you ever find, and know, and tell, the one thing that it is our obligation to tell: the truth."
This was truly a celebration of writers, manuscripts and the creative process, for which we must thank Eva Kollsman and her friendship for Ray Mathew, home at last in the archives at NLA.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 18 June 2005
2005: Loot by Joe Orton
Loot by Joe Orton. ARTS Theatre Company directed by Adam Maher at ANU Arts Centre DramaLab Studio, June 17 - 25.
Loot is a hoot, with mystery, satire and police corruption to boot. And a real dead body. Kerrie Roberts as the ex-Mrs McLeavy deserves the best of applause for her lifeless flexibility flat out in her coffin, upside down in what was once her wardrobe, strapped up as a taylor's dummy, dragged off stage by her feet, stripped down - so we believe - thankfully behind a screen, re-dressed and returned to her coffin, to the immortal retort that Mr McLeavy had no justifable complaint about this treatment since she began the day dead and was just as dead at the end.
Living actors came off almost second-best in the face of such competition, but Lucy Goleby as the murdering nurse Fay and Steven Kennedy as Truscott, the most devious detective in the corruption business, stood out as exponents of the Orton style. British farce has a long history, but Orton invented black farce which twists and turns until logic takes bizarre directions. Especially neat is McLeavy's gormless son Hal (Michael Beard), the bank robber's off-sider, who always tells the truth and is therefore believed to be lying, ironically by the protector of the law, Truscott, who nevers tells the truth. The art lies in creating an impossible storyline which has its own line of logic, drawing us in to suspending our disbelief.
Adam Maher's direction keeps up a cracking pace, sometimes a little too fast and tight for the DramaLab's bouncing acoustics, at least in the upper half of the seating. But, jokes aside, this production works very well because all the visuals are right and the timing of the action is excellent.
The program is well worth the cost for the background to the play and the author. Laughing at Orton's theatre takes a turn for the worse when one is reminded of his awful death, only the year after this play was written, murdered by his partner Kenneth Halliwell because he was jealous of Joe's success. Black farce indeed.
ARTS Theatre continues to produce theatre with a purpose, stylish without pretension, and therefore worth seeing.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Loot is a hoot, with mystery, satire and police corruption to boot. And a real dead body. Kerrie Roberts as the ex-Mrs McLeavy deserves the best of applause for her lifeless flexibility flat out in her coffin, upside down in what was once her wardrobe, strapped up as a taylor's dummy, dragged off stage by her feet, stripped down - so we believe - thankfully behind a screen, re-dressed and returned to her coffin, to the immortal retort that Mr McLeavy had no justifable complaint about this treatment since she began the day dead and was just as dead at the end.
Living actors came off almost second-best in the face of such competition, but Lucy Goleby as the murdering nurse Fay and Steven Kennedy as Truscott, the most devious detective in the corruption business, stood out as exponents of the Orton style. British farce has a long history, but Orton invented black farce which twists and turns until logic takes bizarre directions. Especially neat is McLeavy's gormless son Hal (Michael Beard), the bank robber's off-sider, who always tells the truth and is therefore believed to be lying, ironically by the protector of the law, Truscott, who nevers tells the truth. The art lies in creating an impossible storyline which has its own line of logic, drawing us in to suspending our disbelief.
Adam Maher's direction keeps up a cracking pace, sometimes a little too fast and tight for the DramaLab's bouncing acoustics, at least in the upper half of the seating. But, jokes aside, this production works very well because all the visuals are right and the timing of the action is excellent.
The program is well worth the cost for the background to the play and the author. Laughing at Orton's theatre takes a turn for the worse when one is reminded of his awful death, only the year after this play was written, murdered by his partner Kenneth Halliwell because he was jealous of Joe's success. Black farce indeed.
ARTS Theatre continues to produce theatre with a purpose, stylish without pretension, and therefore worth seeing.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 17 June 2005
2005: Old Time Music Hall
Old Time Music Hall. Canberra Repertory directed by Rosemary Hyde at The Playhouse, June 16-25, 8pm
The 31st Old Time Music Hall is traditional. There are no surprises, but plenty of good performances. Though an old friend, who has seen many of these annual celebrations of an almost antique kind of theatre, thought that this year's fare was less varied than the best, I came away satisfied, if not satiated.
Master of Ceremonies Russell Brown, in his 30th performance in this role, took a little while to warm up on opening night, but I felt this was not a disadvantage. It gave the show less of an over-the-top feeling than I've had in some previous years, giving time for the evening to find its feet with more surety and even a little subtlety. Brown's jokes were as execrable as ever. One was even excretable, which got the biggest laugh and loudest groan.
The cast has an excellent team feeling, each person working well when in unison and with humorously played individual characters in group and solo sections. The traditional male Harmony Quartet became an octet, which allowed an excellent range of voices and variety of attitudes to come to the fore. Among soloists, I thought Sheena Smith, Jamie Swann and Helen Perris stood out not just for their singing voices but for the warmth of their communication with the audience, and their ability to play the comic and the straight.
As always, Jeanette Brown's expertise as Manager of Wardrobe shines through every costume. Pauline Sweeney, pianiste extraordinaire, percussionist Ron Tito and Andrew Kay, for the 30th time directing the music from his piano, form a wonderful team who keep the show moving along in tune with the singers and dancers. Their work is certainly no less vibrant this year.
This is the first year I have seen choreographer Anne Supple's work. The measure of quality is the variety of dance, the suitability for the numbers and the confidence of the dancers - the whole cast. The women's tap dancing with farming tools in Run, Rabbit, Run was a particular delight. On all three points the choreography measures up, and with the music makes the show so coherent that two hours and a half pass very smoothly and pleasantly.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The 31st Old Time Music Hall is traditional. There are no surprises, but plenty of good performances. Though an old friend, who has seen many of these annual celebrations of an almost antique kind of theatre, thought that this year's fare was less varied than the best, I came away satisfied, if not satiated.
Master of Ceremonies Russell Brown, in his 30th performance in this role, took a little while to warm up on opening night, but I felt this was not a disadvantage. It gave the show less of an over-the-top feeling than I've had in some previous years, giving time for the evening to find its feet with more surety and even a little subtlety. Brown's jokes were as execrable as ever. One was even excretable, which got the biggest laugh and loudest groan.
The cast has an excellent team feeling, each person working well when in unison and with humorously played individual characters in group and solo sections. The traditional male Harmony Quartet became an octet, which allowed an excellent range of voices and variety of attitudes to come to the fore. Among soloists, I thought Sheena Smith, Jamie Swann and Helen Perris stood out not just for their singing voices but for the warmth of their communication with the audience, and their ability to play the comic and the straight.
As always, Jeanette Brown's expertise as Manager of Wardrobe shines through every costume. Pauline Sweeney, pianiste extraordinaire, percussionist Ron Tito and Andrew Kay, for the 30th time directing the music from his piano, form a wonderful team who keep the show moving along in tune with the singers and dancers. Their work is certainly no less vibrant this year.
This is the first year I have seen choreographer Anne Supple's work. The measure of quality is the variety of dance, the suitability for the numbers and the confidence of the dancers - the whole cast. The women's tap dancing with farming tools in Run, Rabbit, Run was a particular delight. On all three points the choreography measures up, and with the music makes the show so coherent that two hours and a half pass very smoothly and pleasantly.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 9 June 2005
2005: Interview with Alana Valentine. Feature article.
Did you think "Shirley" as I did when I read the name "Valentine"? Remember the housewife who breaks out of domestic boredom, goes on a permanent holiday to Greece and resumes her maiden name? Her British suburban husband Mr Bradshaw comes to find her to take her home, but passes without recognising his wife, at her table outside the taverna at the edge of the sea. "I'm Shirley Valentine. I'll never be Shirley Bradshaw again."
I didn't ask Alana Valentine the origin of her name. She is certainly not fictional, but like Willy Russell's Shirley, this Valentine seeks what she calls "magical reality". Not on a Greek island, however enticing that may be, but through her writing - short stories, poetry, drama for radio, television, film and especially for the stage. Living in inner-Sydney Redfern, her grandfather a fervent supporter of the Rabbitohs, Valentine didn't wait or deny herself like Shirley, but started young with a BA Communications at UTS in 1982, became a script editor for Grundy Television, wrote some 16 ABC radio programs, 5 film scripts, speeches for Judi Connelli and Max Gillies, 18 playscripts, gained a Grad Dip in Museum Studies (with Merit) at Sydney University in 2001 and in 2004 wrote Episode 89 of McLeod's Daughters, for Millenium Television.
Rather surprised, I wondered why McLeod's Daughters? After all I remembered Mary Rachel Brown's very affecting performance of Valentine's Radio Silence under the vast wings of G for George at the Australian War Memorial soon after Episode 89 appeared. Did Valentine need the money? No, it wasn't the money. It was to learn the craft of writing to a strict formula with the characters and their way of speaking and acting already decided. You need this, she explained, to get more work as a television writer.
But what about the sentimentality? I asked. We discussed craft and content, sentiment rather than sentimental, practicality and the writer's voice, theatre and community - her "magical reality". What about her current Canberra play, Butterfly Dandy? Her $20,000 grant from the NSW Ministry for the Arts researching and writing a verbatim theatre piece Parramatta Girls, for Belvoir Street's Company B, about the Parramatta Girls Home and its past residents? Or Run Rabbit Run retelling South's Rugby League fight for survival, or Savage Grace about a deeply religious man who falls in love with a younger man, "drawn together by sexual passion and driven apart by professional ethics"? The accolades are there from a NSW Premier's Literary Award in 1989, through a Shakespeare Globe Theatre Writer's Fellowship, a Rodney Seaborn Playwrights' Award, an AWGIE from the Australian Writers' Guild, a Churchill Fellowship, an Australian National Playwrights' Centre Award. I felt exhausted just talking to her.
Writing to a formula is not Valentine's style. "Each play is a puzzle to solve. You solve that puzzle in a different way," she says. The text is "just one more brush" to add to set, costume, lights and all the other theatrical devices. She might begin writing with an idea like exploring euthanasia (in Savage Grace), or material from a commission like cross-dressing women performers of 1900 (researched by Julie McElhone who performs in Butterfly Dandy), or making a museum exhibit come alive (in The Prospectors, originally for the Australian National Maritime Museum). Then she has to find the drama in a character, pair or group who have to face up to a problem and, in trying to solve it, come to a different understanding of themselves. And they need to be in Australia because that connects them to our community.
The prospectors of the Gold Rush exhibit are an experienced Californian miner and a young Australian new-chum who gets taken up in the Eureka Stockade, against the American's advice. Designed for 13 year-olds, the play is about friendship: "Do I do those things because my friend does it?" Or should I not follow my American friend's opinions?
In Butterfly Dandy, based on real-life women performers' experiences, Valentine's character Mirabella Martin is talked into performing in a man's costume because it is the 1905 fashion, though she has to struggle with her feelings to do it. But with her stage success, she finds her feelings change from limited to liberated woman - with significant resonances for us in 2005. This is not only a "delightful and very funny cabaret" but has been written strictly in the tradition of the Women on a Shoestring Theatre Company. It is a perfect example of Valentine's central diamond of reality in a magical theatrical setting. Her art is to make the magic reveal the reality to which we all can respond.
In doing so, Valentine also shows the way for new Australian theatre, drawing audiences like South's Rugby fans to the theatre and into a sense of community. Live theatre is certainly not dead, according to this Valentine, and it's even better than escape to a Greek island.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I didn't ask Alana Valentine the origin of her name. She is certainly not fictional, but like Willy Russell's Shirley, this Valentine seeks what she calls "magical reality". Not on a Greek island, however enticing that may be, but through her writing - short stories, poetry, drama for radio, television, film and especially for the stage. Living in inner-Sydney Redfern, her grandfather a fervent supporter of the Rabbitohs, Valentine didn't wait or deny herself like Shirley, but started young with a BA Communications at UTS in 1982, became a script editor for Grundy Television, wrote some 16 ABC radio programs, 5 film scripts, speeches for Judi Connelli and Max Gillies, 18 playscripts, gained a Grad Dip in Museum Studies (with Merit) at Sydney University in 2001 and in 2004 wrote Episode 89 of McLeod's Daughters, for Millenium Television.
Rather surprised, I wondered why McLeod's Daughters? After all I remembered Mary Rachel Brown's very affecting performance of Valentine's Radio Silence under the vast wings of G for George at the Australian War Memorial soon after Episode 89 appeared. Did Valentine need the money? No, it wasn't the money. It was to learn the craft of writing to a strict formula with the characters and their way of speaking and acting already decided. You need this, she explained, to get more work as a television writer.
But what about the sentimentality? I asked. We discussed craft and content, sentiment rather than sentimental, practicality and the writer's voice, theatre and community - her "magical reality". What about her current Canberra play, Butterfly Dandy? Her $20,000 grant from the NSW Ministry for the Arts researching and writing a verbatim theatre piece Parramatta Girls, for Belvoir Street's Company B, about the Parramatta Girls Home and its past residents? Or Run Rabbit Run retelling South's Rugby League fight for survival, or Savage Grace about a deeply religious man who falls in love with a younger man, "drawn together by sexual passion and driven apart by professional ethics"? The accolades are there from a NSW Premier's Literary Award in 1989, through a Shakespeare Globe Theatre Writer's Fellowship, a Rodney Seaborn Playwrights' Award, an AWGIE from the Australian Writers' Guild, a Churchill Fellowship, an Australian National Playwrights' Centre Award. I felt exhausted just talking to her.
Writing to a formula is not Valentine's style. "Each play is a puzzle to solve. You solve that puzzle in a different way," she says. The text is "just one more brush" to add to set, costume, lights and all the other theatrical devices. She might begin writing with an idea like exploring euthanasia (in Savage Grace), or material from a commission like cross-dressing women performers of 1900 (researched by Julie McElhone who performs in Butterfly Dandy), or making a museum exhibit come alive (in The Prospectors, originally for the Australian National Maritime Museum). Then she has to find the drama in a character, pair or group who have to face up to a problem and, in trying to solve it, come to a different understanding of themselves. And they need to be in Australia because that connects them to our community.
The prospectors of the Gold Rush exhibit are an experienced Californian miner and a young Australian new-chum who gets taken up in the Eureka Stockade, against the American's advice. Designed for 13 year-olds, the play is about friendship: "Do I do those things because my friend does it?" Or should I not follow my American friend's opinions?
In Butterfly Dandy, based on real-life women performers' experiences, Valentine's character Mirabella Martin is talked into performing in a man's costume because it is the 1905 fashion, though she has to struggle with her feelings to do it. But with her stage success, she finds her feelings change from limited to liberated woman - with significant resonances for us in 2005. This is not only a "delightful and very funny cabaret" but has been written strictly in the tradition of the Women on a Shoestring Theatre Company. It is a perfect example of Valentine's central diamond of reality in a magical theatrical setting. Her art is to make the magic reveal the reality to which we all can respond.
In doing so, Valentine also shows the way for new Australian theatre, drawing audiences like South's Rugby fans to the theatre and into a sense of community. Live theatre is certainly not dead, according to this Valentine, and it's even better than escape to a Greek island.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)