Something serious is happening at the Australian National Playwrights' Conference at the ANU Arts Centre. Most of it is hidden, for very good reasons, behind closed workshop doors, but you can be an outsider looking in, alongside the insiders looking out, by going along to workshop presentations starting on Thursday October 3.
The public program at a glance:
Thursday Oct. 3:
8.30 pm: Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (a realistic social exposé of an Aboriginal experience of football and love).
9.30 pm: Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Cassandra, the prophetess destined to tell the truth but not to be believed, appears at significant moments in history leaving warnings for the future - including ours).
Friday Oct. 4:
2.00 pm: Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (a strong psychological drama).
4.00 pm: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (an epic humorous treatment of Tasmania's history as an island of freaks).
7.00 pm: Kingalawuy by Ali Arjibuk (a story of Aboriginal people coping with traditional legends and rituals in the face of white colonisation, from Darwin).
8.30 pm: Into the Fire by Deborah Baley, visiting writer from USA (about a woman in Alaska, unable to cope with the isolation).
Saturday Oct. 5:
1.00 pm: Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (a radio play about a girl and boy forced to become prostitute and pickpocket after the violent expulsion of the population of their village by a militia in the Philippines).
2.30 pm: The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (moral dilemmas faced by the NSW Governor and his children at the time of Federation - with implications for 2000 and The Republic).
4.30 pm: Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (a humorous play with music about the loneliness and hardship of the women on the rodeo circuit).
Each of these plays is in a different stage of development and some writers will be feeling quite vulnerable in the public gaze. However, discussion after each presentation is the usual thing, so be prepared to watch, listen, learn and have your say with care, knowing that your responses will become part of the final product on a stage somewhere in Australia - or overseas.
The Chair of the ANPC, well-known playwright Stephen Sewell, is working - with students from the Centre for Performing Arts, Adelaide - on finding the right approach for creating a community based musical making the Australia-Asia connection, probably to be performed in a Hindley Street takeover, which should revitalise multiculturalism despite the current political correctedness. There will be a presentation and forum on Thursday at 7.00 pm, though this work is not part of the main conference.
This represents a serious change from days of yore when writers were under contract to come with a script, watch, listen and re-write, while directors and actors got on with the work. Now the actors' responses to Tear from a Glass Eye have sent the writer back to the computer; while for the Filipino bilingual writer Merlinda Bobis, Rita's Lullaby actors are having Tagalog language classes.
Lafe Charlton, Aboriginal actor from traditionally a fishing culture on Stradbroke Island, is facing the harsh realism of the inland NSW experience in Blackgammon, switching to a Kungarakantj traditional man's role from south-west of Darwin in Kingalawuy (while on the side he is involved with Seven Stages of Grieving [by Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch] to be presented at the Performing Arts Market after the Conference).
In Rodeo Noir, Valerie Bader is busy learning to yodel; Daynan Brazil is working with director Yaron Lifschitz adding scenes to Cassandra; Odile Le Clezio is studying how to be a 19th Century Tasmanian hermaphrodite called Hercules for Transylvania; in The Governor's Family actors and director are reading to discover all the levels of meaning in the script; and Deborah Bayley has found that Australian actors understand the open spaces and isolation of Alaska better than actors from New York.
The Conference is all about diversity of approaches, celebrating differences, exploring possibilities with actors, directors, dramaturgs and writers working in community. It is a model of the very multiculturalism which Sewell's new musical envisages. If you can get to see some of the presentations, you'll be sure to sense the new directions and the excitement of the ANPC 1996.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 30 September 1996
Wednesday, 25 September 1996
1996: Report article on Australian National Playwrights' Conference
The Australian National Playwrights' Conference, running this week and next at the ANU Arts Centre and Burgmann College, is like one of those wooden interlocking puzzles: even worse, it's spherical - not just a simple cube - and even has spheres within spheres.
I disturbed four of the pieces on Wednesday - Canberra actor Mary Brown; Sydney writer Beatrix Christian; May-Brit Akerholt, Artistic Director of the whole conference; and Carol Woodrow who directs the Delegates' Program. My interference didn't actually cause the whole conference to fall apart (which is what happens when I just glance at the wooden puzzle on my bookshelf) but my brain was truly glowing with incandescence as I struggled to understand how these pieces all fit in such a complex arrangement.
Mary is enclosed in the innermost sphere where eight new Australian plays and one from Deborah Baley, a guest from New York, are being workshopped for presentation next week. Mary emerged from Tear from a Glass Eye (by Victorian Matt Cameron) almost inarticulate with intensity. After performing in Charlotte's Web for Company Skylark for many weeks, Mary is inspired by the rehearsal work on this strong psychological drama which raises disturbing ethical questions, re-igniting her enthusiasm for writing which had been put aside for the sake of regular acting work.
The image of getting a tear from a glass eye made me wonder if for an artistic director the conference might be like getting blood from a stone. But for May-Brit Akerholt, who is directing the conference for the fourth time, the stone is a jewel of "generosity, goodwill and passion". She is the outer sphere - the geodetic structure which is stable and secure within which new constructions can be put together in safety. Somehow, May-Brit knows what is happening in all the workshops, senses if someone is uncomfortable, is open to everyone. She provides her expertise directly as a dramaturg for Beatrix Christian, so she is both outside and inside the real work of the conference. To help her do all this, of course, there must be creative (that means very efficient) administration - by General Manager Kate Riedl.
Another sphere - another unit of construction - is Carol Woodrow who is working with the Delegates. These are would-be writers who pay for the privilege of having their script ideas workshopped with actors and developed with dramaturgs. Carol works flexibly so that each writer can take their script through drafts with or without practical workshops as they feel the need. Like May-Brit, Carol seems by some almost paranormal insight to know where each writer is up to, what their needs are, who would be the right dramaturg or the best actors. This is a delicate shell within the total structure, where as yet untried writers are encouraged, guided and given the confidence which may lead to their work being supported next year in the main program.
And, indeed, this is what has happened to Beatrix Christian's The Governor's Family. This play, about the family of the Governor of NSW at the time of Federation; about revolution and reconciliation; a metaphorical piece with resonances for the year 2000 and the possibility of an Australian Republic - began life at last year's conference as a longish one-acter. May-Brit has worked with Beatrix through the year and now it is being presented as a full length play. Beatrix was happy that the first reading has confirmed that the structure works and the language is both actable and meaningful, while May-Brit sees more to be done on the final section.
Discussing building her play, Beatrix supplied the construction image which finally helped me put together all the pieces of this conference puzzle. She explained that writing a play is like writing a functional brief for a house, becoming the architect and turning out the blueprints. But this work always needs to be done keeping in mind that real people will live in the house when it is finally built. This is what the Playwrights' Conference is for: the dramaturg is like a people-sensitive engineer who makes the architect face reality, modelling the construction with real people - the actors - until the plans are ready for sale on the open market.
And this is why writers keep coming back to the Playwrights' Centre and to the annual Conference. Plays which survive this rigorous development have a proud record on the professional stage. Only at that point is the puzzle complete.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I disturbed four of the pieces on Wednesday - Canberra actor Mary Brown; Sydney writer Beatrix Christian; May-Brit Akerholt, Artistic Director of the whole conference; and Carol Woodrow who directs the Delegates' Program. My interference didn't actually cause the whole conference to fall apart (which is what happens when I just glance at the wooden puzzle on my bookshelf) but my brain was truly glowing with incandescence as I struggled to understand how these pieces all fit in such a complex arrangement.
Mary is enclosed in the innermost sphere where eight new Australian plays and one from Deborah Baley, a guest from New York, are being workshopped for presentation next week. Mary emerged from Tear from a Glass Eye (by Victorian Matt Cameron) almost inarticulate with intensity. After performing in Charlotte's Web for Company Skylark for many weeks, Mary is inspired by the rehearsal work on this strong psychological drama which raises disturbing ethical questions, re-igniting her enthusiasm for writing which had been put aside for the sake of regular acting work.
The image of getting a tear from a glass eye made me wonder if for an artistic director the conference might be like getting blood from a stone. But for May-Brit Akerholt, who is directing the conference for the fourth time, the stone is a jewel of "generosity, goodwill and passion". She is the outer sphere - the geodetic structure which is stable and secure within which new constructions can be put together in safety. Somehow, May-Brit knows what is happening in all the workshops, senses if someone is uncomfortable, is open to everyone. She provides her expertise directly as a dramaturg for Beatrix Christian, so she is both outside and inside the real work of the conference. To help her do all this, of course, there must be creative (that means very efficient) administration - by General Manager Kate Riedl.
Another sphere - another unit of construction - is Carol Woodrow who is working with the Delegates. These are would-be writers who pay for the privilege of having their script ideas workshopped with actors and developed with dramaturgs. Carol works flexibly so that each writer can take their script through drafts with or without practical workshops as they feel the need. Like May-Brit, Carol seems by some almost paranormal insight to know where each writer is up to, what their needs are, who would be the right dramaturg or the best actors. This is a delicate shell within the total structure, where as yet untried writers are encouraged, guided and given the confidence which may lead to their work being supported next year in the main program.
And, indeed, this is what has happened to Beatrix Christian's The Governor's Family. This play, about the family of the Governor of NSW at the time of Federation; about revolution and reconciliation; a metaphorical piece with resonances for the year 2000 and the possibility of an Australian Republic - began life at last year's conference as a longish one-acter. May-Brit has worked with Beatrix through the year and now it is being presented as a full length play. Beatrix was happy that the first reading has confirmed that the structure works and the language is both actable and meaningful, while May-Brit sees more to be done on the final section.
Discussing building her play, Beatrix supplied the construction image which finally helped me put together all the pieces of this conference puzzle. She explained that writing a play is like writing a functional brief for a house, becoming the architect and turning out the blueprints. But this work always needs to be done keeping in mind that real people will live in the house when it is finally built. This is what the Playwrights' Conference is for: the dramaturg is like a people-sensitive engineer who makes the architect face reality, modelling the construction with real people - the actors - until the plans are ready for sale on the open market.
And this is why writers keep coming back to the Playwrights' Centre and to the annual Conference. Plays which survive this rigorous development have a proud record on the professional stage. Only at that point is the puzzle complete.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Sunday, 22 September 1996
1996: Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love by Brad Fraser
Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love by Brad Fraser. Directed for The Company by Catherine Mann. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Sunday September 22, 1996. Professional reading.
Living as I do in a quiet cul-de-sac of the Bush Capital, this play about the failure of love in alienated city life, the revelation of a serial killer, and the discovery of love in cathartic horror, was not my usual fare at dinner time on Sunday. If a reading of this play can be so affecting, I'd hate to see a full production.
In fact with the high quality of direction and acting, I found myself quite able to imagine what was not explicitly presented. The play has a surprising structure. Beginning with disparate (indeed desperate) elements displayed as if on film, in a kind of abstract expressionist style, the first Act approaches a weird sort of unity. Act Two takes up the thread and weaves it into a thick rope of fear. Only when this is broken can some understanding and a semblance of human love remain.
The play, from Canada, has been filmed as Love and Human Remains (directed by Denys Arcand). I haven't seen the film, but I sense that detailed realistic shots crossfading from scenes of gritty ironic humour - powerful though I can imagine them to be - might not be as frightening and embarrassing as their live representation on stage, especially in an intimate theatre like the Currong. I think we need the personal confrontation of real people, a short distance away, to bring us up short against the truth of our confusion of love, sexuality and aggression which is the core of this play.
I have only one point of criticism. Killers of the kind that Bernie is, have no remorse and seem to believe in their immortality even within earshot of the police sirens. When he is given the gun, I think it is more likely that Bernie would shoot David than himself. But this is an argument with the playwright. This reading, the four already presented and the six more to come this year constitute a stunning program. Don't miss it. Ring 247 1561 or 247 4000 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Living as I do in a quiet cul-de-sac of the Bush Capital, this play about the failure of love in alienated city life, the revelation of a serial killer, and the discovery of love in cathartic horror, was not my usual fare at dinner time on Sunday. If a reading of this play can be so affecting, I'd hate to see a full production.
In fact with the high quality of direction and acting, I found myself quite able to imagine what was not explicitly presented. The play has a surprising structure. Beginning with disparate (indeed desperate) elements displayed as if on film, in a kind of abstract expressionist style, the first Act approaches a weird sort of unity. Act Two takes up the thread and weaves it into a thick rope of fear. Only when this is broken can some understanding and a semblance of human love remain.
The play, from Canada, has been filmed as Love and Human Remains (directed by Denys Arcand). I haven't seen the film, but I sense that detailed realistic shots crossfading from scenes of gritty ironic humour - powerful though I can imagine them to be - might not be as frightening and embarrassing as their live representation on stage, especially in an intimate theatre like the Currong. I think we need the personal confrontation of real people, a short distance away, to bring us up short against the truth of our confusion of love, sexuality and aggression which is the core of this play.
I have only one point of criticism. Killers of the kind that Bernie is, have no remorse and seem to believe in their immortality even within earshot of the police sirens. When he is given the gun, I think it is more likely that Bernie would shoot David than himself. But this is an argument with the playwright. This reading, the four already presented and the six more to come this year constitute a stunning program. Don't miss it. Ring 247 1561 or 247 4000 for details and bookings.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 20 September 1996
1996: Princess Ida by Gilbert and Sullivan
Princess Ida, or Gilbert and Sullivan meets Germaine Greer. Queanbeyan Players at Queanbeyan Bicentennial Centre, September 19-21 and 26-28, 1996. Amateur.
The astronomer Mary Whitney wrote in 1882: "We are forced to admit that in spite of the wonderful enlightenment of opinion which the last half century has produced in the public mind in reference to women's ability and position, there is still considerable unreadiness to believe that in the higher professions she either can make or will make herself as proficient as a man."
Princess Ida appeared in 1884. She is the daughter of a king who likes nothing but grumbling and insulting people; sister of three stupid war-mongering brothers; betrothed at the age of one to Hilarion, son of another war obsessed king. No wonder she takes 100 intellectually brilliant women into her women-only institution of higher learning.
It was a bold move to update the setting to something like the 1960s, and it was the right thing to do. Mind you, I'm sure Germaine Greer of The Female Eunuch would have found G&S's final argument hard to stomach: Princess Ida has to admit that marriage to men is necessary to propagate the species, though she at least threatens that if Hilarion doesn't treat her properly she will retire once more to her Castle Adamant.
It's hard not to have stars in G&S, and certainly Amanda Stevenson stands out as Ida in singing and acting (culminating in an affecting solo in I Built Upon a Rock), but the production has a well-balanced cast which kept the show moving on the opening night. Timing will settle in as the singers find their way around the remarkable acoustics of the Bicentennial Centre. The orchestra was competent with lively conducting by Geoff Smith. Perhaps two highlights for me were the chorus singing, which always had strength and the necessary G&S vitality, and the clarity of characterisation by Bill Lord as King Gama.
G&S, in the English satirical tradition, maintain all the elements of the romantic form, but on the way create some serious criticism of social issues. I also find their playing with the musical forms of romantic opera amusing and impressive. They can do Verdi or Puccini better than the originals. Queanbeyan Players provide all that is required for an enjoyable evening, making fun of over-seriousness today just as G&S did more than a century ago.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The astronomer Mary Whitney wrote in 1882: "We are forced to admit that in spite of the wonderful enlightenment of opinion which the last half century has produced in the public mind in reference to women's ability and position, there is still considerable unreadiness to believe that in the higher professions she either can make or will make herself as proficient as a man."
Princess Ida appeared in 1884. She is the daughter of a king who likes nothing but grumbling and insulting people; sister of three stupid war-mongering brothers; betrothed at the age of one to Hilarion, son of another war obsessed king. No wonder she takes 100 intellectually brilliant women into her women-only institution of higher learning.
It was a bold move to update the setting to something like the 1960s, and it was the right thing to do. Mind you, I'm sure Germaine Greer of The Female Eunuch would have found G&S's final argument hard to stomach: Princess Ida has to admit that marriage to men is necessary to propagate the species, though she at least threatens that if Hilarion doesn't treat her properly she will retire once more to her Castle Adamant.
It's hard not to have stars in G&S, and certainly Amanda Stevenson stands out as Ida in singing and acting (culminating in an affecting solo in I Built Upon a Rock), but the production has a well-balanced cast which kept the show moving on the opening night. Timing will settle in as the singers find their way around the remarkable acoustics of the Bicentennial Centre. The orchestra was competent with lively conducting by Geoff Smith. Perhaps two highlights for me were the chorus singing, which always had strength and the necessary G&S vitality, and the clarity of characterisation by Bill Lord as King Gama.
G&S, in the English satirical tradition, maintain all the elements of the romantic form, but on the way create some serious criticism of social issues. I also find their playing with the musical forms of romantic opera amusing and impressive. They can do Verdi or Puccini better than the originals. Queanbeyan Players provide all that is required for an enjoyable evening, making fun of over-seriousness today just as G&S did more than a century ago.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 6 September 1996
1996: Feature article on Australian National Playwrights' Conference
The Australian National Playwrights' Conference at the ANU Arts Centre from Monday September 23 to Saturday night October 5, 1996. Public readings on October 3, 4 and 5: ring ANU Arts Centre 249 4787 for details.
Maybe because Canberra has real seasons, the winter wattles are harbingers of the sudden appearance above ground of theatrical annuals in September and October. The first delicate petals are the new playwrights, keeping to the mottled shade of the ANU. These are plants already well-bred but often needing further genetic engineering ready to bloom in the full sunlight in a later season.
The more raucous plants, reaching urgently for the light, appear soon afterwards in the Festival of Australian Theatre. This event is watched with avid interest by a hundred David Attenboroughs, breathily exclaiming oohs and aahs at the Australian Performing Arts Market. Plants from here are exported all over the world, to show themselves from the tropics to the northern snows.
If you want to keep in touch with all the dramatic flowershows in Australia and around the globe, you can't do better than join the International Theatre Institute (Australian Centre). For only $15 a year you get a regular newsletter with absolutely everything about conferences, festivals, workshops, opportunities for theatre work, resource material and information about what theatre people are doing. Write to 8A/245 Chalmers Street, Redfern NSW 2016.
This year's new blooms at the ANPC are nine plays: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (Tasmania); Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (NSW); Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Queensland); Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (Victoria); The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (NSW); Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (ACT); Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (South Australia); Kingalawuy by Allyson Mills (NT); and Into the Fire by the visiting exchange writer from New York, Deborah Baley. Floriade at the Commonwealth Gardens will have nothing on the variety and flair at the ANU Arts Centre. But of course you can see both: Floriade during the day and the public readings of the new plays on Thursday to Saturday October 3 - 5.
Since its inauguration in 1973, the Playwrights' Conference has been a major influence on the growing maturity with which plays are taken through the writing and production process. Katharine Brisbane, long time theatre critic and director of Currency Press, specialising in publishing Australian scripts, has seen the change from the days when writers were uneducated in the craft of play production.
Directors and actors often felt, justifiably, that the writer would only be in the way while they were rehearsing. At the Playwright's Conference, directors directed while writers watched, got some advice from a dramaturg, went away to rewrite, and came back to watch the director direct. Now, Brisbane says, writers are much more familiar with the dramaturgical and workshop process, and are nowadays much more drawn to the centre of the development of their scripts at the Conference. The result is not that the plays which result can be described as "better" than in the past, but certainly plays show a greater understanding of the craft of theatre. By the time they are taken up by the major companies, scripts have been filtered and shaped so that top quality productions are standard today.
But the seedplots in the greenhouse of the Playwrights' Conference not only produce better quality plants, but in recent years have been diversified to provide a wider gene pool. May-Brit Akerholt, the Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre which produces the Conference, is proud of four new tendrils.
Between 1993 and 1996, ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander playwrights have had their work developed at the Conference, with the participation of a large number of indigenous actors, directors and dramaturgs. This has encouraged the exploration of the distinct nature and character of indigenous theatre, but also assists the integration of indigenous artists into main stream theatre.
A mutual exchange has been established between the Playwrights' Centre and New Dramatists in New York. Australian new writers go there and US writers like this year's Deborah Baley come here. The international aspect of the Conference is growing, and links in with the Australian Performing Arts Market.
Then there is the Student Laboratory which brings student directors and writers from the tertiary institutions like the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) to the Conference for professional rehearsed readings and secondments to work with Conference directors and dramaturgs.
And finally there is the Delegate Program which is directed by Canberra's Carol Woodrow, involving emerging writers, drama teachers and students in workshops of delegates' scripts, observing Conference workshops, lectures, seminars and forums and generally mingling with the professionals at work.
This year there will be new development: The Centre for the Performing Arts (CPA) from Adelaide will bring third-year students to perform Stephen Sewell's musical Anger's Love and workshop a new musical by Sewell. The CPA acting students will also take part in Conference workshops and the Delegate's Program.
Directors, dramaturgs and actors, like the playwrights, come from all over Australia to imbibe the intimate, creative hothouse atmosphere of the National Playwrights' Conference - including not only Carol Woodrow but actors Mary Brown and Simon Clarke from Canberra. I asked Katharine Brisbane if "hothouse" meant self-indulgence, but she explained that the dramaturgs have the task - which requires very high level skills combining an academic understanding of dramatic structure with an ability to solve practical craft problems - of providing the objectivity which is needed to produce professional standards.
So this is the Playwrights' Conference - a hothouse, greenhouse, seminal sort of event which is encapsulated by the title of the year-round program run by the Playwrights' Centre, called Fertile Grounds. This provides Master Classes for experienced writers, so when a delicate petal has made it from the seedbeds to the garden, growth still continues. It's not like Floriade, where all those bulbs get untimely ripped out after a month of glorious show: modern Australian theatre is a professionally organised process of development - a continuing growth industry.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Maybe because Canberra has real seasons, the winter wattles are harbingers of the sudden appearance above ground of theatrical annuals in September and October. The first delicate petals are the new playwrights, keeping to the mottled shade of the ANU. These are plants already well-bred but often needing further genetic engineering ready to bloom in the full sunlight in a later season.
The more raucous plants, reaching urgently for the light, appear soon afterwards in the Festival of Australian Theatre. This event is watched with avid interest by a hundred David Attenboroughs, breathily exclaiming oohs and aahs at the Australian Performing Arts Market. Plants from here are exported all over the world, to show themselves from the tropics to the northern snows.
If you want to keep in touch with all the dramatic flowershows in Australia and around the globe, you can't do better than join the International Theatre Institute (Australian Centre). For only $15 a year you get a regular newsletter with absolutely everything about conferences, festivals, workshops, opportunities for theatre work, resource material and information about what theatre people are doing. Write to 8A/245 Chalmers Street, Redfern NSW 2016.
This year's new blooms at the ANPC are nine plays: Transylvania by Richard Bladel (Tasmania); Rita's Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (NSW); Cassandra by Daynan Brazil (Queensland); Tear from a Glass Eye by Matt Cameron (Victoria); The Governor's Family by Beatrix Christian (NSW); Blackgammon by Suzanne Ingram (ACT); Rodeo Noir by Andrea Lemon (South Australia); Kingalawuy by Allyson Mills (NT); and Into the Fire by the visiting exchange writer from New York, Deborah Baley. Floriade at the Commonwealth Gardens will have nothing on the variety and flair at the ANU Arts Centre. But of course you can see both: Floriade during the day and the public readings of the new plays on Thursday to Saturday October 3 - 5.
Since its inauguration in 1973, the Playwrights' Conference has been a major influence on the growing maturity with which plays are taken through the writing and production process. Katharine Brisbane, long time theatre critic and director of Currency Press, specialising in publishing Australian scripts, has seen the change from the days when writers were uneducated in the craft of play production.
Directors and actors often felt, justifiably, that the writer would only be in the way while they were rehearsing. At the Playwright's Conference, directors directed while writers watched, got some advice from a dramaturg, went away to rewrite, and came back to watch the director direct. Now, Brisbane says, writers are much more familiar with the dramaturgical and workshop process, and are nowadays much more drawn to the centre of the development of their scripts at the Conference. The result is not that the plays which result can be described as "better" than in the past, but certainly plays show a greater understanding of the craft of theatre. By the time they are taken up by the major companies, scripts have been filtered and shaped so that top quality productions are standard today.
But the seedplots in the greenhouse of the Playwrights' Conference not only produce better quality plants, but in recent years have been diversified to provide a wider gene pool. May-Brit Akerholt, the Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre which produces the Conference, is proud of four new tendrils.
Between 1993 and 1996, ten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander playwrights have had their work developed at the Conference, with the participation of a large number of indigenous actors, directors and dramaturgs. This has encouraged the exploration of the distinct nature and character of indigenous theatre, but also assists the integration of indigenous artists into main stream theatre.
A mutual exchange has been established between the Playwrights' Centre and New Dramatists in New York. Australian new writers go there and US writers like this year's Deborah Baley come here. The international aspect of the Conference is growing, and links in with the Australian Performing Arts Market.
Then there is the Student Laboratory which brings student directors and writers from the tertiary institutions like the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) to the Conference for professional rehearsed readings and secondments to work with Conference directors and dramaturgs.
And finally there is the Delegate Program which is directed by Canberra's Carol Woodrow, involving emerging writers, drama teachers and students in workshops of delegates' scripts, observing Conference workshops, lectures, seminars and forums and generally mingling with the professionals at work.
This year there will be new development: The Centre for the Performing Arts (CPA) from Adelaide will bring third-year students to perform Stephen Sewell's musical Anger's Love and workshop a new musical by Sewell. The CPA acting students will also take part in Conference workshops and the Delegate's Program.
Directors, dramaturgs and actors, like the playwrights, come from all over Australia to imbibe the intimate, creative hothouse atmosphere of the National Playwrights' Conference - including not only Carol Woodrow but actors Mary Brown and Simon Clarke from Canberra. I asked Katharine Brisbane if "hothouse" meant self-indulgence, but she explained that the dramaturgs have the task - which requires very high level skills combining an academic understanding of dramatic structure with an ability to solve practical craft problems - of providing the objectivity which is needed to produce professional standards.
So this is the Playwrights' Conference - a hothouse, greenhouse, seminal sort of event which is encapsulated by the title of the year-round program run by the Playwrights' Centre, called Fertile Grounds. This provides Master Classes for experienced writers, so when a delicate petal has made it from the seedbeds to the garden, growth still continues. It's not like Floriade, where all those bulbs get untimely ripped out after a month of glorious show: modern Australian theatre is a professionally organised process of development - a continuing growth industry.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 5 September 1996
1996: The Incorruptible by Louis Nowra
The Incorruptible by Louis Nowra. Directed by Aubrey Mellor. Designer: Shaun Gurton. Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, September 4 - 7, 1996.
Don't miss this new production of The Incorruptible. Since its Playbox production in Melbourne a year ago, the script has been tightened, characters have more depth and the humour more edge.
If you ever wondered how Joh Bjelke-Petersen's pilot could have remained so loyal, Rachel Szalay's characterisation of Louise Porter will show you, as she develops from lapsed Catholic cynical realist to follower of the faith, whose eyes are finally opened to a new understanding. Hers is the central role in the emotional interplay between Ion Stafford, the incorruptible loner who is made Premier of Queensland and makes himself Prime Minister of Australia, and Ed Gabelich (Gabo), political wheeler and dealer who shows how the loner's single-mindedness creates corruption and chaos for everybody else.
On opening night John Howard as Ion and Denis Moore as Gabo were so finely tuned in the development of the humour and the bitterness in their roles that they both starred and gave Szalay the support she needed for her quality to shine through in the second act. This was top class ensemble playing which is an absolute pleasure to see.
Louis Nowra experiments with style in each new play, and Shaun Gurton has provided wonderful, huge and colourful back projections and shadows which are a delight in themselves, but especially enhance Nowra's statement "I work by resonance and metaphor". The play is full of laughs which reverberate against reality. Words spoken have different explicit and implicit meanings in public and private responses. Events have the unpredictability of real life in an expressionist setting.
The music includes Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry - this title sums up for me the central theme. Nowra is an original, and prolific writer whose work always has integrity. The earth does cry in this play, though you may be laughing even at the end. I was reminded of a King Lear in which Cordelia is left to face the truth, and Kent clowns for our amusement on a tightrope above filthy sawdust mulch, the blood and bone around the roses, which fertilises our lives. This is an enjoyable, at times unnerving, and satisfying theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Don't miss this new production of The Incorruptible. Since its Playbox production in Melbourne a year ago, the script has been tightened, characters have more depth and the humour more edge.
If you ever wondered how Joh Bjelke-Petersen's pilot could have remained so loyal, Rachel Szalay's characterisation of Louise Porter will show you, as she develops from lapsed Catholic cynical realist to follower of the faith, whose eyes are finally opened to a new understanding. Hers is the central role in the emotional interplay between Ion Stafford, the incorruptible loner who is made Premier of Queensland and makes himself Prime Minister of Australia, and Ed Gabelich (Gabo), political wheeler and dealer who shows how the loner's single-mindedness creates corruption and chaos for everybody else.
On opening night John Howard as Ion and Denis Moore as Gabo were so finely tuned in the development of the humour and the bitterness in their roles that they both starred and gave Szalay the support she needed for her quality to shine through in the second act. This was top class ensemble playing which is an absolute pleasure to see.
Louis Nowra experiments with style in each new play, and Shaun Gurton has provided wonderful, huge and colourful back projections and shadows which are a delight in themselves, but especially enhance Nowra's statement "I work by resonance and metaphor". The play is full of laughs which reverberate against reality. Words spoken have different explicit and implicit meanings in public and private responses. Events have the unpredictability of real life in an expressionist setting.
The music includes Peter Sculthorpe's Earth Cry - this title sums up for me the central theme. Nowra is an original, and prolific writer whose work always has integrity. The earth does cry in this play, though you may be laughing even at the end. I was reminded of a King Lear in which Cordelia is left to face the truth, and Kent clowns for our amusement on a tightrope above filthy sawdust mulch, the blood and bone around the roses, which fertilises our lives. This is an enjoyable, at times unnerving, and satisfying theatre experience.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 29 August 1996
1996: The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by Steve J. Spears
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by Steve J. Spears. Ian Croker, directed by Colin Anderson, at Cafe Thespia. Professional.
"In retrospect, the performance as well as the production by Richard Wherrett probably lulled most of us into overpraising the play when it first appeared. Nonetheless it was a triumphant success on three continents." (Leonard Radic in The State of Play, 1991). In Colin Anderson's production there is the same tension between, on the one hand, an immediate audience response to the one-liners, the visuals (including nudity) and the sound effects (everyone appreciates why Robert O'Brien blasts the cuckoo clock) and, on the other, a niggling concern about the artistic truth and (after 20 years) the relevance of the play.
Laughter abounds through the first two acts, but the final act is only a partial success unless the ever-present sense of danger can be built up from the opening line of the play. In 1976 the likelihood of homosexual men being murdered was public knowledge, and Spears tried genuinely to re-cast the image of transvestites: O'Brien falls in love with the 12 year old Benjamin but does not act out his sexual fantasy. But I think Spears missed the point. The one-liners make the character superficially attractive, but O'Brien holds back not on moral grounds but only because he knows he will be destroyed if the relationship is made public.
Probably this play helped change attitudes even so: now we have the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and gay rights are better entrenched in law. However, gay bashing is still common. On the other hand the World Congress on the Sexual Exploitation of Children currently in Stockholm would show that today Benjamin Franklin, though a 12 year old seducer of middle aged men, is a victim of a "global, multi-billion-dollar industry" (Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF). I think Spears was ultimately naive in his comic presentation of Robert O'Brien and the play's popularity for a few years in Australia, London, San Francisco and New York is not a measure of its worth in the long run.
Though you will have a convivial night at Cafe Thespia, and between laughing you will sympathise with Robert, and think about the issues, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin did its bit 20 years ago. It's hooked to the Skyhooks and the young Mick Jagger, and though it is interesting historically to see a revival, I think it is better to leave it pegged in its place and time.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
"In retrospect, the performance as well as the production by Richard Wherrett probably lulled most of us into overpraising the play when it first appeared. Nonetheless it was a triumphant success on three continents." (Leonard Radic in The State of Play, 1991). In Colin Anderson's production there is the same tension between, on the one hand, an immediate audience response to the one-liners, the visuals (including nudity) and the sound effects (everyone appreciates why Robert O'Brien blasts the cuckoo clock) and, on the other, a niggling concern about the artistic truth and (after 20 years) the relevance of the play.
Laughter abounds through the first two acts, but the final act is only a partial success unless the ever-present sense of danger can be built up from the opening line of the play. In 1976 the likelihood of homosexual men being murdered was public knowledge, and Spears tried genuinely to re-cast the image of transvestites: O'Brien falls in love with the 12 year old Benjamin but does not act out his sexual fantasy. But I think Spears missed the point. The one-liners make the character superficially attractive, but O'Brien holds back not on moral grounds but only because he knows he will be destroyed if the relationship is made public.
Probably this play helped change attitudes even so: now we have the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and gay rights are better entrenched in law. However, gay bashing is still common. On the other hand the World Congress on the Sexual Exploitation of Children currently in Stockholm would show that today Benjamin Franklin, though a 12 year old seducer of middle aged men, is a victim of a "global, multi-billion-dollar industry" (Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF). I think Spears was ultimately naive in his comic presentation of Robert O'Brien and the play's popularity for a few years in Australia, London, San Francisco and New York is not a measure of its worth in the long run.
Though you will have a convivial night at Cafe Thespia, and between laughing you will sympathise with Robert, and think about the issues, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin did its bit 20 years ago. It's hooked to the Skyhooks and the young Mick Jagger, and though it is interesting historically to see a revival, I think it is better to leave it pegged in its place and time.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 26 August 1996
1996: Preview article on Neither Here Nor There by Olwen Wymark
Preview: Neither Here Nor There by Olwen Wymark. ACT Drama Association, directed by Lynette Wallis. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, 8.00 pm August 29-31, 1996. Bookings: 247 4000.
The ACT Drama Association is the professional association for drama teachers across the Territory. Most of its time is spent lobbying for better conditions for teaching and learning drama in schools, being an affiliate of the National Association for Drama in Education (NADIE) and the International Drama Education Association (IDEA), and arranging professional development workshops for drama teachers. They have Moya Simpson to lead a vocal workshop on September 12 and Bronwyn Vaughan on November 6 teaching the process of theatrical storytelling.
Organising, teaching, and learning from these practical workshops is not enough: someone realised that The Jigsaw Company could provide the complete professional development by having Lynette Wallis direct drama teachers in public productions. This is the first - a play about seven institutionalised women, exploring issues of power structures, repressed sexuality and fantasies of freedom.
This is an important exercise because it provides the teachers with the best form of work experience, as actors and backstage crew under professional direction. From this experience they can refine the way they teach students in their classes, showing them how to achieve better quality and helping them to be realistic about the world of theatre.
Lynette Wallis has found this an enjoyable experience, watching her charges loosen up and behave like actors, rather than teachers. Under her direction the result is sure to be exciting, judging by her work on Mercury which I reviewed earlier in the year. Tickets are only $5 for the half-hour performance, but my guess is that you'll get more than your money's worth not only from the show but in the conversation afterwards. It's an opportunity to support the work these teachers do in the schools, but, just as important, they need you as an audience to test their skills. It's a risky business putting yourself upfront on stage, even for a professional actor. For a teacher there is the double jeopardy of having to come up with the goods for the students the next day. Take the risk with them: I expect it will be a worthwhile learning experience for everyone.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
The ACT Drama Association is the professional association for drama teachers across the Territory. Most of its time is spent lobbying for better conditions for teaching and learning drama in schools, being an affiliate of the National Association for Drama in Education (NADIE) and the International Drama Education Association (IDEA), and arranging professional development workshops for drama teachers. They have Moya Simpson to lead a vocal workshop on September 12 and Bronwyn Vaughan on November 6 teaching the process of theatrical storytelling.
Organising, teaching, and learning from these practical workshops is not enough: someone realised that The Jigsaw Company could provide the complete professional development by having Lynette Wallis direct drama teachers in public productions. This is the first - a play about seven institutionalised women, exploring issues of power structures, repressed sexuality and fantasies of freedom.
This is an important exercise because it provides the teachers with the best form of work experience, as actors and backstage crew under professional direction. From this experience they can refine the way they teach students in their classes, showing them how to achieve better quality and helping them to be realistic about the world of theatre.
Lynette Wallis has found this an enjoyable experience, watching her charges loosen up and behave like actors, rather than teachers. Under her direction the result is sure to be exciting, judging by her work on Mercury which I reviewed earlier in the year. Tickets are only $5 for the half-hour performance, but my guess is that you'll get more than your money's worth not only from the show but in the conversation afterwards. It's an opportunity to support the work these teachers do in the schools, but, just as important, they need you as an audience to test their skills. It's a risky business putting yourself upfront on stage, even for a professional actor. For a teacher there is the double jeopardy of having to come up with the goods for the students the next day. Take the risk with them: I expect it will be a worthwhile learning experience for everyone.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 20 August 1996
1996: Feature article on Don's Party by David Williamson
Don's Party by David Williamson to be presented by the Bruce Hall Players, ANU Arts Centre, August 22-23 at 8 pm and August 24, 1996 at 2 pm.
DON: Mal: I'd like you to have Kath for the night.
MAL: Don: I'd like you to have Jenny for the night.
In the meantime, of course, Cooley has coolly "had" most of the women at Don's Party in 1969. How could this happen, and how could Cooley still be the most loved character from this classic David Williamson play now the numbers have turned into 1996? What could inspire today's students to want to re-create the kind of engineering students' parties of Williamson's university days - when the men's immediate sexual gratification seemed to be their only concern, to the ultimate exclusion of really important matters like who's winning the Federal Election.
I found some answers when I met, courtesy of Coralie Wood Publicity, not only the producers, director and actors from the Bruce Hall Players but also Coralie's little secret: in this very city, urbane and sophisticated, partner in a well known legal firm, is the very model of the original Cooley - the name slightly re-worked from Crowley.
Peter Crowley (even looking a little like John Ewart with whom I identify the role of Cooley from the 1972 NIDA/Jane Street production) is not just a barrister admitted to the Supreme Courts of the ACT, Victoria and NSW and to the High Court of Australia, not just a leading figure in the ACT Law Society and sometime lecturer at the ANU Legal Workshop, but a man of genuine social concern in his work for Open Family Australia and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. He chairs the local section of the National Gallery Foundation, and admits to a strong and continuing friendship with David Williamson, not despite the creation of Cooley, but indeed because of it.
In a three-way conversation between the students, Crowley and a telephone, on the other end of which was David Williamson, the timelessness of the characters in Don's Party became the theme. Director Richard Baxter sees the play as a "photograph" of its time, Crowley backing this view by explaining how Williamson does not present a viewpoint but leaves the audience to make their own judgements. Williamson recalled how, after a showing of the film to a Marxist Feminist audience in Denmark, women spoke to him, privately, saying that though Cooley was terrible he was also attractive. This was characterised by Williamson as a tension between their "heads" and their "hormones".
I wondered, though, whether "openness", "honesty" and "directness", which seemed to attract the men in this discussion, were not simply charming cover-ups for Cooley's chauvinism.
One scene begins with Kerry telling Cooley "You would be one of the coarsest, most sex-obsessed persons I've ever met" and ends with
KERRY: Usually it's [going to bed with someone] an organic part of the whole relationship.
(Cooley ushers her towards the bedroom)
COOLEY: Organ first, relationship later.
KERRY: (as she is going) That's a very interesting philosophical proposition.
But Kate Barraclough, student producer, sees Cooley as everyone's mate. The old Australian mateship, originally exclusively a male to male relationship, has expanded, by 1996, to include all. Now it is common to meet female Cooleys. Indeed Williamson's character represents the change beginning in the sixties towards gender inclusivity. Mateship for all is now the reality. Peter Crowley told how parents are now mates with their adult children, while this was hardly possible in his parents' time. Kate thought that young people are less promiscuous now than 30 years ago, not because they know more about the risks but because it's now possible for people to be just mates. Men can now relate to women person to person on many levels apart from sexual power play. Women can be Cooleys if they want to.
It's funny, but Federal Elections didn't get a mention. Maybe it's plays and playwrights like David Williamson that are the vehicles for real change in society, while politicians belong in the back seat.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
DON: Mal: I'd like you to have Kath for the night.
MAL: Don: I'd like you to have Jenny for the night.
In the meantime, of course, Cooley has coolly "had" most of the women at Don's Party in 1969. How could this happen, and how could Cooley still be the most loved character from this classic David Williamson play now the numbers have turned into 1996? What could inspire today's students to want to re-create the kind of engineering students' parties of Williamson's university days - when the men's immediate sexual gratification seemed to be their only concern, to the ultimate exclusion of really important matters like who's winning the Federal Election.
I found some answers when I met, courtesy of Coralie Wood Publicity, not only the producers, director and actors from the Bruce Hall Players but also Coralie's little secret: in this very city, urbane and sophisticated, partner in a well known legal firm, is the very model of the original Cooley - the name slightly re-worked from Crowley.
Peter Crowley (even looking a little like John Ewart with whom I identify the role of Cooley from the 1972 NIDA/Jane Street production) is not just a barrister admitted to the Supreme Courts of the ACT, Victoria and NSW and to the High Court of Australia, not just a leading figure in the ACT Law Society and sometime lecturer at the ANU Legal Workshop, but a man of genuine social concern in his work for Open Family Australia and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. He chairs the local section of the National Gallery Foundation, and admits to a strong and continuing friendship with David Williamson, not despite the creation of Cooley, but indeed because of it.
In a three-way conversation between the students, Crowley and a telephone, on the other end of which was David Williamson, the timelessness of the characters in Don's Party became the theme. Director Richard Baxter sees the play as a "photograph" of its time, Crowley backing this view by explaining how Williamson does not present a viewpoint but leaves the audience to make their own judgements. Williamson recalled how, after a showing of the film to a Marxist Feminist audience in Denmark, women spoke to him, privately, saying that though Cooley was terrible he was also attractive. This was characterised by Williamson as a tension between their "heads" and their "hormones".
I wondered, though, whether "openness", "honesty" and "directness", which seemed to attract the men in this discussion, were not simply charming cover-ups for Cooley's chauvinism.
One scene begins with Kerry telling Cooley "You would be one of the coarsest, most sex-obsessed persons I've ever met" and ends with
KERRY: Usually it's [going to bed with someone] an organic part of the whole relationship.
(Cooley ushers her towards the bedroom)
COOLEY: Organ first, relationship later.
KERRY: (as she is going) That's a very interesting philosophical proposition.
But Kate Barraclough, student producer, sees Cooley as everyone's mate. The old Australian mateship, originally exclusively a male to male relationship, has expanded, by 1996, to include all. Now it is common to meet female Cooleys. Indeed Williamson's character represents the change beginning in the sixties towards gender inclusivity. Mateship for all is now the reality. Peter Crowley told how parents are now mates with their adult children, while this was hardly possible in his parents' time. Kate thought that young people are less promiscuous now than 30 years ago, not because they know more about the risks but because it's now possible for people to be just mates. Men can now relate to women person to person on many levels apart from sexual power play. Women can be Cooleys if they want to.
It's funny, but Federal Elections didn't get a mention. Maybe it's plays and playwrights like David Williamson that are the vehicles for real change in society, while politicians belong in the back seat.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1996: Lucy in the Leap Year by Nadia Wheatley
Lucy in the Leap Year adapted, from her own novel, by Nadia Wheatley. Theatre South at the ANU Arts Centre, August 20, 1996. Directed by Des Davis. Professional: matinees for school groups and general public.
I walked beside a green crocodile through the ANU grounds, meeting up with a red crodocodile in the foyer. Phalanxes were formed by firm Arts Centre staff; disco-ish music rose among the hubbub; "We're right up the top!" exclaimed a large primary boy (a bit like Adrian in the play); while a row of normally polite young ladies did roly poly hand movements in unison, pointing left and right in time to the music, collapsing in fits of laughter every few seconds.
Theatre South's highly professional team of actors did all the right things, and the staging was made for audience interaction, but something was wrong. Probably the children felt the problem at a subliminal level, and indeed I discovered the source of my feelings only when I talked with some of the actors after the show.
Here is a company with a script which has all the right intentions: to entertain while helping children to come to terms with death; cultural diversity; the fears of inner city living; the truth about astrology; understanding adult work and the risk of poverty; nightmares; and finally how everyone can live in a community, even when the family is fractured. So the nub of the matter is that this is Nadia Wheatley's first playscript, and theatre makes different demands from the discursive novel. Theatre needs tight focus: in this production the weight of responsibility falls on the actress playing Lucy, continually on stage, the communication link between the fourth wall action and the audience to whom she talks directly.
Why wasn't the script pruned, focussed on a unified theme? The answer is funding. Theatre South had only two weeks' development and rehearsal time. Any new play needs dramaturgical work and workshopping before design and rehearsal begin. Here it had to be done all at once, in a short time, and while some of the company were busy earning money in other projects. Fortunately the professional skills of the director and actors have masked the script's weaknesses very well, and audiences of children and adults will continue to respond to the inherent good intentions.
But some money is needed to re-work this script if it is to last.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
I walked beside a green crocodile through the ANU grounds, meeting up with a red crodocodile in the foyer. Phalanxes were formed by firm Arts Centre staff; disco-ish music rose among the hubbub; "We're right up the top!" exclaimed a large primary boy (a bit like Adrian in the play); while a row of normally polite young ladies did roly poly hand movements in unison, pointing left and right in time to the music, collapsing in fits of laughter every few seconds.
Theatre South's highly professional team of actors did all the right things, and the staging was made for audience interaction, but something was wrong. Probably the children felt the problem at a subliminal level, and indeed I discovered the source of my feelings only when I talked with some of the actors after the show.
Here is a company with a script which has all the right intentions: to entertain while helping children to come to terms with death; cultural diversity; the fears of inner city living; the truth about astrology; understanding adult work and the risk of poverty; nightmares; and finally how everyone can live in a community, even when the family is fractured. So the nub of the matter is that this is Nadia Wheatley's first playscript, and theatre makes different demands from the discursive novel. Theatre needs tight focus: in this production the weight of responsibility falls on the actress playing Lucy, continually on stage, the communication link between the fourth wall action and the audience to whom she talks directly.
Why wasn't the script pruned, focussed on a unified theme? The answer is funding. Theatre South had only two weeks' development and rehearsal time. Any new play needs dramaturgical work and workshopping before design and rehearsal begin. Here it had to be done all at once, in a short time, and while some of the company were busy earning money in other projects. Fortunately the professional skills of the director and actors have masked the script's weaknesses very well, and audiences of children and adults will continue to respond to the inherent good intentions.
But some money is needed to re-work this script if it is to last.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 19 August 1996
1996: Feature article on Australian National Young Playwrights' Weekend
Young Playwrights' Weekend. Director/dramaturg Carol Woodrow. In conjunction with Canberra Youth Theatre, directed by Roland Manderson. December 1996.
Synthia: I mean I'm obsessed with other people's problems you know but I don't know why and I mean I put everything into helping people but I'm wishing they'd stay sick and you know I'm all the time dealing with other people's problems instead of dealing with my own problems so there's just like this ton of problems weighing down on me and I'm sinking deeper into the darkness you know!
This play, The Maze by Niamh Kearney, was the success story of the Young Playwrights' Weekend 1994. Every second year Canberra gets a turn, and it's time now for young people under 25 to get their scripts in for assessment.
The Australian National Young Playwrights' Weekend is a mini version of the Australian National Playwrights' Conference. If you've written a script, it's probably not ready to go on stage without improvements - but how do you know what to do? Leading playwrights like Michael Gow and Dorothy Hewett have had their plays workshopped at the ANPC, and young people can go to the ANYPW. This is not as scary as it sounds, though if your script really isn't ready you'll find this out at the first assessment.
If your play, like The Maze, shows real potential, then you will have at your disposal one of the nicest directors to work with, Carol Woodrow. She'll spend time with you being a dramaturg at first. This means she works through your script and shows you how to change it to make characters or the action come through on stage. After that she will work with you and a group of actors from Canberra Youth Theatre, first of all workshopping the script and finally putting on a workshopped reading in December.
Carol, of course, is an expert at helping playwrights: she directs at the ANPC (held at ANU in the September/October vacation each year) and also directs the ANPC Playwriting Course with Timothy Daly, whose The Moonwalker has recently had a successful run at The Stables Theatre in Sydney. Roland Manderson, who directs Canberra Youth Theatre, says that it's important for Youth Theatre actors (who usually spend most of their time devising their own work) to learn the skills of performing a script according to what the writer wants. And, he says, this works best when the writer is from their own generation. Good pieces don't stop at the workshopped reading: Youth Theatre may take them on to full productions here in Canberra or on tour to other cities.
So if you have a script under way, finish it off and send it to Carol Woodrow, Young Playwrights' Weekend, ANPC, PO Box 1566, Rozelle NSW 2039. To find out more details about dates and costs, you can ring the ANPC on 02 555 9377 or fax them on 02 555 9370.
©Frank McKone
Synthia: I mean I'm obsessed with other people's problems you know but I don't know why and I mean I put everything into helping people but I'm wishing they'd stay sick and you know I'm all the time dealing with other people's problems instead of dealing with my own problems so there's just like this ton of problems weighing down on me and I'm sinking deeper into the darkness you know!
This play, The Maze by Niamh Kearney, was the success story of the Young Playwrights' Weekend 1994. Every second year Canberra gets a turn, and it's time now for young people under 25 to get their scripts in for assessment.
The Australian National Young Playwrights' Weekend is a mini version of the Australian National Playwrights' Conference. If you've written a script, it's probably not ready to go on stage without improvements - but how do you know what to do? Leading playwrights like Michael Gow and Dorothy Hewett have had their plays workshopped at the ANPC, and young people can go to the ANYPW. This is not as scary as it sounds, though if your script really isn't ready you'll find this out at the first assessment.
If your play, like The Maze, shows real potential, then you will have at your disposal one of the nicest directors to work with, Carol Woodrow. She'll spend time with you being a dramaturg at first. This means she works through your script and shows you how to change it to make characters or the action come through on stage. After that she will work with you and a group of actors from Canberra Youth Theatre, first of all workshopping the script and finally putting on a workshopped reading in December.
Carol, of course, is an expert at helping playwrights: she directs at the ANPC (held at ANU in the September/October vacation each year) and also directs the ANPC Playwriting Course with Timothy Daly, whose The Moonwalker has recently had a successful run at The Stables Theatre in Sydney. Roland Manderson, who directs Canberra Youth Theatre, says that it's important for Youth Theatre actors (who usually spend most of their time devising their own work) to learn the skills of performing a script according to what the writer wants. And, he says, this works best when the writer is from their own generation. Good pieces don't stop at the workshopped reading: Youth Theatre may take them on to full productions here in Canberra or on tour to other cities.
So if you have a script under way, finish it off and send it to Carol Woodrow, Young Playwrights' Weekend, ANPC, PO Box 1566, Rozelle NSW 2039. To find out more details about dates and costs, you can ring the ANPC on 02 555 9377 or fax them on 02 555 9370.
©Frank McKone
Tuesday, 13 August 1996
1996: Feature article on Canberra Milk High Schools and Colleges Dance Festival
Is the annual Canberra Milk High Schools and Colleges Dance Festival, which began in 1986 with the theme "Peace", still "... In Motion" as the 1996 theme suggests? Ausdance ACT Executive Officer, Jennifer Kingma says "Yes" with some reservations. Canberra Dance Theatre Director, Stephanie Burridge, also perhaps the most highly qualified teacher in the schools, seems more inclined towards Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion: the law of inertia, "which states that a body will continue in the same state of motion until it is acted on by a force".
In her book about God, physics and gender called Pythagoras' Trousers, the Australian science writer Margaret Wertheim discusses how Newton's laws became models for the social sciences: Burridge would like to see the format for the Dance Festival kicked around every few years to generate creativity. But are the dance crumbs which fall from the great feast table of education so stale?
Going to the Canberra Theatre on August 29 and 30 may help provide some answers, but seeing dance "... In Motion" at one moment in time will tell little about Newton's Second Law which relates force, mass and acceleration, and direction.
Even though dance is still peripheral to the core curriculum in most schools, the Dance Festival is increasing in mass: more schools take part now; more boys take part.
The direction was set from the beginning, in an opposite reaction (Newton's Third Law) to an earlier dance competition. This is still a festival very much in keeping with one of Ausdance's aims: "To establish the opportunity for every child to have dance experience."
Force and acceleration are the deeper issues. Even Newton would have found it difficult to express the Dance Festival as a mathematical equation. The forces for shifting out of a state of inertia ought to be the gradual accretion of experience by the teachers who, one would like to think, have space, time and resources. But the reality is that the dance-in-schools universe, unlike the one envisaged by Newton, is finite. As students pass through the schools, we can only expect the newcomer in 1996 to be able to begin dance with more appreciation, more sense of creativity, maybe even more skills than in 1986, if the teachers have had the time to learn from their previous experiences, the space in the curriculum to build on what they learn; and the input from new forces of qualified dynamic young dance-trained teachers. Our universities, in the post-Einstein space-time universe, are producing some big bangs (in every state except the ACT!), but the ripple effect is marginal in the schools where dance is still in the cold outer reaches.
Jennifer Kingma has no doubts about the need for dance and for the festival. Because the performances are not judged, anyone can take part without fear or favour. She is certain that this is why the numbers have increased and why more boys, including strong teams from the private boys' schools, are taking part nowadays. She is certain too that the core learning experience is cooperation, teamwork and confidence building. This is not only so for the students, but for the teachers who have less need to come to her in fear and trembling about whether their work is good enough as they did in earlier years.
But creativity is where she has her reservations: it's too safe to imitate the actions of Anna Pavlova or Michael Jackson. The link between drama and dance - the motivation for the movement - is, for Jenny Kingma, the accelerator pedal. But if the fuel tank is empty of teaching quantity and the quality is mixed, and the vehicle needs to be four-wheel drive for rough, new terrain - and big enough to carry the masses - then we are forced to accept ten years of inertia. In this view, the Dance Festival is a holding operation - essential to hold on to until the day is reached when our society comes to understand (and supply the resources) so that a new invigorating dance force emanates from the schools. She sees the potential in every Dance Festival performance.
Dance, of course, is the last of the traditional arts to gain a place at the table. In Australian secondary schools art and music were more or less established by the Whitlam era; drama made its big push from the mid-1970's; media shoved its way in from the outfield in the late '70s; while dance lost its olde-worlde social significance, tripped around awhile in ethnic and folk, and only began in the 1980's to take Martha Graham seriously. In the meantime, outside the schools the traditionals stuck with ballet, the arty lot went post-modern, while the others went disco.
Emmy Noether, the great mathematician of this century, who redefined abstract algebra, created the "New Maths" and whose Noether's Theorem relates fundamental physics to mathematical symmetry would have as much chance as Newton if she tried to coalesce dance. Bringing together the dance trainers and the school teachers; the "disciplined" private schools and the less cohesive government schools; the boys' boys and the girly girls; the experience and the art: even Stephanie Burridge finds this daunting.
But Ausdance never gives up, and the Canberra Milk Dance Festival lives on, waiting for the day when dance in education goes supernova. Can someone choreograph this scenario? Maybe next year's theme should be some imitation Latin (for the traditionalists): Per Ars ad Astra - "Through Art to the Stars". And maybe the Festival should be a huge celebration in dance combining all the students in one production. And maybe this could become the new beginning, with a nation-wide performance at the Olympics 2000. Make dance an Olympic event. After all that's where the money is. Ask the Government!
©Frank McKone, Canberra
In her book about God, physics and gender called Pythagoras' Trousers, the Australian science writer Margaret Wertheim discusses how Newton's laws became models for the social sciences: Burridge would like to see the format for the Dance Festival kicked around every few years to generate creativity. But are the dance crumbs which fall from the great feast table of education so stale?
Going to the Canberra Theatre on August 29 and 30 may help provide some answers, but seeing dance "... In Motion" at one moment in time will tell little about Newton's Second Law which relates force, mass and acceleration, and direction.
Even though dance is still peripheral to the core curriculum in most schools, the Dance Festival is increasing in mass: more schools take part now; more boys take part.
The direction was set from the beginning, in an opposite reaction (Newton's Third Law) to an earlier dance competition. This is still a festival very much in keeping with one of Ausdance's aims: "To establish the opportunity for every child to have dance experience."
Force and acceleration are the deeper issues. Even Newton would have found it difficult to express the Dance Festival as a mathematical equation. The forces for shifting out of a state of inertia ought to be the gradual accretion of experience by the teachers who, one would like to think, have space, time and resources. But the reality is that the dance-in-schools universe, unlike the one envisaged by Newton, is finite. As students pass through the schools, we can only expect the newcomer in 1996 to be able to begin dance with more appreciation, more sense of creativity, maybe even more skills than in 1986, if the teachers have had the time to learn from their previous experiences, the space in the curriculum to build on what they learn; and the input from new forces of qualified dynamic young dance-trained teachers. Our universities, in the post-Einstein space-time universe, are producing some big bangs (in every state except the ACT!), but the ripple effect is marginal in the schools where dance is still in the cold outer reaches.
Jennifer Kingma has no doubts about the need for dance and for the festival. Because the performances are not judged, anyone can take part without fear or favour. She is certain that this is why the numbers have increased and why more boys, including strong teams from the private boys' schools, are taking part nowadays. She is certain too that the core learning experience is cooperation, teamwork and confidence building. This is not only so for the students, but for the teachers who have less need to come to her in fear and trembling about whether their work is good enough as they did in earlier years.
But creativity is where she has her reservations: it's too safe to imitate the actions of Anna Pavlova or Michael Jackson. The link between drama and dance - the motivation for the movement - is, for Jenny Kingma, the accelerator pedal. But if the fuel tank is empty of teaching quantity and the quality is mixed, and the vehicle needs to be four-wheel drive for rough, new terrain - and big enough to carry the masses - then we are forced to accept ten years of inertia. In this view, the Dance Festival is a holding operation - essential to hold on to until the day is reached when our society comes to understand (and supply the resources) so that a new invigorating dance force emanates from the schools. She sees the potential in every Dance Festival performance.
Dance, of course, is the last of the traditional arts to gain a place at the table. In Australian secondary schools art and music were more or less established by the Whitlam era; drama made its big push from the mid-1970's; media shoved its way in from the outfield in the late '70s; while dance lost its olde-worlde social significance, tripped around awhile in ethnic and folk, and only began in the 1980's to take Martha Graham seriously. In the meantime, outside the schools the traditionals stuck with ballet, the arty lot went post-modern, while the others went disco.
Emmy Noether, the great mathematician of this century, who redefined abstract algebra, created the "New Maths" and whose Noether's Theorem relates fundamental physics to mathematical symmetry would have as much chance as Newton if she tried to coalesce dance. Bringing together the dance trainers and the school teachers; the "disciplined" private schools and the less cohesive government schools; the boys' boys and the girly girls; the experience and the art: even Stephanie Burridge finds this daunting.
But Ausdance never gives up, and the Canberra Milk Dance Festival lives on, waiting for the day when dance in education goes supernova. Can someone choreograph this scenario? Maybe next year's theme should be some imitation Latin (for the traditionalists): Per Ars ad Astra - "Through Art to the Stars". And maybe the Festival should be a huge celebration in dance combining all the students in one production. And maybe this could become the new beginning, with a nation-wide performance at the Olympics 2000. Make dance an Olympic event. After all that's where the money is. Ask the Government!
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 12 August 1996
1996: Nothing Like the Odyssey by John Eastman and Brendan O'Connell
Nothing Like the Odyssey. Self Raising Theatre for The Jigsaw Company. Directed by Lenny Covner. Touring schools Years 7-10, August 12 till September 6, 1996. Professional. Bookings: 247 2133.
Canberra is so well served by professional theatre in education that it's hard nowadays to find points of criticism. This is certainly true of this work by John Eastman and Brendan O'Connell. Performing in the round in the vastness of a gymnasium floor, they have both re-created the power of the ancient Greek myths and made them immediately relevant to the audience traditionally seen as the most difficult: junior high.
Using the full gamut of acting skills - voice, mime, evocation of images (the huge Trojan horse), masks and costumes reminiscent of the original Greek - two consummate actors destroy Troy, outwit the Cyclops, and reflect in the River of Death. They engage in philosophical disputation, having fun with Descartes. Poseidon: "Where are you?" Zeus: "Here -- I think!" Penelope's intelligence outshines an awful suitor; Telemachus grows up a typical teenager, rebellious and yet exactly like his Dad; and Odysseus comes to terms with all the ill that he has caused, though always acting according to reason and acceptable social demands.
This is where we see the real value of theatre in education. It's about Junior High coming face to face with violence and cunning, with family obligations, with powers beyond our control, with the excitement of adventure, and with our human inability to fully understand the consequences of our actions until, very often, it is too late.
Yet don't imagine this is all stiff Greek tragedy. Self Raising Theatre raises as many laughs as sighs, or moments of fear and wonder. I felt the rare experience of great story-telling as it must have been in the days of Homer - and as it still is in many indigenous communities today. In a cold hall full of empty space, I stopped taking notes: the actors' artistry was beyond the realm of criticism and had drawn me into the universal: where men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, defenders and attackers, leaders and followers; where all people, however we categorise ourselves and each other, have the qualities of heroes and the responsibility for our own destinies.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Canberra is so well served by professional theatre in education that it's hard nowadays to find points of criticism. This is certainly true of this work by John Eastman and Brendan O'Connell. Performing in the round in the vastness of a gymnasium floor, they have both re-created the power of the ancient Greek myths and made them immediately relevant to the audience traditionally seen as the most difficult: junior high.
Using the full gamut of acting skills - voice, mime, evocation of images (the huge Trojan horse), masks and costumes reminiscent of the original Greek - two consummate actors destroy Troy, outwit the Cyclops, and reflect in the River of Death. They engage in philosophical disputation, having fun with Descartes. Poseidon: "Where are you?" Zeus: "Here -- I think!" Penelope's intelligence outshines an awful suitor; Telemachus grows up a typical teenager, rebellious and yet exactly like his Dad; and Odysseus comes to terms with all the ill that he has caused, though always acting according to reason and acceptable social demands.
This is where we see the real value of theatre in education. It's about Junior High coming face to face with violence and cunning, with family obligations, with powers beyond our control, with the excitement of adventure, and with our human inability to fully understand the consequences of our actions until, very often, it is too late.
Yet don't imagine this is all stiff Greek tragedy. Self Raising Theatre raises as many laughs as sighs, or moments of fear and wonder. I felt the rare experience of great story-telling as it must have been in the days of Homer - and as it still is in many indigenous communities today. In a cold hall full of empty space, I stopped taking notes: the actors' artistry was beyond the realm of criticism and had drawn me into the universal: where men and women, husbands and wives, children and parents, defenders and attackers, leaders and followers; where all people, however we categorise ourselves and each other, have the qualities of heroes and the responsibility for our own destinies.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 31 July 1996
1996: Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web. Company Skylark: adapted by Gilly Farrelly from the original story by E.B.White. Directed by Christine Anketell. At the Canberra Theatre until August 3, 1996. Professional.
"They're not making it dark!" The 5 year old waited impatiently for the great moment in theatre when the houselights dim, while I watched excited little heads bobbing up like bubbles above a pool packed with schools of tropical reef fishes - a green school, a red school, blue with green stripes, green with yellow stripes, royal blue, pink with yellow flashes, iridescent orange and lots of multicoloured tiny ones.
"If you had been born small, would you have killed me?" asked Fern of her Farmer Father - the debate about life and death was on for young and old. Skylark's production is magical theatre but never sentimental even when Charlotte dies after saving Wilbur the Pig's bacon twice over. Peter Wilson, Artistic Director, explained to me that after experiencing theatre in pre-school (like the wonderful Salty Seagull Takes Off which I reviewed in May), it is important for early primary school children to go to the theatre to take part in our society's culture.
I feel he's right, so I worried about three things. The Canberra Theatre is far too big for 700 little audience people: roll on the new Playhouse. The amplified sound disembodied the actors and puppet characters: real live voices are what distinguishes theatre from video and audio media, because performers and audience interact as equal human beings. Again, the new Playhouse, please. So these things can be fixed.
But I also thought the ending was flat. More awe for the birth (resurrection, reincarnation) of Charlotte's babies is required. Take more time. Fill the stage with silvery spiders: they are too cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd in the framework of the farm shed. Dim the other characters almost out. In unison with the characters, let the children say "Ooh!" and "Aah!" as they did when the houselights first went down. Then the production will be perfect.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
"They're not making it dark!" The 5 year old waited impatiently for the great moment in theatre when the houselights dim, while I watched excited little heads bobbing up like bubbles above a pool packed with schools of tropical reef fishes - a green school, a red school, blue with green stripes, green with yellow stripes, royal blue, pink with yellow flashes, iridescent orange and lots of multicoloured tiny ones.
"If you had been born small, would you have killed me?" asked Fern of her Farmer Father - the debate about life and death was on for young and old. Skylark's production is magical theatre but never sentimental even when Charlotte dies after saving Wilbur the Pig's bacon twice over. Peter Wilson, Artistic Director, explained to me that after experiencing theatre in pre-school (like the wonderful Salty Seagull Takes Off which I reviewed in May), it is important for early primary school children to go to the theatre to take part in our society's culture.
I feel he's right, so I worried about three things. The Canberra Theatre is far too big for 700 little audience people: roll on the new Playhouse. The amplified sound disembodied the actors and puppet characters: real live voices are what distinguishes theatre from video and audio media, because performers and audience interact as equal human beings. Again, the new Playhouse, please. So these things can be fixed.
But I also thought the ending was flat. More awe for the birth (resurrection, reincarnation) of Charlotte's babies is required. Take more time. Fill the stage with silvery spiders: they are too cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd in the framework of the farm shed. Dim the other characters almost out. In unison with the characters, let the children say "Ooh!" and "Aah!" as they did when the houselights first went down. Then the production will be perfect.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 16 July 1996
1996: Two versions of At the Foot of the Storyteller's Chair by Bronwyn Vaughan
Version 1 of this review was more than 370 words in length, so only Version 2 was published by the Canberra Times
Version 1
At the Foot of the Storyteller's Chair. Bronwyn Vaughan, directed by Brian Joyce. Jigsaw Theatre Company at Karrabar Pre-School, Tuesday July 16. Professional. Touring Canberra and region, pre-school to Year 2. Bookings 247 2133.
The little blind girl was so excited by Bronwyn Vaughan's hour long presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), The Tiger Skin Rug (Gerald Rose), The Paper Crane (Molly Bang) and The Story of Marni, The Girl Who Couldn't Stop Shouting (by Aboriginal artist and writer Sally Morgan) that nothing could stop her asking out loud "What's she doing now?" as each newly accented voice and every wonderful sound emanated from this experienced theatre-in-education actor. The caterpillar crunched through food, good and bad, spitting out the pips. The tiger kept very quiet, but didn't he roar at the robbers! The paper crane danced to the flute as the children clapped. And Marni's granny's spell finally reduced her shouting to just a little bit of the Old Crow's harsh caw and the Old Croc's thrashing about, so people could finally stand living with her in the family.
This is another winner from the highly professional Jigsaw Company. Vaughan comes to us via effervescent training with Oliver Fiala (when children's drama was new at NSW Uni) and many years with the acclaimed Pipi Storm TIE team. Joined here by Brian Joyce (of Freewheels TIE, Newcastle), it is wonderful to see the children learning through such creative theatre. Here is entertainment which reflects on real life through beautifully written stories, fascinating mime and dance, sets and costumes designed in styles and colours which sensitively re-create the cultures from which the stories come. And, it must be said, Sally Morgan's ribald humour was a hit with the children and their parents: truly Australian!
So have you met a caterpillar, or met a tiger, or met a morphosis? Phosis is Life, and life is always changing. "Could I metamorphosise me?" sang the Storyteller to her animated Chair. Too hard for pre-schoolers? Not on your life. You should have seen the little blind girl after the show, after all the questions had been asked and answered, after all the others had gone out to play: exploring how the Chair talks, how the Mexican Rainstick makes its eerie sound, how the paper crane flies, how the fur bristles on the tiger rug, or whether the Indian tea was real.
Want to meet a top-notch theatre educator? Bronwyn will conduct workshops on August 7 and November 6 for the ACT Drama Association. If you're a teacher of young children, don't let Bronwyn Vaughan pass you or your class by. Call Greg Lissaman or Clay Thistleton at Jigsaw.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Version 2
At the Foot of the Storyteller's Chair. Bronwyn Vaughan, directed by Brian Joyce. Jigsaw Theatre at Karrabar Pre-School, July 16. Professional. Touring Pre-school to Year 2. Bookings 247 2133.
The little blind girl was excited by Bronwyn Vaughan's hour long presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), The Tiger Skin Rug (Gerald Rose), The Paper Crane (Molly Bang) and The Story of Marni, The Girl Who Couldn't Stop Shouting (by Aboriginal artist and writer Sally Morgan). Nothing could stop her asking out loud "What's she doing now?" as each new accent and wonderful sounds emanated from this experienced theatre-in-education actor. The caterpillar crunched through food, good and bad, spitting out pips. The tiger kept very quiet, but didn't he roar at the robbers! The paper crane danced to the flute as the children clapped. And Marni's granny's spell finally reduced her shouting to just a bit of Old Crow's harsh caw and Old Croc's thrashing about, so people could finally stand living with her in the family.
Another winner from the highly professional Jigsaw Company, here is entertainment which reflects real life through beautifully written stories, fascinating mime and dance, sets and costumes designed in styles and colours which sensitively re-create the cultures from which the stories come. And Sally Morgan's ribald humour was a hit with the children and their parents: truly Australian!
So have you met a caterpillar, or met a tiger, or met a morphosis? Phosis is Life, and life is always changing. "Could I metamorphosise me?" sang the Storyteller to her animated Chair. Too hard for pre-schoolers? Not on your life. You should have seen the little blind girl after the show, after all the questions had been asked and answered, after all the others had gone out to play: exploring how the Chair talks, how the Mexican Rainstick makes its eerie sound, how the paper crane flies, how the fur bristles on the tiger rug, or whether the Indian tea was real.
Want to meet a top-notch theatre educator? Bronwyn will conduct workshops on August 7 and November 6 for the ACT Drama Association. If you're a teacher of young children, don't let Bronwyn Vaughan pass you or your class by. Call Jigsaw today.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Version 1
At the Foot of the Storyteller's Chair. Bronwyn Vaughan, directed by Brian Joyce. Jigsaw Theatre Company at Karrabar Pre-School, Tuesday July 16. Professional. Touring Canberra and region, pre-school to Year 2. Bookings 247 2133.
The little blind girl was so excited by Bronwyn Vaughan's hour long presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), The Tiger Skin Rug (Gerald Rose), The Paper Crane (Molly Bang) and The Story of Marni, The Girl Who Couldn't Stop Shouting (by Aboriginal artist and writer Sally Morgan) that nothing could stop her asking out loud "What's she doing now?" as each newly accented voice and every wonderful sound emanated from this experienced theatre-in-education actor. The caterpillar crunched through food, good and bad, spitting out the pips. The tiger kept very quiet, but didn't he roar at the robbers! The paper crane danced to the flute as the children clapped. And Marni's granny's spell finally reduced her shouting to just a little bit of the Old Crow's harsh caw and the Old Croc's thrashing about, so people could finally stand living with her in the family.
This is another winner from the highly professional Jigsaw Company. Vaughan comes to us via effervescent training with Oliver Fiala (when children's drama was new at NSW Uni) and many years with the acclaimed Pipi Storm TIE team. Joined here by Brian Joyce (of Freewheels TIE, Newcastle), it is wonderful to see the children learning through such creative theatre. Here is entertainment which reflects on real life through beautifully written stories, fascinating mime and dance, sets and costumes designed in styles and colours which sensitively re-create the cultures from which the stories come. And, it must be said, Sally Morgan's ribald humour was a hit with the children and their parents: truly Australian!
So have you met a caterpillar, or met a tiger, or met a morphosis? Phosis is Life, and life is always changing. "Could I metamorphosise me?" sang the Storyteller to her animated Chair. Too hard for pre-schoolers? Not on your life. You should have seen the little blind girl after the show, after all the questions had been asked and answered, after all the others had gone out to play: exploring how the Chair talks, how the Mexican Rainstick makes its eerie sound, how the paper crane flies, how the fur bristles on the tiger rug, or whether the Indian tea was real.
Want to meet a top-notch theatre educator? Bronwyn will conduct workshops on August 7 and November 6 for the ACT Drama Association. If you're a teacher of young children, don't let Bronwyn Vaughan pass you or your class by. Call Greg Lissaman or Clay Thistleton at Jigsaw.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Version 2
At the Foot of the Storyteller's Chair. Bronwyn Vaughan, directed by Brian Joyce. Jigsaw Theatre at Karrabar Pre-School, July 16. Professional. Touring Pre-school to Year 2. Bookings 247 2133.
The little blind girl was excited by Bronwyn Vaughan's hour long presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle), The Tiger Skin Rug (Gerald Rose), The Paper Crane (Molly Bang) and The Story of Marni, The Girl Who Couldn't Stop Shouting (by Aboriginal artist and writer Sally Morgan). Nothing could stop her asking out loud "What's she doing now?" as each new accent and wonderful sounds emanated from this experienced theatre-in-education actor. The caterpillar crunched through food, good and bad, spitting out pips. The tiger kept very quiet, but didn't he roar at the robbers! The paper crane danced to the flute as the children clapped. And Marni's granny's spell finally reduced her shouting to just a bit of Old Crow's harsh caw and Old Croc's thrashing about, so people could finally stand living with her in the family.
Another winner from the highly professional Jigsaw Company, here is entertainment which reflects real life through beautifully written stories, fascinating mime and dance, sets and costumes designed in styles and colours which sensitively re-create the cultures from which the stories come. And Sally Morgan's ribald humour was a hit with the children and their parents: truly Australian!
So have you met a caterpillar, or met a tiger, or met a morphosis? Phosis is Life, and life is always changing. "Could I metamorphosise me?" sang the Storyteller to her animated Chair. Too hard for pre-schoolers? Not on your life. You should have seen the little blind girl after the show, after all the questions had been asked and answered, after all the others had gone out to play: exploring how the Chair talks, how the Mexican Rainstick makes its eerie sound, how the paper crane flies, how the fur bristles on the tiger rug, or whether the Indian tea was real.
Want to meet a top-notch theatre educator? Bronwyn will conduct workshops on August 7 and November 6 for the ACT Drama Association. If you're a teacher of young children, don't let Bronwyn Vaughan pass you or your class by. Call Jigsaw today.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 20 June 1996
1996: Walt Disney's World on Ice
Walt Disney's World on Ice. Written and directed by Jerry Bilik. Skating Director and Choreographer: Bob Paul. At the StarDome, Exhibition Park. June 20 - 23, 1996 (5 matinee performances).
At my keyboard sits a young boy, hair all awry and with sticking-out ears. This is his e-mail message -
To: mickeymouse@disney.com
From: bruce@canberra.au
Subject: World Wide Web on Ice
cc: minniemouse, donaldduck, goofie, rogerrabbitt@disney.com
This is not a flame, unless you want to take it the wrong way. On the Internet everyone's equal, like you don't know how old I am, or what colour I am. So I just want to know did you have any black people hidden in your costumes, because all the people who had bits of skin I could see were white. And why did you and Minnie have to stand on top of that wobbly tower at the end as if you are more important than the rest of us? And why did you let Goofy make fun of shooting people? It's not funny where I live. Is it funny in America? And then you used the music from Deliverance - and that was a really horrible film. In fact Mr Bilik didn't really write any music at all - he just pinched it from Bach, or other dead composers, or from out of date TV shows like Naked City. And that reminds me, what was Donald doing with a heap of gangsters, pretending that violence and robbing jewellery shops and mistreating girlfriends is funny. That was twisted. Girls I know really would flame you for that.
You know, the only bits that were really brilliant were the clowns, specially in the last scene with the water. Oh, and the bumblebee who jumped through a flaming hoop (though I didn't really know why he did it). And the people who danced on skates on their own (you know what I mean, without the big crowd all around them) - they were pretty impressive. And singing along at the end was all right, I suppose.
I thought the story was a bit weak - skating on thin ice :-) :-). Just my joke, but really King Louie's Fabulous Film Fest was a worse excuse for a story than the ones I tell my teacher when I haven't done my homework. It took a while for people to cotton on, specially when crowds were still coming in because of how long it took to park their cars and they kept standing in the way so we couldn't see much of the first scene. And Minnie looked really silly when they played "Love is a Many Splendoured Thing". Yeah, and all this love in misty purple lights (more like foggy actually) didn't mean much to me, though I s'pose the grown ups might have gone a bit gooey. (My grandad told me about when he saw Rose Marie on Ice about 40 years ago and he said that was really romantic. He called your love scene, Strictly Ballroom on Ice).
And you forgot to tell people to bring cushions! Those seats are verrrry cold and hard. But it wasn't all a bad show, even if you did seem to want us to rush out and buy anything we wanted, like Roger Rabbit's video machine - you obviously haven't been to our school and learned about environmental problems and rampant consumerism. Anyway, definitely the best bits were the clowns because they got everyone watching and listening and laughing.
Bruce - NERDS FOREVER!
©Frank McKone
At my keyboard sits a young boy, hair all awry and with sticking-out ears. This is his e-mail message -
To: mickeymouse@disney.com
From: bruce@canberra.au
Subject: World Wide Web on Ice
cc: minniemouse, donaldduck, goofie, rogerrabbitt@disney.com
This is not a flame, unless you want to take it the wrong way. On the Internet everyone's equal, like you don't know how old I am, or what colour I am. So I just want to know did you have any black people hidden in your costumes, because all the people who had bits of skin I could see were white. And why did you and Minnie have to stand on top of that wobbly tower at the end as if you are more important than the rest of us? And why did you let Goofy make fun of shooting people? It's not funny where I live. Is it funny in America? And then you used the music from Deliverance - and that was a really horrible film. In fact Mr Bilik didn't really write any music at all - he just pinched it from Bach, or other dead composers, or from out of date TV shows like Naked City. And that reminds me, what was Donald doing with a heap of gangsters, pretending that violence and robbing jewellery shops and mistreating girlfriends is funny. That was twisted. Girls I know really would flame you for that.
You know, the only bits that were really brilliant were the clowns, specially in the last scene with the water. Oh, and the bumblebee who jumped through a flaming hoop (though I didn't really know why he did it). And the people who danced on skates on their own (you know what I mean, without the big crowd all around them) - they were pretty impressive. And singing along at the end was all right, I suppose.
I thought the story was a bit weak - skating on thin ice :-) :-). Just my joke, but really King Louie's Fabulous Film Fest was a worse excuse for a story than the ones I tell my teacher when I haven't done my homework. It took a while for people to cotton on, specially when crowds were still coming in because of how long it took to park their cars and they kept standing in the way so we couldn't see much of the first scene. And Minnie looked really silly when they played "Love is a Many Splendoured Thing". Yeah, and all this love in misty purple lights (more like foggy actually) didn't mean much to me, though I s'pose the grown ups might have gone a bit gooey. (My grandad told me about when he saw Rose Marie on Ice about 40 years ago and he said that was really romantic. He called your love scene, Strictly Ballroom on Ice).
And you forgot to tell people to bring cushions! Those seats are verrrry cold and hard. But it wasn't all a bad show, even if you did seem to want us to rush out and buy anything we wanted, like Roger Rabbit's video machine - you obviously haven't been to our school and learned about environmental problems and rampant consumerism. Anyway, definitely the best bits were the clowns because they got everyone watching and listening and laughing.
Bruce - NERDS FOREVER!
©Frank McKone
Wednesday, 19 June 1996
1996: ThoughtProcess by Chris Skene
ThoughtProcess written and produced by Chris Skene. Directed by Chris Skene and Catherine Jean-Krista. Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre. June 19 - 22 and 26 - 29, 1996. Amateur. A Jigsaw Theatre Company Sponsored Production.
Jigsaw's Sponsored Productions Program is for young theatre practitioners who aspire to professionalism. The space, administration and technical backup for new writers like Chris Skene, recently out of secondary college, are provided in a relatively low-risk and supportive environment.
ThoughtProcess explores the idea that there are many different realities. Harmony in the music of the spheres is represented by David (played by Skene) finding a relationship with a woman, Vanessa, (an excellent performance by Desiree Bandle) which enhances his creativity as a composer of techno-music. I was surprised that modern youth would respond to such a post-Romantic theme: maybe Beethoven is what Canberra's intelligentsia need, techno-music notwithstanding.
My problem is not with the concept - that's the writer's prerogative - but with the dialogue, direction and production values. A few flashes of wit and perhaps unintentional irony left the audience tentative about how to respond. What seemed like several dozen short scenes needed smooth and creative entrances, exits and light changes to make them work. Much of the acting was lack-lustre: perhaps, I thought, this was a deliberate device to represent the ennui and unrelatedness that young people feel - but it made for static theatre.
So, a brave foray into some interesting metaphysics. Skene must study theatrical forms to find much more original ways of engaging his audience's emotions. He could learn much from Jigsaw's excellent Mercury about using the interplay between television and live performers. His choice of music, including his own compositions, held dramatic possibilities which were only partially realised. I call this "representational theatre" - a representation of ideas on stage. Skene writes of a scale of realities from "mineral" to "human" to "beyond human". As yet, his play is a theatrical rock with all its limitations of feeling and communication. I hope he will keep working until his theatre becomes at least fully human. "Beyond human" is the ultimate level of artistic attainment, of course. And, after all, this is only for those who dare.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Jigsaw's Sponsored Productions Program is for young theatre practitioners who aspire to professionalism. The space, administration and technical backup for new writers like Chris Skene, recently out of secondary college, are provided in a relatively low-risk and supportive environment.
ThoughtProcess explores the idea that there are many different realities. Harmony in the music of the spheres is represented by David (played by Skene) finding a relationship with a woman, Vanessa, (an excellent performance by Desiree Bandle) which enhances his creativity as a composer of techno-music. I was surprised that modern youth would respond to such a post-Romantic theme: maybe Beethoven is what Canberra's intelligentsia need, techno-music notwithstanding.
My problem is not with the concept - that's the writer's prerogative - but with the dialogue, direction and production values. A few flashes of wit and perhaps unintentional irony left the audience tentative about how to respond. What seemed like several dozen short scenes needed smooth and creative entrances, exits and light changes to make them work. Much of the acting was lack-lustre: perhaps, I thought, this was a deliberate device to represent the ennui and unrelatedness that young people feel - but it made for static theatre.
So, a brave foray into some interesting metaphysics. Skene must study theatrical forms to find much more original ways of engaging his audience's emotions. He could learn much from Jigsaw's excellent Mercury about using the interplay between television and live performers. His choice of music, including his own compositions, held dramatic possibilities which were only partially realised. I call this "representational theatre" - a representation of ideas on stage. Skene writes of a scale of realities from "mineral" to "human" to "beyond human". As yet, his play is a theatrical rock with all its limitations of feeling and communication. I hope he will keep working until his theatre becomes at least fully human. "Beyond human" is the ultimate level of artistic attainment, of course. And, after all, this is only for those who dare.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 13 June 1996
1996: Move Over Mrs Markham by Ray Cooney & John Chapman
Move Over Mrs Markham by Ray Cooney & John Chapman. Canberra Star Comedy Company at Belconnen Community Centre Theatre, June 13. Director: Roy Scamp. Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 22, 1996. Amateur.
This new theatre group (Canberra breeds them faster than bilbies!) "was formed as a result of the members' affection for comedy". Mrs Markham, they promise, is "So funny... that it hurts". In fact, their real interest is not comedy, but farce. Roy Scamp is on his third Ray Cooney play - "he finds them addictive". But I suppose to call themselves Canberra Star Farcical Company would not do.
They have the wit to note the dictionary definition of farce as "dramatic work meant merely to cause laughter", and so undermine any attempt on my behalf to question the relevance of highly sentimental upper middle class non-politically-correct British West End farce on the Canberra theatre scene. I can only ask, was it really funny?
For a first night amateur production it had its moments. In Act 2 there was a scene of genuine farce as what seemed to be several dozen different characters (this was because they all called themselves some other character's name and confusion reigned) appeared and disappeared in and out of six different entrances and exits at high speed and with great precision of timing. Generally the acting has the basics right and there were some strong moments of silence as a character tried to work out what was going on, came to a conclusion and then said entirely the wrong thing.
But it wasn't an "evening of continuous mirth" as the Company claimed it would be. For this to happen, Mrs Markham's very first entrance and line - wondering where her husband is - must be funny. Caricature - to the point of absurdity - of the upper middle class is required (Peter Benisch as Philip Markham was the only actor who came close), and of course this also needs the complete setting of the obscenely wealthy British ruling class (a friend working as a servant in the 1970's was once told to go to Harrod's to pick up a £10,000 dress for her mistress). This is possible in the West End of London, but is a little difficult for an amateur lower middle class company at Belconnen Community Centre.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
This new theatre group (Canberra breeds them faster than bilbies!) "was formed as a result of the members' affection for comedy". Mrs Markham, they promise, is "So funny... that it hurts". In fact, their real interest is not comedy, but farce. Roy Scamp is on his third Ray Cooney play - "he finds them addictive". But I suppose to call themselves Canberra Star Farcical Company would not do.
They have the wit to note the dictionary definition of farce as "dramatic work meant merely to cause laughter", and so undermine any attempt on my behalf to question the relevance of highly sentimental upper middle class non-politically-correct British West End farce on the Canberra theatre scene. I can only ask, was it really funny?
For a first night amateur production it had its moments. In Act 2 there was a scene of genuine farce as what seemed to be several dozen different characters (this was because they all called themselves some other character's name and confusion reigned) appeared and disappeared in and out of six different entrances and exits at high speed and with great precision of timing. Generally the acting has the basics right and there were some strong moments of silence as a character tried to work out what was going on, came to a conclusion and then said entirely the wrong thing.
But it wasn't an "evening of continuous mirth" as the Company claimed it would be. For this to happen, Mrs Markham's very first entrance and line - wondering where her husband is - must be funny. Caricature - to the point of absurdity - of the upper middle class is required (Peter Benisch as Philip Markham was the only actor who came close), and of course this also needs the complete setting of the obscenely wealthy British ruling class (a friend working as a servant in the 1970's was once told to go to Harrod's to pick up a £10,000 dress for her mistress). This is possible in the West End of London, but is a little difficult for an amateur lower middle class company at Belconnen Community Centre.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
1996: The Shooga Shoogie Show
The Shooga Shoogie Show. George Spartels with Elliott Wiltshier and Michelle Ellard. Albert Hall 10 am Thursday June 13, 1996. Professional.
George's central purpose is entertainment. This is a value in its own right, but in the context of the ACT Playgroups Association's role in organising live performances for parents and young children, I was a little disappointed. The morning was entirely successful in bringing together many mums and dads and an audience of littlies who comfortably filled the Albert Hall - though comfortable is not really the word I should use for a huge chilly ballroom in June. (I hear by the way that the Albert Hall is shortly to go to private contract management - what this will do for community users is not pleasant to contemplate.)
The performances were tight and small-child friendly. There is none of the gratuitous aggression coming from the American culture which I saw represented on a child's Looney Tunes backpack: "This bag will self-destruct in five seconds". Looney indeed - what parent could buy such negative images for a pre-schooler? Spartels' material is consistently positive; its limitation is its failure to develop a clearly motivated dramatic story.
One useful way of understanding children's learning is to look for four elements: imitation, repetition, creating symbols and exploring new ways of thinking. From Shooga Shoogie the children learn enjoyment and excitement; they hear music used to support the action; they experience motor co-ordination in their wobbling, surfing, hopping and so on. But why do they search for the Sugar Glider?
They become acculturated, learning the conventions of theatrical anticipation, tension and release. The story, however, is fragmented and does not coherently develop thinking and imaginative understanding, because the material is conventional rather than thoroughly creative.
George has his stardom in ABC TV's Playschool to provide an audience, so I think parents should expect more than his excellent entertainment; more than his positivity; more than his lively music. They should demand the same strength of dramatic development that would satisfy them as adults. Shooga Shoogie depends too much on imitation and repetition, and not enough on helping children to explore their lives and culture imaginatively.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
George's central purpose is entertainment. This is a value in its own right, but in the context of the ACT Playgroups Association's role in organising live performances for parents and young children, I was a little disappointed. The morning was entirely successful in bringing together many mums and dads and an audience of littlies who comfortably filled the Albert Hall - though comfortable is not really the word I should use for a huge chilly ballroom in June. (I hear by the way that the Albert Hall is shortly to go to private contract management - what this will do for community users is not pleasant to contemplate.)
The performances were tight and small-child friendly. There is none of the gratuitous aggression coming from the American culture which I saw represented on a child's Looney Tunes backpack: "This bag will self-destruct in five seconds". Looney indeed - what parent could buy such negative images for a pre-schooler? Spartels' material is consistently positive; its limitation is its failure to develop a clearly motivated dramatic story.
One useful way of understanding children's learning is to look for four elements: imitation, repetition, creating symbols and exploring new ways of thinking. From Shooga Shoogie the children learn enjoyment and excitement; they hear music used to support the action; they experience motor co-ordination in their wobbling, surfing, hopping and so on. But why do they search for the Sugar Glider?
They become acculturated, learning the conventions of theatrical anticipation, tension and release. The story, however, is fragmented and does not coherently develop thinking and imaginative understanding, because the material is conventional rather than thoroughly creative.
George has his stardom in ABC TV's Playschool to provide an audience, so I think parents should expect more than his excellent entertainment; more than his positivity; more than his lively music. They should demand the same strength of dramatic development that would satisfy them as adults. Shooga Shoogie depends too much on imitation and repetition, and not enough on helping children to explore their lives and culture imaginatively.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 12 June 1996
1996: Heretic by David Williamson
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre, Wednesday June 12. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
We Canberrans may come to regret Heretic. We took the jokes about Canberra not merely in good part, but as a celebration of our existence. Even if Deakin was dull in the liberated 60's, at last we of the city-without-a-heart could recognise our suburban selves on stage - in a play which has national and indeed international resonances. This play places Canberra on the map of our imaginations just as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra put Tasmania there. But where Nowra gave us a new empathy for Tasmania, Williamson may have unwittingly been complicit in encouraging Canberra-bashing among audiences in other places who may laugh at the jokes differently.
This apparently trivial matter has parallels in the play, where the ultimate issue is the nature of truth. Derek Freeman, by arguing that genetics play an important part (but not the whole) in human behaviour, finds himself accused of racism - the opposite of his intention. Margaret Mead defends herself against Freeman's accusation that she did not tell the truth, only to discover (in the play after her death!) that Freeman never believed that she deliberately told lies. Monica Freeman discovers that Derek really does love her only when she is apparently at death's door, but must say "I wouldn't quite have put it that way" when Derek, trying to make a loving joke, says "Do you mean that you only know I love you when you are apparently at death's door?"
Monica, in determining to choose her own life, is to me the most interesting character in the play: where Derek and Margaret play out their hierarchical socially competitive roles, it is Monica who breaks her bounds and makes a real choice.
This is strong dramatic meat, but to bring it all together Williamson has made a paradigm shift from the narrative form to fantasy. The play is therefore represented as Derek's dream - but there is a weakness here. Williamson, having Derek actually fall sleep before our eyes and wake up at the end, is not willing to let the narrative completely go. The problem is that everything that Williamson wants to say about history from the 1920's to the 1980's can't realistically all be in Derek's dream. So the better trick is to create an illusion of a dream-state from start to finish. It's a risk, but oddly enough this will allow us, the audience, to take the issues on board for real: this is the contrary nature of the illusion of theatre. In this play I think this happens only in our feelings for Monica, who seems to step out of Derek's dream.
I sense that because Williamson is not completely in control of his new-found medium, Wayne Harrison has tried to make it work for him, creating what the real Derek Freeman at a reception after opening night called "a post-post-modern intellectual cabaret". Some of the devices work very well - Margaret Mead incarnated as Marilyn Monroe singing and dancing with an Aquarius crowd is both funny and makes a point about her sexuality. "Beam me up, Scotty", however, belongs to somebody else's fantasy, not this one.
I'm left, then, with mixed feelings. The performances were excellent, of course, as one would expect from such a cast. The design is stage-wise and very clever visually. Costumes are often startling and complement much humorous stage business in the acting. The result is a show which everyone in the audience enjoyed: people's faces were literally quite radiant as they clapped along with the encore reprise, warmly celebrating the skills of the actors. Yet perhaps we were applauding the director's skills in creating exciting theatre more than the writer's wit and sensibility. Williamson's work is not at heart light-weight - there's a sense for me that a sort of modern George Bernard Shaw is in the offing: but the best recipe for mixing comedy with intellectual rigour is still a few whirrs of the processor away.
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
We Canberrans may come to regret Heretic. We took the jokes about Canberra not merely in good part, but as a celebration of our existence. Even if Deakin was dull in the liberated 60's, at last we of the city-without-a-heart could recognise our suburban selves on stage - in a play which has national and indeed international resonances. This play places Canberra on the map of our imaginations just as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra put Tasmania there. But where Nowra gave us a new empathy for Tasmania, Williamson may have unwittingly been complicit in encouraging Canberra-bashing among audiences in other places who may laugh at the jokes differently.
This apparently trivial matter has parallels in the play, where the ultimate issue is the nature of truth. Derek Freeman, by arguing that genetics play an important part (but not the whole) in human behaviour, finds himself accused of racism - the opposite of his intention. Margaret Mead defends herself against Freeman's accusation that she did not tell the truth, only to discover (in the play after her death!) that Freeman never believed that she deliberately told lies. Monica Freeman discovers that Derek really does love her only when she is apparently at death's door, but must say "I wouldn't quite have put it that way" when Derek, trying to make a loving joke, says "Do you mean that you only know I love you when you are apparently at death's door?"
Monica, in determining to choose her own life, is to me the most interesting character in the play: where Derek and Margaret play out their hierarchical socially competitive roles, it is Monica who breaks her bounds and makes a real choice.
This is strong dramatic meat, but to bring it all together Williamson has made a paradigm shift from the narrative form to fantasy. The play is therefore represented as Derek's dream - but there is a weakness here. Williamson, having Derek actually fall sleep before our eyes and wake up at the end, is not willing to let the narrative completely go. The problem is that everything that Williamson wants to say about history from the 1920's to the 1980's can't realistically all be in Derek's dream. So the better trick is to create an illusion of a dream-state from start to finish. It's a risk, but oddly enough this will allow us, the audience, to take the issues on board for real: this is the contrary nature of the illusion of theatre. In this play I think this happens only in our feelings for Monica, who seems to step out of Derek's dream.
I sense that because Williamson is not completely in control of his new-found medium, Wayne Harrison has tried to make it work for him, creating what the real Derek Freeman at a reception after opening night called "a post-post-modern intellectual cabaret". Some of the devices work very well - Margaret Mead incarnated as Marilyn Monroe singing and dancing with an Aquarius crowd is both funny and makes a point about her sexuality. "Beam me up, Scotty", however, belongs to somebody else's fantasy, not this one.
I'm left, then, with mixed feelings. The performances were excellent, of course, as one would expect from such a cast. The design is stage-wise and very clever visually. Costumes are often startling and complement much humorous stage business in the acting. The result is a show which everyone in the audience enjoyed: people's faces were literally quite radiant as they clapped along with the encore reprise, warmly celebrating the skills of the actors. Yet perhaps we were applauding the director's skills in creating exciting theatre more than the writer's wit and sensibility. Williamson's work is not at heart light-weight - there's a sense for me that a sort of modern George Bernard Shaw is in the offing: but the best recipe for mixing comedy with intellectual rigour is still a few whirrs of the processor away.
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Friday, 7 June 1996
1996: Shortis & Curlies by John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett
Shortis & Curlies John Shortis, Moya Simpson, Andrew Bissett at The School of Arts Cafe, 108 Monaro Street, Queanbeyan. Season: Thursdays to Saturdays till June 29, 1996. Bookings: Phone 297 6857. Professional.
If you are a Liberal politician confident that cutting government spending is the only way to go; or a Labour politician feeling sorry for yourself after 100 days of the new regime; or a veterinary surgeon operating out of Woden Valley; or someone who thinks that a national gun register is not a good idea; or Princess Diana; or Jeff Kennett; or even a frozen embryo who hopes to inherit your dead father's estate: then you shouldn't see this show because you probably won't laugh.
Everyone else will enjoy the spoofing and the political commentary which aids the digestion between courses of very nice food (remember it's BYO wine). This is a cabaret which Canberra needs - except that it's in that naif country town, Queanbeyan.
Mind you, in comfortable Queanbeyan, as in the whole of Australia where most people believe they belong to the middle class, only a few of this revue's items come close to the unkindest cuts of real political cabaret. The fashion industry's outworkers' song; the song of the failed political leaders; and especially Moya Simpson's presentation of the song of the Northern Territory's first candidate for euthanasia hint of the possibility that political satire has an essential role in social revolution.
And do we not need such art, described by the great theorist of political theatre Erwin Piscator as "activistic, combative, political" in a time when conservative politicians are elected on false promises; and Jeff Kennett can get away with throwing sand literally in the faces and cameras of a "free" press? I suspect that Shortis and the two "Curlies", by which we were promised to be grabbed, have done some self-censorship for the School of Arts audience. They offer to "satirise...terrorise...every famous ignoramus, the celebrated, the over-rated, the inglorious and notorious" and they are certainly humorous on a wide range of topics; but I don't think any of those people I suggested should not go would really feel terrorised at the end of the evening.
But maybe I expect too much of Queanbeyan: terror on Monaro Street is not something we can seriously contemplate. As has been suggested recently, the place for the realpolitik is the Drama Department at ANU - and haven't they got enough reason to go for the social jugular!
So don't be afraid - you'll thoroughly enjoy Shortis & Curlies. You'll sing along with the new politically correct national anthem; you'll squirm a little deliciously at the Nip and Tuck Song; and you'll have no trouble joining the final rousing chorus of the Twentieth Century. Go for it at the School of Arts Cafe!
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Wednesday, 5 June 1996
1996: Preview of Heretic by David Williamson
Preview:
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
Heretic comes to town next Wednesday June 12. This is David Williamson's newest play, about the personal and intellectual relationship between ANU's very much alive Derek Freeman and the now long dead but not forgotten doyenne of social anthropology, Margaret Mead.
Professor Freeman appears on stage both as a young man and as the older and wiser man he now is, so we will see played out the frustrations which we all experience - sometimes comic, sometimes sad - when we reflect upon our past actions. Margaret Mead created a guru response, especially in her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which became the bible of the view that human behaviour is essentially socially constructed.
In contrast to her Western society where "Adolescence was characterized as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable", she found "The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society" and asks the obvious question: "What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference?"
Mead's description of the sexual freedoms of the Samoan adolescent girls has certainly had its effect on all of us. But was her picture of teenage promiscuity the truth? Derek Freeman fell for the guru until his own research showed Mead's study to have been at fault. Her work became the ideology against which Freeman appears to be a heretic.
Williamson plays not just with the academic issue, but with the nature of the personalities involved. Margaret Mead, according to Williamson, saw herself in a spiritual plane - perhaps she believed in herself as a guru - and her clash with Freeman, the rational man, on the one occasion they met face to face is a moment of dramatic force central to Heretic.
To deal with these characters, David Williamson has become a heretic, too. He set the tradition of the Australian middle-class naturalistic narrative play spiced with verbal wit which has kept him commercially successful for decades. But in his recent Dead White Males he allowed William Shakespeare to confront today's academics in a comic shoot-out. This, he claims, has freed his inhibitions, so we will see Derek the Younger and Derek the Elder, and also Margaret the Dead in what should be a fascinating spiritual contretemps. Williamson, in breaking the unity and thread of his own form of theatre, believes now that he can create what he has described as a greater density in the stage interactions.
So Heretic becomes a new challenge for director Wayne Harrison and designer John Fenczuk. Characters can now be represented in new exciting ways, the success of which we will be able to judge for ourselves next week. As Margaret Mead wrote about the Samoans, as she thought she knew them in 1925, "The attitude towards virginity is a curious one". We will discover what Derek Freeman found out about this, while my curiosity will be focussed as well on the birth of a new kind of play. I wonder how the older David Williamson looks at the plays of his youth. Will this be a second coming?
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Heretic by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company at the Canberra Theatre Centre. Directed by Wayne Harrison. Designer: John Fenczuk. Cast includes Robin Ramsay, Paul Goddard, Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Carroll, Jane Harders with Henri Szeps. Season: Wednesday June 12 - Saturday June 15, 1996.
Heretic comes to town next Wednesday June 12. This is David Williamson's newest play, about the personal and intellectual relationship between ANU's very much alive Derek Freeman and the now long dead but not forgotten doyenne of social anthropology, Margaret Mead.
Professor Freeman appears on stage both as a young man and as the older and wiser man he now is, so we will see played out the frustrations which we all experience - sometimes comic, sometimes sad - when we reflect upon our past actions. Margaret Mead created a guru response, especially in her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which became the bible of the view that human behaviour is essentially socially constructed.
In contrast to her Western society where "Adolescence was characterized as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable", she found "The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society" and asks the obvious question: "What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference?"
Mead's description of the sexual freedoms of the Samoan adolescent girls has certainly had its effect on all of us. But was her picture of teenage promiscuity the truth? Derek Freeman fell for the guru until his own research showed Mead's study to have been at fault. Her work became the ideology against which Freeman appears to be a heretic.
Williamson plays not just with the academic issue, but with the nature of the personalities involved. Margaret Mead, according to Williamson, saw herself in a spiritual plane - perhaps she believed in herself as a guru - and her clash with Freeman, the rational man, on the one occasion they met face to face is a moment of dramatic force central to Heretic.
To deal with these characters, David Williamson has become a heretic, too. He set the tradition of the Australian middle-class naturalistic narrative play spiced with verbal wit which has kept him commercially successful for decades. But in his recent Dead White Males he allowed William Shakespeare to confront today's academics in a comic shoot-out. This, he claims, has freed his inhibitions, so we will see Derek the Younger and Derek the Elder, and also Margaret the Dead in what should be a fascinating spiritual contretemps. Williamson, in breaking the unity and thread of his own form of theatre, believes now that he can create what he has described as a greater density in the stage interactions.
So Heretic becomes a new challenge for director Wayne Harrison and designer John Fenczuk. Characters can now be represented in new exciting ways, the success of which we will be able to judge for ourselves next week. As Margaret Mead wrote about the Samoans, as she thought she knew them in 1925, "The attitude towards virginity is a curious one". We will discover what Derek Freeman found out about this, while my curiosity will be focussed as well on the birth of a new kind of play. I wonder how the older David Williamson looks at the plays of his youth. Will this be a second coming?
© Frank McKone
Canberra, Australia
Thursday, 30 May 1996
1996: Canberra Rep's 22nd Old Time Music Hall
The 22nd Old Time Music Hall '96 Canberra Repertory at ANU Arts Centre. Direction - Rosemary Hyde. Music - Andrew Kay. Choreography - Jan Carey. Wednesdays to Saturdays May 30 - June 29, 1996. Amateur.
Not being a Music Hall regular, I couldn't honestly put my hand up at MC Russell Brown's invitation, but after opening night I'm happy to raise my hand, a leg and a voice - even a glass - to a show full of verve, vivacity, vicarious vitality and viparious vit (sorry - wit). In fact, in the light of Peter Costello's tasteless references to child abuse in Parliament earlier in the day, I was suspicious that the introduction to a wonderfully inane satire on the British Scouting tradition was politically motivated. Dr Brown reminded us that Baden-Powell's original book was entitled "Scouting for Boys"!
Music Hall is a Canberra institution, so it can't be criticised - even though it is a rather weird reincarnation of an ethnic English cult. These are my origins too, so I could sing along with gusto, but I was caught by surprise across the cultural distance of 40 years and 12,000 miles at the sentimental stereotypes surrounding sex, drink and crime. The '96 Canberra show is kept essentially at the level of jolly good fun, although music halls of a century ago included songs of social distress and disaster (like "Don't go Down in the Mine, Dad") which could literally bring the audience to tears. This was nearly achieved in one item - James Payne's rendition of "Ol' Man River" in a voice momentarily reminiscent of Paul Robeson, but costumed in white tie and tails. Here was an irony which created a silence in the audience uncharacteristic of most of the show.
There were too many highlights, and no lowlights, for each individual performer to be properly acknowledged in this space. Judy Burnett sang out of tune wonderfully, and successfully turned an inadequate harp into a remarkable sex object. The Charleston sequence was a clever reflection on the original - one example of the excellent choreography which obviously enthused the whole cast throughout the show. Discipline and polish brought this year's Music Hall out of the ordinary, with perhaps the Harmony Quartet shining as they played with the polyphony and dissonance in Andrew Kay's original compositions. Costumes were classy and backstage management, with very fast changes in costumes, sets and props, was as smooth as the MC's patter.
Don't miss the '96 Music Hall if you are a regular - I think there is more creative flair in the music and dancing than I have seen on my previous visits, and old favourites have lost none of their zing. If you are not ethnic British, don't miss the chance to learn and laugh: they're a bit funny peculiar, and they're certainly funny ha-ha!
© Frank McKone
Not being a Music Hall regular, I couldn't honestly put my hand up at MC Russell Brown's invitation, but after opening night I'm happy to raise my hand, a leg and a voice - even a glass - to a show full of verve, vivacity, vicarious vitality and viparious vit (sorry - wit). In fact, in the light of Peter Costello's tasteless references to child abuse in Parliament earlier in the day, I was suspicious that the introduction to a wonderfully inane satire on the British Scouting tradition was politically motivated. Dr Brown reminded us that Baden-Powell's original book was entitled "Scouting for Boys"!
Music Hall is a Canberra institution, so it can't be criticised - even though it is a rather weird reincarnation of an ethnic English cult. These are my origins too, so I could sing along with gusto, but I was caught by surprise across the cultural distance of 40 years and 12,000 miles at the sentimental stereotypes surrounding sex, drink and crime. The '96 Canberra show is kept essentially at the level of jolly good fun, although music halls of a century ago included songs of social distress and disaster (like "Don't go Down in the Mine, Dad") which could literally bring the audience to tears. This was nearly achieved in one item - James Payne's rendition of "Ol' Man River" in a voice momentarily reminiscent of Paul Robeson, but costumed in white tie and tails. Here was an irony which created a silence in the audience uncharacteristic of most of the show.
There were too many highlights, and no lowlights, for each individual performer to be properly acknowledged in this space. Judy Burnett sang out of tune wonderfully, and successfully turned an inadequate harp into a remarkable sex object. The Charleston sequence was a clever reflection on the original - one example of the excellent choreography which obviously enthused the whole cast throughout the show. Discipline and polish brought this year's Music Hall out of the ordinary, with perhaps the Harmony Quartet shining as they played with the polyphony and dissonance in Andrew Kay's original compositions. Costumes were classy and backstage management, with very fast changes in costumes, sets and props, was as smooth as the MC's patter.
Don't miss the '96 Music Hall if you are a regular - I think there is more creative flair in the music and dancing than I have seen on my previous visits, and old favourites have lost none of their zing. If you are not ethnic British, don't miss the chance to learn and laugh: they're a bit funny peculiar, and they're certainly funny ha-ha!
© Frank McKone
Thursday, 23 May 1996
1996: Kiss Me Kate by Cole Porter
Kiss Me Kate by Cole Porter. Queanbeyan Players at Queanbeyan Bicentennial Centre, May 23. Director/Designer: Marie Jensen. Musical Director: John Agnew. Choreography: Katelyn Keys. Season: May 23, 24, 25, 30, 31 and June 1, 1996, at 8 pm. Matinee May 26 at 2 pm. Amateur.
Bright, colourful costumes: strong medieval Italianate flavour in the Shakespearean scenes. Bright colourful music: strong early 20th Century American flavour throughout. Good to very good voices in all the lead roles. Stylish choreography, though the flavour was post-1990. Except for the tap: a fair imitation of Gene Kelly. Strong chorus singing and dancing. Nifty gangster character roles. Neat script: play within a play - does Petruchio/Fred Graham (Trent Morris) deserve Katherine/Lilli Vanessi (Mary O'Brien)? I thought Mary had the edge on Trent in musicality and acting, but maybe this was Shakespeare/Porter's character shining through. Lois/Bianca (Judith Satrapa) and Bill/Lucentio (Rodney Beaver) were a well balanced pair: all four provided a core strength to the production.
It's unfair that amateur groups - who provide many budding and experienced performers with the opportunity to entertain - have to put up with such dreadful barns as the Bicentennial Centre: no depth to the stage, awful lighting arrangements, tricky amplification problems, difficult sight-lines and hard plastic seats (though at least it was heated). The old re-worked Nova Cinema I remember from 15 years ago wasn't much worse. I notice the Queanbeyan Players' patrons include the Mayor, Frank Pangallo, and the City Manager, Hugh Percy. How about a proper theatre to go with the patronage, eh? Or maybe that would be Too Darn Hot!
Is Kiss Me Kate politically correct? Probably no more or less than The Taming of the Shrew, I think. Much depends on how Kate's last speech is performed. Shakespeare's comedy demands a strong ironic tone to allow us to believe in Kate and Petruchio's sense of humour and finally recognised equality in love: I'm not sure this comes through in Mary/Lilli's performance of Kate's final song, but this could be Porter's fault. The music sounds definitely romantic without suggesting irony. I found it easy to believe that Shakespeare, when he appeared at the end, had just come from David Williamson's Dead White Males and was seriously re-considering his options, at least in relation to Cole Porter's residual performing rights.
Kiss Me Kate is a lively, competent production which manages to defeat the terrors of the Bicentennial Centre. Worth a visit.
(c) Frank McKone M.A., F.A.C.E.
Canberra, Australia
Bright, colourful costumes: strong medieval Italianate flavour in the Shakespearean scenes. Bright colourful music: strong early 20th Century American flavour throughout. Good to very good voices in all the lead roles. Stylish choreography, though the flavour was post-1990. Except for the tap: a fair imitation of Gene Kelly. Strong chorus singing and dancing. Nifty gangster character roles. Neat script: play within a play - does Petruchio/Fred Graham (Trent Morris) deserve Katherine/Lilli Vanessi (Mary O'Brien)? I thought Mary had the edge on Trent in musicality and acting, but maybe this was Shakespeare/Porter's character shining through. Lois/Bianca (Judith Satrapa) and Bill/Lucentio (Rodney Beaver) were a well balanced pair: all four provided a core strength to the production.
It's unfair that amateur groups - who provide many budding and experienced performers with the opportunity to entertain - have to put up with such dreadful barns as the Bicentennial Centre: no depth to the stage, awful lighting arrangements, tricky amplification problems, difficult sight-lines and hard plastic seats (though at least it was heated). The old re-worked Nova Cinema I remember from 15 years ago wasn't much worse. I notice the Queanbeyan Players' patrons include the Mayor, Frank Pangallo, and the City Manager, Hugh Percy. How about a proper theatre to go with the patronage, eh? Or maybe that would be Too Darn Hot!
Is Kiss Me Kate politically correct? Probably no more or less than The Taming of the Shrew, I think. Much depends on how Kate's last speech is performed. Shakespeare's comedy demands a strong ironic tone to allow us to believe in Kate and Petruchio's sense of humour and finally recognised equality in love: I'm not sure this comes through in Mary/Lilli's performance of Kate's final song, but this could be Porter's fault. The music sounds definitely romantic without suggesting irony. I found it easy to believe that Shakespeare, when he appeared at the end, had just come from David Williamson's Dead White Males and was seriously re-considering his options, at least in relation to Cole Porter's residual performing rights.
Kiss Me Kate is a lively, competent production which manages to defeat the terrors of the Bicentennial Centre. Worth a visit.
(c) Frank McKone M.A., F.A.C.E.
Canberra, Australia
Wednesday, 22 May 1996
1996: Salty Seagull Takes Off by Marie-Martine Ferrari and Shelley MacDonald
Salty Seagull Takes Off. Company Skylark directed by Catherine Mann. Original script by Marie-Martine Ferrari and Shelley MacDonald. Music by Jeff Evans. Professional. Current tour to schools fully booked. Public performances: Saturdays June 8 and 15, 10 am and 11 am, Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre.
I like the traditional proscenium puppet theatre and marionettes, but it's hard to go past Skylark's modern mix of stick, string and hand puppets. Pre-schoolers have no problem engaging directly with the puppets, even though the operator is often fully visible and obviously speaking the puppet's words. Story-telling in this way has an ancient history: Company Skylark maintains the tradition with consummate style.
The story is about young Salty, who can't yet properly fly but pushes himself to the limit to rescue the dolphin, drowning because of a plastic bag lodged over his blow-hole. On the way an absolutely huge whale gives the tiring Salty a ride, and we see many other creatures of the sea: the hermit crab who urges Salty on; a shark, sea horses, star fish and colourful reef fish - one of whom is eaten by the shark. The acting and puppet manipulation is top class. There were many moments of delight as the children spontaneously responded. The parents, who were later treated to pumpkin and vegetable soup (the product of several days' learning by the littlies and their tireless Weston Pre-school teachers), exulted in unison as one of their children told Salty with absolute authority "You should try! If you don't try, you won't do it never!"
On the other hand I felt a wee bit squirmy about the message being reiterated by the motherly whale: you'll succeed if you believe you can, and it's all about using your "inner strength". This was new age romanticism which I guess the parents may think is wonderful, but the kids can really do without. Especially if they cotton on to the point that the shark, presented as an aggressive buffoon, actually gets to eat the fish it catches. I have no problems with the practical message to protect the environment. Drama's emotional impact is powerful, so it has to be used with extra care to support children's self-confidence within a proper understanding of reality. The little girl who told Salty he should try was perfectly logical; but the converse of her point (if you keep trying, you will succeed) is not logical nor the truth, despite the myth of Robert Bruce. This issue aside, the main message was eminently clear: don't litter the beach or your plastic bag could kill a dolphin. Dramatic, but true. Salty Seagull is worth his salt.
© Frank McKone
I like the traditional proscenium puppet theatre and marionettes, but it's hard to go past Skylark's modern mix of stick, string and hand puppets. Pre-schoolers have no problem engaging directly with the puppets, even though the operator is often fully visible and obviously speaking the puppet's words. Story-telling in this way has an ancient history: Company Skylark maintains the tradition with consummate style.
The story is about young Salty, who can't yet properly fly but pushes himself to the limit to rescue the dolphin, drowning because of a plastic bag lodged over his blow-hole. On the way an absolutely huge whale gives the tiring Salty a ride, and we see many other creatures of the sea: the hermit crab who urges Salty on; a shark, sea horses, star fish and colourful reef fish - one of whom is eaten by the shark. The acting and puppet manipulation is top class. There were many moments of delight as the children spontaneously responded. The parents, who were later treated to pumpkin and vegetable soup (the product of several days' learning by the littlies and their tireless Weston Pre-school teachers), exulted in unison as one of their children told Salty with absolute authority "You should try! If you don't try, you won't do it never!"
On the other hand I felt a wee bit squirmy about the message being reiterated by the motherly whale: you'll succeed if you believe you can, and it's all about using your "inner strength". This was new age romanticism which I guess the parents may think is wonderful, but the kids can really do without. Especially if they cotton on to the point that the shark, presented as an aggressive buffoon, actually gets to eat the fish it catches. I have no problems with the practical message to protect the environment. Drama's emotional impact is powerful, so it has to be used with extra care to support children's self-confidence within a proper understanding of reality. The little girl who told Salty he should try was perfectly logical; but the converse of her point (if you keep trying, you will succeed) is not logical nor the truth, despite the myth of Robert Bruce. This issue aside, the main message was eminently clear: don't litter the beach or your plastic bag could kill a dolphin. Dramatic, but true. Salty Seagull is worth his salt.
© Frank McKone
Tuesday, 21 May 1996
1996: The Three Little Pigs by Charlotte and Sean Meany
The Three Little Pigs by Charlotte and Sean Meany. Toybox Puppet Theatre Company. Pre-school and Early Childhood. Available for in-school performances throughout the year: bookings on 231 9012. Professional. Thanks to Alison Watson and staff at Fraser Pre-School.
"I can't look! I can't look!" burst from the dramatically inclined pre-schooler near me as the Wolf appeared. Soon she was wide-eyed, cheering the Littlest Pig to make good the escape. In reality, the marionette Wolf and Pig were running on the spot while the backdrop was rolled across the scene behind them. How important indeed it is for young children's imaginations to be stirred by the old theatrical devices. And they were rapt for the whole show.
I was pleased to see string puppets in the traditional puppet theatre once again, when other companies have shifted the focus to hand puppets, whole body puppets and combinations of actors and puppets. Toybox, a local and entirely self-funded company, complements the other companies available to schools. Jigsaw, Skylark and now Toybox provide rich fare. Particularly I thought Shaun's music was delightful: seemingly simple, but with highly original harmonies and rhythms in clear instrumentation. Toybox's speciality is to present traditional European fairy tales (properly researched, I might add) with marionettes, which have been so important in European culture. This is early days for this company, and I hope they will go on to explore marionettes in Australian and Asian contexts.
An essential part of the show is Charlotte's introduction, which sets the rules for the children and gives them some protection (the Wolf is not really scary - he's more like a clown); followed up by her leading a discussion with the children and having them meet the Wolf, the Cat and see backstage after the show. Very quickly children began to ask questions like "How do you make the Cat's eyes open and close?" and from this moment the relationship between imagination and reality is clear, and much is being learned about theatre. The show is very suitable for pre-school and early childhood, but I think some research is needed into the different levels of vocabulary for each age group which Charlotte needs to use when speaking directly to the children.
Toybox's Three Little Pigs has a nice mix of melodrama and sense of irony which the young children thoroughly enjoyed. Productions like this help them know how to be a good audience and, I believe, help to counter the superficiality (and gratuitous violence) of much of what they see on television. I highly recommend this show to teachers as both education and entertainment.
© Frank McKone
"I can't look! I can't look!" burst from the dramatically inclined pre-schooler near me as the Wolf appeared. Soon she was wide-eyed, cheering the Littlest Pig to make good the escape. In reality, the marionette Wolf and Pig were running on the spot while the backdrop was rolled across the scene behind them. How important indeed it is for young children's imaginations to be stirred by the old theatrical devices. And they were rapt for the whole show.
I was pleased to see string puppets in the traditional puppet theatre once again, when other companies have shifted the focus to hand puppets, whole body puppets and combinations of actors and puppets. Toybox, a local and entirely self-funded company, complements the other companies available to schools. Jigsaw, Skylark and now Toybox provide rich fare. Particularly I thought Shaun's music was delightful: seemingly simple, but with highly original harmonies and rhythms in clear instrumentation. Toybox's speciality is to present traditional European fairy tales (properly researched, I might add) with marionettes, which have been so important in European culture. This is early days for this company, and I hope they will go on to explore marionettes in Australian and Asian contexts.
An essential part of the show is Charlotte's introduction, which sets the rules for the children and gives them some protection (the Wolf is not really scary - he's more like a clown); followed up by her leading a discussion with the children and having them meet the Wolf, the Cat and see backstage after the show. Very quickly children began to ask questions like "How do you make the Cat's eyes open and close?" and from this moment the relationship between imagination and reality is clear, and much is being learned about theatre. The show is very suitable for pre-school and early childhood, but I think some research is needed into the different levels of vocabulary for each age group which Charlotte needs to use when speaking directly to the children.
Toybox's Three Little Pigs has a nice mix of melodrama and sense of irony which the young children thoroughly enjoyed. Productions like this help them know how to be a good audience and, I believe, help to counter the superficiality (and gratuitous violence) of much of what they see on television. I highly recommend this show to teachers as both education and entertainment.
© Frank McKone
Wednesday, 8 May 1996
1996: Mercury by Manuel Aston
Mercury by Manuel Aston. The Jigsaw Company at Currong Contemporary Arts Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, and on tour. Directed by Lynette Wallis. Season: Wednesday May 8; Thursday to Saturday May 9 - 25, 1996. 8.15 pm.
The Jigsaw Company specialises in presenting short but telling plays about social issues. Mercury dramatises the production of an audience-participation TV-host open forum, in this case on the death of a young girl after taking Ecstasy at a dance party. Each member of the production team has their own public and private agenda. The play culminates in exposing the conflict between the roles of the TV host as parent and public figure. He sees himself as no more than a "winged messenger" who doesn't deserve to be shot down by his unscrupulous colleagues.
This is a clever script which, in the capable hands of a highly professional team, uncovers a deeper, more significant theme. Using taped footage and live camera, Manuel Aston has drawn upon his experience in television production to show the way the images we see are manipulated to twist our perception of events. In the end the moral dilemma in the characters' relationships is left unresolved; but the issues of the role of the owners of the media and misuse of technical devices in the hands of the TV editor will not go away. I suspect that not many of us really understand how shots of an interviewer taken after the interview are cut in to reflect on and alter the meaning of the interviewee's words. What is the effect of "pixillating" the image of the interviewee's face; or deciding not to do so? Computer "enhancing" of the front page photo of the alleged Port Arthur murderer has exposed one newspaper to criticism this week.
The performances of the highly versatile actors are spot on. They shift into and out of each scene with such precision that one is not aware of the slightest interruption in the dramatic flow. Characters of real depth are created in a moment - I was particularly impressed with Virginia Anderson's rendition of the dead girl's mother. The sense of the reality of a TV studio is very strong using the bare minimum of equipment and a technical director who never misses a beat.
The show is already on tour to day-time venues, and opens for its evening season this Wednesday, May 8. This is entertainment plus: an interplay of critical thoughts and feelings germaine to modern society. I advise you not to miss it.
© Frank McKone
The Jigsaw Company specialises in presenting short but telling plays about social issues. Mercury dramatises the production of an audience-participation TV-host open forum, in this case on the death of a young girl after taking Ecstasy at a dance party. Each member of the production team has their own public and private agenda. The play culminates in exposing the conflict between the roles of the TV host as parent and public figure. He sees himself as no more than a "winged messenger" who doesn't deserve to be shot down by his unscrupulous colleagues.
This is a clever script which, in the capable hands of a highly professional team, uncovers a deeper, more significant theme. Using taped footage and live camera, Manuel Aston has drawn upon his experience in television production to show the way the images we see are manipulated to twist our perception of events. In the end the moral dilemma in the characters' relationships is left unresolved; but the issues of the role of the owners of the media and misuse of technical devices in the hands of the TV editor will not go away. I suspect that not many of us really understand how shots of an interviewer taken after the interview are cut in to reflect on and alter the meaning of the interviewee's words. What is the effect of "pixillating" the image of the interviewee's face; or deciding not to do so? Computer "enhancing" of the front page photo of the alleged Port Arthur murderer has exposed one newspaper to criticism this week.
The performances of the highly versatile actors are spot on. They shift into and out of each scene with such precision that one is not aware of the slightest interruption in the dramatic flow. Characters of real depth are created in a moment - I was particularly impressed with Virginia Anderson's rendition of the dead girl's mother. The sense of the reality of a TV studio is very strong using the bare minimum of equipment and a technical director who never misses a beat.
The show is already on tour to day-time venues, and opens for its evening season this Wednesday, May 8. This is entertainment plus: an interplay of critical thoughts and feelings germaine to modern society. I advise you not to miss it.
© Frank McKone
Tuesday, 7 May 1996
1996: Monica's House by Monica Trapaga, with Penny Flanagan
Monica's House by Monica Trapaga, with Penny Flanagan. Script: Monica Trapaga. Music: Julian Gough, Dave Basten. Sound: Daniele Digiovanni. Stage Manager: Katrina Thomas. Tuggeranong Valley Rugby Union Club 10.00 am May 7 and Canberra Labor Club 10.00 am May 8, 1996. Professional.
Monica's House is a wonderful surprise - not for the littlies who all know what to do when Monica asks; and not for the parents who know they can trust their children in Monica's capable hands - but for me to see such creative, original, educational drama happening so naturally in a club setting. More strength to the clubs if they bring in shows of this quality for members and their children.
Tuggeranong waylaid the performers with some technical problems, but the professional team found solutions without missing a beat. In fact music, rhythm and movement are the core of Monica's presentation. This is not only the Monica of ABC TV's Playschool, but also of the erstwhile band Monica and the Moochers and now of Monica's Brazilian Spectacular band based in Sydney.
A bewildering variety of style in music and drama from a person who was born in Australia of Spanish and American parents from the Philippines - both theatre professionals - and whose grandparents were performers in Spain, comes as no surprise. Monica never trained at NIDA - she has just worked on stage since her schooldays. There is a delightful loving spontaneous empathy in her show which everyone from cradle age responds to. If you've read this far you'll know to seek out Monica's House.
But there is much more to Monica Trapaga than the friend the children see. Here we go for some excellent theory about education and drama - an Education Perspective on the Arts and Entertainment page. As she demonstrates, performing is a "loving experience" - a two-way communication between the actor and her audience. As a band singer she is always conscious of this theatrical relationship, inviting her adult audience to participate just as she invites the children to sing with her, dance with her, mime with her and help her solve problems. It is this focus, so natural for her, that has made her one of the longstanding Playschool performers.
Yet she finds the Playschool approach, which particularly emphasises the children being made to distinguish very definitely between fiction and fact, a limitation of imagination. In her show, she slowly eases the children, after the fiction is complete when everyone sings Happy Birthday to McKaw, out of the dramatic frame (with a re-run of the clapping song) and an announcement that their time together is almost at an end, towards the "reality" frame. Monica comes off stage at this point and receives the children (this takes nearly as long as the show), signing their posters and tee-shirts and simply being their personal friend. In doing so, she leaves a certain fuzzy quality about that line between fiction and fact, which some would question.
But the 3 year old next to me had turned to her mother when the clapping song finished, saying "Mummy, we have to go home now." She knew exactly when the dramatic frame was shifted to reality. And she waited patiently for more than half an hour to talk to Monica before she and her Mummy went home. Monica told me of children like the 10 year old boy, well past Playschool watching age, who waited after a show to say how much he wanted to meet her. This was not adulation of the actor; just wanting to say hallo to a friend.
So Monica Trapaga is a crossing-point between television and drama. Television creates the image of her, but it is live drama where the connection with reality is made.
Monica saw Sesame Street as an important influence on her work, but I observed that her script, like the Playschool scripts, ask for focussed attention as each short-attention-span segment is linked into theme and plot. The essential theatrical form used is absurd drama, which enables the children's imaginations to be turned from mental problem solving (what are we going to do without carrots when McKaw wants us to make a carrot cake) to physical exercise (the running song, which will take us to the shops) to imaginary miming (because we are tired we'll go the beach and go surfing). Absurdism is not used with the pessimism of Ionesco, of course, but with the elan of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. Whereas the logicality of Sesame Street is undermined by the short-attention-span advertising format which reflects a society built on a commercial ideology, Monica's absurdism is a non-preaching, non-judgemental form which celebrates love, empathy and imagination.
Monica Trapaga sees herself as a world citizen coming from an Australia where people accept different cultures more readily than in other places. I found her inspiring, a figure of hope for the future in which we all need to become citizens of the world.
© Frank McKone
Monica's House is a wonderful surprise - not for the littlies who all know what to do when Monica asks; and not for the parents who know they can trust their children in Monica's capable hands - but for me to see such creative, original, educational drama happening so naturally in a club setting. More strength to the clubs if they bring in shows of this quality for members and their children.
Tuggeranong waylaid the performers with some technical problems, but the professional team found solutions without missing a beat. In fact music, rhythm and movement are the core of Monica's presentation. This is not only the Monica of ABC TV's Playschool, but also of the erstwhile band Monica and the Moochers and now of Monica's Brazilian Spectacular band based in Sydney.
A bewildering variety of style in music and drama from a person who was born in Australia of Spanish and American parents from the Philippines - both theatre professionals - and whose grandparents were performers in Spain, comes as no surprise. Monica never trained at NIDA - she has just worked on stage since her schooldays. There is a delightful loving spontaneous empathy in her show which everyone from cradle age responds to. If you've read this far you'll know to seek out Monica's House.
But there is much more to Monica Trapaga than the friend the children see. Here we go for some excellent theory about education and drama - an Education Perspective on the Arts and Entertainment page. As she demonstrates, performing is a "loving experience" - a two-way communication between the actor and her audience. As a band singer she is always conscious of this theatrical relationship, inviting her adult audience to participate just as she invites the children to sing with her, dance with her, mime with her and help her solve problems. It is this focus, so natural for her, that has made her one of the longstanding Playschool performers.
Yet she finds the Playschool approach, which particularly emphasises the children being made to distinguish very definitely between fiction and fact, a limitation of imagination. In her show, she slowly eases the children, after the fiction is complete when everyone sings Happy Birthday to McKaw, out of the dramatic frame (with a re-run of the clapping song) and an announcement that their time together is almost at an end, towards the "reality" frame. Monica comes off stage at this point and receives the children (this takes nearly as long as the show), signing their posters and tee-shirts and simply being their personal friend. In doing so, she leaves a certain fuzzy quality about that line between fiction and fact, which some would question.
But the 3 year old next to me had turned to her mother when the clapping song finished, saying "Mummy, we have to go home now." She knew exactly when the dramatic frame was shifted to reality. And she waited patiently for more than half an hour to talk to Monica before she and her Mummy went home. Monica told me of children like the 10 year old boy, well past Playschool watching age, who waited after a show to say how much he wanted to meet her. This was not adulation of the actor; just wanting to say hallo to a friend.
So Monica Trapaga is a crossing-point between television and drama. Television creates the image of her, but it is live drama where the connection with reality is made.
Monica saw Sesame Street as an important influence on her work, but I observed that her script, like the Playschool scripts, ask for focussed attention as each short-attention-span segment is linked into theme and plot. The essential theatrical form used is absurd drama, which enables the children's imaginations to be turned from mental problem solving (what are we going to do without carrots when McKaw wants us to make a carrot cake) to physical exercise (the running song, which will take us to the shops) to imaginary miming (because we are tired we'll go the beach and go surfing). Absurdism is not used with the pessimism of Ionesco, of course, but with the elan of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. Whereas the logicality of Sesame Street is undermined by the short-attention-span advertising format which reflects a society built on a commercial ideology, Monica's absurdism is a non-preaching, non-judgemental form which celebrates love, empathy and imagination.
Monica Trapaga sees herself as a world citizen coming from an Australia where people accept different cultures more readily than in other places. I found her inspiring, a figure of hope for the future in which we all need to become citizens of the world.
© Frank McKone
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