Reading Snugglepot and Cuddlepie to my 9 months old grandson, surely too young for such dramatic emotions, I experienced an important revelation. He looks at the pictures and even the words in the usual baby books, but instead I found him watching me, especially my facial expressions, as the gumnut babies became lost and then found each other again.
When Patch Theatre brings Who Sank the Boat? to the Playhouse at Canberra Theatre Centre, their production of Pamela Allen’s popular children’s story has extensive research behind it which shows the absolute importance of emotional interaction for a child’s health and well-being. Artistic director Dave Brown’s career began as a teacher in South Australia, where drama and, indeed, all the arts have had a high profile in schools since the 1980s.
Brown, working within the SA Department of Education during the first flush of enthusiasm (the “golden years”, he says), established Jumbuk, a youth musical theatre where he worked with “exemplary young talent” from around the state to put on one major production each year in The Space in Adelaide. During the 1990s support waned somewhat, but by 2000 a resurgence of arts in education was under way at the same time as Brown felt he needed a new beginning - to find something “worthwhile to do with the rest of my life”. He believes a swing towards the positive still means working “against the notion of credibility” of drama, which for him is central to children’s learning, never mere entertainment.
At this time he began reading, to discover first the idea that two thirds of a person’s development takes place in our first 8 years, and that artists have a special place in human development. He quotes Pablo Picasso: “All children are artists; the challenge is to keep them so.” And so Patch Theatre concentrates on 4 to 8 year-olds, and brings together performing artists, children and teachers, not just in theatres but in a Play Package Group Development program.
We will see on stage, as part of a major national tour funded by Playing Australia, a show which will “entertain children of all ages as they investigate the culprit of the dastardly crime” in Who Sank the Boat?, incorporating characters from this and several other Pamela Allen books (“the best ones,” says Brown) - Mr McGee Goes to Sea, My Cat Maisie, Black Dog, The Bear’s Lunch, The Pear and Pear Tree, Herbert and Harry, and Bertie the Bear. But behind the scenes is a group of some 15 preschool, primary school and special school teachers who work monthly with Patch performers, workshop leaders and other artists on the most recent play package program, called Special Delivery, funded by the SA Health Promotion through the Arts Community Arts Fund.
This work goes on at a very unusual educational venue. Sturt Street Community School in Adelaide, re-opened by the Labor Government 2 years ago after previously being closed by a Coalition Government because of small numbers, takes children from ages 0 to 8. Brown has been testing out the way drama works not only with children in his 4 to 8 range, but with some as young as 15 months. For teachers and parents who would like to follow up this work, Patch Theatre has produced a 24 page Special Delivery Play Package, which uses the illustrated book In the Middle of the Night by Amanda Graham as source material and includes a set of “Foundation” games and rituals and “Special Delivery” games and rituals, which focus very much on the children learning to take care when handling the “Fragile Box”.
Brown explains that when very young children are prepared through drama activities, they “process the stage show in a more sophisticated way” than children who have not had preparation. Even though this can’t be done for Who Sank the Boat? on tour, he recommends that animated reading of Pamela Allen’s books with the children before they see the show will greatly enhance their theatre experience. Let the children “workshop” their own games and dramas based on the stories, and they will appreciate even more Patch Theatre’s “inventive theatrics incorporating puppetry, black theatre, operetta, mime, dance and live music”. And, I suspect, will parents and teachers.
Who Sank the Boat?
Based on this and other books by Pamela Allen.
Patch Theatre at The Playhouse
Public Performances: Wednesday July 5 at 6.30pm, Saturday July 8 at 10am (Audio Described) and 11.45am (Live Captioned)
Schools Peformances: July 6 and 7 at 10am and 11.45am
Bookings: Phone: Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700 or www.canberraticketing.com.au
For follow-up: www.patchtheatre.org.au
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 27 June 2006
Monday, 26 June 2006
2006: Australian National Playwrights’ Conference. Feature article.
It’s a bit of a worry when Tom Healey is called the curator of the Australian National Playwrights’ Conference 2006. I remember when he would have been the artistic director. Wot’s in a name? sez Doreen. Quite a lot, when the Australia Council is forced by budgetary constraints to either give their money to the ANPC or to the other main Australian playscript development organisation, Playworks; or to put developing new plays out to tender. Signs of our economic and political times.
Healey is kind enough to suggest that at least this gave the two contenders the option of joining together to bid, which means there will be a new organisation hopefully able to cover the diverse field of the ANPC and Playworks’ particular interest in women’s writing. What will it be called? “We don’t know,” says Healey, sounding far less sure than Doreen about roses being the same by any other name. “Curating”, to me, just sounds a bit too much like a museum function than “artistically directing”.
Ironically, perhaps, Tom Healey began his post-Lyneham Primary, Lyneham High and Phillip College career (and post-failing in all 4 Sydney University first year subjects while directing 11 productions for Sydney University Dramatic Society) when his step-father Ken Healey went to the American Playwrights’ Conference in 1984. Realising Tom had other things in mind than repeating failed subjects, Ken - well-known to Canberra Opera, original director of the ANU Arts Centre and Canberra Times theatre critic, and later theatre history lecturer at the National Institute of Dramatic Art - offered Tom the chance to attend a 3 month course in New York run by the American Playwrights’ Conference for college students.
With iconic teachers such as Stella Adler, New York became the 18-year-old’s theatrical heaven, until he had only enough cash left to get to his mother’s homeland, England. Janet Hough had been a well-known amateur singer whose second marriage to opera director Ken Healey was a fate her son could not escape. After seeing Madonna wed Sean Penn in New York, Tom became a dresser in West End theatre in London. Fate continued to “look after me” when he flew home and applied for NIDA and the Victorian College of the Arts, being accepted at VCA.
Was VCA second-best? In those days NIDA was the “industry-tough” training institution, but Healey had long experience of the discipline of opera. He had, as a result, a “rigid formal classical comprehension of theatre”. To his surprise and joy VCA, under the British-Canadian David Latham, where the industry was more or less ignored in favour of creative expression, was just the training he needed. This explains Healey’s pleasure at working with new Australian writers at the Playwrights’ Conference in Perth, and why the Conference needs him.
After directing and teaching theatre and opera in Melbourne for 10 years, in 1999 Healey became Artistic Associate at Playbox Theatre, where only premieres of new Australian plays were presented. Playbox closed in 2004, having been established in the Paul Keating era of belief in Australian culture in 1990, but unable to survive in today’s political climate. Healey thinks it would be “unintelligent” to simply blame our current prime minister’s cultural leadership, yet finds it hard to see the swing away from new Australian work in the programs of the main subsidised theatre companies as just a matter of a natural cultural see-saw which the government feels it has to follow, up or down as the case may be.
So Healey has just the right experience which the ANPC needs, and has put together an exciting program for the Perth conference. 11 new plays by a mix of new and experienced writers will be given the full workshop treatment, chosen from 140 submissions, while a special development and reading will be led by May Britt Akerholt for Jila’s Bush Meeting by Sam Cook, a Nyikina woman from the Kimberley region. Cutting to the short list of 20, and more especially from 15 to the 12 that funding allowed was “difficult”, says Healey, with no need to elaborate.
And speaking of Akerholt, who was artistic director at Burgmann College in 2002, will the Playwrights’ Conference return to Canberra? In the not too distant future, says Healey, while also pointing out that being in Perth means he can employ 10 West Australian actors this year who would not get this chance if the conference were always held on the east coast. But, hanging on to his mobile while stacking his dirty dishes and getting a coffee from the urn in the college canteen at University of Western Australia, he told me it feels just like Burgmann College of the old days, which he remembers fondly. The name may change, but the buzz remains the same.
Australian National Playwrights’ Conference
University of Western Australia July 2 - 15
Booking Enquiries: Phone (02) 9555 9377
Details: www.anpc.org.au/conference.html
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Healey is kind enough to suggest that at least this gave the two contenders the option of joining together to bid, which means there will be a new organisation hopefully able to cover the diverse field of the ANPC and Playworks’ particular interest in women’s writing. What will it be called? “We don’t know,” says Healey, sounding far less sure than Doreen about roses being the same by any other name. “Curating”, to me, just sounds a bit too much like a museum function than “artistically directing”.
Ironically, perhaps, Tom Healey began his post-Lyneham Primary, Lyneham High and Phillip College career (and post-failing in all 4 Sydney University first year subjects while directing 11 productions for Sydney University Dramatic Society) when his step-father Ken Healey went to the American Playwrights’ Conference in 1984. Realising Tom had other things in mind than repeating failed subjects, Ken - well-known to Canberra Opera, original director of the ANU Arts Centre and Canberra Times theatre critic, and later theatre history lecturer at the National Institute of Dramatic Art - offered Tom the chance to attend a 3 month course in New York run by the American Playwrights’ Conference for college students.
With iconic teachers such as Stella Adler, New York became the 18-year-old’s theatrical heaven, until he had only enough cash left to get to his mother’s homeland, England. Janet Hough had been a well-known amateur singer whose second marriage to opera director Ken Healey was a fate her son could not escape. After seeing Madonna wed Sean Penn in New York, Tom became a dresser in West End theatre in London. Fate continued to “look after me” when he flew home and applied for NIDA and the Victorian College of the Arts, being accepted at VCA.
Was VCA second-best? In those days NIDA was the “industry-tough” training institution, but Healey had long experience of the discipline of opera. He had, as a result, a “rigid formal classical comprehension of theatre”. To his surprise and joy VCA, under the British-Canadian David Latham, where the industry was more or less ignored in favour of creative expression, was just the training he needed. This explains Healey’s pleasure at working with new Australian writers at the Playwrights’ Conference in Perth, and why the Conference needs him.
After directing and teaching theatre and opera in Melbourne for 10 years, in 1999 Healey became Artistic Associate at Playbox Theatre, where only premieres of new Australian plays were presented. Playbox closed in 2004, having been established in the Paul Keating era of belief in Australian culture in 1990, but unable to survive in today’s political climate. Healey thinks it would be “unintelligent” to simply blame our current prime minister’s cultural leadership, yet finds it hard to see the swing away from new Australian work in the programs of the main subsidised theatre companies as just a matter of a natural cultural see-saw which the government feels it has to follow, up or down as the case may be.
So Healey has just the right experience which the ANPC needs, and has put together an exciting program for the Perth conference. 11 new plays by a mix of new and experienced writers will be given the full workshop treatment, chosen from 140 submissions, while a special development and reading will be led by May Britt Akerholt for Jila’s Bush Meeting by Sam Cook, a Nyikina woman from the Kimberley region. Cutting to the short list of 20, and more especially from 15 to the 12 that funding allowed was “difficult”, says Healey, with no need to elaborate.
And speaking of Akerholt, who was artistic director at Burgmann College in 2002, will the Playwrights’ Conference return to Canberra? In the not too distant future, says Healey, while also pointing out that being in Perth means he can employ 10 West Australian actors this year who would not get this chance if the conference were always held on the east coast. But, hanging on to his mobile while stacking his dirty dishes and getting a coffee from the urn in the college canteen at University of Western Australia, he told me it feels just like Burgmann College of the old days, which he remembers fondly. The name may change, but the buzz remains the same.
Australian National Playwrights’ Conference
University of Western Australia July 2 - 15
Booking Enquiries: Phone (02) 9555 9377
Details: www.anpc.org.au/conference.html
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 5 June 2006
2006: All in Favour Said No! by Bernard Farrell
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE
All in Favour Said No! by Bernard Farrell. The Irish Community Players directed by Ian Phillips at the Canberra Irish Club, Weston, June 5 – 8, 8pm.
Watching this farcical Irish comedy about a strike caused by a demarcation dispute deliberately engineered by a new Max the Axe manager, performed by Irish accented players in an Irish club, written in 1981, reminded me of the good old days when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (when he was still a stone hearted Easter Island god) locked teachers out of ACT schools with the CEEP Act. No-one can remember what the dispute was about, or now knows what CEEP stood for. It was just one more move in the everlasting union-employer chess game.
Teachers are about to go through it all again, I suspect, but not in the manner of this play. The Irish way is to divert attention from the serious matter at hand by singing and telling stories, while behind the scenes the bosses and union leaders do deals. Daily life in the office is a fantastical mayhem, while the machinery on the factory floor may or may not be switched on according to which union the switcher unwittingly joins, while a ship waits in the harbour to load product for Hamburg (the Hamburger Contract). Don’t expect to understand everything. Most of the characters are in the same boat.
A small audience on opening night got into the right laughing mood in the second half, when the players settled more confidently into action, timing and remembering lines, but in this close-knit community even potentially embarrassing pauses are accepted sympathetically and become part of the fun. And there were some strong performances, particularly from Susan Murray as the manager’s officious secretary Dee Kavanagh, and Joan Lindley as the possibly blind Miss Temple, who may or may not have murdered a Red Indian in Canada and bought off a Mountie a la the musical Rose Marie. You have to see the play to work this one out, but it may not be easy to compete with the Irish who book backwards. Closing night is already full, but some places are available on Wednesday.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
All in Favour Said No! by Bernard Farrell. The Irish Community Players directed by Ian Phillips at the Canberra Irish Club, Weston, June 5 – 8, 8pm.
Watching this farcical Irish comedy about a strike caused by a demarcation dispute deliberately engineered by a new Max the Axe manager, performed by Irish accented players in an Irish club, written in 1981, reminded me of the good old days when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (when he was still a stone hearted Easter Island god) locked teachers out of ACT schools with the CEEP Act. No-one can remember what the dispute was about, or now knows what CEEP stood for. It was just one more move in the everlasting union-employer chess game.
Teachers are about to go through it all again, I suspect, but not in the manner of this play. The Irish way is to divert attention from the serious matter at hand by singing and telling stories, while behind the scenes the bosses and union leaders do deals. Daily life in the office is a fantastical mayhem, while the machinery on the factory floor may or may not be switched on according to which union the switcher unwittingly joins, while a ship waits in the harbour to load product for Hamburg (the Hamburger Contract). Don’t expect to understand everything. Most of the characters are in the same boat.
A small audience on opening night got into the right laughing mood in the second half, when the players settled more confidently into action, timing and remembering lines, but in this close-knit community even potentially embarrassing pauses are accepted sympathetically and become part of the fun. And there were some strong performances, particularly from Susan Murray as the manager’s officious secretary Dee Kavanagh, and Joan Lindley as the possibly blind Miss Temple, who may or may not have murdered a Red Indian in Canada and bought off a Mountie a la the musical Rose Marie. You have to see the play to work this one out, but it may not be easy to compete with the Irish who book backwards. Closing night is already full, but some places are available on Wednesday.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)