Shoppers, Doggies, Dancers and Cruise Missile from Deckchairs by Jean McConnell. HIT Productions at Tuggeranong Arts Centre, October 18 and 19.
Sitting relaxed at Tuggeranong By The Sea, watching the deckchairs for entertainment was about as exciting as you might expect. Because of the neat directing by Gary Down and fine performances from stalwart sisters Joan Sydney and Maggie King, maybe a bit more than you would have bargained for.
Jean McConnell is an English writer for television, radio and stage. The format for the 12 20 minute playlets in Deckchairs is a variation of a long tradition of English "characters" just talking, more or less to each other. In this case they are sitting in deckchairs, on a promenade or, in Cruise Missile, on a cruise ship. Unlike Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, which are ascerbic revelations of the sad, even tragic, inner lives of English suburbanites, previously presented by HIT Productions at TCA, McConnell's women are more comic in tone.
The result is an entertaining evening which the Canberra audience thoroughly enjoyed, yet I found the themes, like the upper and lower class dog owners who end up growling at each other, a bit too predictable. When I think back to the masters of this form, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (in, say, the 1960s Dagenham Dialogues in which 'Pete', as a confident but ill-informed bore, held forth to 'Dud', a scruffy, even less informed Herbert), I realise that Jean McConnell, writing Deckchairs in the decade since 1995, misses the absurdity of Pete and Dud which her characters need to lift them beyond quite funny but ultimately rather shallow images of English life. Tuggeranong certainly seemed rather far-flung from her world, yet could seem closer to Dagenham.
On the other hand, O'Connell has a good ear for the language of her characters, and the Australian sisters were very skilled not only in accents and comic timing, but especially in the right phrasing and intonation for each class of character. The conniving "shoppers" were perfectly matched in speech, the dog owners' manners and language matched their very funny hand-puppet dogs (wild bitzer and snooty pug), and especially interesting were the 'A' Deck single-cabin wealthy-but-genuine woman and the contrasting below-decks shared-cabin know-it-all "cruise missile" who got her come-uppance to great applause to end the evening's show.
So, in the English tradition, a bit of a curate's egg.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Thursday, 13 October 2005
2005: International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005
MUSEUM EVENTS BY FRANK McKONE
Welcome to the International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005. The world has moved on from the museum theatre of old - like, let's do Shakespeare exactly the way he did it, even though The Globe burned down 400 years ago, and nowadays we can put LED stars in the firmament. Shakespeare didn't even know about museums, which really only became big in the 1800s. I was sitting in the studio of a big one, the National Museum of Australia, surrounded by digital video equipment, lights, cameras and action. A jigsaw blade had just appeared through the blackened door into the bio box and was cutting out a neat rectangle for a vision panel. It had to be in place before the speeches were to start at 9.40am.
Meanwhile, next door in the Temporary Gallery, conference delegates were watching Gondwana, the live action puppetry performance by ERTH, true to the most recent scientific research, which had drawn full houses throughout the school holidays with life size dinosaurs, growing plants, insects and even an early mammal from deep time when Australia, Africa, India, South America and Antarctica were all joined in the super-continent Gondwanaland. This is museum theatre today.
Then, here the delegates entered, not exactly the conventional bunch of bureaucrats and backroom boffins that you might associate with a museum. At this, the first IMTAL Conference in the southern hemisphere, there was a definite atmosphere of bubbling excitement. Craddock Morton, NMA director, dared to admit that he had been a skeptic about museum theatre (boo, hiss from the crowd), but now he had become a convert (claps and cheers). All power to your arms, he concluded. Louise Douglas, general manager public programs, conducted a pre-curtain call of the backstage team from NMA, Questacon, National Gallery, War Memorial, Old Parliament House, to enthusiastic applause.
First keynote speaker, theatrical icon Robyn Archer, noted that whooping and laughter was not common to other conference audiences she had spoken to. Before long, though, she was challenging museums and museum theatre practitioners. Quoting Bertolt Brecht and using powerful examples from her recent worldwide experiences from Buenos Aires, Teheran, Britain and many other places, she said that, in a society of a widening gap between rich and poor, theatre must "test ourselves and our moral stance" which it can do without putting our loved ones at actual risk. Brecht wrote that our fates are "knotted and cast by men" and theatre is about "teaching [the audience] the great art of living together".
The challenge, Archer said, is that it's easy to create a shallow entertainment, even if it might illustrate a museum exhibit. But "all theatre makers should aspire to the best", she said, and in doing so she challenged museums to take the kinds of risk that, I wonder, may not be acceptable to conservative administrators or the politicians behind them. In response to a question about Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, Archer's view was that "Cultural institutions remain the only places for the reclamation of democracy" in societies where only stories like Simpson and his donkey are to be told, or you won't get your grant next year.
Catherine Hughes, founder of IMTAL, presented research information from her doctoral studies at Ohio University which backs Archer's position. Empathy for characters, though vicarious, sets off processes in the brain like those from real experience. These hormonal and neuronal activities - emotional arousal - enhance long-term memory. After a play about the human genome project, 87% of students were able to articulate how the genome project might impact on their lives - a 59% increase on a pre-performance study. In other research, students remembered detailed information from a theatre-in-education performance 7 months later.
Hughes' message was "Activate the amygdala; resonate with [the audience's] lives; shape performances with surprises". This means presenting unexpected viewpoints, like making the murderer of South American rainforest activist Chico Mendez the main character who justifies his action - "just clearing the frontier, just like you [Americans] did". Most important for museums and the issue of truth, Hughes concluded, "Address difficult and controversial subject matter."
Proof of her point followed as Anne E Stewart of the Victorian Storytelling Guild presented the story of the death of her brother Tony Stewart in Balibo in 1975 in "East Timor: Grief: Personal to Public - Telling the Story". Her family's tragedy becomes an uplifting story of her other brother Paul, who began the band Painters and Dockers, and now teamed up with East Timorese refugee Gil Santos to form The Dili Allstars. Their latest CD documents the killing of the Balibo 5 and is a powerful anti-war musical statement in the local language. Delegates had no difficulty feeling empathy, recognising the resonance, being surprised by the serendipity of the Stewart family's story. I'm sure they will not forget.
This article is just a look into a 4-day conference. I cannot let you go without hearing something from Professor Sam H. Ham, director of the Centre for Training and Outreach, University of Idaho, and an expert in the psychology of audiences. He suggested 3 aims for museum theatre - acquisition of new factual knowledge, entertainment and holding attention, heightened "awareness".
To achieve heightened awareness he described a choice of 3 roads. The Teacher Tell Paradigm "if they know what we know, then they too will care as we care". Research shows that this approach may increase factual knowledge, but does not change awareness. The Infotainment Paradigm "if we can just keep people entertained long enough something good is bound to happen and they'll end up being changed for the better" is no more successful at creating awareness, though positive feedback may appear convincing.
Only the Meaning Making Paradigm works. "If you can get visitors thinking ... they'll make their own connections, and if they make their own connections, it's possible they'll be able to care" about what has been presented. "The main thing [museum] interpretation should try to accomplish is getting people to make their own themes inside their own heads". Then "it must (Italics on) matter (Italics off) to the audience. As Robyn Archer / Bertolt Brecht said, making meaning is teaching "the great art of living together".
Extending Our Reach: 4th Biennial IMTAL Conference at National Museum of Australia October 13-16.
Go to www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/2005_imtal_conference/
www.anne-e-stewart.com
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Welcome to the International Museum Theatre Alliance Conference 2005. The world has moved on from the museum theatre of old - like, let's do Shakespeare exactly the way he did it, even though The Globe burned down 400 years ago, and nowadays we can put LED stars in the firmament. Shakespeare didn't even know about museums, which really only became big in the 1800s. I was sitting in the studio of a big one, the National Museum of Australia, surrounded by digital video equipment, lights, cameras and action. A jigsaw blade had just appeared through the blackened door into the bio box and was cutting out a neat rectangle for a vision panel. It had to be in place before the speeches were to start at 9.40am.
Meanwhile, next door in the Temporary Gallery, conference delegates were watching Gondwana, the live action puppetry performance by ERTH, true to the most recent scientific research, which had drawn full houses throughout the school holidays with life size dinosaurs, growing plants, insects and even an early mammal from deep time when Australia, Africa, India, South America and Antarctica were all joined in the super-continent Gondwanaland. This is museum theatre today.
Then, here the delegates entered, not exactly the conventional bunch of bureaucrats and backroom boffins that you might associate with a museum. At this, the first IMTAL Conference in the southern hemisphere, there was a definite atmosphere of bubbling excitement. Craddock Morton, NMA director, dared to admit that he had been a skeptic about museum theatre (boo, hiss from the crowd), but now he had become a convert (claps and cheers). All power to your arms, he concluded. Louise Douglas, general manager public programs, conducted a pre-curtain call of the backstage team from NMA, Questacon, National Gallery, War Memorial, Old Parliament House, to enthusiastic applause.
First keynote speaker, theatrical icon Robyn Archer, noted that whooping and laughter was not common to other conference audiences she had spoken to. Before long, though, she was challenging museums and museum theatre practitioners. Quoting Bertolt Brecht and using powerful examples from her recent worldwide experiences from Buenos Aires, Teheran, Britain and many other places, she said that, in a society of a widening gap between rich and poor, theatre must "test ourselves and our moral stance" which it can do without putting our loved ones at actual risk. Brecht wrote that our fates are "knotted and cast by men" and theatre is about "teaching [the audience] the great art of living together".
The challenge, Archer said, is that it's easy to create a shallow entertainment, even if it might illustrate a museum exhibit. But "all theatre makers should aspire to the best", she said, and in doing so she challenged museums to take the kinds of risk that, I wonder, may not be acceptable to conservative administrators or the politicians behind them. In response to a question about Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, Archer's view was that "Cultural institutions remain the only places for the reclamation of democracy" in societies where only stories like Simpson and his donkey are to be told, or you won't get your grant next year.
Catherine Hughes, founder of IMTAL, presented research information from her doctoral studies at Ohio University which backs Archer's position. Empathy for characters, though vicarious, sets off processes in the brain like those from real experience. These hormonal and neuronal activities - emotional arousal - enhance long-term memory. After a play about the human genome project, 87% of students were able to articulate how the genome project might impact on their lives - a 59% increase on a pre-performance study. In other research, students remembered detailed information from a theatre-in-education performance 7 months later.
Hughes' message was "Activate the amygdala; resonate with [the audience's] lives; shape performances with surprises". This means presenting unexpected viewpoints, like making the murderer of South American rainforest activist Chico Mendez the main character who justifies his action - "just clearing the frontier, just like you [Americans] did". Most important for museums and the issue of truth, Hughes concluded, "Address difficult and controversial subject matter."
Proof of her point followed as Anne E Stewart of the Victorian Storytelling Guild presented the story of the death of her brother Tony Stewart in Balibo in 1975 in "East Timor: Grief: Personal to Public - Telling the Story". Her family's tragedy becomes an uplifting story of her other brother Paul, who began the band Painters and Dockers, and now teamed up with East Timorese refugee Gil Santos to form The Dili Allstars. Their latest CD documents the killing of the Balibo 5 and is a powerful anti-war musical statement in the local language. Delegates had no difficulty feeling empathy, recognising the resonance, being surprised by the serendipity of the Stewart family's story. I'm sure they will not forget.
This article is just a look into a 4-day conference. I cannot let you go without hearing something from Professor Sam H. Ham, director of the Centre for Training and Outreach, University of Idaho, and an expert in the psychology of audiences. He suggested 3 aims for museum theatre - acquisition of new factual knowledge, entertainment and holding attention, heightened "awareness".
To achieve heightened awareness he described a choice of 3 roads. The Teacher Tell Paradigm "if they know what we know, then they too will care as we care". Research shows that this approach may increase factual knowledge, but does not change awareness. The Infotainment Paradigm "if we can just keep people entertained long enough something good is bound to happen and they'll end up being changed for the better" is no more successful at creating awareness, though positive feedback may appear convincing.
Only the Meaning Making Paradigm works. "If you can get visitors thinking ... they'll make their own connections, and if they make their own connections, it's possible they'll be able to care" about what has been presented. "The main thing [museum] interpretation should try to accomplish is getting people to make their own themes inside their own heads". Then "it must (Italics on) matter (Italics off) to the audience. As Robyn Archer / Bertolt Brecht said, making meaning is teaching "the great art of living together".
Extending Our Reach: 4th Biennial IMTAL Conference at National Museum of Australia October 13-16.
Go to www.nma.gov.au/events/major_events/2005_imtal_conference/
www.anne-e-stewart.com
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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