2015: 360 Allstars by Gene Peterson

360 Allstars by Gene Peterson.  Lighting by Geoff Squires; audio-visual by Freddy Komp.  Presented by Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, The Q, March 31 – April 2, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 31


Director / Percussionist:
Gene Peterson

Sound:
Vocal Loop Artist, Sam Perry


Breakdancers:
B-Boy Leerok, B-Boy Kareem


Basketball Juggler:
Rashaun Daniels


Roue Cyr Wheel:
Rhys Miller


BMX Flatlander:
Peter Sore

High-energy circus is brought up to date in surround-sound hip-hop vocal loop beatboxing and drumming.  The show is entertainment for entertainment’s sake.  It’s about showing off physical and electronic skills, just like circus in the old days – gymnastics on the floor, on horseback and on the flying trapeze. 

But where the traditional circus went from oompah brass bands to the famous jazz clarinet playing clowns in the 20th Century, now the whole show rocks to the boombox beat in the rhythm of hip-hop and rap.

Peter Sore, balancing and spinning (himself and the bike), reminded me of the old clowns who used ordinary street bicycles, and his performance was well up to the traditional standard. 

The B-Boys Leerock and Kareem have turned the break dance of Harlem and the Bronx into an athletic maelstrom of movement. [see http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/history%20of%20breaking.htm for the history]

A different sort of B-Boy (B for Basketball) is the juggler, Rashaun Daniels, who could spin one ball on top of another, all on one finger, as well as juggling four basketballs – and just managed five!

Possibly the most artistic work came from Rhys Miller on the full-size ring – the Roue (wheel) Cyr (named after Daniel Cyr in 2003, who presented the first cyr wheel circus act at the 2003 Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyr_wheel]

The Ringmasters who keep the whole show moving do not have whips and trained elephants and lions – just Gene Peterson’s massive drum kit and Sam Perry’s control board, both rapping away on their mics.  Perry even managed to make an educational demonstration of his equipment become melded into the show.  It was, in fact, highly informative to see how the loop which repeats a vocalisation can be held in place while more loops are built around the original until a complete orchestra fills the theatre – all made up of vocalised bleeps, pops and hisses (and with a video behind, all going in time together).

The days when I first walked on (very low) stilts made by my elder brother, and balanced a broomstick on my chin, while spinning lasso ropes in the garage certainly seem a very long way in the past.  But essentially each of these performers began in much the same way as me.  Except that they’ve gone on to win world championships and present professional shows like 360 Allstars.

And may they go on to higher things, say I.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Jumpy by April de Angelis

All photos by Brett Boardman

Jumpy by April de Angelis.  Melbourne Theatre Company production presented by Sydney Theatre Company.  Directed by Pamela Rabe; set design by Michael Hankin; costumes by Teresa Negroponte; lighting by Matt Scott; composer/sound by Drew Crawford; choreographer, Dana Jolly. 

Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre, March 26 – May 16, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 30

Brenna Harding as Tilly, Jane Turner as her mother Hilary

 Surreptitiously overhearing a friendship group of over-50-somethings in the foyer at interval, I heard the keywords: ‘clever set’ and ‘annoying’.  Having read Andrew Upton’s program message – ‘On a first scan, [Jumpy] could read as a comedy of manners – neatly packaged and wrapped in a bow.  But there is subterranean life to it.  Something deeply felt that courses through the play.  In an understated, never plangent way, it speaks to the morally deracinated landscape left after years of Thatcherite economic rationalism’ – I was a bit surprised to hear the comment ‘annoying’.

But by the end of the second half, I saw the connection between ‘clever set’ and ‘annoying’.  The depth of feeling (and political import) that Upton had spruiked just didn’t happen.  The script just doesn’t support his description and the clever set becomes part of the gimmickry used to create laughter to cover the weakness in the writing.

Of course, being a lot over 50 myself, I have to record that another surreptitiously overheard comment after the show from an over-20-something to her (male) friend, who had not seen the show, was that Jumpy is ‘very funny’.  So I must be careful not to be a mere grumpy old male.

David Tredinnick as husband Mark, Jane Turner as Hilary

Daughter Tilly and mother Hilary
Brenna Harding and Jane Turner

Hilary, Tilly and teenage mother Lyndsey
Jane Turner, Brenna Harding and Tariro Mavondo

I respect Pamela Rabe’s work as director particularly for her production of In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) [reviewed on this blog June 8, 2011].  Now I can respect her work again, for escaping from the static set and what looks more or less like stand-up comedy of the London Duke of York’s 2012 production [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV9_9AXaGaA]. 

Cleverly using the stage revolve, which transports items of the set, including actors, in from stage left and out on stage right, in front of a blank wall with sections which open and close to reveal glimpses of the staircase up (to an unseen but heard bedroom), Rabe has represented the ‘progress’ of Hilary’s life.  Jane Turner takes all the opportunities to extract a laugh as the movement of the floor or the closing of a gap catches her by surprise.

This literally dynamic set also works well to solve the problem of the Drama Theatre’s impossibly wide letter-box shaped stage.  Jorn Utzon surely must still be turning in his grave at this abomination.

Caroline Brazier as Bea, Tariro Mavondo as Lyndsey, Jane Turner as Hilary

Roland, technically incompetent.

John Lloyd Fillingham as Bea's husband and Josh's father Roland
with Mark's wife Hilary (Jane Turner)
after Hilary has opened and lit the barbecue

Rabe’s casting is also a great success.  Her Tilly (Hilary’s rebellious daughter) is played by Brenna Harding as the worst up-to-date 15 to 16-year-old city sophisticate pushing the envelope in every direction.  It takes a very real near death experience to bring her down.  Though the playscript in the end takes a sentimental rom-com decision to reconcile both Tilly and husband Mark (David Tredinnick) with Hilary, Brenna and Jane manage their necessary hug without the huge sense of relief which would suggest that all will be OK between them forever, now.  The script could easily have led in that direction.  The title ‘Jumpy’ was enough to make me suspicious.

But even Rabe could not make the final scene, Hilary and Mark back in bed together again, more than a device on the part of the author to end the ‘comedy of manners – neatly packaged and wrapped in a bow’.  Essentially, de Angelis’s script raises every issue from middle-class unemployment at 50, teenagers whose idea of fun brings them up against real danger, what happened to classic feminism (and nuclear disarmament), and teenagers having babies (with an excellent performance by Tariro Mavondo as Lyndsey), to male failure.  Apart from husband Mark, all the other men in Tilly’s and Hilary’s life (Josh, Roland and Cam – played by Laurence Boxhall, John Lloyd Fillingham and Dylan Watson respectively) appear, cause disaster or near disaster, can’t face the consequences of their actions, and disappear from the action.

Marina Prior as Frances demonstrating her burlesque act
to Tilly (Brenna Harding) and Mark (David Tredinnick)

Is this meant to be merely amusing, a damning indictment of men, or a statement that this is just how life is – a series of unpredictable comings and goings?  Any of these could be a reasonable theme, but the play doesn’t deal with the issues it raises.  Despite what Andrew Upton wrote, Thatcher doesn’t get a direct mention (though David Cameron gets a throw-away one-liner), Hilary’s university-days brief fling at Greenham Common gets a little bit of development in talk with her long-time girlfriend Frances (played wildly – very funnily – by Marina Prior), social one-up-womanship gets a run with Josh’s mother, Bea (played magnificently bitchily by Caroline Brazier) – but the issue gets lost when Tilley’s late period and the need for an abortion (which Bea insists upon to protect her son) turns out to be a false alarm.  Isn’t Tilley lucky, eh?

So I can’t disagree with the young woman who found the play ‘very funny’, more so in the second half, and I certainly can’t complain about the quality of the acting and the ‘clever set’, but I have ended up feeling that the play was annoying because the writing opens up issues, most of which are not properly developed, while the conclusion seems to say that a sensible woman of 50 with a daughter on the cusp of adulthood should settle back into a conventional way of life basically for safety and rather boring security (with a husband who has managed to keep his job, apparently).

Not only Andrew Upton’s introduction led me to expect more, but so did the lengthy essays in the program (‘Common Cause’ detailing the 1981 Greenham Common protests against the cruise missile deployment; ‘Midlife’ about the ‘middle years, years of accelerating decline'; ‘Motherly Instincts’ (by Wendy Zukerman – the only piece with an acknowledged author) which discusses Freud, Darwin and a number of other developmental psychology authors; and ‘Nostalgia’ which concludes Meanwhile, our present days move out of our control into a future that’s always in doubt.  Nostalgia, according to all the research, is an anchor we throw out on this uncertain tide.

Nostalgia doesn’t seem all that funny; nor does the conclusion to Zukerman’s piece: It looks like we will not truly unravel whether there is a special bond between mothers and daughters until scientists conduct large studies using stay-at-home fathers, who spend more time with their girls than the mothers.  Only then will we know if humans are just like emus and titi monkeys.  Until then, we can thank our lucky stars that Freud is no longer interpreting the dreams of young women and their jewel-boxes.

But at least there’s some guts there, that unfortunately is not manifest in de Angelis’s playscript.  Maybe emus and titi monkeys may have introduced some satire to sustain the comedy.

Tilly and Hilary: reconciliation
Brenna Harding and Jane Turner

Jane Turner as Hilary

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Black Diggers by Tom Wright

Black Diggers by Tom Wright.  Queensland Theatre Company and Sydney Festival.  Directed by Wesley Enoch; Set Design by Stephen Curtis; Costumes by Ruby Langton-Batty; Lighting by Ben Hughes; Composer/Sound designer – Tony Brumpton.  Dramaturg – Louise Gough.  Cultural Consultant – George Bostock.  Canberra Theatre Centre, The Playhouse, March 25-28, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 25

Previously reviewed by Frank McKone, January 19, 2014 (Sydney Festival), Canberra Critics’ Circle.

Seeing Black Diggers for the second time, a year apart, has brought home to me the power and the importance of this play.  In the Canberra Playhouse the impact was even greater than in the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre – so much so that I could not write about this presentation immediately afterwards.  Tears and anger meant I needed time (and luckily a day at the beach) to recover my composure.

It is time now to reconsider the status of this work.  Rather than thinking of it as a play, we should recognise it as ceremony – not just ‘a ceremony’, but as a ritual required of us all to observe.

Every year, as an essential element of the ANZAC commemoration, Black Diggers should be performed – by Indigenous people – to mark their sacrifice, made in the name of Australian equality.  Drama has been created and performed from ancient times in the traditions of all of the hundreds of cultures in the backgrounds of our Australian people, not to glorify the past but to seek truth and honesty. 

Think of the great work by Sophocles, Antigone, where the King Creon says to the Prophet Teiresias, I say all prophets seek their own advantage.  Teiresias replies, All kings, say I, seek gain unrighteously.  Why, you may ask, should the Athenians, having established democratic decision-making by the time Sophocles was born in 496 BCE, select this work for performance in, probably, the annual festival of 442 or 441?  Because we must not forget the past, and must maintain an honest understanding of what has happened.  As Antigone shows, Creon’s biassed judgement of ‘all prophets’ seeking their own advantage was not true of Teiresias, but Teiresias’ judgement of ‘all kings’ seeking gain unrighteously was also not true of Creon.  Tragedy resulted because Teiresias’ prophecy was true, while Creon’s decision which caused disaster was, in his mind, righteous.

Black Diggers raises such questions for us to need to face up to, on an annual basis and in the context of what happened to those men in World War I and after they – not all of them – came home.  The truth is tragic.  The drama reminds us that those of us who became the decision-makers allowed equality to rule in the trenches on Flanders Field, but failed to understand the importance of that experience and the absolute need for equality to rule at home in peace-time. 

A century later we are still not through with this sorry business.  We require Black Diggers to get back on track, and we need to see the signpost each year as we remember and value all those who fought for Australia.   I hope that the Australian War Memorial can bring to centre stage the ‘small, hand-built memorial that commemorated the First World War Aboriginal servicemen’ which the designer Stephen Curtis was taken to see by the Memorial’s Indigenous guides ‘up on the hill behind the museum.’

I suggest that Black Diggers become the central work performed leading up to the Last Post ceremony, which is the key to the powerful effect of the play.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Everybody Loves Lucy by Elise McCann and Richard Carroll

Everybody Loves Lucy by Elise McCann and Richard Carroll.  Produced by Luckiest Productions.  Performed by Francine Cain and Anthony Harkin; directed by Helen Dallimore.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 25, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Actor Francine Cain performs as Lucille Ball in Everybody Loves Lucy in the role originally played by Elise McCann.

Looking remarkably like Lucille Ball (and Elise McCann) on stage, Francine Cain is a Helpmann Award-nominated musical theatre star, who has just concluded an 18-month national tour as Frenchy in the musical Grease. She was the winner of the 2010 Rob Guest Endowment Scholarship, and her credits include Regina in Rock of Ages (Helpmann and Green Room Award nominations), and understudying Truly Scrumptious in the Australian tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

This recognition is not surprising, as you hear Francine reproduce the voices of Lucille Ball – from the piercingly high-pitched American television comedy voice to the mature voice of her final interview following her divorce from Desi Arnaz and the end of the original series of I Love Lucy.  Perhaps even more engaging is her movement, from the Ball skit on her childhood ballet class and the many and varied little dance illustrations of the Lucy character through to expressive facial and bodily contortions that indicate excellent mime training.

Though Lucille (and an anonymous supposedly representative American housewife who watches and empathises with her as she appears on television) is the star of this production, Anthony Harkin’s Desi Arnaz is very well acted (in addition to his terrific piano-playing).  In fact it is his Desi that brings out the theme of the show.  Was he, in real life, playing a role which did or did not justify Lucille’s characterisation of him as a ‘loser’ who needed to destroy his own achievements; who needed to see himself as a failure?  The script, deliberately, makes it difficult to be sure when Desi is acting or not acting – meaning that Anthony’s acting was well done.

Because, by the end of this short hour-long overview of her life, we only get to know Lucille’s viewpoint, we are left wondering.  Everybody Loves Lucy is not of the dramatic quality of, say, Robyn Archer’s A Star is Torn (1979) – it’s light entertainment rather than excoriating life experience – but perhaps that’s because, as Ron Cerabona records (in the Canberra Times) Although both Ball and Arnaz were behind the success of the show and of [their company] Desilu, Ball tended to get most of the credit and Cain says Arnaz was "torn".

[Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/everybody-loves-lucy-is-a-tribute-to-a-comedy-legend-20150320-1m22ys.html#ixzz3VMvQbyXy ]

But a theme of social responsibility, something about Jerome Kern’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes you might say (just to keep to the musical ambience), makes a clever point.  The show begins with Lucille’s (or Lucy’s)  and Desi’s (or Ricky’s) advertisement for cigarettes which, if the woman buys them for her man to show she loves him, then he will love her, too.  The same song is reprised, and sung in a quite different mood, towards the end of their marriage – and the two points are made in one, since on our stage in modern non-smoking times, the cigarettes are not lit, as, one might say, the fire of their relationship had gone out.

So the entertainment was not perhaps as ‘light’ as it seemed.  It was certainly very funny and enjoyable, and very appropriate for The Q’s Morning Melodies program.

[If for some unknown reason you want to follow up Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (lyrics by Otto Harbach), have an interesting read at http://www.steynonline.com/1663/smoke-gets-in-your-eyes ]

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Elektra / Orestes by Jada Alberts & Anne-Louise Sarks

Katherine Tonkin
Illustrator: Julian Meagher

Hunter Page-Lochard
Illustrator: Julian Meagher

Elektra / Orestes by Jada Alberts & Anne-Louise Sarks.

Presented by Belvoir, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks.  Designed by Ralph Myers; costumes by Mel Page; lighting by Damien Cooper; composer and sound, Stefan Gregory; fight director, Scott Witt.

At Belvoir Upstairs, Sydney, March 14 – April 25, 2015.




 Cast:

Linda Cropper:    Queen Klytemnestra
(mother who killed her husband, King Agamemnon, eight years ago, after he sacrificed their eldest child, daughter Iphegenia, to the gods to give him safe passage to Troy and left the family while at war for nine years)
Ursula Mills:        Khrysothemis (fourth child, youngest daughter)
Hunter Page-Lochard:    Orestes (third child, and only son)
Katherine Tonkin:    Elektra (second daughter, eldest surviving child)
Ben Winspear:    Aegisthus
(Agamemnon’s cousin, lover of Klytemnestra, joint murderer of Agememnon, now King)

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 21

Klytemnestra (Linda Cropper), Elektra (Katherine Tonkin), Orestes (Hunter Page-Lochard)

Elektra / Orestes shows the final battle in an internecine family war of monumental proportions. 

But instead of taking place in the kind of Ancient Greek palace that we might imagine if we think of the Parthenon, massively dominating Athens still today, we watch the verbal and physical violence play out in a minimally furnished family or breakfast room, and later in a slightly more upmarket kitchen (with an island workbench and extensive cupboards).

Revolves are now the in-thing (since Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day, I suspect), and in this case Ralph Myers’ design works very well indeed.  The play takes place twice, the first half hour focussed on Elektra in the family room; the second half hour repeating the action, but focussed on Orestes in the kitchen – where there is a knife block. 

He has also brought a handgun and secretly hidden in a cupboard, prepared to avenge his father’s murder, as his elder sister had told him to do when she sent him away to protect him from Aegisthus eight years previously, when he was still only an eleven-year-old.

We are in modern suburban Australia, with something like a professional woman trying to keep herself and her family together, or at least keeping up appearances.  Her youngest polite daughter tries to keep out of the way of the worst of the continuing conflict, yet can’t help being attracted by Aegisthus’ predatory attention.  Her other surviving daughter has become foul-mouthed and rebellious, focussed obsessively on her mother’s calumny, and has refused to reveal the whereabouts of her only son.

Orestes’ return inevitably presages the tragic consequences of past action.  In the Ancient Greek context, of course, it is the demand for human sacrifice made by the gods which is the root cause of the tragedy of the human condition.  In this modern setting, Agamemnon takes all the blame for the sacrifice of Iphegenia from Klytemnestra’s standpoint, while she takes all the blame for the murder of their father in the eyes of Elektra and Orestes.  Gods don’t get a look in nowadays.

Hunter Page-Lochard as Orestes

Soft toy rabbit, Ben Winspear (Aegisthus), Hunter Page-Lochard (Orestes), Ursula Mills (Khrysothemis)

Katherine Tonkin (Elektra) and Hunter Page-Lochard (Orestes)

The writing and production of this play is an ambitious and risky project.  Does it entirely succeed?

The production certainly does.  We are held in the grip of the conflict situation – except briefly when people laughed as Orestes continued to stab, and stab, and stab Aegisthus.  Half a dozen stabs were believable, even though we knew that the horribly long sharp kitchen knife was not really piercing Ben Winspear, despite how it looked.  (Fight director Scott Witt deserves credit here).  But the next half a dozen went over the top.  Even so, the laughter faded as another half a dozen stabs, and another, meant we could not look away. 

At this point I was reminded of the obsessive murder of his mother by an adult son which took place here, in modest Canberra, some years ago.  The perhaps schizophrenic son stabbed his mother more than 50 times, according to news reports.

The revolve and the action being repeated as seen from behind the scene worked brilliantly.  I remember a novel (French existentialist, I suspect) which described the same scene three or four times, each from a different character’s physical and mental perspective.  That struck me as an interesting idea, but not much more than playing an intellectual game with the reader. 

In Elektra / Orestes the point was that in the second half we discovered what was really happening in the kitchen which we had not known while watching the first half – and it worked because dramatically the second half developed our understanding of the plot and of each of the character’s viewpoints, which we thought we had understood before.  The structure of the drama was strengthened in this way, reaching the climax we might have expected, but with unexpected personal elements – such as the importance to Orestes of his soft-toy rabbit.

Katherine Tonkin (Elektra) and Linda Cropper (Klytemnestra)

Ursula Mills (Khrysothemis) and Katherine Tonkin (Elektra)

Ben Winspear (Aegisthus) and Linda Cropper (Klytemnestra)

But I wonder why a play, written by two modern Australian women – Aboriginal Jada Alberts and non-Indigenous Anne-Louise Sarks – kept the names and key elements of the Ancient Greek myth.  Were these meant to be modern Greeks?  How could a Queen and her family be living in such mundane circumstances?  Were we supposed to be watching a realistic story of a modern family, since the attitudes of the children were understandable considering what their mother and her lover had done?  But how could this be real in modern times, without their father having been arraigned for murdering his daughter Iphegenia, and their mother being arrested for murdering her husband (even if she acted partly in the belief that he was a threat to the safety of her other children)?

I had no problem seeing the issues of family violence exposed by the play.  That’s a tremendously valuable aspect of the writing and its presentation on stage.  But I found myself not connecting emotionally as I would like to have been able to do, because the myth from the ancient past and such a different culture was too literal.  So I began thinking about how it might be better done.

This Elektra / Orestes can be seen as part of the long tradition of representing the myth, starting from the 5th Century BCE Aeschylus, then Sophocles and Euripedes, but particularly in the 20th Century the American Eugene O’Neill’s trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400141.txt 

O’Neill finds a parallel in American history with the Trojan War – the American Civil War – and covers the years 1865 – 1866, when Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon comes home to his wife Christine and his daughter Lavinia.  Mannon’s mansion has a “white Grecian temple portico with its six tall columns [which] extends across the stage” which was correct for the American South (and is still used on MacMansions today in Australia!).  The characters have names which are appropriate for the period, and they speak American English of that period according to their class and racial background.  The three plays – Homecoming--A Play in Four Acts; The Hunted--A Play in Five Acts; The Haunted--A Play in Four Acts – parallel the plays by Aeschylus, but the reference is not made explicit.

Mourning Becomes Electra made O’Neill’s name as the great American playwright in 1931.  This was because Electra in the title made people try to work out what his play meant.  When the connection to the Electra / Orestes myth was thought through, people could see the play was a tragedy – not just for the characters in the story, but because Lavinia and her brother Orin represent the failure of the American Dream.  This is Lavinia’s last speech, to the old servant/retainer Seth:

LAVINIA--(grimly)  Don't be afraid.  I'm not going the way Mother
and Orin went.  That's escaping punishment.  And there's no one
left to punish me.  I'm the last Mannon.  I've got to punish
myself!  Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of justice
than death or prison!  I'll never go out or see anyone!  I'll have
the shutters nailed closed so no sunlight can ever get in.  I'll
live alone with the dead, and keep their secrets, and let them
hound me, until the curse is paid out and the last Mannon is let
die!  (with a strange cruel smile of gloating over the years of
self-torture)  I know they will see to it I live for a long time!
It takes the Mannons to punish themselves for being born!

Maybe Jada and Anne-Louise were not trying to write a play of such monumental proportions, but Lavinia is not so far from their Elektra (though I think their Orestes deserves more sympathy than O’Neill’s Orin).  But if they were wanting to put our feelings and understanding of the tragedy of family violence on stage at a higher level, they need to find a story from our history on which to turn the blowtorch of ancient myth.

The story of Jandamarra (http://www.bungoolee.com.au/index.php/jandamarra/) could be a good place to begin, for example.  If the family story in Elektra / Orestes represents the extension of the ancient Greek myth into the family violence we see in modern times, surely there might be an even more powerful drama in another 21st Century family perhaps entailing myth from the European and Aboriginal cultures, and the real history of the Bunuba man Jandamarra from 120 years ago.

This would be an equally ambitious and risky project, even more monumental in proportions.  Elektra / Orestes is an excellent start, but I feel the tragedy of family violence needs to be brought closer to home.

Ben Winspear as Aegisthus (the first stab)

Klytemnestra appeals to Orestes
Hunter Page-Lochard and Linda Cropper

Orestes about to take final revenge for his father's murder
Hunter Page-Lochard and Linda Cropper

All production photos by Lisa Tomasetti

© Frank McKone, Canberra

         

2015: The Drama of Sponsorship or The Theatre of Giving by Wesley Enoch

Wesley Enoch

The Drama of Sponsorship or The Theatre of Giving  by Wesley Enoch.
This is an extract from an address given by Wesley Enoch at a Currency House Creativity and Business Breakfast this morning, Wednesday March 18, 2015, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

Posted by Frank McKone with thanks to Martin Portus, Currency House

George Bernard Shaw is quoted as having said "There is no drama without
conflict; no conflict without something to decide."

After the 2014 Sydney Biennale artists boycott there have been many
questions raised about how artists negotiate a changing moral and financial
landscape. In a world where governments are wanting to see greater giving
from corporate and philanthropic bodies how are artists negotiating the pros
and cons of receiving monies and creating working partnerships with those
who give.

Wesley Enoch, Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, talks about
practical and ethical dilemmas for those giving and those receiving
non-government support.


INTRODUCTIONS

I’d like to add my acknowledgment of country here on Gadigal Land. There are amazing stories from the Tench diaries of being able to sit on the hill behind us watching the woman and children fishing on the harbour.  From this vantage point in the evenings you could spot their canoes bobbing in the water with a small fire alight in the front of each flimsy craft. The women could fish and cook a meal for their children whilst never needing to come in to shore. This kind of self-sufficiency is something the young colonists must have looked at with envy.

My name is Wesley Enoch and I am currently the Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre. I am the first Indigenous Artistic Director of any of the State Theatre Companies of the country. My family come from Stradbroke Island or Minjeeribah in Quandamooka country just off the coast of Brisbane. But I am so much more than that. On my father’s side of the family we have connections to three  different clans, a great great grandfather named Fernando Gonzales a filopino man, another great grandfather from Rotumah Island in the South Pacific and a range of other bloodlines. On my mothers side of the family we have Danish great grandmother and a Spanish great grandfather who met on a boat coming to Australia after WW1, as well as a mix of European influences.
I am like the average Australian, a mix of traditions and stories to tell.

The story I want to tell today is that of support for the arts and the cultural ambitions of our nation. A story that is age old and, like me, this nation has grown up with an eclectic collection of influences and an all-embracing sense of ourselves. We have grown to become a wonderful mongrel of a nation. By rejecting genetic and cultural purity in favour of a multicultural hybrid we have bred a society based on a set of uncertainties and questions rather than knowns. Our traditions come and go, our national narratives are contestable and we have become a country of bruisers ready for a good natured punch up. We sometimes don’t know the rules well enough and need a bit of biffo to test where we stand.

I have to admit I don’t mind a bit of metaphorical biffo. I think this is part of the role of an artist – to reflect the character of a country and to challenge and test accepted norms.

ROLE OF THE ARTIST

The Creative Thinker is constantly imagining a vocabulary for the future. Imagining an alternative to the status quo and building a tension between what is known and what is just out of reach. The Creative Thinker spends their time avoiding rigid judgement in favour of that next evolutionary step, a step that brings with it innovation and change. The Creative Thinker must possess the child-like qualities of play whilst simultaneously engaging in the mercantile and organisational realities of advanced societies. The Creative Thinker engages with the aesthetic, cultural and material world to reflect where we are and advocate progress to where we could be. George Bernard Shaw is quoted as having said "There is no drama without conflict; no conflict without something to decide." This drama takes the form of debate and engagement so that a fork in the road can be identified and the audience encouraged to decide which path is right for them.

Artists are a distillation of this creative thinking. Artists are by their very nature ratbags and fringe-dwellers, dissenters and protestors. A lone voice on the progressive edge of a society. Artists are constantly having to confront and manage their disappointment in a world that does not always recognise the validity of their views, appreciate their talent or support them unconditionally. It is the nature of all those in progressive leadership to be disappointed and disappointing for often our vision outstrips and outpaces the ability of a society to be led. Though artists have incredible visions of the future which goes beyond the changes of fashion and boredom with the status quo, visions that are more akin to futurists in their abilities to open our minds and souls to new ways of seeing the world around, we have not been known for our abilities to negotiate change and often we have needed curators, managers, translators and interpreters to help connect the vision of the future with an audience.

SEEKING SUPPORT

Since time immemorial the Artist has relied on the largesse of the tribe to allow them space in a society to practise their craft. To be excused from the day to day gathering of food and collective survival responsibilities of the whole tribe so that they could perfect skills, reflect on tribal cultural needs and devise distractions and engagements with a sense of themselves. Patronage has been a structural support for artists since we first stood on two feet. Be it a collective undertaking or the need for specialist artists, the cultural artefacts and practices of a people have become the signifier of an advanced society. All great societies have supported artists to become great, elevating them to be high priests of culture and storytelling. Every great social endeavour has been enhanced or recorded through having an artistic parallel. Think of crowns and jewels, architecture, rock art recording the arrival of different waves of European explorers on these shores, religious iconography, epic poems and songs of great battles and creation.

From Tribal practices within Indigenous peoples across the world, here on this country, European models of patronage where the rich exercised their wealth through signs of artistic knowledge and alignment with these outliers of a society: societies have advanced or stagnated in parallel with their artistic endeavours.

Patronage could sometimes lead to incredible stagnation as societies set out to control artists and harness them to promote certain ideas and glorify the leaders. In recent centuries the glorification of royalty and leaders created a form of propaganda that rings false to a modern audience. The grand heroic painting of a leader on his horse…you get the idea.

In recent times governments have taken on a greater role in supporting artists.  The 20th century saw the growth of publicly endowed galleries, theatres, concert halls and festivals throughout the world. Admittedly infrastructure was often pursued before the financial support of artists but one begat the other eventually. Successive governments at all levels and all political persuasions have found ways of patronising the arts as a sign of advancement and social legacy. They have embraced the intrinsic role of artists to be creative thinkers, social provocateurs and cultural canaries in the mineshafts of it’s citizenry.

With government support and a post war environment of the mid 20th century came less control over the artists as elected representatives developed a more hands off approach to avoid accusations of propaganda and social engineering.

 ‘Arms Length’ decision making has taken hold as the norm. To maintain the role of the artist in our modern society our major funding bodies engage ‘experts’ from the field to help shape policy, collections and funding decisions. This allows artists to be independent of the political imperatives of the day, removing the temptation to use artists as an arm of social engineering. But I think this has come with an expectation that artists stay rooted in their community and effectively play their role that justifies the investment of time and resources that the tribe allots them.

In recent years successive governments have started to erode this position through targeted funds, ‘dollar for dollar’ incentive deals, and general rewards for different behaviours within the funding environment. Increasing levels of interest and intervention by ministers have occurred as governments of all persuasions deal with competing priorities, increasing demands on a shrinking resource pool and the need to balance budgets. Subtle and not so subtle signals are given to companies and institutions to find alternatives to public funds to do their core roles. The larger the organisation the greater the reliance on box office, earned income and the recent move to philanthropy and sponsorship. I know at QTC we have experienced a 50% growth in sponsorship in the past four years, a 150% increase in philanthropy, a 20% increase in audiences. Though government Arts grants are still the greatest supporter of the company most of the almost $3 million growth in the company’s turnover has come from increases in earned income and alternative sources of support.

This has given the company a great deal of flexibility due to the freedom from some ‘red tape’ attached to government sources….but I see Government red tape as a reflection of the public accountability functions with one eye on artistic and community values so I don’t totally disagree with it; but are we replacing this form of accountability with a need for artistic companies to reflect the values of those who are giving the money?

Does this appetite and reliance on new monies from the private sector create a timidity amongst our companies and eroded our ability to dissent, offend and challenge?

Have we become quiet and compliant to the will of a new breed of patrons and taste makers? Ralph Myers and David Pledger have both outlined the fact that amongst our larger arts organisations the Chairs of Boards and the Boards themselves  have become increasingly populated by business people, private philanthropists and managers. This is seen as an attempt by companies and governments to build non-grant income for companies. But has it shaped the artistic will of a company either directly or indirectly?

Has this created a world where artists don’t fit in? Or created a mould where artists are not trusted?
Have we become fearful of artists like Bill Henson or Barrie Kosky or an artist who will offend and polarise an audience?

I fundamentally don’t believe this is the case, but I think we need to be vigilant. I think if artists consider themselves as equals to board members, philanthropists, sponsorship managers, believe in the worth of their work and ambitions, then a dialogue can occur without necessarily compromising their artistic intent.

But I have seen a growing trend of late where the artist feels disempowered in these discussions. Where artists feel that they cannot achieve their best, based on an assumption of obstacles. The assumption of disempowerment is as destructive as any actual reality. We’re not talking about discussion, debate and differences of opinion, I’m talking about where people assume disagreement, and a point of view before even testing it and don’t engage in the discussion chooses to be silent rather than face a bit of biffo.

I come from a collaborative art form and an Indigenous community so I think I am all for a good debate about what is the ‘right’ way forward together.

I’ll just digress for a short time. When I was 24 I ran an Indigenous theatre company in Brisbane called Kooemba Jdarra – which means Good Ground. Deborah Mailman and I and Wayne Blair and Leah Purcell and a huge range of artists worked with the company over the years. We did a huge range of work in communities, theatres, career development and commissioning. We had an all-Indigenous board and in the mid-90’s we were hoping to expand our work and needed increased financial support. The Board were discussing options to raise funds and our attention turned to sponsorship. Now you can imagine the issues that arose around taking support from a fictional alcohol company, or a hypothetical mining company… we talked about approaching the Commonwealth Bank and one board member pointed out the role of that bank in the Queensland stolen wages saga of the 20th Century. The company was ultimately in pursuit of a mythical ‘clean money’...in the end it was hard to identify the notion of clean money. Even the idea of needing money and speaking English was a contestable assault on Indigenous sovereignty. In the abstract it was impossible to identify clean money. We hit a kind of paralysis of integrity. Any move was a checkmate because we didn’t agree with the game we were playing.

Concepts of brand association and personal integrity stopped the work we were wanting to make from occurring. We found it impossible to tell the stories we wanted to tell to our community and the broader community because we assumed things in the abstract that we didn’t know we could do.

SIBELCO

Flash forward 20 years. I am back in Brisbane and running the Queensland Theatre Company. We have a project that was so big that there was no way we could afford to do it alone.

Enter Silbelco. It’s great to have a table of you here today. Thanks for coming.

Now Silbelco is a family-owned company with mining interests across the globe. One of those mines is a sandmining operation on Stradbroke Island….I call it Minjeeribah…it is my tribal Lands. I must admit to feeling conflicted about this potential relationship. On one hand the notion of engaging with a mining company brought up all this conversation two decades earlier but on the other hand my family have been engaged in the sand mining business for all the time it had been occurring on the island. My father talked about how he and his father did test drilling when he was a child. As one of 13 my father gave up schooling at ten to help provide for the growing family and when my grandfather died, leaving his brood to fend for themselves, it was the church, Legacy and the sandmining that helped get them through those first few years without the welfare breaking the family apart.

The project we needed the money for was Black Diggers a show of such immense importance to the nation’s history that even with the support of the Sydney Festival and extra support from the Australia Council its future was dubious. Black Diggers is about the stories of Indigenous soldiers who went to and returned from WW1.

My great Aunt is Kath Walker Oodgeroo Noonuccal and I remember her saying to me once that traditionally the natural landscape is there to feed us and feed our art. Convenient memory…thanks Aunty Kath.

But it set me on a journey of discussion about values…I talked to elders and community members. I can tell you now there is no consensus on this topic. Blackfellas are like a pack of whitefellas sometimes—no one can agree who should be the leader, who has the numbers and what policy is the right one to dump and which version we’re up to. Sometimes I would rather eat an onion than have these conversations.

In the end I stood by the decision to accept the support of Sibelco, because ultimately the intent of the work was to express an Indigenous perspective and celebrate the contribution of those Indigenous men who served and sacrificed.

We were honest about the difficulties and the intentions of the work and Sibelco is a fantastic supporter. I mean it. They don’t try to tell me what to do, they don’t try to make propaganda or corrupt the intention of the artistic vision. They are not deaf to the concerns in the communities in which they work and attempt to create more value for those people they work with. Not to assuage guilt, or mediate bad press but because they believe it is a responsibility of a corporate citizen.
This decision seems to many a betrayal of some rainbow alliance of green, black, pink and any other assumed relationship but it is not for others to decide what is right for me.

BOYCOTT

I wrote a Platform Paper last year which is published by Currency House, and one of the topics I wrote about was the boycott of the Sydney Biennale by a number of artists in 2014. Now I respect each person’s right to navigate the minefield of association and sponsorship as they see is right, it is a complex issue and I do not know all the arguments involved but I personally feel that boycott is more about a battle of brands than it is about making a difference around a social concern. The real challenge is to engage in a debate and create work that reflects that debate. The silence of the artist is an abrogation of our basic role in our community. If you believe in an issue enough make your art a reflection on the issue.

If the organisation or the sponsor is not making demands on the work then can you not accept the support from the sponsor; but at the same time create a critical environment within the work or in a discussion about the work that promotes alternative views to those of the donor? For me that is the key. It’s the ‘arms length’ that helps us accept monies from a government that we may or may not agree with. A government of a country that has systematically disenfranchised Indigenous Australians, promulgated obviously racist policies over the years and proven themselves ineffectual advocates for change;  but I will accept their support to challenge them and give voice to the opposing side of the debate.

NEGOTIATION

The true drama of sponsorship comes from when you (as an artist) can express the reasons you want to make the work, your values and the stories you want to tell. When you can dedicate your life to engaging in important work that takes the world to another place of investigation and growth. And the sponsor or philanthropist can do the same thing—they can articulate why they want to share their treasure. What the values being expressed through sponsorship and philanthropy are—and what they expect from the relationship.

It is not a transaction of master and servant, it is a conversation of equals, it is not a mendicant meets Midas relationship, it must be where we talk about what we want to achieve and if there is irreconcilable disagreement we can move on without penalty or prejudice for any future conversation.
I promise to be articulate and forthcoming, challenging and equal to the debate if those who are willing to support artists are open to discussion and discourse, robust challenges and believe in the role artists play in our society.

"There is no drama without conflict; no conflict without something to decide."

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Out of the Cabinet! by Shortis & Simpson

Moya Simpson
Photo by Jen Everart

Out of the Cabinet! by Shortis & Simpson.  John Shortis, composer and keyboard, with singer Moya Simpson; and including lecture by Nicholas Brown.  At the National Archives of Australia, Queen Victoria Terrace, Parkes, Canberra.  March 6 and 7, 2015, 6.30pm and 8.30pm.

Commentary / Review by Frank McKone
March 8

I reviewed John Shortis and Moya Simpson, in company with Andrew Bissett, in their first show of political satire in June 1996. (Available at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com.au )

Called Shortis and Curlies, it was entertaining food for thought at the long departed School of Arts Cafe in Queanbeyan.  Proprietor Bill Stephens (still very active as you’ll see on other posts in this blog) had previously asked them to do a Christmas cabaret show, after Moya had sung there with the likes of Margret Roadknight. 

As Peter Webb (Member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for Monaro) recorded in Hansard at 4.45 p.m., 24 November 2000: This evening I speak of a sad occasion, the end of the Queanbeyan School of Arts Cafe. The cafe has become a local institution and a role model for cabaret venues. A lot of Australians who perform on the national and international stage got their grounding at that cafe.  He concluded: The cafe has put Queanbeyan on the cultural national map. I offer my congratulations to Bill, Pat and Timothy Stephens on their contribution to the social fabric of Queanbeyan and to the arts in the local region, the State and the nation, and on the assistance they have given to all of the artists. I wish them all the best for this icon's closing festivities over the next few weeks. I sincerely hope that assistance from an individual, the Queanbeyan community or the Queanbeyan City Council will be forthcoming to continue this great icon. My best wishes to the Stephens family.

Unfortunately, no-one put their hand up or a fistful of money to keep the School of Arts Cafe going, though the Queanbeyan City Council now supports the highly successful Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre (The Q) under the direction of Stephen Pike, also known in those earlier days for his theatre-restaurant productions.

But, fortunately, before they became titled ‘Shortis & Simpson’, their Christmas show had included a song of political satire.  Was it the one about ex-WA Premier  and by then Federal MP Carmen Lawrence’s woes over the Penny Easton Affair?

[In 1996, a Royal Commission into the ‘Penny Easton Affair’ found Lawrence had lied to the Western Australian Parliament. As a result, Lawrence was charged with perjury and resigned as a shadow minister. The resulting court case took two years and, in 1999, she was found not guilty.]
http://www.civicsandcitizenship.edu.au/cce/lawrence_carmen,15274.html and http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s38678.htm

Politics at Christmas is sure to be a goer in Queanbeyan/Canberra, the Federal Capital, and so was born Shortis and Curlies the following June.  And the point of all this history?  That of all the shows at the Queanbeyan School of Arts, Shortis & Simpson has (or have) endured.  Where the Cafe had been the ‘local institution’, an ‘icon’ on the ‘cultural national map’, John Shortis and Moya Simpson (so tightly bonded that I’m not sure whether to refer to them in the singular or plural) have become one of our crucial cultural repositories.

I used that word advisedly, rather than the word chosen (on another issue) by our budgie smuggling Prime Minister, Tony Abbott – suppository – particularly because S&S (grammatically plural, I guess) have taken the tradition of the School of Arts Cafe right into the heart of Federal Government: the National Archives of Australia.  Each year, when the Cabinet documents of the past are un-embargoed – this year from the Bob Hawke / Paul Keating Government years 1988-89 – John and Moya are paid (at least I hope they are) to satirise our seat of democracy.

The audience at the 8.30pm session last night was highly sophisticated and obviously included men and women with intimate knowledge of government, past and present.  So what was the film, among all those released in 1988-89, which accrued the greatest approval?  The Cane Toad documentary, of course!  Produced by Film Australia, written and directed by Mark Lewis, its full title was Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Toads:_An_Unnatural_History) and I well remember the long, long shot down a straight country road.  A Kombi campervan takes its time driving towards the camera, every few metres ducking off to the left, or to the right, instead of taking the proper straight line.  Only some minutes in, does the audience (or at least this slow reactor) realise what’s happening.  “Run over the bastards” is the political quote that comes mind.

That’s not from the Hawke-Keating Cabinet papers, but from the time of the early anti-Vietnam War protests in 1966, spoken by the NSW Premier Bob Askin.

(See http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=arts_article for a fictional account by Camilla Nelson of the visit by US President Lyndon Johnson and his wife Lady Bird, called All the Way with LBJ.)

That’s an episode in history that I remember well, too.

The Archives’ description of Out of the Cabinet gives the picture: The musical and comedic stylings of Shortis and Simpson are back by popular demand. 1988 was the year of the Bicentenary, new Parliament House, the Fitzgerald Inquiry, and George Bush senior. In 1989, events in Tiananmen Square unfolded and the Berlin Wall fell. Bob Hawke returned as Prime Minister. Our music charts were jumping with the hits of Crowded House, Madonna, The Bangles and U2.

Join Shortis and Simpson on a humorous musical journey to mark the release of the Cabinet papers of those two eventful years.

An essential part of the show was also the highly energetic lecture by ANU History academic, Nicholas Brown.  You can read the formal research background to his talk at http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/cabinet/by-year/1988-89/index.aspx, but his lively presentation fitted perfectly in style after the main 25 minutes of Shortis & Simpson’s performance.  After hearing songs of the day ranging from comic versions of 500 Miles, through Fast Car, Don’t Worry Be Happy, to the jingoistic Celebration of the Nation, and Eric Bogle’s Poor Wee Billy McMahon who was outshone by Sonia’s split skirt, as well as Paul Kelly’s Bicentennial from the Indigenous people’s viewpoint:

"Bicentennial"

A ship is sailing into harbour
A party's waiting on the shore
And they're running up the flag now
And they want us all to cheer

Charlie's head nearly reaches the ceiling
But his feet don't touch the floor
From a prison issue blanket his body's swinging
He won't dance any more

Take me away from your dance floor
Leave me out of your parade
I have not the heart for dancing
For dancing on his grave

Hunted man out on the Barcoo
Broken man on Moreton Bay
Hunted man across Van Diemen's
Hunted man all swept away

Take me away from your dance floor
Leave me out of your parade
I have not the heart for dancing
For dancing on his grave

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paulkelly/bicentennial.html

we were introduced to Nicholas Brown via the song Turn Back Time by Cher:

"If I Could Turn Back Time"

If I could turn back time
If I could find a way I'd take back those words that hurt you and you'd stay

I don't know why I did the things I did I don't know why I said the things I said
Pride's like a knife it can cut deep inside
Words are like weapons they wound sometimes.

I didn't really mean to hurt you I didn't wanna see you go I know I made you cry, but baby

[Chorus:]
If I could turn back time
If I could find a way
I'd take back those words that hurt you
And you'd stay
If I could reach the stars
I'd give them all to you
Then you'd love me, love me
Like you used to do

If I could turn back time

My world was shattered I was torn apart
Like someone took a knife and drove it deep in my heart
You walked out that door I swore that I didn't care
But I lost everything darling then and there

Too strong to tell you I was sorry
Too proud to tell you I was wrong
I know that I was blind, and ooh...

[Chorus]

Ooohh

If I could turn back time
If I could turn back time
If I could turn back time
ooh baby

I didn't really mean to hurt you
I didn't want to see you go
I know I made you cry
Ooohh

[Chorus #2]
If I could turn back time
If I could find a way
I'd take back those words that hurt you
If I could reach the stars
I'd give them all to you
Then you'd love me, love me
Like you used to do

If I could turn back time (turn back time)
If I could find a way (find a way)
Then baby, maybe, maybe
You'd stay

[to fade]
Reach the stars
If I could reach the stars

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cher/ificouldturnbacktime.html

Nicholas then proceeded to give us a feel for the changes since and, indeed, the political and social beginnings which were in the Cabinet submissions of 1988-89.  Particularly he noted how the  downbeat and often negative language about the economy and how people’s expectations should be contained began to appear in the new phrases used by politicians.  Just one example from today’s Canberra Times [March 8, 2015 p8] (which is of personal interest to me) is how Alan Tudge, the Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, “said on Saturday that the pension system was likely to become unsustainable”.  This was a word first emphasised in 1988-89, warning us of dire things to come – which turned out to be the recession “we had to have” when Paul Keating ousted Bob Hawke, and still won the 1990 election (since the Liberal Party was going through similar turmoil to today, as Andrew Peacock ousted John Howard), despite raising interest rates to 18% in the vain hopes of stimulating the economy.


It was this sense of history, including questions from those in the know in the audience (for example, about the Notebooks taken by 4 notetakers in Cabinet meetings being embargoed for 50 years!), that dovetailed seamlessly with Shortis & Simpson’s re-creation of the times as we lived them in 1988-89.  Their achievement was grounded firmly in Moya Simpson’s ability to channel the voices of the singers of those days, as well as in John Shortis’ accuracy and originality in his accompaniments.

Nicholas Brown’s presentation was bookended by Peter J Casey’s comic song of the ACT’s Legislative Assembly – The Biggest Town Council – which included four members (from a metre-long ballot paper) voted in at its first self-government election who had stood against self-government !!!  Noting that Inquiries are now a regular feature of our lives, we were reminded that the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption in Queensland took place 1987-89.  “Don’t you worry about that!” said Moya in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s never to be forgotten voice.

And so we ended on a sober note, singing Crowded House’s You Better be Home, Soon.

Maybe I’ve written more than you might expect for a review of an hour-long show, but to me it’s important to recognise the role Shortis & Simpson still play, and I hope will continue to play, for as many as possible of another 20 years.

© Frank McKone, Canberra