2015: The Chain Bridge by Tom Davis

The Chain Bridge by Tom Davis.  Presented by The Street, directed by Caroline Stacey.  Designer – Imogen Keen; Sound – Kimmo Vennonen; Lighting – Gillian Schwab.  At The Street One, November 21-29, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 22

Most serious plays tell us truths we need to hear.  The Chain Bridge does that in one sense, but is also a salutary reminder that in some circumstances knowing the truth might be more destructive than we can bear.  Some of the best plays in the canon – like, say, Oedipus Rex or King Lear – have this theme.

Though Canberra writer Tom Davis, in this play, doesn’t have the same sense of economy of form as Sophocles or Shakespeare, his story of a young academic couple – Sarah (Kate Hosking) and her Hungarian-background husband Imre (Peter Cook) – arguing about the need for accuracy of historical truth in the book he is about to publish becomes as grim as Oedipus gouging out his eyes, when the truths about how Imre’s mother Eva (Geraldine Turner) survived the Nazi occupation at the end of World War II and the 1956 Hungarian revolution against the Russian occupiers, and finally arrived as a refugee in Australia in 1958. 

Two others had also escaped from Budapest – Katalin (Zsuzsi Soboslay) and József (PJ Williams) – arriving here in 1957, whose histories were closely entwined with Eva’s story.  Sarah, marrying into this migrant family where covering up truths is a necessary part of being freed from an awful past – being free in Australia – senses that she is not being told the truth, certainly by Imre’s mother, but maybe even by Imre himself.  Who, especially, was Imre’s father, mysteriously absent from the scene in Melbourne?

Since revelation is the purpose of the play, it’s not my place to reveal more of the story apart from saying that a resolution is achieved.  Sarah and Imre are nearly torn apart, but finally a point is reached where they are able to respect each other, and so can love each other – and let the argument about the truth become academic rather than a tear in the fabric of their relationship.

So the play is, in essence, very good.  It’s a measure of the success of The Street’s Hive playwriting program, including its First Seen staged readings, which provided the development stage of this work and Tom Davis’ next work, The Faithful Servant, which will appear in 2016.

An essential part of The Street’s role as a professional theatre emphasising new writing in Canberra is to give the works high quality direction and design.  Caroline Stacey is Artistic Director and CEO of the The Street and, for this production has put together an excellent team on stage and backstage.  The script requires scenes in Imre and Sarah’s Melbourne home to morph into remembered (or perhaps not truthfully remembered) scenes in Budapest, including occasions such as the German SS blowing up the Chain Bridge, the crossing of the Danube from Pest on the eastern side to Buda on the western bank, on the route from Hungary into Austria – an escape route from the Russian invasion.

This meant the actors playing the core roles all needed to play a wide variety of other roles in those historical (or maybe not truly historical) scenes.  The list looks bewildering:

Geraldine Turner – Eva/Woman/Villager/Townsman/Private (as in ‘soldier’)
Peter Cook – Imre/Tabor/Wisliceny/Arrow Cross/Gerö/Protester
Kate Hosking – Sarah/Deborah/Villager/Townsman/Corporal/Protester
ZsuZsi Soboslay – Katalin/Woman/Agnes/Dora/Villager/Townsman/Sergeant
PJ Williams – József/Samuel/Ferenc/Doctor/Villager/Townsman/Lieutenant/Arrow Cross, Domokos/Szabo

Phew!  Yet all these roles were clear, even including in scenes where some characters were in the past while others were in the present.  In fact there were scenes where past and present would shift from one to the other during continuous action.  It’s a measure of the careful writing and, of course, of the care taken in directing – as well as the skills of the actors in establishing and maintaining characters on cue. 

Set, lighting and sound required as much agility (just to throw in a current political term).  The basic set was abstract in form, using long narrow vertical poles which, with horrifyingly realistic sound effects of bomb explosions and gunfire, and lighting which could pick out details of a particular pole or characters between poles, gave the viewer an ever-changing array of images as time and place shifted.

Then there was the clever device of books, the play being about writing a book and about the ‘truth’ written in books.  Books were everywhere, with an interesting twist as they became the stones thrown at the Soviet Russian invaders.  Wikipedia tells the story of “The Hungarian resistance [which] continued until 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956)

It takes concentration on the audience’s part, over three hours with a 20 minute interval, but the effort is well worthwhile.  There’s a message here that we should all be careful about making assumptions about our neighbours in multicultural Australia.  To quote as nearly as I can remember: “It’s not just a story when your parents have been killed.”  And, of course, it’s highly ironic to watch this play about refugees from Hungary finding freedom in Australia while Hungary is building fences to keep out the refugees flooding in from being bombed in Syria.

For me there was also a personal note.  Only a year ago, before the refugee torrent was under way, I visited Budapest, heard the stories about how people tried to make their Communism into a softer form and provided others (such as a community of Serbs) with a bit more freedom than in other states, and the chance to cross into Austria where the Iron Curtain was a bit rusty.

I heard too about the 400-year history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the rule of the Hapsburg family, and the building of the Buda Palace – and I enjoyed the evening lights and the soup and dumplings on a Danube River cruise under the Chain Bridge, rebuilt with its sculptured horses.  But now I know so much more about the reality of the lives, especially of the women and how they survived.  I was born about the same time as Eva, winter 1940/41, and also have memories (but from London), perhaps true or maybe not entirely so, of hiding under a reinforced table in case the house was bombed, of air-raid sirens, of being born in such a snow-storm that my father could not get to the hospital. There was much in this play to remind me. 

I arrived in Australia in early 1955, while in 1956 a young teacher – the best English teacher I ever had – left Sydney to go to Hungary to watch, if not take part in, the revolution to throw the Russians out.  Whether he succeeded or not I will never know, since a recent book (2014) by a classmate records that Neil Hope, nicknamed Soap or Sope, “left the shores of Australia for what he hoped would be a less philistine society in Italy, only to die there in a motor-scooter accident.” 

As The Chain Bridge suggests, to know the truth about even one’s own past is not necessarily to know what really happened.

Whole cast of The Chain Bridge - dress rehearsal
Photo by Lorna Sim

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Catalyst (formerly known as the National Program for Excellence in the Arts) Guidelines Released

From: "Ministry for the Arts" To: "Frank McKone"
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 13:28:27

Special bulletin from the Ministry for the Arts - November 2015 Guidelines released for Catalyst - Australian Arts and Culture Fund The guidelines for Catalyst - Australian Arts and Culture Fund have been released. Catalyst (formerly known as the National Program for Excellence in the Arts) will provide funding of $12 million each year to small, medium and large arts organisations at a national, regional and community level. Priorities for the program include innovative projects by small to medium organisations, and projects that increase participation of regional Australians in the arts and enhance our international reputation. Funding can support activities such as performances, exhibitions, tours, development and creation of new work, festivals, investment in foundation or fellowship programs, and infrastructure and capacity-building projects. Arts Minister Mitch Fifield announced the new program today following consultation with the arts sector. The Minister has also restored $8 million per year to the Australia Council to primarily support small to medium organisations. Catalyst will complement the programs of the Australia Council and Creative Partnerships Australia which encourages private sector support to the arts.   Catalyst funding is available from three streams: partnerships and collaborations; innovation and participation; and international and cultural diplomacy. Applications will be assessed with the assistance of independent assessors. So far, over 300 assessors are registered with the Ministry for the Arts including artists, curators, philanthropists and audience members. Applications to Catalyst open on Friday 27 November. To see the guidelines and eligibility criteria, visit the Ministry for the Arts website. Read the Minister’s media release announcing Catalyst. main image credit: Todd Robinson Kilim 2012, Artbank Collection Annual rental, $700+GST Do you have feedback on our e-newsletter? Send us an email at artworks@arts.gov.au If you do not wish to receive future newsletters unsubscribe here Know someone who might be interested in this newsletter? Send to a friend Posted by Frank McKone

2015: Orlando by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Sarah Ruhl

Orlando from the novel by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Sarah Ruhl.  Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Sarah Goodes.  Designer – Renée Mulder; Lighting – Damien Cooper; Music – Alan John; Sound – Steve Francis.  Sydney Opera House, November 9 – December 19, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 16

Well – I had no idea Virginia Woolf could be so much fun.  Orlando begins his story as a typical Elizabethan swashbuckling man having an interesting affair with a Russian Princess.  Orlando ends her story in about 1930 driving her own car, married to an Archduke, having some confused memories and new-found feelings about the Russian Princess, and finding men still don’t understand women – especially when they now expect to behave and think like men.

As Sarah Goodes has written, “The story of Orlando is so epic, bold and brave, it soars through time, age, gender and space.”  This adaptation by Sarah Ruhl is a wonder to behold.  And enjoy. 

And it’s all done with just six terrific actors.  Their roles will give you some idea of the madcap sort of approach which makes the play so much fun to watch.

Jacqueline McKenzie is Orlando, who is desperate to become a great writer.  After several hundred years, his/her poem about the oak tree and the green grass is still never quite complete.

Luisa Hastings Edge plays Sasha, the Princess with a seemingly endless title.

The inimitable John Gaden is an absolutely magnificent Queen Elizabeth I, who also seems to have escaped from Alice in Wonderland, thoroughly lustful for the man with the most beautiful legs, Orlando. 

Polynesian actor Anthony Taufa is a poet, Othello, a seaman on Princess Sasha’s ship taking her away from Orlando (when Orlando is still a man).

Matthew Backer is Desdemona, horribly trying to defend herself as Othello so stupidly kills her, moralising all the way.  Backer is Orlando’s awful suitor Marmaduke in a later time, a kind of reverse image of Queen Elizabeth now that Orlando is a woman.

And Garth Holcombe is at times both the Archduke and an Archduchess.

Apart from Orlando, the other five come together in many different combinations as a Chorus who sing, observe, tell the story, make comments and provide Orlando with all he/she needs to continue on his/her way.

A huge movable set of stairs going up one side and down the other form a kind of pyramid which is opened up into many different configurations to reveal all manner of things, from a ‘cupboard under the stairs’ for props and costumes, to the prow of Sasha’s ship, to a secret mirrored space where the naked Orlando is exposed.

The sense of journey is conveyed by setting the action on a dual revolve, where the centre may turn, the outer rim may turn, together or separately, bringing actors or props (one was a fully laden banquet table which reminded me of Prospero’s entertainment by his spirits in The Tempest) into view or away as needed.

Such flexibility on the part of the actors, costumes and set design would have to make Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull proud from an economic point of view.  But he’ll have to rethink his position on same-sex marriage, methinks. 

And, as usual for Sydney Theatre Company productions, the program provides excellent background research material including an extract from Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison.  Background notes tell us “Orlando (1928) was written for and dedicated to Vita Sackville-West whom Virginia met in 1922.  Somewhere between 1925 and 1929, their friendship developed into a love affair.”  The highlighted quote from Dennison fills in the picture: “...the catalyst for Vita’s sexual epiphany was a uniform of breeches and leather gaiters.  She would wear it for the rest of her life.”

So don’t miss Orlando, and make sure you take the extra $10 for the program.

Photos by Prudence Upton

 

 © Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: My Zinc Bed by David Hare

My Zinc Bed by David Hare.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, directed by Mark Kilmurry.  Designer – Tobhiyah Stone Feller; Lighting – Nicholas Higgins; Wardrobe – Alana Canceri; Make-up – Peggy Carter.  October 10 – November 22, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 14

It’s not clear to me why Victor Quinn (one-time British Communist, but nowadays – in the year 2000 – a wealthy financier) refers to his death bed as his ‘zinc’ bed.  Maybe it’s a reference to commodity prices: if the price of zinc falls, he is ‘dead’. 

But the deathly pallor of the metal might be an image of the mortuary bench on which  Quinn would have been laid out after his car crash.  Suicide?  Very likely. 

Especially since the play is horribly prescient of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

It’s easy to focus on the superficial question posed by Paul (poet – but only when he’s drunk) and Victor’s wife Elsa, already with two children and ruined by alcohol and drugs when he, Victor, rescued her from the floor of a bar in Denmark.  Is it really true that alcoholism is a disease which can be managed or cured – by Alcoholics Anonymous – or is this obsession built into some people’s genetic structure? 

Many others over its fifteen year life thought that was what the play is about, but I saw David Hare using alcoholism as just one example of obsessive human behaviour.  Others in this play are sexual lust – or falling in love – and power, which Victor epitomises, whether as Communist or financier, employer (of Paul) or husband.  He crashes when can no longer believe he is in control of any of these things – even including alcohol, five times over the legal driving limit in his bloodstream.

Not a very happy play, but Mark Kilmurry succeeds in making clear to his audience (and we do listen to a lot of talk) what is actually going on in the feelings of each character.

Danielle Carter plays Elsa Quinn with an awareness of her previous degradation, reliance on Victor and attraction for Paul which leaves us wishing she could do more than outwardly present the calmness and dignity she knows she needs for the sake of her children.

Sam O’Sullivan as Paul Peplow is physically almost as floppy as he is indeterminate mentally while maintaining AA rules; but when he drinks he becomes the sexual being, and poet, that Elsa can’t resist.

Sean Taylor as Victor is made up and dressed in absolute contrast to Paul’s pale and wan poet.  He has the presence and voice of authority about him – yet every now and then he senses his own insecurity.  Like when he makes and drinks a margarita or three.

However unhappy the play, this production is satisfying theatre.  This cast and this director have found the trick of David Hare’s writing, so that we both appreciate and even empathise with each character equally, and yet remain at just enough distance to see each in a clear objective light.

And in doing so, we see Hare’s purpose: to show how our natural human tendencies lead us, sometimes, into ineffable difficulties – in our personal lives as we interact with the world at large.  We need more than a version of Alcoholics Anonymous to save ourselves from a Global Financial Crisis.  Revelatory group meetings in a circle can become addictive, but can they permanently solve our behavioural contradictions?

This a worthwhile production of a significant play.



© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Mortido by Angela Betzien

Mortido by Angela Betzien.  Presented by Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South Australia, directed by Leticia Cáceres.  Set and Costume design – Robert Cousins; Lighting – Geoff Cobham; Composer – The Sweats; Sound design – Nate Edmondson; Movement – Scott Witt.  November 11 – December 17, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
November 14

Unfortunately, despite the author’s idea of a grand theme – I wonder, is the destructive drive of mortido in all of us?  Is it symbiotically linked with our drive for life, for self-preservation? – her play as staged in this joint production by the SA State Theatre and Belvoir is theatric rather than dramatic, simplistic rather than thematic.

The Currency Press blurb (you buy the whole script with the program for $13) reveals the problem.  “This is Betzien’s most ambitious play so far, and a brilliant portrait of the Emerald City: familiar, bizarre, glorious and mean.  A quintessential Sydney tale about crime, globalisation and the killer desire for a bigger house.”  My emphasis: it’s situational television, not the serious drama the blood and gore or the revelation of criminal behaviour pretends to be.

On stage, Detective Grubbe begins by telling a long Mexican story, the myth of El Gallito, the boy who comes back from the dead, to revenge his killing by drug-runners.  The central character is a Sydney school-dropout Jimmy, who is pressured by his brother-in-law Monte to carry out day-to-day cocaine importing work.  Monte is wealthy, living in Woollahra, married to Jimmy’s sister Scarlet.

In Act Two, the script reads:  EL GALLITO enters the bathroom.  He goes to the urinals.  JIMMY is hyper-aware of EL GALLITO’s presence, but MONTE ignores him.

I may be super-insensitive, but without my script in hand I took the appearance of this young man visiting the toilet apparently in a Sydney night-club to be no more than ordinary.  He stood beside Jimmy, facing the mirror.  JIMMY turns to look at him.  EL GALLITO leaves without looking at JIMMY.

This figure mysteriously appears, in Sydney, Germany or South America, only speaking Spanish, until Jimmy kills El Gallito.  Watching, I had no idea beyond a vague inkling that I was supposed to interpret this figure somehow – perhaps as a homosexual decoy in the business of drug dealing.  At the end, Grubbe completes the story he began four acts ago, about the death of La Madre, El Gallito’s mother.

On stage I thought I saw the anonymous Spanish-speaking man kill Jimmy, yet in the script I read They fall together.  EL GALLITO is dead.  Then I’m told: AT LA MADRE’S FUNERAL IN PUNCHBOWL, JIMMY listens as GRUBBE finishes the story.  Then JIMMY leaves the marigold flowers and is gone. GRUBBE remains.

Only by reading the script can I see what the author was trying to do: to turn a grubby cocaine importing business operating in Sydney suburbs into a story of mythical proportions.  This was why scenes were cued in by loud noises and flashes, perhaps of lightning.  That was why the blood and gore from the Spanish man’s box cutter was draped around Jimmy’s body as if in some kind of ceremony, and the Spanish man moved in the manner of a bull-fighter.  Perhaps.

I’m used to interpreting all kinds of theatrical imagery, but this one lost me.  There was no empathy for any of the characters, not even Jimmy.  Just a display of theatrics in a story that made almost no sense – without knowing at least who the anonymous Spanish speaking man was and what exactly was said.  And there were many more mysteries, about Oliver, Scarlet’s son, the German who seemed to be the mastermind (in Bolivia after WWII), Monte’s mother (the one buried at Punchbowl) and more.

Angela Betzien writes “Writing Mortido has been a thrilling adventure and I’m proud to say I’ve travelled to every location in the story: from the barrios of Mexico, to the hipster hub of Kreuzberg, from La Paz down El Camino de la Muerte to Coroico, and from a CBD nightclub to the pho-infused backstreets of Cabramatta....I’d like to thank everyone for joining me on this wild ride.”

Despite her enthusiasm, the experience for me was more confusion than wild. Leticia Cáceres’ Director’s Notes say “For me, making Mortido has been a process of distillation, of creating space for audiences to exercise their own imaginations.  Every step of the way we’ve asked ourselves: what elements do we really need to tell this tale?  To what extent can we trust the audience to listen, to feel, to know, to put the pieces of the puzzle together?”

I listened, I didn’t feel much, and I failed to put the pieces together.  Sigmund Freud’s idea of ‘mortido’ was always a bit weird, explained by Betzien as ‘the theory of the death drive, the instinct of all living things to return to an inanimate state’.  I wouldn’t put too much trust in that bit of imagination.

Tom Conroy as Jimmy, David Valencia as El Gallito

Photo by Brett Boardman


© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Paying the Piper: There has to be a Better Way by Cathy Hunt. Commentary.

Paying the Piper: There has to be a Better Way by Cathy Hunt.  Platform Papers No 45, Currency House, November 2015.

Commentary by Frank McKone

There are three aspects of Cathy Hunt’s detailed essay which need discussion:

What are The Arts for?

What roles have Australian governments played in the past?

What should Australian governments do next?

Her concluding section 7. Changing the paradigm: The Money Story begins:

“If we truly want our artists to succeed and to be recognised at home and overseas for their excellence and if we want our citizens actively engaged in arts and cultural activities in building strong healthy communities, then we need resilient organisations and a stable environment from which to create, experiment and grow.”

This is what The Arts are for.  I begin by wondering if mental boundaries are being set up here which don’t suit the amorphous shape of human art – should I be singing “Don’t fence me in”?

But then I think about what Aboriginal people call ‘culture’.  I’m an outsider to that culture, though I’ve been entertained and educated by Aboriginal artists in many forms.  It seems to me that their arts are so integrated into daily life that each artist (and this seems to mean most members, at least in more traditional communities) both works within cultural boundaries and also as an individual creating new interpretations which move boundaries in new directions – even across the major boundary dog-fence of the overwhelming invasion of the country and into the lives of the invaders, including me.

Have Aboriginal people ever needed to pose the question “If we truly want our artists...then....?"  I think not.  Art has just been there, always, and always will be.  If “we” have to pose the “If we want” type of question, we are presupposing that most people in our culture are separated, maybe “divorced”, from being artists. 

I think this goes to the heart of the issues raised in Cathy Hunt’s paper about what governments have done and might do in future.  For Aboriginal peoples, culture is central and all-encompassing in all governance matters.  Our Governments confine our arts to a small box at the bottom of a jumbled pile of supposedly much more serious weighty concerns. 

This was particularly harshly demonstrated in the recent Abbott-led cabinet arrangement where The Arts, usually at least a minor attachment to some vaguely related portfolio like Sports and Education, was given to the Attorney-General, would you believe?  At the A-G’s whim, money was hived off from the Australia Council to set up his favourite thing (you can sing this while dancing across green mountainsides)  the National Program for Excellence in the Arts.

Since the change in leadership, The Arts are now with Senator the Hon Mitchell Peter (Mitch) Fifield, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Digital Government, Minister for Communications, Minister for the Arts, and Manager of Government Business in the Senate.  Note the order of the boxes in this pile.

Good luck, I guess, to Cathy Hunt’s very sensible proposals about what our government should do with its money, but I have doubts that the core cultural paradigm is shifting.  I doubt our political decision makers will really understand that The Arts are central to everybody’s life, not to be mentally boxed and paid for simply to achieve political ends like being “recognised at home and overseas for their excellence” or “building strong healthy communities”. 

The Arts are an end in themselves.  Historically they do build communities, but who’s to say what “healthy” means?  Or what “excellence” consists of?  Glib words, but should governments be determining definitions?

I’m not criticising Cathy Hunt here, because her business-like analysis is concrete and realistic, reaching probably the best conclusions we can expect of our society.

I recall the excitement of establishing the Australia Council at arms length from political interference in 1967, the time of flowering of the rumbustious new wave in Australian Theatre.  Hunt usefully compares us with UK and Canada, but that bit of governmental history made us unique.  That peer-to-peer administration in The Arts (not ‘of’ The Arts), even though the money was never enough, was what made my small contribution more than a self-indulgent lifestyle choice (to quote one-time PM Tony Abbott, talking about outback Aboriginal communities). 

For nearly 50 years we have had the freedom to push against artistic boundaries, bend them and cross them, and the result is an Australian arts community writ large in a way that seemed impossible when I began teaching in 1963.

So where are we now after this year’s self-indulgence on the part of the Attorney-General.  According to Hunt, George Brandis in the May 2015 budget “announced that $123.3 million would be removed from the Australia Council budget allocation over four years, of which a proportion would be placed at the disposal of the Minister himself for the purpose of creating a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts.”

This is where Cathy Hunt excels.  She states firmly: “I don’t believe we need a review of the Australia Council and what it does. That has been done, a new governance model established and a new strategic plan developed based on extensive consultation with the sector and endorsed by the sitting government [before the May 2015 budget], and it was on the verge of being implemented [including an innovative six-year funding program]. The Council’s need for additional investment to undertake the work required was clearly articulated through that process.  But we may need a very different type of organisation from the one that is currently legislated for—one that can:

• Plan effectively for the future and for its entire budget and operations, without fear of unilateral intervention from the responsible Minister;
• Rely on diverse sources of financial input, so that it itself is less vulnerable to change, through partnerships with the private sector and the development of new investment mechanisms;
• Provide a range of different investment opportunities for the sector beyond grants,
working with other finance providers to create specific products of benefit to artists and arts organisations;
• Invest in the long-term resilience of artists and arts organisations without always requiring direct immediate program outcomes in return;
• Work with a new industry body and policy institute on research which will report on the impacts of the sector, provide the best possible advice to government on how best to invest in the sector and provide the best value for money;
• Be at the forefront of reporting its achievements through an integrated financial reporting mechanism which can measure all aspects of cultural, social and economic value from its investments to all partners.”

And, Hunt asks:

“So what are the conditions required to enable that vision for a ‘culturally ambitious nation’ to be fulfilled? There are three core ideas for any federal government action that I want to reiterate here:

• Take a whole view of the broad cultural economy as expressed in the UNESCO
framework. Stop treating the arts as a marginal venture. Establish a cultural ministry, which will, as one of its first steps, contribute to a Productivity Commission inquiry into the scale, contribution, and support systems required to facilitate that economy.
• Adopt contemporary funding and financing practices where collaboration is key. Bring together some of the best financial minds in the country to develop some concrete proposals along the lines proposed in this paper, from new forms of taxation to developing a significant endowment or ‘Future Fund’ for the arts.
• Build the Australia Council into a body which can truly invest in and develop a ‘culturally ambitious nation’ in partnership with the states and territories and the growing philanthropic sector in Australia; with access to diversified streams of funding as with Arts Council England and the Canada Council for the Arts.  Fund for resilience not for dependency.”

If there is any chance of shifting the paradigm, it seems to me that Cathy Hunt lays down for government the practicalities of how it may be achieved.  And, as her final sentence says:

Let the actions of the last few months be a wake-up call to all concerned with the future of Australian arts and culture.
 

BRISBANE: Launch of PAYING THE PIPER: There has to be a better way with Cathy Hunt in conversation with Professor Judith McLean
   When: 6pm, Thursday 12 November 2015
   Where: Brisbane Powerhouse, Park Mezzanine, 119 Lamington St, New Farm
   All welcome. Essential to book at info@currencyhouse.org.au  mailto:info@currencyhouse.org.au

MELBOURNE: Launch of PAYING THE PIPER with keynote address from Cathy Hunt at the Victorian Theatre Forum and in conversation with Julian Meyrick
   When: 11am, Tuesday 17 November 2015
   Where: The Coopers Malthouse, Sturt St, Southbank
   Media welcome. Contact Nicole Beyer mailto:nicole@tnv.net.au

Media enquiries to Martin Portus mailto:mportus@optusnet.com.au  or 0401 360 806.




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Paying the Piper: There has to be a Better Way by Cathy Hunt. Platform Papers No 45. Media Release.

Paying the Piper: There has to be a Better Way by Cathy Hunt.  Platform Papers No 45, Currency House, November 2015.

Posted by Frank McKone

The next Platform Paper from Currency House will be launched in

BRISBANE: with Cathy Hunt in conversation with Professor Judith McLean
When: 6pm, Thursday 12 November 2015
Where: Brisbane Powerhouse, Park Mezzanine, 119 Lamington St, New Farm
All welcome. Essential to book at info@currencyhouse.org.au <mailto:info@currencyhouse.org.au>

and in
MELBOURNE: with keynote address from Cathy Hunt at the Victorian Theatre Forum and in conversation with Julian Meyrick
When: 11am, Tuesday 17 November 2015
Where: The Coopers Malthouse, Sturt St, Southbank
Media welcome. Contact Nicole Beyer nicole@tnv.net.au <mailto:nicole@tnv.net.au>

MEDIA RELEASE Monday 2 November 2015

There has to be a better way


As the Senate Inquiry into Commonwealth responsibility for the arts begins its last week of hearings, international cultural strategist Cathy Hunt puts the case in the November issue of Platform Papers that our arts funding system needs a complete overhaul.

In Currency House’s PAYING THE PIPER: There has to be a better way, Ms Hunt argues for a new funding framework that brings government and the philanthropic sector together, new business models and new forms of financing to build sector resilience.

She calls for new leadership to overturn George Brandis’ hasty decision to seize more than $120 million from the Australia Council budget; and shows how the former Arts Minister’s action has exposed the fragility of our national arts funding.

“If the new National Program for the Excellence in the Arts goes ahead, the money that would have supported building resilient organisations will be used to keep organisations compliant and mendicant through the out-of-date, one-off grant process,” she writes.

Ms Hunt proposes a Productivity Commission Inquiry into the entire cultural economy, and a new independent source of policy, research and new thinking. She also wants an end to the distinction between “majors” and “small-to-medium” companies.

Ms Hunt also calls on the Australia Council to step up to its advocacy role, and to seek new authority to negotiate funds for the arts from sources other than Government.


Cathy Hunt is a founding director of Positive Solutions, a Brisbane-based consultancy in the cultural and non-profit sectors. She co-authored the 2008 Platform Paper, A Sustainable Arts Sector, and has written widely on cultural policy. She was also co-executive producer of WOW Brisbane in June 2015.



I’ll post a more detailed commentary closer to the launch date.  The Paper is a complex study of the situation of arts funding in Australia compared with the UK and Canada, reaching positive conclusions for a new approach which could well be of interest to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. – Frank McKone

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Festival of Museum Theatre: Come Alive 2015

Festival of Museum Theatre: Come Alive 2015.  Artistic Director – Peter Wilkins.  Participating schools – Orana Steiner School, Daramalan College, St Francis Xavier College, Calwell High School Dance, Canberra College, Namadgi School, Telopea School, Canberra College Dance, Marist College, and Bateman’s Bay High School.

James O Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery of Australia, October 26 – November 1 2015.

by Frank McKone
October 31

In conjunction with the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTAL), Come Alive! has been presented each year since 2010, mainly at the National Museum of Australia, on occasion at the interactive science museum Questacon, and this year jointly by the National Gallery of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery.

The essence of Wilkins’ approach is simple in concept, highly effective in results.  I saw only two of the ten shows today, Light by Daramalan College and Lina by Orana Steiner School.  Having reviewed Come Alive! previously in 2012 and 2013 I can confidently say that the promise of developing a tradition and improvement in the two aspects of the program – understanding of the process of presenting theatre and appreciation of culture – has been very well fulfilled. 

Light took the work of James Turrell, represented in the NGA by Skyspace and Perceptual Cell and by his recent James Turrell: A Retrospective extended exhibition.  Lina was inspired by four Australian paintings from the 1940s Heide modernist group – The Red Hat by Jock Frater and Lina Bryans’ Nina Christiansen, The babe is wise, and Yellow portrait.

The basic principle of Wilkins’ method is that the student group in each school, with no more than minimal assistance from a teacher, will choose their subject from the museum / gallery display, undertake detailed research and create a theatre performance of about 20 minutes to express their new understanding.

Light became a kind of ‘abstract’ theatre, in which figures in white tops moved slowly together and apart, front lit by moving spotlights while live video showed them via changing differently manipulated images on a rear screen, as individuals spoke sections of poems referring to light, with backing group vocal sounds sometimes in harmony and sometimes quite discordant in effect.  The sound became like light, played as if it were light of different intensities and colour.  The piece concluded with a twist on the Dylan Thomas injunction – going ‘into the dying light’ as the stage lights faded before a silent bow (while we in the audience clapped gently).

Lina showed us, partly in mime or briefly frozen tableaus, and using spoken material from critical writing, personal letters and interviews, twelve of the artists and others associated with the Heide group: Lina Bryans and her relationships with William ‘Jock’ Frater, Ian Fairweather, Alex Jelinek, Nina and Clem Christiansen, novelist and critic Jean Campbell, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker, John Brack, Winifred Frater and Alan Sumner.  Despite the fractious nature of these diverse relationships, out of which came such an immense change in Australian painting and sculpture, the students found a peaceful ending in the interview with Lina, in her old age, married to Alex and content to look back with a degree of equanimity.

Each show, though completely different in stylistic approach, showed the same commitment, enthusiasm for research, originality in devising how to present the material, and remarkable maturity in dealing with ideas like Turrell’s ‘wordless thought’ in his work which has ‘no object, no image and no focus’; or with the contrasting and often conflicting philosophies of art, and the often explosive feelings (or especially in Ian Fairweather’s case, the depths of depression) generated between the artists of the Heide group. 

On my visit I was fortunate to hear some of the delegates from the International Museum Theatre Alliance (Asia/Pacific) conference currently being held in Canberra, whose questions of the two casts in a Q&A session brought out highly articulate expressions of delight at what they had achieved on stage.

To quote from my first encounter with museum theatre in 2001: "Banging a visitor over the head with a message will only serve to concuss their mind, not expand it." - Catherine Hughes, Boston Museum of Science, [then] Executive Director of the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTAL).  This was on the occasion of only the second IMTAL conference.  If you would like to follow up information on museum theatre, you could well begin here:
 http://www.recollections.nma.gov.au/shared/libraries/attachments/imtal_2005_bibliography/files/11890/IMTAL2005_biblio.pdf

Further reading will take you to the psychology researcher from Harvard University, Howard Gardner (of Multiple Intelligences fame) who was probably the main stimulator of thinking about ‘museum education’ – that is taking students out of their isolated classrooms and stimulating their intelligences beyond the conventional numerical and verbal aspects, which effectively are the only sources of measurement in IQ tests. 

Peter Wilkins’ work in Come Alive! is a major contribution, serving not to ‘concuss their mind’, but ‘expand it’ for all the students who take part, especially because they become responsible, to themselves, for both observing and choosing from the cultural artefacts in the museums, and then for discovering and putting into practice the theatrical form which will convey their ‘excitement’, as one student said today, of finding out so much from ‘reading in the National Library’.  This is what we might call ‘wholistic’ education, the value of which cannot be over-estimated.

I now have a much better understanding of James Turrell, and learned a great deal more than I had known before about the Heide modern art movement.

And, finally, I must thank the teachers who will surely have worked overtime and inevitably had much more than ‘minimal’ input to their students’ success in this year’s Come Alive! : Jana Watson, Joe Woodward, Douglas Amarfio, Kym Degenhart, Ian Walker, Stephanie Ikin, Jessica Dixon, Sharon McCutcheon, Susan Johnson and Carla Weijer.  And the staff of NGA and NPG for their technical and administrative work – and their commitment to education.




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: The Art of Teaching Nothing by Kirsty Budding

The Art of Teaching Nothing by Kirsty Budding.  Free Rain Theatre Company: directed and designed by Cate Clelland; lighting and sound by Joel Edmondson; costumes by Fiona Leach.  Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, October 22-25, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 25

This is a new locally written play about which I find myself in several minds.  It’s certainly about the business of being a teacher, set definitively in the government school system as opposed to any private school.  And clearly in the Canberra jurisdiction.

Its title has an element of foreboding which comes to fruition in the final scenes.

But it’s the author’s intention in writing the play that is not clear to me. 

Some parts are farcical – and there’s nothing wrong with farce which is funny for the sake of being funny.  That’s a well established theatre genre.

Some parts are comedy with ironic material as, for example, an incompetent Level 2 English Faculty head Clara (Elaine Noon) who has had a longstanding sexual relationship with the Principal Julian (Rob De Fries) finds herself promoted even further above her level of incompetency into a sinecure administrative position in Head Office.  There are several other similar situations as the play progresses.  The complete nonentity Deputy Principal George (Arran McKenna) is used as a comic foil in most situations.

Some scenes, though, are anything but comedy.  A particularly nasty one is where the woman Head of Student Services, Bronwyn (Emma Wood) – in charge of everything, especially staffing (Human Resources) – and the newly promoted woman Level 2 English Faculty head, Steph (Marti Ibrahim) attack the recently appointed young woman teacher, Lucy (Glynis Stokes) on personal grounds such as her youth and beauty.  It isn’t that this couldn’t happen when jealousy raises its ugly head, but the intensity and viciousness of the scene was quite out of line with both the comedy and sometimes farce of most other scenes.  I found that scene actually quite shocking, and wasn’t at all sure of how I was meant to take it.

Then again, there are quite sweet scenes. Lucy explains her background relationship with her now dead father.  The art teacher Paul (Brendan Kelly) has a similar kind of story to tell about his mother, and about his father – the Principal who has employed his son despite his having falsified  teaching qualifications.  At these points the theatrical form is anything but comedy, certainly not farce: here it strikes home as straightforward realism.  The character of the PE teacher Ray (John Kelly) seems to exist in this realist frame throughout the play, while it’s hard to place the elderly maths teacher Mary (Liz Bradley) who dies on the job.  Realistic, comic commentary, or farce?  I’m not sure.

However, finally we find that we have been taken in because these apparently genuine characters, except perhaps Ray and the now dead Mary, turn out to be frauds like all the rest.  The key point in the story is about who put the blog online which exposes the corruption of the Principal and indeed the whole process of employment and promotion.  The play becomes a whodunnit, and the answer is that the new young genuine idealistic teacher Lucy uses a bright student, Beth (Sophie Hopkins) to do the dirty work.  And even worse, Beth and Lucy turn out to be sisters.

At this point I either have to see the play as a clever piece of extreme absurdism, or perhaps it is a deeply cynical piece saying that teaching is essentially nothing more than an entirely selfish power play.  The art, indeed, of teaching absolutely nothing.  And then its deliberate setting in the government school system makes me wonder about the author’s politics, particularly in our local jurisdiction.  Am I to lightly pass off the evening’s entertainment as a bit of enjoyable fun, or should I take up the issues seriously?

One way of thinking about this is to do a thought experiment.  Imagine if this play were designed, directed and performed by, say Belvoir or Sydney Theatre Company?  Imagine then that it might be done with the absurdism of, say, Eugene Ionesco in mind.  Rhinoceros comes to mind.  Deputy Principal George in this play has a flying shark to entertain the students.  Maybe, parallel to Rhinoceros, people turn into sharks, going green and floating about – except perhaps for the Artist, Paul, who refuses.  He has done the right thing by Lucy after all, just as Berenger does his best to save Daisy.  Paul almost gives in and accepts the corruption, but perhaps like Berenger his last line should be “I’m not capitulating!”

I can see such a possibility, but it would mean much more work on the script and its style of presentation for The Art of Teaching Nothing to educate us about conformity and corruption as Ionesco achieved.  That’s a worthy aim for Kirsty Budding.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Company by Stephen Sondheim

Company Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.  Everyman Theatre, Canberra.  Director – Jordan Best; Musical Director – Tim Hansen; Choreographer – James Batchelor; Set Designer –Michael Sparks; Lighting Designer – Kelly McGannon; Sound – Steve Allsop; Technical Manager – Hamish McConchie (Eclipse Lighting and Sound).  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre October 16-24, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 16

Highly skilled, entertaining, and quite original in style, this production of a 1970 musical “comedy” succeeds despite the unlikely nature of Sondheim’s writing. 

The casting has brought together singers who can act and actors who can sing from among the best musical theatre performers in Canberra-Queanbeyan.  They, the chorus (named The Vocal Minority), and the nine-piece orchestra handle the quirky music beautifully –if that’s the right language to describe Sondheim.

The mood was upbeat throughout on opening night with a very responsive audience, even if somewhat biassed towards friends and family on stage.  For me this is an important value of our local theatre: our performers include many with professional training and experience, while we still have the ‘feel’ of a country town without the pretensions of the big-city-slickers.

The success of the show depends on Jordan Best’s may-I-say-it? Australian approach.  It’s all very well for the Americans to take Sondheim’s representations of heterosexual marriage seriously and therefore Bobby becomes a sentimental figure “poor baby”.  Best has said, let’s not bullshit – this is comedy, so it’s got to be funny.  She has kept the show absolutely New York America, but exaggerated the way all of these characters behave, including Bobby, to get as near as Sondheim’s lyrics and dialogue allow to satire.

It can’t work all the time, considering the quote from Dr Duncan Driver’s very informative article on the history of the show, where Sondheim said “Broadway theater has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems.  These people really want to escape that world when they go to the theatre, and then here we are with Company talking about how we’re going to bring it right back in their faces.”

What pretentious bullshit!  Perhaps the nearest to ‘in their faces’ – which means satire for Jordan Best – is the Ladies for Lunch scene, where Joanne does her serious best to race off Bobby: but he won’t smoke her cigarette!  Well done Karen Vickery in this role.  And well done Jarrad West, whose Bobby was a very knowing 35-year-old, rather than some kind of innocent booby as he appears in some other productions, available on YouTube.

If you dislike my argument, consider that the well-known popular play in Australia in 1971 was David Williamson’s Don’s Party.  If you want to think of Company as the equivalent of a musical Don’s Party, have a good look at the depth of character in the marriage relationships in Williamson’s writing.  Sondheim’s characters are shallow cardboard cutouts in comparison.

Four images stand out for me from Best’s Company: Ladies for Lunch for satire; the karate scene for great slapstick comedy by Jordan Best herself as Sarah; the I’m (Not) Getting Married Today scene for frantic comedy by Phillipa Murphy as Susan; and the story of the butterfly for beautiful timing by Amy Dunham as April.

So whatever Stephen Sondheim thought he was doing, our Everyman Theatre production has picked up the good bits, made fun at every opportunity and avoided the American tendency for sentimentality.  It’s still an odd ending, as Bobby (on the third, or is it fourth, version of his 35th birthday party) simply stays away until the company have decided not to wait, leaving him to his quiet life in his favourite apartment.  I’m not sure what Sondheim meant this to mean, but in this lively show of terrific singing and playing, it doesn’t matter.

It’s just a good way to finish, with the mysterious “But Alone, Is Alone.  Not Alive”.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Photos by Daniel Boud

Hamlet by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare directed by Damien Ryan, at Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse October 13-24, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 14

Designed by Alicia Clements; Design Assistant – Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting – Matt Cox; Composer and Sound – Steve Francis; Fight and Movement and Assistant Director – Nigel Poulton.

Cast:
Hamlet – Scott Sheridan (understudy for Josh McConville)    Ophelia – Matilda Ridgway
Claudius/Ghost – Sean O’Shea                Gertrude – Doris Younane
Horatio – Ivan Donato            Laertes/Franciso/Guilderstern – Michael Wahr
Polonius/Gravedigger/Norwegian Captain – Philip Dodd
Reynaldo/Rosencrantz/Osric/Gravedigger – Robin Goldsworthy
Marcellus/Voltemand/Player Queen – Julia Ohannessian
Bernardo/Cornelia/Player King/Fortinbras – Catherine Terracini

There are many ways to go with Hamlet – brooding, pusillanimous, unable to take action, unsympatico are common approaches.  But not this Hamlet by Scott Sheridan, who has stood in magnificently for the injured Josh McConville.

This Hamlet is a study of how the personal is political, and how the political destroys the personal.  Literally, as all the key players are dead by the end of the play.  In the play’s the thing speech at the end of the first half, we are suitably warned that Hamlet may catch the conscience of all of us.  And indeed, as Horatio says, so shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, and, in this upshot, purposes mistook fall’n on the inventors’ heads.

In any audience, in Shakespeare’s dreadful time of autocratic rule as much as in today’s rule by even the best examples of representative democracy, who can say they are completely innocent of every one of these kinds of acts?  Accidental judgements with unintended consequences are, I suppose, probably unavoidable, even if we have not personally been caught up in worse policy decisions.  A Canberra audience with a good smattering of government officials might well want to exclaim, as King Claudius does, Give me some light: away! when the players hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature.

But this Hamlet is a study in action.  Sheridan captures the energy of the intellectual Hamlet.  He is not constrained by weakness but by the strength of his questioning, of his demand to know and understand the truth.  As anyone would do, he seeks out information, he tries to set up situations to test what he thinks may be true, and he makes, among his worst accidental judgements, the decision to save Ophelia even from himself – with the most horrific of unintended consequences.

The result of Damien Ryan’s directorial approach is a production of Hamlet in which there is such high definition and clarity of meaning that I find myself struggling to remember any previous performance of this play.  Every character, even the infamous Rosencrantz and Guilderstern, is sharply drawn by their clear intentions, reactions and responses.  Every actor deserved the three curtain calls, while the extra applause for Scott Sheridan was not just for his willingness to stand in for such a part at such short notice, but for the consistency which he gave to such an inconsistent character.

We felt for Matilda Ridgway’s Ophelia, treated so abominably by her father and so apparently incomprehensibly by Hamlet.  Though we understood Philip Dodd’s Polonius’ position as intelligence gatherer for his political master, it was hard to accept how he played that role against his own bright and upbeat daughter, against his very proper son Laertes (played precisely by Michael Wahr) at university in Paris, and of course against the very prince who by all rights should have been King Hamlet of Denmark, with Queen Ophelia by his side.

So there it is: how politics and subterfuge destroys the personal.  And proof that the play is the thing that is the mirror up to nature.  Shakespeare’s subtlety and complexity is matched by the quality of the acting, in a set design, lighting design and sound design which works perfectly.  Voice, spoken and in song, is especially intriguing for its modern Australian natural cadences – a touch which opens up early 17th Century Shakespeare to our culture in the 21st.

Try not to miss Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet while it is here in Canberra, but otherwise make sure you see it in Sydney, October 27 to December 6 at the Opera House Playhouse.

Matilda Ridgway as Ophelia - bright and upbeat

Robin Goldsworthy as Reynaldo and Philip Dodd as Polonius
- intelligence gathering

Matilda Ridgway (Ophelia) sees
Doris Younane (Gertrude) and Sean O'Shea (King Claudius)

Josh McConville as Hamlet, Sean O'Shea as King Claudius
And am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?

Matilda Ridgway (Ophelia) and Josh McConville (Hamlet)
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate
our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.

Josh McConville as Hamlet
Now, mother, what's the matter?

Catherine Terracini as Bernardo, Matilda Ridgway as Ophelia
Ivan Donato as Horatio, Michael Wahr as Laertes, Doris Younane as Gertrude
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance

Robin Goldsworthy as Gravedigger, Ivan Donato as Horatio,
Philip Dodd as Gravedigger, Josh McConville as Hamlet
This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2015: Soul of Fire by Susanne F Wolf.

Maxi Blaha as Bertha von Suttner
Photo by Peter Rigaud

Soul of Fire by Susanne F Wolf.  Presented by The Street in association with the Austrian Embassy, Canberra, at The Street Two, 8pm October 2-4, 2015, plus German language performance 4pm October 4.

Performed by Maxi Blaha as Bertha von Suttner with live guitarist, Georg Buxhofer. 
Director - Alexander Hauer; designer - Hannes Kaufmann; production, idea - Maxi Blaha; costumes - Moana Stemberger.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
October 2

In 1889, Bertha von Suttner had published her anti-war novel Lay Down Your Arms. After that, she was drawn into the international peace movement. She undoubtedly exercised considerable influence on Alfred Nobel, whom she had known since 1876, when he later decided to include the Peace Prize as one of the five prizes mentioned in his will. In 1905, she was awarded the [fifth] Peace Prize, the first woman to receive such a distinction. Her supporters strongly felt that the prize had come too late, since she had had such an influence on Nobel.

"The Nobel Peace Prize 1901-2000". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 2 Oct 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/peace/lundestad-review/index.html

For a more detailed biography see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_von_Suttner

Bertha von Suttner 1873, aged 30

 Susanne Wolf’s 55 minute monologue is written in the first-person as Bertha, born in 1843, covering from her childhood as Countess Kinsky of Austrian parents in Prague to her death in 1914, only two months before the World War began which she had so desperately tried to prevent.

The writing is daunting for an actor, not just in presenting a complex life story as a consistent character developing from a child to a feisty septuagenarian, but finding a suitable style and manner in performance.  Maxi Blaha succeeds in revealing to us both the public and private sides of a woman of great significance in the history of the peace movement, without pretension yet with a sense of great respect.

Incorporated into the performance is beautiful delicate guitar music which Georg Buxhofner plays as if it were improvised in unison with the mood of the story’s episodes and Bertha’s ever-changing feelings.  Silences, on the part of the guitar and the actor, often make us listen more deeply.  The performers’ respect for their subject is passed over to us, watching from the future.

The setting is simple.  Dark curtaining, information panels in German and English, a plush chair in the centre which might have come from an upper-class residence.  A museum exhibit, which is inhabited by the guitarist, with a small-scale amplifier, seated partly facing away from the audience, playing softly, slow notes, perhaps wistful.  The living exhibit enters from the shadow, peruses some printed sheets which she scatters around her as she sits.  Her mother calls, the child Bertha responds, and bit by bit we see and hear figures from her life speaking and see her responding, as well as see her taking the initiative, speaking privately and publicly.

Bertha von Suttner 1896

There are some significant episodes – when she is 30 and falls truly in love with Arthur von Suttner, when she speaks and writes to Alfred Nobel, when she is published in the Neue Freie Presse, when she discovers her husband’s dalliance with his young niece, when her husband dies, when she is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, when she reaches her end.  She hands out her major speech, and we read:

Hence it is necessary that wherever proponents of peace exist, they confess themselves publically as such and work for the cause to the best of their ability.  My challenge goes out to all those who wish to join us: send in your name and address.

If ever there was a theatre presentation relevant in our times, that speech says it all.  Though perhaps the strict social hierarchy of European nations which she had to face may have levelled somewhat, many of the conflicts in countries she mentions, from Russia to the Balkans and across Europe, worsened in the century following her death, and now are in contention again through North Africa and the Middle East.  Just today there are reports of the rise of the “Freedom” party on the far right of politics in Bertha’s home country – Austria – as the masses try to escape from the South to the North, from the East to the West.  The Austro-Hungarian  and the Ottoman Empires might as well still be here.

But at least Bertha’s work, along with that of other Nobel Peace Prize winners and of untold unsung activists, has maintained the Peace Movement, and led to the tentative beginnings of world-wide political negotiations instead of an automatic recourse to war, in the United Nations Organisation after the worst paroxysm in World War II.  We may have a long way yet to go, but without Bertha von Suttner’s words of 1891:

Would it not be simpler to lay down the fuses voluntarily, in other words to disarm?  To apply international law – merge the divided groups in a single group and found a union of the civilised nations of Europe!  Tiny is the minority that still wishes for war.  Immeasurably vast are the masses who yearn for peace – not a truce maintained out of fear but a secure and guaranteed peace.

we would not have come as far as we have.

Soul of Fire  is a message of hope, common sense and reason, presented in a performance of dignity and respect.

Bertha von Suttner 1906
Nobel Peace Prize 1905

© Frank McKone, Canberra