An Australian Nativity Story is a special presentation at Belconnen Community Church tonight and Canberra City Uniting Church on Christmas Eve. The two churches have joined together for this multicultural musical and dramatic celebration written and directed by recent migrant to Australia, Kabu Okai-Davies.
Okai-Davies, originally from Ghana, lived in America for 18 years where he founded and directed the African Globe TheatreWorks Company. He brings to this production his personal beliefs, as a Methodist in Ghana and being active in the St James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, mixed with his extensive experience in community theatre as a writer and director.
He has taken the Black Nativity, written by the iconic African-American poet Langston Hughes, as a basis for writing scenes using Biblical text, workshopping with the church members, young and old, to find ways of re-working his ideas into an Australian context, re-writing the script and incorporating music and song from all the cultures represented in these churches.
A particular delight is a Christmas carol such as Silent Night sung by three Tongan women with the slow haunting harmonies and rhythms of their sea-going people.
Though the participants on stage are not experienced performers – indeed this is a celebration by church members for themselves as much as for the general public – the production process has been as much about learning theatre as about celebrating religious faith. With Stopera stage manager Liz Topperwien as production manager, training has not only been in performing by Okai-Davies. Stage Manager Nell Feneck has already been fingered by Topperwien to take over the whole production next year.
Okai-Davies has a grand vision, seeing the Bible as the source of drama, tragedy, comedy and satire which he plans to use for bigger and better celebrations of this kind as the years go by. He sees An Australian Nativity Story as the beginning of a new tradition in a new theatrical genre which he calls Theatre of Faith.
However, this is not to be seen as limited to a particular sect or even a particular religion. Okai-Davies explains that “entertainment transcends race, sex and all of humanity’s issues” bringing together people of all religions and cultures. He starts from the Shakespearean quotation “If music be the food of love, play on” and reinterprets it to say “Music is the food of love, and let us all play together”.
This year’s small-scale work, which has been prepared in only one month, is planned to become a “mass ecumenical celebration” in Civic Square in the future. Bringing people of all beliefs together in celebration is the “key to what Christianity is all about”, says Okai-Davies.
In developing the characters in the spoken drama and the songs, the play takes Biblical figures, using text from a range of translations, and places them in a thematic structure so that they become symbols relevant to modern life rather than only representing the ancient past.
And to make the point, the children in the workshop stage of production made it clear that the conventional blue with silver stars would not do in Australia. So look for the green and gold!
An Australian Nativity Story
by Kabu Okai-Davies
Belconnen Community Church
93 Hennessy St, Belconnen
December 22, 7pm
Canberra City Uniting Church
69 Northborne Ave, Civic
December 24, 7pm
Donations: Adults $10, Children $5, Family $25
For further information: 6255 5532 or 0405 447 845
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 19 December 2006
2006: Kabu Okai-Davies - feature article
A new arrival on Canberra’s theatre scene is Kabu Okai-Davies. University studies in his home country, Ghana, began his interest in theatre.
In America from 1988, where he studied film, taught African film and theatre courses and became resident playwright at New York’s Ensemble Theatre Company, his major achievement before migrating here has been African Globe TheatreWorks, a company he formed originally in Newark, New Jersey, a city where he found African-Americans needed an outlet to celebrate their culture.
By 2002, his still struggling independent company had produced a long series of plays, often re-worked to suit his African-American performers and audience. One critic commented “Though the playhouse’s seats are plastic, its productions are not.”
The company was attracting considerable corporate sponsorship, and yet, says Okai-Davies, he became aware of a major shift in American attitudes as the Bush administration took over from the Clinton era, when the arts and community had been exciting arenas for him to work in.
Though he had become a ‘legal resident alien’, especially after the September 11 disaster he felt society becoming “too saturated with its own self, insular, parochial”. He had to face the question, Have I finished here?
In Australia, he says in contrast, he has found new “exciting people who have a sense of natural friendliness” which was reinforced when he brought his African Globe TheatreWorks production of When a Man Loves a Woman by Solomon F Caudle to Canberra for the 2005 Multicultural Festival.
With his family now settled in, and after involvement backstage in local productions, his immediate venture this Christmas is An Australian Nativity for the Canberra City Uniting and Belconnen Community Churches, partly based on the Black Nativity by Langston Hughes, who was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture.
In May 2007 at The Street Theatre, Okai-Davies will direct local writer Mark Taylor’s Young Followers, a play about bastardisation and the ‘accelerated deconstruction’ of officer cadets.
If all his plans come to fruition, a new organisation will form with a strong emphasis on multicultural theatre. Multiculturalism is an Australian reality, he says. Integration never works. In the meantime he is taking a post-graduate course in Creative Writing at the University of Canberra with projects already in mind for at least the next three years.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In America from 1988, where he studied film, taught African film and theatre courses and became resident playwright at New York’s Ensemble Theatre Company, his major achievement before migrating here has been African Globe TheatreWorks, a company he formed originally in Newark, New Jersey, a city where he found African-Americans needed an outlet to celebrate their culture.
By 2002, his still struggling independent company had produced a long series of plays, often re-worked to suit his African-American performers and audience. One critic commented “Though the playhouse’s seats are plastic, its productions are not.”
The company was attracting considerable corporate sponsorship, and yet, says Okai-Davies, he became aware of a major shift in American attitudes as the Bush administration took over from the Clinton era, when the arts and community had been exciting arenas for him to work in.
Though he had become a ‘legal resident alien’, especially after the September 11 disaster he felt society becoming “too saturated with its own self, insular, parochial”. He had to face the question, Have I finished here?
In Australia, he says in contrast, he has found new “exciting people who have a sense of natural friendliness” which was reinforced when he brought his African Globe TheatreWorks production of When a Man Loves a Woman by Solomon F Caudle to Canberra for the 2005 Multicultural Festival.
With his family now settled in, and after involvement backstage in local productions, his immediate venture this Christmas is An Australian Nativity for the Canberra City Uniting and Belconnen Community Churches, partly based on the Black Nativity by Langston Hughes, who was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture.
In May 2007 at The Street Theatre, Okai-Davies will direct local writer Mark Taylor’s Young Followers, a play about bastardisation and the ‘accelerated deconstruction’ of officer cadets.
If all his plans come to fruition, a new organisation will form with a strong emphasis on multicultural theatre. Multiculturalism is an Australian reality, he says. Integration never works. In the meantime he is taking a post-graduate course in Creative Writing at the University of Canberra with projects already in mind for at least the next three years.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 14 December 2006
2006: Red Riding Hood by Peter McDonald
Red Riding Hood, a pantomime by Peter McDonald. Ickle Pickle Productions at Belconnen Community Centre Theatre December 14-22 3pm and 7pm, except Tuesday December 19 11am. Bookings: 6247 1223.
Following last year’s Goldilocks success, director Justin Watson and writer Peter McDonald have conspired to produce the only version of Red Riding Hood to mention the corrupt failed company Enron which, news reports said, “lied about its profits and stands accused of a range of shady dealings, including concealing debts so they didn't show up in the company's accounts”.
But don’t worry, this is just a pantomime in the long tradition of humorous social commentary. Even the younger audience members followed a very twisted plot in which Granny and the Wolf are business rivals. They quickly learned when and how to call for the Good Fairy of Marketing, played nicely by Josie Dunham as a quite daffy character who finally brings a new cookie-making cooperative into being and marries off Granny Hood (Dave Smith as the panto dame) to Wolf Jackman (Peter Rousell) who baulks at wearing Granny’s skirt and shawl because he is a male wolf (while she gets hot under the collar in his oven).
Red Riding Hood (Kat Brand) marries Martin from Accounts (Anna O’Leary), the 3 evil robotic blind mice (well-played mechanically by Grace Connelly, Rebecca de Costa and Clare Sheehan) are properly defeated by management consultants Michael Mouse (Jennifer Maclean), Stuart Mouse (Erin Cassidy) and Gerald Mouse (Irena Reedy). While Wolf’s offsider Crookwell, played strongly by Jaime Isfahani, is left rather lonely, except that Santa appears to make everyone happy in the end.
You’ll have to see the show to appreciate McDonald’s Terry Pratchett-like mind, with any number of musical references and bits of other fairy stories built in. It’s just as much fun for the adults as the children.
Directing, choreography and an intriguingly simple set change device all show the skills which we have come to expect from Ickle Pickle, resulting in excellent performances from all the young actors in an engaging production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Following last year’s Goldilocks success, director Justin Watson and writer Peter McDonald have conspired to produce the only version of Red Riding Hood to mention the corrupt failed company Enron which, news reports said, “lied about its profits and stands accused of a range of shady dealings, including concealing debts so they didn't show up in the company's accounts”.
But don’t worry, this is just a pantomime in the long tradition of humorous social commentary. Even the younger audience members followed a very twisted plot in which Granny and the Wolf are business rivals. They quickly learned when and how to call for the Good Fairy of Marketing, played nicely by Josie Dunham as a quite daffy character who finally brings a new cookie-making cooperative into being and marries off Granny Hood (Dave Smith as the panto dame) to Wolf Jackman (Peter Rousell) who baulks at wearing Granny’s skirt and shawl because he is a male wolf (while she gets hot under the collar in his oven).
Red Riding Hood (Kat Brand) marries Martin from Accounts (Anna O’Leary), the 3 evil robotic blind mice (well-played mechanically by Grace Connelly, Rebecca de Costa and Clare Sheehan) are properly defeated by management consultants Michael Mouse (Jennifer Maclean), Stuart Mouse (Erin Cassidy) and Gerald Mouse (Irena Reedy). While Wolf’s offsider Crookwell, played strongly by Jaime Isfahani, is left rather lonely, except that Santa appears to make everyone happy in the end.
You’ll have to see the show to appreciate McDonald’s Terry Pratchett-like mind, with any number of musical references and bits of other fairy stories built in. It’s just as much fun for the adults as the children.
Directing, choreography and an intriguingly simple set change device all show the skills which we have come to expect from Ickle Pickle, resulting in excellent performances from all the young actors in an engaging production.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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