2017: Under Sedation: Canberra Verse Remixed, edited and directed by Adele Chynoweth

Under Sedation: Canberra Verse Remixed, edited and directed by Adele Chynoweth.  The Street at The Street Two, Canberra, September 30 – October 14, 2017.

Designer – Imogen Keen; Movement Director/Choreographer – Emma Strapps; Sound Designer – Shoeb Ahmad; Lighting Designer – Linda Buck

Performed by Ben Drysdale and Ruth Pieloor

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 8

Adele Chynoweth, like an expert DJ, has mixed clips taken from 43 poems and songs, supported by The Street’s artistic director Caroline Stacey, “to devise a poetry anthology of Canberra verse – a theatrical work embodied by professional actors as a complement to the conventional genre of poetry readings”.

Ruth Pieloor

Ben Drysdale

The result is a quite fascinating performance-poetry production: 80 minutes of exploration of personal and social behaviour starting from the key quote Remember, sister, we are under sedation of habit, of hope, of lust from the poem Under Sedation by the classic Canberra poet A.D. Hope, published in A Late Picking 1975.  The whole poem begins and ends the show, and is available for download at

https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hope-a-d/under-sedation-0142018

Canberra becomes a character in its own right, not because of many explicit references, but as an ineffable spirit expressed through all these different writers, ranging from the Australian National University academic A.D. Hope to the famous Wiradjuri man Kevin Gilbert in his poem Tree. 

Gilbert was instrumental in setting up the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the tree-lined lawns facing the original Parliament House, and his poem stood out for me against the dark side of Under Sedation.  I have reprinted it here from the obituary by his daughter Kerry-Reed Gilbert, published shortly after her father’s death in April 1993, in Green Left Weekly:

I am the tree

the lean hard hungry land

the crow and eagle

sun and moon and sea

I am the sacred clay

which forms the base

the grasses vines and man

I am all things created

I am you and

you are nothing

but through me the tree

you are

and nothing comes to me

except through that one living gateway

to be free

and you are nothing yet

for all creation

earth and God and man

is nothing

until they fuse

and become a total sum of something

together fuse to consciousness of all

and every sacred part aware

alive

in true affinity

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/voice-his-people


In a talk before the performance today, Adele Chynoweth said “We didn’t want to sedate the audience”.  The design in-the-round, the lighting, sound and choreography, and the vocal and movement and characterisation skills of both actors, as well as the choices and layout of the texts and songs certainly made sure we were never sedated.  The range of emotions from laughter, often with a sense of irony, concern about serious social problems like drug-taking up and down the social scale,  sadness, for example when an intimate relationship breaks down, or death occurs, meant that our attention never flagged.

For me, the song that formed the third strong support with Hope’s and Gilbert’s poems was Fred Smith’s Dust of Uruzgan.  I have reviewed Smith’s work before on this blog, at the National Folk Festival, April 5 2015 and again in the one-off Soldier Songs and Voices, March 10, 2016.  When the verses of that song were interspersed between others’ poems, and especially because of the quality and strength of Ben Drysdale’s singing and guitar playing, I felt the effect was even more powerful.  As I wrote in 2015 “Then there’s Fred – Fred Smith, that is.  Canberran to the boot-straps.  A DFAT warrior with a successful diplomatic record in some of the war-torn and socially messy parts of the world, who writes ascerbic songs about life.”

So I found in Under Sedation: Canberra Verse Remixed the soul of this bureaucratic capital city that will surprise many outsiders, and encourage those of us who live here and seek out the arts for our self-expression.  I think I am not going too far if I say this is perhaps the best original work I have seen at The Street, showing the value of Caroline Stacey’s leadership as artistic director and CEO.

Ruth Pieloor and Ben Drysdale

© Frank McKone

2017 Morning Melodies - Paul Martell and Jane Scali

Paul Martell and Jane Scali

The Paul Martell and Jane Scali Show.  Morning Melodies at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, Friday October 6, 2017.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Morning Melodies at The Q might cater for the elderly (at 76 I was among the younger members of today’s audience), but it wasn’t all mere melody on this occasion.  I’m glad to say that we were certainly not treated as the stereotypical sentimental nincompoops as we might have been in times gone past.

It is true that Dean Martin and Perry Como had their parts to play, and yes, I could sing along with Irish Eyes are Smiling and even Oh Danny Boy, but certain political conservatives would surely have been horrified that comedian Paul Martell assumed that we were intelligent, up with the latest on same-sex marriage surveys and Trumpian matters, and therefore very likely to vote yes to progressive social policy.  Tony, Corey, Eric and their old mate Howard would have been offended.  This show kindly reminded us of the 1950s and 1960s, but didn’t try to take us back there.

So this old audience laughed, enjoyed Martell’s jokes and mature-age innuendos, as much as Jane Scali’s straight renditions of songs we used to know, and appreciated Martell’s mimicry of movie stars (and even one politician – Bob Hawke).  It was light entertainment, but not mere fluff, which gave us a sense of relief from the woes of the world, laughing along for an hour or so with this nice, sensible, funny, married couple.

The show is cleverly put together and deserves all the praise I felt the audience give it.  The only quibble (and I checked with others in case it was just my hearing aid that was the problem) was that the level and tone control on Jane’s microphone was not set to get the best effect from her voice.  She seemed often to be too loud when close to the mic, and with too much lower frequency tone, so that often her words were hard to understand.  If she took the mic farther away, her words were clearer, but the volume and impact dropped off.  This was particularly noticeable compared with the clarity of Paul Martell’s mic.  Since I hadn’t heard Jane sing on stage previously, I checked on YouTube with clips from a number of her performances – and her voice was clear as a bell.

I recognise, of course, that technical rehearsals and different equipment in venues make this kind of thing problematic for touring one-off performances, so the quibble remains no more than that.

The important take-home message is that everyone came out obviously pleased with a thoroughly enjoyable Morning Melody.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2017: Drama Education 2 - Drama Teaching Processes

Three Cognitive Processes

in Drama Teaching Design

While listening to the 23 presenters at the Drama Australia Symposium 2017, and thinking about my own interest in the concept of metacognition and its importance in higher level learning especially at the senior secondary level at which I used to teach, I have come up with these three concepts.

The papers which were most significant in my thinking were:

Susan Davis: Dramatic Thinking: Identifying and Owning Our Creative Process - "This paper investigates the concerns and considerations of the creative process in drama with reference to systems theories of creativity and the notion of signature pedagogies to propose embracing the concept of 'dramatic thinking'.  If we accept that there are signature pedagogies (Shulman 2005) which are endemic to different disciplines and professions, these may also be seen to extend to thinking and creative process used by the dramatic pedagogue and dramatist."

Brad Haseman: Thin Redundancy or Rich Aesthetics?  Drama Education and Online Learning Design - "While the paper is immediately relevant to those working with drama and digital technology, it is also relevant to arts teachers who are having to deal with educational approaches dismissive of constructivist, problem-based and experiential learning."

Paul Gardiner: Creative Climates: Collaboration for Creativity in the Context of Individual Assessment - "This paper explores the findings of research into playwriting pedagogy and the associated pedagogical strategies that develop student creative capacity and creative confidence....  It examines classroom practice through the lens of creative environments (Isaksen & Ekvall, 2010) and how collaborative practice can further foster student creativity through encouraging idea support, debate, trust and openness."

Alison O'Grady:  Navigating Context in a Post-truth World: Confronting a New Challenge for Researchers - "In a recent workshop, it was discovered that divergent personal truths could co-exist, while simultaneously suggesting what was believed was most likely a lie."

John Nicholas Saunders: Using Drama as Creative, Critical and Quality Pedagogy to Improve Student Literacy and Engagement in the Primary Years - "The paper will illustrate how using creative pedagogy (partularly process drama-based strategies), combined with quality children's literature, can improve student academic (English and literacy) and non-academic (engagement, motivation, confidence and empathy) outcomes in the primary years of schooling."

Michael Anderson: Capitalising on Creativity to Re-imagine Schooling: Beyond STEM and STEAM - In this presentation I will discuss the role of creativity as a driver of innovation across all subjects and fields and explore what we are missing out on by siloing STEM from other areas of creativity and innovation in the curriculum."

My purpose is to offer these three headings under which a teacher may plan drama-based activities appropriate for the needs of their students; while they may be helpful in judging the success or otherwise of the activity when assessing the students' learning outcomes.

 

Process Drama: a linear process from implicit learning in the active drama phase to explicit understanding of external material.  For the students, this is "Simple Cognitive" experience, in which they learn about subjects which are not Drama.

Drama Process Drama: a linear process from implicit learning in the active drama phase to explicit understanding of drama process.  For the students, this is "Metacognitive" experience, taking their understanding of Drama to a higher level.  This kind of experience was the objective of my development of extended group improvisation method for Years 11/12 1985-1992.

Theatre Process Drama: a recursive process from metacognitive understanding in rehearsal to internalised implicit recall in performance phase.  For the students, as actors in a drama (whether formally or informally staged), this "Recursive Metacognition" experience enables them to act, in Hayes Gordon's words, rather than 'perform'.  (Hayes Gordon: Acting and Performing, Ensemble Press, Sydney © Hayes Gordon 1987, first published 1992)

© Frank McKone, Canberra