2018: Black is the New White by Nakkiah Lui

Black is the New White by Nakkiah Lui.  Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, March 28 – 31, 2018.

(This production premiered at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney on March 1, 2018.  The original production premiered at Wharf 1 Theatre on May 10, 2017.)

Director – Paige Rattray; Designer – Renée Mulder; Lighting Designer – Ben Hughes; Composer and Sound Designer – Steve Toulmin; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell.

Cast:
Ray Gibson – Tony Briggs; Narrator – Luke Carroll; Marie Smith – Vanessa Downing; Dennison Smith – Geoff Morrell; Joan Gibson – Melodie Reynolds-Diarra; Charlotte Gibson – Shari Sebbens; Francis Smith – Tom Stokes; Rose Jones – Nakkiah Lui (replacing Miranda Tapsell for the Canberra season); Sonny Jones – Anthony Taufa

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 28

There is a special sense of coming together in this new form of comedy of manners.  It is both a romantic comedy, but also a questioning comedy.  What does it mean to be ‘black’ or ‘white’?  Lui’s highly sophisticated writing says it’s very funny.  Standing ovation kind of funny.  Seriously exciting kind of theatre.

Looking at Black is the New White from the white side, as I inevitably must, I see a picture which reminds me of when I was a £10 invading Pom some 60 years ago.  I was fascinated then by my culture’s 18th Century cartoonery and social commentary pictures.  William Hogarth comes to mind.

             An Election Entertainment featuring the anti-Gregorian calendar banner "Give us our Eleven Days", 1755

I came to understand that to see the whole picture, I had to accept equally all the diverse characters in Hogarth’s typically crowded scenes – from the grotesque to the ‘normal’; from the low class to the high.

L-R: Anthony Taufa, Vanessa Downing, Luke Carroll (above), Shari Sebbens,
Geoff Morrell, Melodie Reynolds-Diarra, Tony Briggs, Miranda Tapsell, Tom Stokes
in Black is the New White by Nakkiah Lui

Joan Gibson's Christmas speech
Photo: Prudence Upton

Nakkiah Lui’s picture of today’s middle class in Sydney – black, white and Tongan – is as humorous a view as Hogarth’s and brings me up to date.  Though I was an unwitting invader at the age of 14, I feel better about being here now, thanks to the many Aboriginal playwrights and performers whose work I’ve seen (and some reviewed here and at ( www.ccc-canberracriticscircle.blogspot.com ) from the days of the National Black Theatre in Redfern which I attended in 1973, through  Jimmy Chi's 1990 musical Bran Nue Dae and many others, to Nakkiah Lui. 

The first work of hers I reviewed, Kill the Messenger (February 20, 2015) was beyond impressive.  Black is the New White thoroughly establishes her place among our great writers on the Australian stage.  She makes the crossover between cultures understandable and acceptable.  Lui is an enormously generous writer.

The quality of the production of the play goes without saying, after last year’s success at Wharf 1, though I would have liked to have seen Miranda Tapsell (not to disparage the author’s performance here in Canberra).  I first noted Tapsell’s acting while she was still at NIDA, in Dallas Winmar’s Yibiyung ten years ago, with Wesley Enoch directing, and later in Louis Nowra’s Radiance, directed by Leah Purcell, and would love to have seen her here in such a different role.  Tapsell’s story alone shows where Indigenous theatre is travelling.

Luke Carroll, Miranda Tapsell, Anthony Taufa
Photo: Hon Boey

In this rehearsal picture, you see not only Miranda Tapsell (Rose) and Anthony Taufa (Sonny), but an important figure in the background, Luke Carroll as The Narrator.  From her Indigenous culture, Lui has clearly drawn upon the storytelling tradition in this dynamic character, but also on the idea – regarded as new when Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie last century – of a member of the family standing aside from the action to explain to us outsiders what is really going on inside.

While Tom tells much of his own story in The Glass Menagerie, director Paige Rattray writes of Black is the New White, in answer to the question  “What can the narrator be and what can’t it be for it to work well here”,  The improvisations were useful.  We pushed that character to see how far he could be involved in the world of the other characters.  We found a few little moments of overlap, but it’s actually much better if he is outside the reality, observing.  He’s more connected to the audience than he is to the characters.

I found The Narrator especially important in two ways.  The first is as a simple device for changing scenes as one bit of the story ends and another begins.  But this character knows all the little details of the family members’ behaviours, do’s and don’ts, wishes and real intentions.  He is absolutely Aboriginal, though so well dressed in ‘white’ suits.  He moves as if dancing (including with a front-row audience member!) and talks with a glint of humour in his eye.

I found myself imagining The Narrator as a kind of ghost-figure, but the opposite of a Kadaitcha (the harbinger of death).  This Narrator is the epitome of life, both romantic and questioning – but never with rancour.  Observing, yes – but to me, at least, he is much more, connecting the audience to the characters.

If there’s a parallel in my culture, it must be in the independent clownish philosophers in Shakespeare’s plays, but never with the cynicism of a Jacques.  It’s at this level that I place Nakkiah Lui’s art.

Director Paige Rattray with playwright Nakkiah Lui during rehearsal
Photo: Hon Boey

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: The Stevenson Experience: Spot the Difference

James and Benjamin Stevenson

The Stevenson Experience: Spot the Difference, created and performed by Benjamin and James Stevenson.  At The Street Theatre 1, Canberra, Saturday March 24, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Ben and James Stevenson in
The Stevenson Experience

Now that I’ve stopped laughing, this is serious.  Despite one review a year ago of their earlier show Identical as Anything (“Their songs are catchy enough, but the content of their comedy is overly puerile and questionable..." by Joe Dolan, The Music.com.au), the Stevenson Twins, in their new show this year, Spot The Difference, still have catchy songs and puerile jokes – but that’s the point of their comedy.

How puerile indeed is so much of what purports to be ‘social’ on the internet.  The audience, mostly about the same age or a bit younger than the 28 the boys claimed to be, seated around time-worn me, got all the details of the jokes – many of which I missed – because they recognised the teenage-bitch quality in themselves.  In my maturity, I’m not on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and the Stevensons have made be glad I’m not.

Of course, I recognised myself in the Stevenson parents’ text messages and emails.  Like them I like to be precise and careful about what I write, as well as making the occasional Dad and even Grandad apocryphal joke, though I hope I’m not quite as gormless as their father seems to be.

So what makes their show worth going to?  The serious answer, considering Benjamin’s insistence throughout the show that he is an intellectual and it's all about Art, would be the Menaechmi by the ancient Roman playwright Plautus.  In that play the twins are separated when young when their father takes Menaechmus to another country on business.  After their father dies, their grandfather, with the other twin in the original country, renames Sosicles ‘Menaechmus’.  As adults in a third country, chaos (ie comedy) reigns as people can’t tell the difference between the two Menaechmi.

The Stevensons have not been separated, so their experience is about their growing up together – looking alike to the degree that Ben took James’ driving test, so James had a driver’s licence for ID purposes with Ben’s photo on it; and so had to use Ben’s photo for his passport.  But, he discovered, German face recognition software saw the difference – with chaotic comic consequences, on a par with Plautus’s plot.

So what I like about The Stevenson Experience but not
is that it has something of a play about it, more than standard stand-up comedy. 

The twins play characters in a story which reflects on the lives of young people in the internet age in contrast to the past.  Time becomes a philosophical question, since James was born 30 minutes before his brother Ben.  They live in Sydney, but James insists that Ben is really in Adelaide (where the Central Australian time difference is 30 minutes behind Eastern Australian time). 

Of course, this sort of argument is puerile (literally from the Latin meaning ‘childish’), but the silly argument is funny because it is silly – yet it has implications for Ben’s feelings of being put down by James (especially because Adelaide is seen as a less than exciting city compared to Sydney, and we Australians all get the joke). 

Fortunately, as in Menaechmi when the identical twins finally meet, the Stevenson twins clearly get along – they couldn’t possibly write and improvise so well together otherwise, and the comedy has a happy ending, which deserves all our applause.

Benjamin Stevenson and James Stevenson

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Drama Education Principles - Platform Paper No 54.

PRINCIPLES AND METHODS
FOR EXPERIENTIAL ENGAGEMENT IN DRAMA / THEATRE
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

An extension of Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change by Sue Giles, Platform Papers No 54, Currency House Feb 2018

by Frank McKone





Acknowledgements

The central content in this article was originally published by the Education Directorate, Australian Capital Territory Government in the course document Drama A&T, 1994 (Hawker College).  Material consisting of direct quotations is reproduced here by kind permission of the Directorate and the three co-authors 1992/93: myself and colleagues David McClay and Jenny Brigg.

The concepts concerning experiential engagement are largely derived from the work published by David A. Kolb: Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, 1984 (2nd Edition Contents, Preface and Introduction now available at http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780133892406/samplepages/9780133892406.pdf Pearson Education, NJ, 2015)

Background
In her Platform Paper, Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change, Sue Giles, well-recognised for her work as artistic director of Polyglot Theatre, Melbourne, makes an impassioned and urgent plea for adults to appreciate the need for and to put into practice, theatre which is for, with and by young people – not at them.

These are my words to distinguish between those children’s theatre productions which are valid educationally – in the broad sense of having social value – as opposed to those that are presented on stage, and on small and large screens, in ways which impose attitudes and ideas, and even stereotyped feelings, on the viewers.  Indeed, as I have experienced, this essential difference in the business of theatre is important to recognise in all theatrical productions for audiences of any age.  Quality theatre means engaging audiences sincerely in new understanding.

For this discussion, the issue is the nature of engagement.  For adults, watching a stage from the bleachers, the two-way engagement between them and the actors, and thus – via the directors and designers – engagement with the authors, is for the most part an act of the imagination.  Watching, for example, the current BBC 1 production of Howard’s End, is illuminating in many ways – about the issues surrounding sexist behaviour, including the aside remark by Mr Wilcox that ‘I am not Bernard Shaw’, as well as about E M Forster’s remarkable ability to create fully-rounded characters across the several layers of the English society of his day. It is a person’s imaginative response to drama which needs to be developed in childhood and in youth.  As Polyglot’s videos show on their website http://polyglot.org.au/ this is the essential work that Sue Giles and the many others she refers to in her Platform Paper are doing every day – despite lack of recognition, including insecure financing, for what has become an established Theatre for Young People industry.

The key issue which arises, as I see it, from the Giles paper is that adults who have not had exposure to personal engagement behind the scenes, and so do not understand the process of drama creation, and whose imaginations have been guided to seek superficial ‘entertainment’, are inclined to think of theatre for children as essentially only to ‘entertain’ them and to inculcate conventional ideas, beliefs and behaviours.  In other words these people would replicate themselves.  Giles describes the situation perhaps more bluntly, as follows:

Children live in an adult world that controls them, feeds
them, teaches them, trains them in values and principles,
asks them to sit quietly, teaches them manners, cares for
them, punishes them, loves them, watches them, neglects
them and damages them. Children have no money, no
vote, no power. They are small, vulnerable and easily hurt.
They are under the eye of a controlling force because they
are not yet trusted to be self-aware and able to think for
themselves. Some adults understand them, others consider
them to be a different species—and yet all adults were
children once too.

To assist practitioners – whether teachers in educational institutions or theatre directors of children’s drama – I would like to provide details of the process which I along with a number of colleagues developed over 20 years’ work.  At the time, this was for senior secondary students, but the principles and practice can apply to any age – from babies to young adults as directors such as Sue Giles show, and indeed for many situations which would not be thought of as ‘drama’ for adults of any age, taking up David Kolb’s still ongoing work in workplace training and organizational behaviour. 

My purpose is not only to provide drama/theatre practitioners with methods and concepts that may help them in their practice, but perhaps (rather than teach ‘grandmothers to suck eggs’) more to give practitioners the words to explain why and how they do what they do, to those others who would distrust or prefer them to go away; who do not recognise the value of child/youth initiated drama/theatre – and do not wish to provide support or funds.

As one school principal demanded of me, “Where is the Content in Drama?”.  It took 20 years to answer that question.  This was because I had begun with largely romantic ideas based on the Play Way approach of the British educator, Brian Way.  Here is what I, with the help of many colleagues, settled on.  There are three main parts: Drama Knowledge, Personal Development and Design of Process.

These are followed by an outline of the student assessment system we developed for this age group of self-selected Drama students.  Though this section may seem relevant only to a formal school situation, it was designed as a guide for both students and teachers – including new staff coming from other schools or systems.  Curriculum is strongly school-based in the Australian Capital Territory, so this document was originally specific to Hawker College.

1. Drama Knowledge

If people want to know what is the content of drama, we found there are five elements in drama, whether it be improvisational activity (which is close to the play that is natural to young children, but is still an essential component in adult acting) or the performance of tightly scripted theatre (which assumes an established cultural tradition, specific genre, or new exploratory writing).  These are:

_____________________________________________________________________
       
KEY LEARNING AREA 1 : DRAMA KNOWLEDGE

ROLE KNOWLEDGE:
Learning to "identify with a particular set of values and attitudes, which may or  may not be your own" (Haseman & O'Toole: Dramawise 1987); create a shared  belief  in the  dramatic  reality  of the roles; develop one's awareness  of  images  and feelings; be aware of and work with other people's images and feelings.
       
             GROUP KNOWLEDGE:
Learning to take personal initiatives; co-operate with others; gain confidence in  movement,  speech and improvisation; take the lead in group  work;  direct other  people  with confidence; adjust one's approach to help the  group  work together.
       
             BODY KNOWLEDGE
Learning to keep in time with the group; relax; develop good posture;  control breathing; move freely and with control; control voice; understand the  importance  of training in physical skills; develop and use personal  warm-up  routines; direct warm-ups with other people.
       
             KNOWLEDGE OF DESIGN ELEMENTS
Learning  to use self and others in space, sound, light, colour,  texture  and materials in purposeful ways to create dramatic effects; highlight drama  with complementary  use of any appropriate media; explore presentation and  management skills.
       
             CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
Learning  to place drama experience in a cultural context, using a variety  of appropriate forms among which might be script, film/video treatment,  documentary, essay, research report, narrative, plot (lighting/sound/stage  manager), prompt  book,  illustration, statement (financial),  report  (administrative), director's instructions, scene analysis (directing/acting/technical),  character  analysis (directing/acting/technical),  notation  (movement/dance/music), phonetics, production review, theatre criticism, social and historical study.
       
        NOTE:
Drama Knowledge is the domain of learning.  The five types of drama  knowledge are  areas  of focus within the domain.  They cannot be taught or  learned  as independent entities, since each overlaps into all the others.

___________________________________________________________________

The degree to which a child, teenager or young adult may be expected to become conscious of operating in each of these areas of focus is clearly different according to their age, their practical drama experience, their intention or purpose in participating.  Judgements by others, such as a teacher, a director or audience are only relevant where the activity is in the formal or institutional context of ‘learning drama’ or ‘studying theatre arts’ or undertaking “theatre training”.

There is no requirement for assessment, for example, in situations like those set up by Polyglot Theatre in public areas where Polyglot performers are dressed as ants, transporting bundles from place to place (representing moving egg-sacs to a new nest).  Though these actors and their director and designers could be expected to understand as well as perform in all five areas of Drama Knowledge, the two to three-year-olds who take part will do so without needing to be conscious at all of these concepts.

However, when parents take part with their children or as audience, and ask questions, the practitioners’ being able to articulate these elements of Drama Knowledge can help educate them about the drama process and encourage support.  For example, the child who sees that it would be more efficient to stack the egg-sacs in a neat way, and gets other children (now all self-enrolled as ants) to work as a team to get the job done is demonstrating some aspects of Role Knowledge, Group Knowledge, Body Knowledge, Design Knowledge and even perhaps of Cultural Knowledge (stacking neatly and tidily) very effectively for a three-year-old, while naturally absorbing an understanding of drama process internally.



2. Personal Development

This aspect of drama experience is commonly thought of in global terms, such as ‘gaining self-confidence’.  For institutional teaching purposes, we had to explain in more detail what personal development consisted of, showing its constituent parts and clarifying the line of progress for a student.

As in the case of Drama Knowledge, in situations such as public performance of children’s theatre there need be no explicit judgement or assessment of the participants’ progress in personal development, but the concepts we developed in a teaching course for senior secondary students may be useful for theatre practitioners to be able to articulate to parents and the powers that be how experiential drama benefits children, even at very young ages, as well as at teenage and young adult stages of their lives.

One would hope that all adult theatre practitioners are at the Making Meaning stage of personal development in drama.

____________________________________________________________________

KEY LEARNING AREA 2 : PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
       
Key area 2 comprises three levels of personal development in drama.
       
             ACTION ---------> PERSONAL RELEVANCE ------------> MAKING MEANING
       
These are progressive from Action to Making Meaning.
       
The development in learning can be described as:
       
             ACTION
Participants  may learn skills and techniques in drama but they may not  value their learning and have difficulty communicating about what they have learned.
       
                                PERSONAL RELEVANCE
Participants  are  engaged  in  learning and value  it  personally,  but  have difficulty  placing their dramatic learning in a broader context  relevant  to others.
       
                                                               MAKING MEANING
Participants  are  engaged  in  learning, value  it  personally,  can  reflect critically on the process and make their learning relevant to others.
       
       
NOTE:
       
Making meaning represents the student's objective particularly if their aim is tertiary entrance.
       
"Making  their  learning  relevant  to others" implies being  able  to  use  a sophisticated knowledge of the culture of theatre to underpin one's  practical work in drama; and to be able to articulate one's knowledge to peers, to other theatre  and  drama practitioners, and to an academic audience orally  and  in writing.


LEVELS OF EXPERTISE
       
Expertise  can be described as three levels of initiative which  indicate  the student's taking increasing responsibility for their own learning:
       
             CONTRIVING
       
             EXPERIENCING
       
             CREATING
       
These  levels  of expertise show the quality of learning  represented  by  the degree  to which the student takes responsibility for their learning and  thus their leadership in drama.
       
       
             CONTRIVING
       
Learners  participate in dramatic action with a low level of initiative  in  a self-conscious way.
       
       
                                       EXPERIENCING
       
Learners  participate in dramatic action with medium level  initiative.   They are intuitive and sincere in their involvement and connect the value of  their dramatic work with their personal development.
       
       
                                                                 CREATING
       
Learners participate in dramatic action with high level initiative.  They  are self-confident, self-questioning and therefore self-aware.  They make  meaning out of the drama for themselves and others.
       
       
       
NOTE:
The three levels of expertise relate directly to the three levels of  personal development.   "Contriving", "Experiencing" and "Creating" are descriptors  in an  active  form which a teacher can easily recognise  in  students'  dramatic work.

___________________________________________________________________


3. Design of Process

The essential structure of child-engagement in improvisational drama has four parts:

Planning – by adult and/or child/youth participant(s);

Stimulus – a theatrical device to initiate a drama action in response;

Drama action – by participants – with or without adult input, in or out of role;

Reflection – talking about the drama action.

This structure can be observed in children’s play, and is the same as in scripted theatre.  My role as theatre critic, for example, is part of the reflection process; as is the publication of papers such as Sue Giles’ Platform Paper No 54, and indeed this paper you are now reading.

The important issue raised by Giles is that, even if the planning and stimulus phases are carried out by adults, the children need at least to be given the freedom to initiate drama action in response, and respond freely in reflection.

By taking this idea further, child-centered means the stimulus phase and ultimately the planning phase is placed in the control of the child/youth participants, while the adult(s) may act, in or out of role, essentially to protect participants where necessary, or sometimes to help shift the direction of the drama action to help a through-line develop and reach a satisfying (to the participants) endpoint.

Here is how the original Hawker College course document explained the process (in a trimester system of 12-week units), for the School Board and the Tertiary Accrediting Panel which accredited this course for a five-year period.  This course was in modern parlance, Drama v5.

__________________________________________________________________

DESIGN OF PROCESS: ACTION AND REFLECTION
       
Usually  a focus is established by the end of the second week of classes,  but sometimes  with provisos, such as re-negotiation to take place at some  specified time.
       
Dramatic  Frame  is a useful concept to keep in mind, and can be  imagined  in three  dimensions,  as if it were a proscenium stage.  The proscenium  may  be changed  in shape, or the action may take place upstage or downstage.  If  the "audience" is considered ordinary reality, then the further upstage the action takes place the more it is removed from ordinary reality. 
       
Negotiation and re-negotiation can take place in terms of changing the  height and  width of the dramatic frame; or, of course, changing the  picture  within the frame.
       
Many different factors can determine how a group will respond to the  dramatic frame.   A  group may be more comfortable closer to ordinary reality,  yet  on occasion may need to work at a more abstracted level.  The teacher can  intervene  (in or out of role as appropriate) to shift the action within its  frame for the benefit of the whole group or individuals in the class.
       
Intervention which breaks the dramatic frame is often felt by the students  as an  unwarranted  intrusion.  On the other hand intervention  is  necessary  at times  to  deepen  the drama and, provided the teacher has the  trust  of  the group,  students will respect the teacher's important role and also  recognise the need for the teacher to provide a safety net for the group.  Emotions  are often  finely  balanced when situations are being explored with  real  energy.  The teacher may often have to make delicate judgements (sometimes in  conjunction with the students who are leading the work).These include deciding:  when to  stop open-ended group improvisations; when to intervene in work  which  is ongoing  but  showing little apparent progress; or when to perform or  not  to perform.
       
Throughout  the unit, dramatic action, including decisions taken  by  leaders, must  be followed by reflection.  Commonly this takes place before the end  of each  session,  but  sometimes a period in which the  experience  is  absorbed privately  is valuable before group reflection occurs - perhaps at the  beginning  of the next session.  Sometimes whole sessions are needed to  articulate everyone's understanding.
       
Through  the process of reflection, new ideas are generated and put  into  action.  This means that it is rare that a class will lay out a complete program early in a trimester with a rigid timetable; yet for some groups deadlines may be best.  One important function for the teacher is to take initiatives  (with the whole group or certain individuals) at appropriate times in an attempt  to have  the whole group feel high points of achievement.  These should  be  just before vacations and especially in the last practical classes of each  trimester.
       
The  teacher, in this process, becomes a leading member of the group  and  can think of the work as rather like directing through a rehearsal period so  that the  high point is achieved at final dress rehearsal and opening night.   Perfection  is rare.  The teacher's aim is the same as for the students: to  make meaning  from  personal involvement in dramatic action.  With  this  aim,  the teacher becomes a positive role model whose work benefits all the students  at whatever level they are able to achieve.
       
Finally,  at least at the end of each trimester and possibly once  during  the trimester,  reflection becomes a formal evaluation of the  students'  achievements, as individuals and as a group.  This provides a conclusion to the  unit and often is a stimulus to dramatic action in the following unit.

____________________________________________________________________


4. System for Assessment and Evaluation – The Matrix

The development of the Assessment Matrix, or Drama Assessment Profile, which is used to describe a participant’s achievement and assists the teacher/director to evaluate their work, was my invention to solve the problem of making fair assessment for students while producing grades for an education system.  Using the matrix is valuable for the teacher/director also for reflection on their own participation in the theatre or workshop process.

_____________________________________________________________________

 The  following  figure provides students and teachers with  descriptors  which help them to make judgements about their progress.
       
These descriptors apply to the student's way of approaching their work in  all five areas of drama knowledge.
       
          ____________________________________________________________
         |              |                                            |
         |              |INITIATIVE -----------------------------> LEADERSHIP     |
         |              |                                            |
         |              |Contriving             Experiencing                      Creating      |
         |_______|______________|______________|__________________|
         |              | Doing it              | Connecting         | Doing it with             |
         |              |                            | doing it with        | value for me              |
         |State of Doing|                   | self: (value          | to make mean-          |
         |              |                            | for me)                | ing for others             |
         |              |                            |                            |                                    |
         |______________|______________|______________|___________
         |              | Being self-          | Being intuit-        | Being self-                 |
         |State of Being| conscious   | ive and                 | aware                         |
         |              |                             | sincere                 |                                   |
         |______________|______________|______________|______________|
         |              | Low quality         | Medium               | High quality              |
         |State of  | initiative              | quality                 | initiative                    |
         |Relationship                        | initiative              | (leadership) |
         |______________|______________|______________|______________|
       
       
       
Judgement about one's work is therefore concerned with quality.
       
Quality can be observed in the nature of the involvement of the student in the action.   It can range from being self-conscious; to being intuitive and  sincere; and to being self-aware.  Furthermore quality is indicated in the  types of  response by students in reflection.  These can range from  being  descriptive; to being concerned with value to self; and to being concerned with value to others.
       
Self-confidence  is  related to quality in a complex way.  It is  possible  to have high self-confidence with low quality initiative.  Commonly,  self-confidence increases when students are involved in medium quality initiative  which they value. 
       
Initiative  of high quality, however, inevitably requires self-confidence  but is tempered by self-questioning.  Together these are the essential elements of self-awareness.
       
Thus, assessment is of the quality, not merely of self-confidence or  personal self-knowledge,  but  of  knowledge of one's experience in  a  wider  cultural context.
       
Analysing  one's  failures and successes leads to the development  of  a  very strong relationship between theory and practice (carried out in the context of the texts and human resources made available to the students for research).
       
Day to Day Content
       
The content of individual drama activities consists of those actions which the students  and  teacher,  as  a group, choose to do in each  of  the  areas  of knowledge.   Since all human experience is available for dramatic  use,  daily content cannot be prescribed.  The quality of a student's work in drama is not only related to the day-to-day content, but to what the student does with  the content.
       
Activities  can  be based on areas that are very important  to  the  students' everyday  life, such as relationships or communication.  A second approach  is that students may explore broader issues, such as discrimination or the future with  which  they may have had less direct experience.  Finally  students  may wish to explore aspects of theatre.
       
The  power  of  drama is that it allows students to explore a  wide  range  of issues  through the roles they play and they learn about both drama  and  themselves from these experiences.  The framework of the Key Areas 1 and 2 provides this exploration with the necessary coherence.
       
       
In  the following figure, some descriptors have been written in as a  guide  to what students might do, so that the distinctions between the types of knowledge may  be clearer.  These descriptors are in no way exhaustive but are  designed as  a  guide to indicate how a student's experience changes as  s/he  develops expertise.
       
            ____________________________________________________________
           /                                                          
          /             INITIATIVE ----------------------------------> LEADERSHIP      
         /                                                          
        /___________________________________________________________/  
        |                             |                           |                            |  MAKING              |
        |                             |   ACTION         |      SELF             |  MEANING           |
        |______________|______________|______________|_______________  |
        | ROLE                  |Contriving          |Enjoying role      |Expressing              |
        | KNOWLEDGE   |images and         |images and          |character                 |
        |_______________|feelings_______|feelings________|________________|
        | GROUP               |Going along       |Belonging with    |Working with         |
        | KNOWLEDGE   |with the group    |the group             |the group                |
        |_______________|_____________|______________|________________|
        | BODY                  |Breathing           |Enjoying             |Expressing               |
        | KNOWLEDGE    |Moving              |action and           |through                    |
        |______________---_|Voicing_______|responding_____|action____________|
        | KNOWLEDGE   |Making sound     |Enjoying             |Expressing               |
        |OF DESIGN         |silence;light        |effects and          |through                     |
        | ELEMENTS        |dark;shapes;       |responding          |effects                       |
        |_______________|colours;masks__|______________|________________|
        | CULTURAL        |Collecting          |Using                  |Creating                   |
        | KNOWLEDGE    |cultural              |cultural                |cultural                    |
        |_______________|artefacts_______|artefacts_______|artefacts__________|
        <------------- Drawers open from the left end
       
       
Note: Cultural artefacts may refer to any works of art, literature or products of research relevant to the dramatic theme, form or theory under study.


The  final figure represents the integration of all the aspects of the  course, showing  how a student operating in all areas of drama knowledge  may  progress through negotiated drama activities towards achieving expertise in drama.
       
In  a light-hearted way, the teacher may perceive this process as a  chest  of drawers,  each  drawer  containing compartments in which there  are  items  of costume  which the student selects and, with the help of the teacher, uses  to become "well-dressed".
       
The  "best-dressed" student has a complete costume, representing an  ideal  to aim towards.  
       
       
In  this  figure, the front of the drawers is hidden so that the items  in  the drawers can be indicated on the sides and top of the chest.
       
As   students  open a drawer, they will first find items of action.   If  they play with these alone, they operate with low quality initiative.
       
If,  or  when,  they venture further and open the drawer to  reveal  items  of personal  relevance  to add to their action, they are  operating  with  medium quality initiative.
       
If,  or when, they open the drawer fully, they will find items of  meaning  to others as well as themselves to add to their action.  Then they are  operating with high quality initiative.
       
If  the student opens only some of the five drawers, they will find that  they will  have difficulty putting together a properly co-ordinated  outfit.   They may not be concerned about this while they play only with action items, but it will become more of an obvious problem to them, and to the teacher and  others in the group, as they open the drawers further.
       
By regularly reflecting on what they have done, what they think and feel about what they have done, and what their play means, students go through a  process which encourages them to open all the drawers as far as they can.
       
The teacher has a special role to assist with drawers that stick, in  responding  with thoughts and feelings, and to help interpret what the  group's  play means.

__________________________________________________________________


                                
By taking the side of the set of drawers in our original Figs. 1 and 2, we can create a table with two dimensions:

 BASIC DRAMA ASSESSMENT TABLE

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT        Action           Self             Making Meaning
DRAMA KNOWLEDGE           
Role           
Group           
Body           
Design           
Culture           
GRADE LEVELS           

This is the generic model.  There are several ways you can easily modify it to suit your needs.

The matrix can be used to draw a ‘best line of fit’ to decide on the grade.


DRAMA ASSESSMENT TABLE – Two different students with the same overall grade.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT         Action             Self                 Making Meaning
DRAMA KNOWLEDGE           
Role                                                                    S2            S1   
Group                                                                          S2   S1   
Body                                                                                   S1  S2   
Design                                                                                S1           S2   
Culture                                                                          S2 S1   
GRADE LEVELS                                                              C   

We can see here that Student 1 works evenly across the drama knowledge categories, while Student 2 shows much more variation.  In a tick-the-box outcomes system, it would be difficult to distinguish these two students, while using the 2-axis system it would be easier to describe the particular qualities of each student’s work.  This becomes an important matter when writing reports.

If the institution requires scores, then these two students could be distinguished.  Middle C might be allocated a score of 65.  Because S2 had three assessments below middle C, it may be decided that while S1 receives 65, S2 would receive 64.  On the other hand because S2 has such a high place in Design, despite the low place in Role, a score of 66 might be awarded.  For each student the ‘shape’ of the ‘line of best fit’ will help decide on fine distinctions between students, as scoring by numbers require.

The Matrix is not a Rose Garden – no assessment system can make a good drama teacher – but I hope you may find some practical use for it.

© Frank McKone, Canberra
2018                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

2018: Drama Education - Young People and the Arts by Sue Giles

Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change by Sue Giles.  Platform Papers No 54, Currency House, February 2018.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Expectations around theatre for young people are prescribed and the barriers to exploration and risk taking are many and high. Adults who bring children to works for young people have strong opinions on what is acceptable; and yet, and perhaps because of this concern, the arts for young people are not highly valued as art....

We work with and for a demographic that has no buying power or whose buying power is indirect and in the power of others.  Demanding recognition of the importance of this audience and of the merit of the work created for this audience is
a constant issue for the sector, whether we are outright activists or rely on our work to speak for itself in the world.

To appreciate what Sue Giles, Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Polyglot Theatre might mean by An Agenda for Change, I went to the website at http://www.polyglot.org.au/ to discover what her company does to put into practice what she means when she asks “Can we consider the child as a cultural citizen? Can we challenge the dominant definition of the child and consider a different one, where the child is the key to a more engaged sector and a more inclusive society?”

There I found videos of what I regard as exemplary presentations of forms of theatre for the very young, often including the attending adults, in which the children were clearly engaged in the action, initiating where the storyline might go, and therefore learning about drama by doing it themselves, guided by frameworks set up by the adult actors. 

If this is “seeing the child as a cultural citizen”, then I’m all for it.  I have in the past consistently been critical of the sorts of shows mentioned in Chapter 4. Content:

“There is a school of thought that says children’s theatre must have a particular aesthetic: colour and movement, slapstick, happy endings, simple story lines, engaging characters, costumes and songs. Blockbuster touring works like Disney on Ice, but also home grown works like Wiggles in Concert or High5, fulfil this brief and are considered purely entertainment for children and families. Distraction is central to this form of entertainment and it’s for this reason that ‘entertainment’ is seen as distinct from Art.”

Throughout the Paper Giles provides a series of definitions to frame her discussion, an overall rationale, and chapters:

1. The Landscape for young people and the arts – then and now.
2. Questions of value.
3. Our point of difference.
4. Content.
5. Artistic practices that are shifting the ground.
6. Shifting our thinking: Showing adults what is possible.
7. Conclusion, in which she states:

“If we, adults, can begin to hear clearly and without judgement the opinions of children, see clearly and without bias the ways children choose, we might start to
understand how the jigsaw will be more complete when children are involved. If we can accept the knowledge and power of young people in the creation of art as equals in the journey then our art will be the better for it. They know things that we don’t and we can benefit from their shared knowledge. So let’s do that. The artists exploring in the TYA sector in Australia have a handle on this that can open the door for others, and not just in the arts.”

In the end, Sue Giles’ Platform Papers No 54 is a detailed and highly valuable statement of advocacy.  The focus on this aim, however, limits her argument to assertions and descriptions, without showing more exactly how to turn the “handle on this that can open the door for others, and not just in the arts.”

Currency House at https://currencyhouse.org.au/node/45  has a webpage link to Paper No 54, and I will follow up Sue Giles’ important work with further discussion of the principles behind drama method which is focussed on the participants having agency in practice – in theatre work for, with and by the young, rather than at the young.  This will be available shortly in an extended form on my blog – search www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com for Drama Education Principles - Platform Paper No 54.

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: RED by Liz Lea

Red by Liz Lea Productions.  At QL2 Dance Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, Canberra, March 8-11, 2018.

Choreographer/Performer: Liz Lea

Choreographers: Vicki van Hout; Virgina Ferris; Martin del Amo
Dramaturg / Mentor: Brian Lucas
Cinematographer: Nino Tamburri
Film Editor: Arianna Bosi
Script writers: Liz Lea; Brian Lucas; Victoria Lea
Lighting Designer: Karen Norris
Rehearsal Director and Dramaturgy: Natalie Ayton
Costumes: Consultant – Cate Clelland; Designers – Liz Lea, Brian Lucas, Bruce Scott and Brooke Giles

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 9

On January 21 this year I reviewed a solo dance theatre work, writing “For Ghenoa Gela to show the rest of us her personal salvation in re-connecting with her traditional culture is clearly more than a passion.  It’s a necessity as much for her sake as for ours.”

At the time I thought it was rare to see such core personal growth in understanding made into dance art form and then performed by the artist herself.  Yet, just a few weeks later, Liz Lea has taken the same risk.  Her story is as central to her understanding of herself: equally necessary to be told by her on stage as Ghenoa’s was for her.

Equally, also, for us to appreciate the hidden force propelling another person’s life.  Where for Ghenoa it was the need to find her place in her culture; for Liz it is the need to know the truth about her pain – not ‘normal’ menstrual pain as she was told when 13, but essentially untreatable endometriosis.

“For 20 years,” Liz writes, “I had an illness I was not aware of and for those 20 years I travelled and toured, performed and created....Why tell the tale?  My journey played out on stage and I gave away my future for the stage, all without my knowledge.  Best I address some of that on a stage.”

And like that other dancer, Ghenoa, Liz Lea can find humour at surprising moments and expressed in surprising ways, connecting us to her personal story as supportive friends; as comrades on life’s journey.

As I wrote of Ghenoa Gela, this piece by Liz Lea is “work which seems to me to be a new original and significant form, which I’ll call Theatre of the Personal Self.”

Red also places Liz Lea’s work in the relatively new tradition of ‘dance theatre’, which in my experience became established mainly by Kate Champion’s Force Majeure company, beginning for me with The Age I’m In at The Q, Queanbeyan in April 2010 through to Nothing To Lose (in which Ghenoa Gela performed and choreographed) at Carriageworks in the Sydney Festival, January 2015.

Looking through my collection of reviews of works I see in this tradition (www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com search for “Force Majeure”) I see Liz Lea’s and Ghenoa Gela’s works as parallel to the long tradition of visual artists painting self-portraits, to capture the essence of themselves, just as they have done for others. 

In this process, the artist places herself in context: and thus both explains herself to herself while illuminating her audience’s understanding – in Gela’s case of the essence of Indigenous culture, and in Lea’s case of our capacity to work through pain to become true to ourselves.  In this work we see, I believe, the true nature of art.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2018: Thank Q for the Memories

Thank Q for the Memories, devised and directed by John Shortis and Moya Simpson, with Stephen Pike. At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, March 8-10, 2018.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 8


If I listed everyone involved in this enthusiastic celebration of The Q’s first ten years – Shortis & Simpson as comperes, narrators and conductors, with the 29-strong Queanbeyan Players Chorus, the 44 members of the Wordly Goods Choir, the 42nd Street Dancers (only 9 of them), the 10 individual performers, and the Band (Peter J. Casey, Dave O’Neill, Ian Blake and Jonathon Jones) – there would be no space for a review.

But John Shortis, despite his usual extensive historical research – in this case back to the 1830s – left out the one name of perhaps the most important person, although he didn’t appear on stage: Ratko Vatavuk, project architect in the Project Team from BVN Architecture.

Here’s a little of “In the Architect’s Words” published by the Australian Institute of Architects, to add to John’s story of Council’s decision to follow up the Queanbeyan Players’ raising of $50,000 for a proper theatre next to the “barn” of the Bicentennial Centre:

Pre-existing site conditions also constrained the building's location, as the presence of a large in-ground service line in the existing carpark established the footprint, and the 100 year flood level elevated the building onto a podium.

This gives an extra level of relevance to Moya’s singing not only of  “celebration”, but of John’s execrable rhyme, with “elevation”.

The building is a simple and urbane zinc and terracotta clad structure hovering within the lively Queanbeyan civic precinct. Its facilities rival those of much larger centres and include a raked 350-seat auditorium, generous stage and wings, crossover and a large orchestra pit.

http://content.environmentdesignguide.com.au/awards_search?option=showaward&entryno=2009011463

And here’s how it looked in the design awards presentation photo by Brett Boardman:

No wonder Shortis & Simpson say “We love entertaining here, and we love to be entertained here.  It’s our favourite theatre”.  I’ve reviewed more than a dozen shows in The Q since it opened in 2008, and I feel the same way.  And as Moya sang, it seems as if time has gone by and even disappeared – can it really be only ten years?  The Q has become such a natural part of Queanbeyan that it seems to have been – and will go on – forever.

The celebration program was an eclectic collection of items ranging over many of the shows, including Shortis & Simpson’s, which have appeared at The Q, tied together by John’s newly written songs, such as "Thank Q for the Memories", "Life Before the Q" and "Ten Good Years".

Not all items were musical, such as the very funny Hermia / Helena verbal stoush from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, played by Jordan Best and Jenna Roberts; and the more serious excerpt from Playhouse Creatures where Elizabeth Bradley and Amy Dunham – accompanied by Jordan Best on cello – reflect on their time as the first women to perform on stage – in the 17th Century – with its resonance for the role of women in the 21st Century, made particularly relevant on March 8 as the International Women’s Day which the United Nations describes as “a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.”

A neat contrast was Dave Evans and Jenna Roberts performing the Lasagne Incident from I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, followed by the Jenna’s singing "I Will Be Loved Tonight", from that show, accompanied by Peter J. Casey.

A special delight was the re-appearance of the great satirical pianist Peter J. Casey, especially in his performance of his version of the squirm-inducing "I Just Want to Conceive With You", which was originally imposed upon the world in Shortis & Simpson’s show about the business of song-writing, Waxing Lyrical, at The Q (reviewed here December 2011).

It’s a pity we can’t have the more regular services of Peter J. Casey, who nowadays lives in Wagga Wagga, and this terrific band, but a glance at Peter’s extensive bio https://majortominor.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/peter-j-casey-2014-light-bio.pdf explains why.

If theatre is essentially about engagement and entertainment, then Shortis & Simpson’s work is an engaging and highly entertaining celebration of this theatre – The Q.  As Tim Overall, Mayor of Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council has written, To The Q Team: Well done to you all, you have galvanised the community in a truly commendable way.  The Councillors and I wish you continued success for the next ten years.

And so say all of us (though I worry a little about being “galvanised”).

© Frank McKone, Canberra