The Aunt's Story by Patrick White, adapted for the stage and directed by Adam Cook. Melbourne Theatre Company presented by Company B at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, until September 8. Note: 6.30pm (ends 9.45pm).
There's a joke in Act 2, among the mad denizens of a cheap 1930s hotel somewhere in Europe, about how boring life is: "It's probable that God created Adam on a rainy day." I can only say that if this nail-paring God created Adam Cook, and Helen Morse, and the Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir B, then do it again, Sam. Morse, as the shamelessly symbolically named Theodora Goodman, is on stage throughout: a tour de force and a wonder to behold. Absolutely the opposite of boring.
The rest of the cast - Andrew Blackman, Julia Blake, Ralph Cotterill, Sarah Kants, Roger Oakley and Genevieve Picot - speak for themselves if you are looking for a quality production. This is MTC at its most marvellous, each of these actors playing Patrick White's amazing array of characters in Theodora's life, the real people and her fantasies. Costumes change, accents change, make-up changes, mannerisms change so smoothly that though you can see it all happening you are never made conscious of the acting. The illusion is complete in the theatre, just as it should be for Patrick White's examination of the question, How can we be sure when illusion is reality, or reality is illusion?
Although you do not need to read White's original novel - Cook's script stands alone on stage - the program is worth a few dollars for its excellent discussion of White's story and its themes. Act 1 covers the death of Theodora's father who appreciates her as a real thinking person, in contrast to her air-headed sister Fanny, whose only interest is to marry a wealthy man and have babies. This Act is a memory play, a flashback triggered by the death of her mother, who describes Theodora as a thin stick, and yellow, (while Fanny is exactly the daughter she wanted).
After these two deaths and a decent interval, we observe Theodora escape from the dry sheep farm of her first 45 years (Fanny had her children, Theodora looked after her mother). Act 2 is in the Jardin Exotique, where the mad tumbledown pretend nobility draw her into an unreal world. White's ideas for the novel were developing as World War 2 drew on apace, and he wrote the novel immediately he escaped from the Royal Air Force at the war's end. Maybe people thought America would be the saviour from chaos, so Theodora travels on a train there, pulls the emergency cord in the middle of nowhere and finds a shack with a ghost who is clearly her father. Finding a kind of peace here, the so-sensible Americans see her fantasy as insanity and she is committed for treatment. Is this the 'rational' world we really want? Is ordinary reality enough?
Watch out for the thunder, lightning and gunshots. I shuddered in my safe seat as these effects seemed so real that I might myself be struck down like the huge tree in Theodora's garden, or shot through the heart like the little hawk. Signs in the foyer forewarn you: be warned. Dale Ferguson (design), Gavan Swift (lighting) and Ian McDonald (sound) have created just the strength of emotional response that White's imagination demands.
Add to all that a sound score created by Peter Sculthorpe which crept into my consciousness as if it naturally belonged there, and you may imagine why this production is among the best I have ever seen. Patrick White is a towering figure in Australian culture. Adam Cook has done him proud. Maybe God did have something to do with it - but maybe God is just another illusion, and we can do it all by ourselves, like Theodora Goodman.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 21 August 2002
Friday, 16 August 2002
2002: The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon by REM Theatre. Feature article.
If you were to imagine the musical sound of a wombat, you would quite likely agree with the popular choice in REM Theatre's The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon. The tuba really has no competition. But you might be a bit surprised to find the emu played on the 'cello and conga drums. There you go, though - that's what a creative presentation of the orchestra for young people can do. Give you lots of laughter and surprises.
The story of the kookaburra's laugh is quite simple. If you fell in love with the moon, and you were a kookaburra, you'd gobble it down like all those other tasty morsels you love - like lizards and snakes - wouldn't you? But what about all those dark and scary nights without the moon? How would you get the moon back out of the kookaburra in the proper way? You can't chop him open because you shouldn't do such violent things to others. And if you're simply pragmatic, you'll soon see that if you did you might hurt the moon, and you'd end up with no kookaburra. But if you make him laugh, and laugh, and laugh so much that the moon can escape from his wide open beak, everyone can be happy. And that's why the kookaburras laugh every evening just at sundown.
Making the kookaburra laugh is sure to keep the audience of youngsters rolling in the aisles, according to Catherine Pease, a founding member of REM Theatre and the narrator for this show. She should know after more than 10 years touring all over Australia, Britain, Europe, USA, the South Pacific and Asia, where the Artistic Director, Roger Rynd, has a special association with the Seoul Arts Center in Korea. Audiences there have given Rynd awards for best play, while a reviewer in The Scotsman on the opposite side of the globe wrote "Rarely have I seen so many people so thoroughly and happily engrossed".
That reviewer surely wasn't talking only about the children, anywhere between 3 and 12, that the show is mainly for. People of all ages can respond directly to music and dance which tells such a story - and take part with the children in recognising the instruments of the orchestra as each animal's theme appears. It has to be fun, too, when the children are taught each animal's movements by Gamillaroi artists Tanya and Eric Ellis. Eric plays the kookaburra; Tanya plays all the others. And when the children do the movements, the whole orchestra stands to do the movements too.
This is getting to sound a bit like going to a Rocky Horror Show, or The Sound of Music, and Catherine admits that things get a bit chaotic at times. This writer, when he was that young, was excited enough by Peter and the Wolf.
In fact, that classic musical tale was the origin of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon. As Peter and the Wolf was a Russian folk tale, so The Kookaburra is an Australian approach to ancient myths. Peter Winkler - who directed the music for the opening of the Paralympics and has a long history as a music educator (he co-founded the Bondi Youth Wave annual rock music school) - wrote both the script and the music for The Kookaburra, combining an Aboriginal myth with ideas from Aesop's tales. Rather like the development of world music, this show combines elements from many cultures, and REM's productions have seen Tanya Ellis become the first Koori to perform in Korean language, while she has also maintained her traditional dance forms as well as working as a puppeteer with Plasticienne Volants in Europe.
What may seem superficially to be a simple children's educational show has behind it a complex system of support. Each venue - in our case the Canberra Theatre Centre - provides the orchestra: the Canberra Symphony here, the Tasmanian Symphony a few weeks ago, the Frankston Symphony in Victoria last week. The commitment of people all over the country and the world has been so effective that Playing Australia, the Australia Council's funding body for touring companies, has taken a major role in supporting The Kookaburra.
There are also technical issues to be solved. The two didgeridoos in the orchestra are very special: one tuned in the key of D and the other in B flat. When the show began back in 1990, didge players had to be sent back to the drawing boards when their sounds were not quite in harmony with the classical orchestral instruments. Maybe it's this kind of reconciliation that this show represents. The music is onomatopaeic, but creating sounds not merely like the sounds each animal makes, but giving the feeling associated with each animal's character. The cross-cultural effect is also embedded in the music, where you will notice subtle touches of different popular dance forms as well as the Australian indigenous forms.
In other words, there is more education in this show than at first meets the ear and eye, for adults as well as for children. At the same time, the basic rule of theatre - always entertain - is the core of the show in performance. When the Producer is Marguerite Pepper, who has produced major cultural events since the 1980s (including being Associate Producer of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Paralympics); the Music Director is Peter Winkler, winner of the Federal Government's Roz Bower Award for his contribution to Australia's community music scene; the Narrator, Catherine Pease, has been Director Community Programs for the Queensland Performing Arts Trust; the key performers Eric and Tanya Ellis come with the full respect they deserve from the indigenous community; and when the orchestra is the Canberra Symphony - what more needs to be said about the professional credentials of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon.
REM Theatre Company's 2002 tour of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon comes to Canberra for schools performances at 10am and 11.45am on August 29 and 30. There will be one public performance at The Playhouse on Saturday August 31 at 11.45am. Book at Canberra Theatre on 6257 1077.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The story of the kookaburra's laugh is quite simple. If you fell in love with the moon, and you were a kookaburra, you'd gobble it down like all those other tasty morsels you love - like lizards and snakes - wouldn't you? But what about all those dark and scary nights without the moon? How would you get the moon back out of the kookaburra in the proper way? You can't chop him open because you shouldn't do such violent things to others. And if you're simply pragmatic, you'll soon see that if you did you might hurt the moon, and you'd end up with no kookaburra. But if you make him laugh, and laugh, and laugh so much that the moon can escape from his wide open beak, everyone can be happy. And that's why the kookaburras laugh every evening just at sundown.
Making the kookaburra laugh is sure to keep the audience of youngsters rolling in the aisles, according to Catherine Pease, a founding member of REM Theatre and the narrator for this show. She should know after more than 10 years touring all over Australia, Britain, Europe, USA, the South Pacific and Asia, where the Artistic Director, Roger Rynd, has a special association with the Seoul Arts Center in Korea. Audiences there have given Rynd awards for best play, while a reviewer in The Scotsman on the opposite side of the globe wrote "Rarely have I seen so many people so thoroughly and happily engrossed".
That reviewer surely wasn't talking only about the children, anywhere between 3 and 12, that the show is mainly for. People of all ages can respond directly to music and dance which tells such a story - and take part with the children in recognising the instruments of the orchestra as each animal's theme appears. It has to be fun, too, when the children are taught each animal's movements by Gamillaroi artists Tanya and Eric Ellis. Eric plays the kookaburra; Tanya plays all the others. And when the children do the movements, the whole orchestra stands to do the movements too.
This is getting to sound a bit like going to a Rocky Horror Show, or The Sound of Music, and Catherine admits that things get a bit chaotic at times. This writer, when he was that young, was excited enough by Peter and the Wolf.
In fact, that classic musical tale was the origin of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon. As Peter and the Wolf was a Russian folk tale, so The Kookaburra is an Australian approach to ancient myths. Peter Winkler - who directed the music for the opening of the Paralympics and has a long history as a music educator (he co-founded the Bondi Youth Wave annual rock music school) - wrote both the script and the music for The Kookaburra, combining an Aboriginal myth with ideas from Aesop's tales. Rather like the development of world music, this show combines elements from many cultures, and REM's productions have seen Tanya Ellis become the first Koori to perform in Korean language, while she has also maintained her traditional dance forms as well as working as a puppeteer with Plasticienne Volants in Europe.
What may seem superficially to be a simple children's educational show has behind it a complex system of support. Each venue - in our case the Canberra Theatre Centre - provides the orchestra: the Canberra Symphony here, the Tasmanian Symphony a few weeks ago, the Frankston Symphony in Victoria last week. The commitment of people all over the country and the world has been so effective that Playing Australia, the Australia Council's funding body for touring companies, has taken a major role in supporting The Kookaburra.
There are also technical issues to be solved. The two didgeridoos in the orchestra are very special: one tuned in the key of D and the other in B flat. When the show began back in 1990, didge players had to be sent back to the drawing boards when their sounds were not quite in harmony with the classical orchestral instruments. Maybe it's this kind of reconciliation that this show represents. The music is onomatopaeic, but creating sounds not merely like the sounds each animal makes, but giving the feeling associated with each animal's character. The cross-cultural effect is also embedded in the music, where you will notice subtle touches of different popular dance forms as well as the Australian indigenous forms.
In other words, there is more education in this show than at first meets the ear and eye, for adults as well as for children. At the same time, the basic rule of theatre - always entertain - is the core of the show in performance. When the Producer is Marguerite Pepper, who has produced major cultural events since the 1980s (including being Associate Producer of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Paralympics); the Music Director is Peter Winkler, winner of the Federal Government's Roz Bower Award for his contribution to Australia's community music scene; the Narrator, Catherine Pease, has been Director Community Programs for the Queensland Performing Arts Trust; the key performers Eric and Tanya Ellis come with the full respect they deserve from the indigenous community; and when the orchestra is the Canberra Symphony - what more needs to be said about the professional credentials of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon.
REM Theatre Company's 2002 tour of The Kookaburra Who Stole the Moon comes to Canberra for schools performances at 10am and 11.45am on August 29 and 30. There will be one public performance at The Playhouse on Saturday August 31 at 11.45am. Book at Canberra Theatre on 6257 1077.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 15 August 2002
2002: NIDA invites applications for 2003. Feature article.
NIDA INVITES APPLICATIONS FOR 2003. What better invitation could you imagine? Until, maybe, you remember the tv makeover: backstage at NIDA seemed pretty daunting.
And, of course, you can't forget that your invitation has about a 1% chance of getting you into the party. Is it really possible to get into NIDA? Two Canberrans are there now, so I asked them how they did it.
Just to begin with a downer for drama teachers, neither Alex O'Lachlan or Gordon Rymer beavered away at drama through high school and college. Gordon did all the right things, like study hard across the normal range of subjects, until he started to seriously worry his parents at the beginning of Year 12. Who said he could act? What about his nice career, as an accountant or something? Help!!
Well, Gordon found indeed that he wasn't a great actor, or likely ever to become one, but he became fascinated with the way theatre production works. So even more horrors - he became stage manager for the bloodthirsty story of Sweeney Todd with a collapsible barber's chair on a truck. In Semester 2, Year 12! Oh, what will become of him?
He's actually a calm and sensible lad who now praises the drama teacher who left him to face up to solving problems like what to do when the wheels literally fell off the truck, on which most of the set was built, as it was being shouldered on for final dress rehearsal. He took a year off after that, went travelling to Europe, worked as a dishwasher in a large hotel for 10-14 hour days, and thus proved to his parents that he was able to look after himself, and proved to himself that he could work the long hours that NIDA now demands of him. Only then did he take up the invitation to apply, built a set model with lighting, sound and costume design for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which he claims was "not very good") and wrote some 3000 words about why his design was eminently workable. Phew!
Now in Second Year, Gordon recently was deputy stage manager for NIDA's Third Year production of Country Music by Nick Enright, in which Alex O'Lachlan was a leading actor. Wheels falling off trucks was nothing, says Gordon, compared with a 4 hour long play being written in the wings, with pauses for writing lighting plots extending technical rehearsals over a whole week. Both Gordon and Alex seem to have revelled in the challenge.
But how did Alex get there, via a story which could be entitled, How Not To Get to NIDA? He was the bad boy of high school and college that many teachers would recognise. Actually, they won't because his name is not in the records, not just because he often wasn't in school (and never did drama past primary). Alex needed to escape a Canberra which did nothing for him before he changed his life, and his name.
Perhaps the first solid book he read was AB Facey's A Fortunate Life, when he was 19. Here he discovered a common spirit in touch with humanity, a kind of innocence, and a person of honesty who would not deceive another. Facey was a model for a new life, and as Alex travelled, also in Europe, he watched films with an ache which he finally recognised. He wanted to perform with the same commitment and honesty he now saw in so many great actors.
Back in Australia, but in vibrant Sydney, not the cold Canberra of old, he says he literally woke up one morning and knew he must apply for NIDA. They didn't invite him: he invited himself, at the age of 23.
As soon as his real life began, commitment to the work has led to an avid interest in theatre history covered in essays which would surprise his earlier teachers. He told me he is an "instinctual actor - I feel my way through it" but very soon was explaining detailed techniques of characterisation. He seems to have just the right mix of method and emotion, and control of his life, for us to sincerely hope for professional success.
Alex is the one with the photo, but Gordon will be there in the backstage gloom, making sure all the calls are spot on. He didn't mind not having a photo, he said. That's not his role.
For NIDA, ring the Admissions Officer on (02) 9697 7600 or at www.nida.edu.au, but if you may not be in that particular 1%, don't forget all the other drama and theatre courses available after Year 12. You can find them all on university websites.
Frank McKone's First Audition - How to Get Into Drama School (Currency Press) will be launched at the National Conference of Drama Australia in Fremantle WA on September 28.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
And, of course, you can't forget that your invitation has about a 1% chance of getting you into the party. Is it really possible to get into NIDA? Two Canberrans are there now, so I asked them how they did it.
Just to begin with a downer for drama teachers, neither Alex O'Lachlan or Gordon Rymer beavered away at drama through high school and college. Gordon did all the right things, like study hard across the normal range of subjects, until he started to seriously worry his parents at the beginning of Year 12. Who said he could act? What about his nice career, as an accountant or something? Help!!
Well, Gordon found indeed that he wasn't a great actor, or likely ever to become one, but he became fascinated with the way theatre production works. So even more horrors - he became stage manager for the bloodthirsty story of Sweeney Todd with a collapsible barber's chair on a truck. In Semester 2, Year 12! Oh, what will become of him?
He's actually a calm and sensible lad who now praises the drama teacher who left him to face up to solving problems like what to do when the wheels literally fell off the truck, on which most of the set was built, as it was being shouldered on for final dress rehearsal. He took a year off after that, went travelling to Europe, worked as a dishwasher in a large hotel for 10-14 hour days, and thus proved to his parents that he was able to look after himself, and proved to himself that he could work the long hours that NIDA now demands of him. Only then did he take up the invitation to apply, built a set model with lighting, sound and costume design for A Midsummer Night's Dream (which he claims was "not very good") and wrote some 3000 words about why his design was eminently workable. Phew!
Now in Second Year, Gordon recently was deputy stage manager for NIDA's Third Year production of Country Music by Nick Enright, in which Alex O'Lachlan was a leading actor. Wheels falling off trucks was nothing, says Gordon, compared with a 4 hour long play being written in the wings, with pauses for writing lighting plots extending technical rehearsals over a whole week. Both Gordon and Alex seem to have revelled in the challenge.
But how did Alex get there, via a story which could be entitled, How Not To Get to NIDA? He was the bad boy of high school and college that many teachers would recognise. Actually, they won't because his name is not in the records, not just because he often wasn't in school (and never did drama past primary). Alex needed to escape a Canberra which did nothing for him before he changed his life, and his name.
Perhaps the first solid book he read was AB Facey's A Fortunate Life, when he was 19. Here he discovered a common spirit in touch with humanity, a kind of innocence, and a person of honesty who would not deceive another. Facey was a model for a new life, and as Alex travelled, also in Europe, he watched films with an ache which he finally recognised. He wanted to perform with the same commitment and honesty he now saw in so many great actors.
Back in Australia, but in vibrant Sydney, not the cold Canberra of old, he says he literally woke up one morning and knew he must apply for NIDA. They didn't invite him: he invited himself, at the age of 23.
As soon as his real life began, commitment to the work has led to an avid interest in theatre history covered in essays which would surprise his earlier teachers. He told me he is an "instinctual actor - I feel my way through it" but very soon was explaining detailed techniques of characterisation. He seems to have just the right mix of method and emotion, and control of his life, for us to sincerely hope for professional success.
Alex is the one with the photo, but Gordon will be there in the backstage gloom, making sure all the calls are spot on. He didn't mind not having a photo, he said. That's not his role.
For NIDA, ring the Admissions Officer on (02) 9697 7600 or at www.nida.edu.au, but if you may not be in that particular 1%, don't forget all the other drama and theatre courses available after Year 12. You can find them all on university websites.
Frank McKone's First Audition - How to Get Into Drama School (Currency Press) will be launched at the National Conference of Drama Australia in Fremantle WA on September 28.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 14 August 2002
2002: Ordinary/Extraordinary: Exhibition in a Suitcase. Feature article.
Ordinary/Extraordinary: Exhibition in a Suitcase. Coming to a school near you from Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG).
On a lonely luggage carousel, somewhere in the universe, an artful suitcase (or a suitcase full of art) circulates forever. No-one knows where it is, but we know where it came from. Way back in the 1970s Craft ACT's Inspiration program made this suitcase which then circulated to many schools, until the day came when it never came back. Maybe those garden gnomes who go on world trips visit it, but they never reveal the secrets of their journeys.
So, last Wednesday, Mr Bill Wood, ACT Minister for Urban Services and the Arts, the obvious combination for a lost suitcase, launched two more Ordinary/Extraordinary suitcases full of art into circulation, one red (with objects of design) and one blue (with objects of creative inspiration). Ten local artists have their works encased: Robert Foster, Anna Gianakis, Myles Gostelow, Gilbert Riedelbauch, Carrie Webster, Hamilton Darroch, Bev Hogg, Megan Munro, Jaishree Srinivasan and Indigenous artist Lorraine Webb. From Foster's computer generated Tulip Vase to Webb's literally Handpainted Child's Shoes, these objets d'art have already travelled through diverse cultures and now form a harmonious set of companions, setting off together on the road to education.
"This is an innovative, exciting and hands-on approach to learning, likely to stimulate active participation and dialogue among young people in schools," said the Minister. I found this to be the case at Gold Creek School, who were so keen to billet the exhibition that they have been using the two suitcases for a month already. Melissa Brodis makes sure the visitors are handled in a carpeted area, team-teaching in the middle school Years 6-8. With real art works to see and appreciate close-up, the Year 6 group I observed were learning design concepts beyond my expectation for their age. Then it was back to the art room to put the ideas into practice.
I asked, in view of concerns about teacher overload, how Melissa coped with the touring suitcases, but she explained she had less work to do because the art works spark teaching ideas for all kinds of classes, making preparation and motivation of the students so much easier. At CMAG, Education Officers Lisa De Santis and especially Megan Nicolson, who has taken on the main responsibility for Ordinary/Extraordinary, are getting prepared to be run off their feet. One suitcase disappeared years ago; two more have begun their journey: who can predict how many more will expect to travel in the coming years? Nicolson, Kate Murphy and Catrina Vignando have written a top-flight teachers' guide which fully justifies the grants for this project from artsACT and the Australia Council Audience Development program. I can see lots more grant applications ahead.
Behind the concept of Ordinary/Extraordinary - exploring the extraordinary nature of ordinary things - is the strengthening movement towards education by immersion. Over two decades or so, as researchers like Harvard's Howard Gardner show the many different kinds of intelligences we each have, innovative teaching has taken the students out of the classroom, into the environment where they can learn from more direct experience. Work experience, say, is a huge program across all states in Australia today, after a tentative Participation and Equity Program in the mid-1980s. Museum education - taking students to museums with interactive and dramatic exhibitions - is another aspect of this movement. CMAG's Suitcases take the exhibition to the students for a different kind of interaction.
Immersion doesn't mean drowning. Waving, not drowning, is what it's about: learning to swim in a new environment. It all sounds rather like a holiday - and why not? Why should children whose imaginations dance in the arts not have the opportunity to dive down under, hold their breath and discover new creations?
The initial concept of the travelling suitcase - the one that never came back - came from the Canberra Art Teachers' Association, Craft ACT's Fiona Hooton, Caris Tirrell and Jenny Deves. The Education Kit Teachers' Guide was designed by msquared and Kate Murphy, with Steven Murray's excellent photos. The suitcases, like theatrical roadcases with built in handles and wheels, are by Kenetic Flight Cases and Zeljko Markov designed the internal structure which enfolds the artworks so firmly and delicately. From the outside to the inside the suitcases are an exciting exhibition of art.
Schools in the Canberra region can borrow for free what Bill Wood said is "the sort of 'baggage' I'm happy to be associated with." What better recommendation could you get from the Arts Minister? All teachers need to do is ring Megan Nicolson at CMAG on 6207 1775. If you would like to talk to Craft ACT about more ideas, ring Catrina Vignando on 6292 9333.
If you're a parent, do your bit to encourage more magical mystery suitcase tours for your children - they'll appreciate the experience. And if you know where the original suitcase has gone, please send a postcard.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
On a lonely luggage carousel, somewhere in the universe, an artful suitcase (or a suitcase full of art) circulates forever. No-one knows where it is, but we know where it came from. Way back in the 1970s Craft ACT's Inspiration program made this suitcase which then circulated to many schools, until the day came when it never came back. Maybe those garden gnomes who go on world trips visit it, but they never reveal the secrets of their journeys.
So, last Wednesday, Mr Bill Wood, ACT Minister for Urban Services and the Arts, the obvious combination for a lost suitcase, launched two more Ordinary/Extraordinary suitcases full of art into circulation, one red (with objects of design) and one blue (with objects of creative inspiration). Ten local artists have their works encased: Robert Foster, Anna Gianakis, Myles Gostelow, Gilbert Riedelbauch, Carrie Webster, Hamilton Darroch, Bev Hogg, Megan Munro, Jaishree Srinivasan and Indigenous artist Lorraine Webb. From Foster's computer generated Tulip Vase to Webb's literally Handpainted Child's Shoes, these objets d'art have already travelled through diverse cultures and now form a harmonious set of companions, setting off together on the road to education.
"This is an innovative, exciting and hands-on approach to learning, likely to stimulate active participation and dialogue among young people in schools," said the Minister. I found this to be the case at Gold Creek School, who were so keen to billet the exhibition that they have been using the two suitcases for a month already. Melissa Brodis makes sure the visitors are handled in a carpeted area, team-teaching in the middle school Years 6-8. With real art works to see and appreciate close-up, the Year 6 group I observed were learning design concepts beyond my expectation for their age. Then it was back to the art room to put the ideas into practice.
I asked, in view of concerns about teacher overload, how Melissa coped with the touring suitcases, but she explained she had less work to do because the art works spark teaching ideas for all kinds of classes, making preparation and motivation of the students so much easier. At CMAG, Education Officers Lisa De Santis and especially Megan Nicolson, who has taken on the main responsibility for Ordinary/Extraordinary, are getting prepared to be run off their feet. One suitcase disappeared years ago; two more have begun their journey: who can predict how many more will expect to travel in the coming years? Nicolson, Kate Murphy and Catrina Vignando have written a top-flight teachers' guide which fully justifies the grants for this project from artsACT and the Australia Council Audience Development program. I can see lots more grant applications ahead.
Behind the concept of Ordinary/Extraordinary - exploring the extraordinary nature of ordinary things - is the strengthening movement towards education by immersion. Over two decades or so, as researchers like Harvard's Howard Gardner show the many different kinds of intelligences we each have, innovative teaching has taken the students out of the classroom, into the environment where they can learn from more direct experience. Work experience, say, is a huge program across all states in Australia today, after a tentative Participation and Equity Program in the mid-1980s. Museum education - taking students to museums with interactive and dramatic exhibitions - is another aspect of this movement. CMAG's Suitcases take the exhibition to the students for a different kind of interaction.
Immersion doesn't mean drowning. Waving, not drowning, is what it's about: learning to swim in a new environment. It all sounds rather like a holiday - and why not? Why should children whose imaginations dance in the arts not have the opportunity to dive down under, hold their breath and discover new creations?
The initial concept of the travelling suitcase - the one that never came back - came from the Canberra Art Teachers' Association, Craft ACT's Fiona Hooton, Caris Tirrell and Jenny Deves. The Education Kit Teachers' Guide was designed by msquared and Kate Murphy, with Steven Murray's excellent photos. The suitcases, like theatrical roadcases with built in handles and wheels, are by Kenetic Flight Cases and Zeljko Markov designed the internal structure which enfolds the artworks so firmly and delicately. From the outside to the inside the suitcases are an exciting exhibition of art.
Schools in the Canberra region can borrow for free what Bill Wood said is "the sort of 'baggage' I'm happy to be associated with." What better recommendation could you get from the Arts Minister? All teachers need to do is ring Megan Nicolson at CMAG on 6207 1775. If you would like to talk to Craft ACT about more ideas, ring Catrina Vignando on 6292 9333.
If you're a parent, do your bit to encourage more magical mystery suitcase tours for your children - they'll appreciate the experience. And if you know where the original suitcase has gone, please send a postcard.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 9 August 2002
2002: Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson
Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson. Free Rain Theatre Company directed and designed by Kelly Somes. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre August 7-24 Wed-Sat 8pm.
Hotel Sorrento has been compared to Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, and seems to have the same kind of appeal to amateur companies. It's a seductive play about societal change in a backwater played out in a family of three sisters, bonded together yet fighting to break their bonds. Written in 1990, it remains an iconic Australian drama.
Somes claims to have set the play in its period, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain: a point which is important to the politics of the play. At the same time, though, to deal with the family's memories and emotional conflicts, she has seen the characters as costumed figures against a blank background, making the whole set white except for the symbolic painting of "Hotel Sorrento" (in which all of the older generation pictured have now died). Though this is ostensibly a good idea, the contrast in the first act between scenes in British London and the Australian beach village of Sorrento is not made as obvious as the drama demands. Or, on the other hand, a much more stylised set, using perhaps something like a Whiteley painting as a model, might have given the design the visual life it needs.
Free Rain intends to be a company of development for young people between amateur and professional levels, and Somes' directing here has worked quite well. The key roles of the sisters (Bronwyn Grannall as Hilary, Helen Tsongas as Meg, Lucy Goleby as Pippa) and Hilary's son Troy (Rhys Holden) made an effective ensemble, though I couldn't see Wal (David Ives), with an odd accent and manner, as these Australian girls' father. Characterisations were intelligent, though early in the season showed how much more training is needed for the full depth of the relationships to have immediate impact from the opening moment. By the second half energy was on the rise and dramatic action and silences began to make their points.
Good intentions and the sincerity of this production are strong reasons for seeing this play which won the NSW Premier's Award in 1991 and established Hannie Rayson in the Australian canon.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Hotel Sorrento has been compared to Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, and seems to have the same kind of appeal to amateur companies. It's a seductive play about societal change in a backwater played out in a family of three sisters, bonded together yet fighting to break their bonds. Written in 1990, it remains an iconic Australian drama.
Somes claims to have set the play in its period, when Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain: a point which is important to the politics of the play. At the same time, though, to deal with the family's memories and emotional conflicts, she has seen the characters as costumed figures against a blank background, making the whole set white except for the symbolic painting of "Hotel Sorrento" (in which all of the older generation pictured have now died). Though this is ostensibly a good idea, the contrast in the first act between scenes in British London and the Australian beach village of Sorrento is not made as obvious as the drama demands. Or, on the other hand, a much more stylised set, using perhaps something like a Whiteley painting as a model, might have given the design the visual life it needs.
Free Rain intends to be a company of development for young people between amateur and professional levels, and Somes' directing here has worked quite well. The key roles of the sisters (Bronwyn Grannall as Hilary, Helen Tsongas as Meg, Lucy Goleby as Pippa) and Hilary's son Troy (Rhys Holden) made an effective ensemble, though I couldn't see Wal (David Ives), with an odd accent and manner, as these Australian girls' father. Characterisations were intelligent, though early in the season showed how much more training is needed for the full depth of the relationships to have immediate impact from the opening moment. By the second half energy was on the rise and dramatic action and silences began to make their points.
Good intentions and the sincerity of this production are strong reasons for seeing this play which won the NSW Premier's Award in 1991 and established Hannie Rayson in the Australian canon.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 29 July 2002
2002: The Dancing Orchestra by Steven Bailey
The Dancing Orchestra. Script and music by Steven Bailey. The Acting Company at Hawk Theatre, Narrabundah College, July 23-27.
"If we hold onto the feeling, maybe we'll find our way out of the darkness" the young people said, in this quite fascinating tone poem. It brought to mind certain oft seen political faces, elected supposedly to represent the people: Yes, indeed - where have all the feelings gone?
Pragmatism is anathema to these recent and current students of Narrabundah College. The Acting Company more usually consists of ex-college students, like Steven Bailey, now at the School of Music. This time, though, it was very appropriate to have an even mix, giving the chance for the younger people to explore their need to understand the nature of the darkness and the light in a theatrical way conceived by someone just a year or two older. Rather than the more usual "workshop taken to performance level", with the inevitable surging group movement around stand-out figures seeking to tell a tale of conflict of good and evil, Bailey has produced an interesting philosophical study extending into how, or whether, art itself - in music, poetry and dance - resolves the apparent conflict.
A small very well-disciplined ensemble of piano, keyboard, percussion and strings sometimes led and sometimes accompanied the spoken modern verse representing a range of characters expressing contrasting views of reality, while two dancers commented on the action, and sometimes took the lead, using imagery in movement. The effect is modernist without being too post-modern: although there is no standard plot, there is a feeling of a quest reaching a conclusion as the three artistic elements blend together.
The key question is, "What does 'now' sound like?" It is "soft and beautiful" for the romantic young man. For the more clinically observant young woman, sitting by a stream, the conclusion is gradually reached that she sees both the stillness of her reflection and the movement of the water at the same time: this is her 'now'. There is, too, a self-serving character who cynically observes these mystical flounderings, yet cannot herself escape the need to search for understanding.
I hope Steven Bailey goes on to greater art: surely he will never encage people in razor wire. He's made a good beginning in The Dancing Orchestra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"If we hold onto the feeling, maybe we'll find our way out of the darkness" the young people said, in this quite fascinating tone poem. It brought to mind certain oft seen political faces, elected supposedly to represent the people: Yes, indeed - where have all the feelings gone?
Pragmatism is anathema to these recent and current students of Narrabundah College. The Acting Company more usually consists of ex-college students, like Steven Bailey, now at the School of Music. This time, though, it was very appropriate to have an even mix, giving the chance for the younger people to explore their need to understand the nature of the darkness and the light in a theatrical way conceived by someone just a year or two older. Rather than the more usual "workshop taken to performance level", with the inevitable surging group movement around stand-out figures seeking to tell a tale of conflict of good and evil, Bailey has produced an interesting philosophical study extending into how, or whether, art itself - in music, poetry and dance - resolves the apparent conflict.
A small very well-disciplined ensemble of piano, keyboard, percussion and strings sometimes led and sometimes accompanied the spoken modern verse representing a range of characters expressing contrasting views of reality, while two dancers commented on the action, and sometimes took the lead, using imagery in movement. The effect is modernist without being too post-modern: although there is no standard plot, there is a feeling of a quest reaching a conclusion as the three artistic elements blend together.
The key question is, "What does 'now' sound like?" It is "soft and beautiful" for the romantic young man. For the more clinically observant young woman, sitting by a stream, the conclusion is gradually reached that she sees both the stillness of her reflection and the movement of the water at the same time: this is her 'now'. There is, too, a self-serving character who cynically observes these mystical flounderings, yet cannot herself escape the need to search for understanding.
I hope Steven Bailey goes on to greater art: surely he will never encage people in razor wire. He's made a good beginning in The Dancing Orchestra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 19 July 2002
2002: Paipa - Exhibition at National Museum of Australia
Paipa has replaced the Alfred Haddon Collection of Torres Strait Islander treasures in the First Australians Gallery at the National Museum of Australia. In 5 sections - The Coming of the Light, Pearling/Fishing Industry, Cane Cutting Industry, World War II, and Young People and their Environment - Paipa is about the winds of change. The aim is to show how "the four directions of the wind ... drew people to and from the Torres Strait, and how the beliefs, customs and traditions of the Torres Strait Islanders have been influenced by migration and industry."
In The Coming of the Light you'll see the "Mother Hubbard" dresses, which covered women's nakedness (and became wonderful colour creations). Have a close look at an old diver's suit and imagine how claustrophobic it must have been fathoms under water - you had to bend your knees and keep your back straight to pick up the pearl shell. If you leaned forward the headpiece was so heavy you might not be able to stand up again. And what callouses your hands would have grown using the simple hooked machetes to cut tons of cane a day!
World War II relics still litter the islands, and here there are bits of planes and many photos. While modern young Islanders are as up to date in sunglasses as anywhere in Australia.
The exhibition is a deliberate shift from an anthropologist's view of Islander people to a presentation of the people's experience through their own words, photographs and iconic objects since the Rev Samuel McFarlane of the London Missionary Society introduced Christianity on 1 July 1871, a date now celebrated each year by Islanders throughout Australia.
So what should we expect from such an exhibition? A strong positive appreciation of the people's culture surviving all that was thrown in their way, I imagine.
I certainly found an accentuation on the positive achievements, but not enough about the forces which might have destroyed them. We need to know these truths.
Dawn Casey, NMA director, has done the right thing by employing an Islander, Leilani Bin-Juda, to curate the exhibit, and she has done a great job collecting materials, including people's stories. But I fear that the legacy of the old Queensland Department of Native Affairs still casts an awful shadow. We are given only snippets of the dangers of pearlshell diving and the hardships of cane cutting. So I sought more from Uncle Seaman Dan, of Darnley Island and Harry Pitt from Mackay.
From them I heard stories that should be in the exhibit. Seaman Dan told me of the pearlshell diving bank off Darnley, more than 30 fathoms down, where an unknown number of young men have been caught in the reef, in their bulbous divers' suits, while their supply boats, pushed by tides and winds, shifted beyond the reach of safety lines and air hoses. From that depth, he says, you must come up slowly, stopping to acclimatise at 5 or 6 levels. That's with your air hose attached. Father Dalton Bon from Torres Strait said at the opening last Monday that nothing happens by accident: everything is part of God's plan. Well, I wondered about such belief when I heard Seaman Dan's story.
I found that Harry Pitt has also wondered since his life as a cane cutter and merchant seaman has taken him around the world and among people of many cultures. If you leave the cane too long, he said, the molasses start oozing out. So, I asked, you get fumes or something? No, it's the bees. You go to take hold of the cane to cut it, and you get a handful of bees. Without a glove....
I showed Harry the description, quoted from someone named Jeremy Beckett, about 1947, when the pearling industry was declining and "the Department [of Native Affairs allowed] 80 men to go down to the cane fields where there was a shortage of canecutters .... The experiment was successful and repeated several years running." Their wages were paid straight into the bank, explained Harry. They could ask for a sub, say £2, but that's all they got. Harry was fortunate that his family were evacuated during the war, which was why he was brought up in Mackay. This meant he was a free man and could go contract canecutting in 1960 on the same terms as other contractors. But people who remained on the Islands, and of course other Aboriginal people like those on Palm Island, were still controlled by the infamous Department.
I thought, too, that Islander Eddie Mabo's taking on 200 years of British law, and winning, should be mentioned, and a link made to the Rights Area in the First Australians Gallery. Maybe many people feel that a museum should just be a nice place to enjoy the remains of the past, but director Dawn Casey said she is proud that "The Museum in fact is the only one which presents Torres Strait Islander culture in the national context." The exhibit has a 3 year run, so I hope more stories like Seaman Dan's and Harry Pitt's will be brought in to show us the total picture. Then we will really see the amazing resilience of Islander culture.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
In The Coming of the Light you'll see the "Mother Hubbard" dresses, which covered women's nakedness (and became wonderful colour creations). Have a close look at an old diver's suit and imagine how claustrophobic it must have been fathoms under water - you had to bend your knees and keep your back straight to pick up the pearl shell. If you leaned forward the headpiece was so heavy you might not be able to stand up again. And what callouses your hands would have grown using the simple hooked machetes to cut tons of cane a day!
World War II relics still litter the islands, and here there are bits of planes and many photos. While modern young Islanders are as up to date in sunglasses as anywhere in Australia.
The exhibition is a deliberate shift from an anthropologist's view of Islander people to a presentation of the people's experience through their own words, photographs and iconic objects since the Rev Samuel McFarlane of the London Missionary Society introduced Christianity on 1 July 1871, a date now celebrated each year by Islanders throughout Australia.
So what should we expect from such an exhibition? A strong positive appreciation of the people's culture surviving all that was thrown in their way, I imagine.
I certainly found an accentuation on the positive achievements, but not enough about the forces which might have destroyed them. We need to know these truths.
Dawn Casey, NMA director, has done the right thing by employing an Islander, Leilani Bin-Juda, to curate the exhibit, and she has done a great job collecting materials, including people's stories. But I fear that the legacy of the old Queensland Department of Native Affairs still casts an awful shadow. We are given only snippets of the dangers of pearlshell diving and the hardships of cane cutting. So I sought more from Uncle Seaman Dan, of Darnley Island and Harry Pitt from Mackay.
From them I heard stories that should be in the exhibit. Seaman Dan told me of the pearlshell diving bank off Darnley, more than 30 fathoms down, where an unknown number of young men have been caught in the reef, in their bulbous divers' suits, while their supply boats, pushed by tides and winds, shifted beyond the reach of safety lines and air hoses. From that depth, he says, you must come up slowly, stopping to acclimatise at 5 or 6 levels. That's with your air hose attached. Father Dalton Bon from Torres Strait said at the opening last Monday that nothing happens by accident: everything is part of God's plan. Well, I wondered about such belief when I heard Seaman Dan's story.
I found that Harry Pitt has also wondered since his life as a cane cutter and merchant seaman has taken him around the world and among people of many cultures. If you leave the cane too long, he said, the molasses start oozing out. So, I asked, you get fumes or something? No, it's the bees. You go to take hold of the cane to cut it, and you get a handful of bees. Without a glove....
I showed Harry the description, quoted from someone named Jeremy Beckett, about 1947, when the pearling industry was declining and "the Department [of Native Affairs allowed] 80 men to go down to the cane fields where there was a shortage of canecutters .... The experiment was successful and repeated several years running." Their wages were paid straight into the bank, explained Harry. They could ask for a sub, say £2, but that's all they got. Harry was fortunate that his family were evacuated during the war, which was why he was brought up in Mackay. This meant he was a free man and could go contract canecutting in 1960 on the same terms as other contractors. But people who remained on the Islands, and of course other Aboriginal people like those on Palm Island, were still controlled by the infamous Department.
I thought, too, that Islander Eddie Mabo's taking on 200 years of British law, and winning, should be mentioned, and a link made to the Rights Area in the First Australians Gallery. Maybe many people feel that a museum should just be a nice place to enjoy the remains of the past, but director Dawn Casey said she is proud that "The Museum in fact is the only one which presents Torres Strait Islander culture in the national context." The exhibit has a 3 year run, so I hope more stories like Seaman Dan's and Harry Pitt's will be brought in to show us the total picture. Then we will really see the amazing resilience of Islander culture.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 17 July 2002
2002: Warehouse Circus
Warehouse Circus directed by Skye Morton at Belconnen Community Centre July 17-20, 7pm. Bookings 6251 4007.
If there's one thing I like to see when young people perform on stage, it's a genuine sense of enjoyment and community. Even though Warehouse Circus can only offer part-time training, it was pleasing to watch people not just going through the motions of circus exercises, but putting on an entertaining show.
Skye Morton, herself a student with Warehouse back in 1993 and a professional performer in the intervening years, demonstrated the difference between circus and gymnastics. Where gymnastics is about getting every move correct, circus is about knowing how to turn a dropped dumbbell or a fall from a balancing act into a humorous part of the show. These young performers kept up a warmth of feeling in the audience in the tradition of the great circus clowns. Each one had their own character whom we got to know well. They even built in deliberate "mistakes" as part of the comedy so that it wasn't always easy to tell if a real mistake had been made. This is excellent theatrical thinking.
I was also impressed by the originality of many of the moves, especially in the multi-person balances where there was a real sense of exploring new positions and interesting shapes. This kind of work requires a strong feeling of trust, which is the basis for the continued life of Warehouse Circus over the years since it began in 1991. In true circus tradition some families have become long-term participants, and the feast on stage after opening night was certainly a community affair.
This is not elitist theatre. It's entertainment done with sincerity - and hard work on the young people's part. Good to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If there's one thing I like to see when young people perform on stage, it's a genuine sense of enjoyment and community. Even though Warehouse Circus can only offer part-time training, it was pleasing to watch people not just going through the motions of circus exercises, but putting on an entertaining show.
Skye Morton, herself a student with Warehouse back in 1993 and a professional performer in the intervening years, demonstrated the difference between circus and gymnastics. Where gymnastics is about getting every move correct, circus is about knowing how to turn a dropped dumbbell or a fall from a balancing act into a humorous part of the show. These young performers kept up a warmth of feeling in the audience in the tradition of the great circus clowns. Each one had their own character whom we got to know well. They even built in deliberate "mistakes" as part of the comedy so that it wasn't always easy to tell if a real mistake had been made. This is excellent theatrical thinking.
I was also impressed by the originality of many of the moves, especially in the multi-person balances where there was a real sense of exploring new positions and interesting shapes. This kind of work requires a strong feeling of trust, which is the basis for the continued life of Warehouse Circus over the years since it began in 1991. In true circus tradition some families have become long-term participants, and the feast on stage after opening night was certainly a community affair.
This is not elitist theatre. It's entertainment done with sincerity - and hard work on the young people's part. Good to see.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 2 July 2002
2002: Odyssey by Andreas Litras and John Bolton
Odyssey created by Andreas Litras and John Bolton. Performed by Andreas Litras. Directed by John Bolton for Anthos Theatre at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, July 2-6, 8pm.
If you are of Greek background, you must not miss this Odyssey. If your family has a migrant history, Odyssey will echo in your mind like the echoes in the giant's cave created by this excellent theatre artist, Andreas Litras. If you are an indigenous Australian, this mythic story of journey, adversity and final homecoming is a symbol of a history still seeking that necessary resolution. In other words, no-one should miss this play.
I could write a treatise about the complexity of the layers of theatrical meaning created by just one performer in 80 minutes; about the wonderful interplay between comedy and tragedy; about the history of epic storytelling represented here; about the melding of Grotowski and Brecht. Probably I would focus on the influence of the French mime Lecoq who trained John Bolton, who trained Litras to create so much with so little.
But this play doesn't need academic justification: children on opening night were fascinated, laughed and felt the power of the story of migration as much as the theatre professionals and all the wide range of people there. It was a wonderful joke for the Greek stage cleaner, who preferred tv because you can switch off what you don't like, to pick out the professional theatre-goer, sitting at the end of the row near the door, ready to do a bunk. Must be intelligent, therefore must be Greek.
– But no, said Domenic Mico, I'm Italian!
– Well, really? I think you'd better go and ask your mother!
This was serendipity, since it was Mico who had originally tried to bring the play to Canberra's Multicultural Festival, couldn't raise the funds, but did manage a one-off for the 20th Anniversary of the Migrant Resource Centre. He claims that even the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs showed an emotional response.
This play, and the photo exhibition The Sea and Foreign Lands by Simon Cuthbert, does the Canberra Theatre Centre proud. This is theatre with humour, guts and depth which everyone can appreciate - a rare diamond cut with taste and precision.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If you are of Greek background, you must not miss this Odyssey. If your family has a migrant history, Odyssey will echo in your mind like the echoes in the giant's cave created by this excellent theatre artist, Andreas Litras. If you are an indigenous Australian, this mythic story of journey, adversity and final homecoming is a symbol of a history still seeking that necessary resolution. In other words, no-one should miss this play.
I could write a treatise about the complexity of the layers of theatrical meaning created by just one performer in 80 minutes; about the wonderful interplay between comedy and tragedy; about the history of epic storytelling represented here; about the melding of Grotowski and Brecht. Probably I would focus on the influence of the French mime Lecoq who trained John Bolton, who trained Litras to create so much with so little.
But this play doesn't need academic justification: children on opening night were fascinated, laughed and felt the power of the story of migration as much as the theatre professionals and all the wide range of people there. It was a wonderful joke for the Greek stage cleaner, who preferred tv because you can switch off what you don't like, to pick out the professional theatre-goer, sitting at the end of the row near the door, ready to do a bunk. Must be intelligent, therefore must be Greek.
– But no, said Domenic Mico, I'm Italian!
– Well, really? I think you'd better go and ask your mother!
This was serendipity, since it was Mico who had originally tried to bring the play to Canberra's Multicultural Festival, couldn't raise the funds, but did manage a one-off for the 20th Anniversary of the Migrant Resource Centre. He claims that even the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs showed an emotional response.
This play, and the photo exhibition The Sea and Foreign Lands by Simon Cuthbert, does the Canberra Theatre Centre proud. This is theatre with humour, guts and depth which everyone can appreciate - a rare diamond cut with taste and precision.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 29 June 2002
2002: Shortis & Simpson: Topical Heatwave
Shortis & Simpson: Topical Heatwave at the Kurrajong Hotel. Supper and show, Friday nights only, June 28 - July 26, 9pm (show starts 9.15).
You thought it was Red Nose Day last week, but no ... Brown Nose Day was celebrated on Friday night with a twinge of Texan hoe-down, performed by Markie Latham's favourite dancer at the White House. Markie himself came in for a bit of stick, to the tune of Little Peter Rabbit, flip-flapping in a conflict situation with a certain Tony Abbott. This involved the audience singing along with actions, of course. Typical Shortis & Simpson lampooning - all good fun so long as you don't take your politics too seriously.
Yet this entertaining 2002 contribution to the Shortis & Simpson tradition of annual political commentary to mark the winter recess of Parliament includes a genuinely affecting song of an asylum seeker which begins "He could have been a doctor in Afghanistan..." In the form of a folk revival song, this one would be well worth recording.
And, for an encore in the Chifley Restaurant, the song of the Death of Chifley is full of irony in today's political scene. Could Howard sincerely say of a political opponent as Menzies did of Chifley: "He was a great friend of mine, and of yours. A True Australian." This to an audience of mixed political persuasions. And where does Mark Latham stand, talking on television of how he hates the other side?
Though S&S talk of satire in their show, most of the humour is too light for such a bite. It's the serious numbers which crunch. They're the ones you remember next day, as you realise how Australia is losing its tolerance in a relaxed and comfortable political fog.
Other images do remain, though. The encouragement of women parliamentarians to build a 100 cubicle toilet block for women (since Old Parliament House had no women's toilets when women finally got there in 1943). John Gorton, besotted with drink and Gotto, singing his version of "I did it my way" on his death bed. And the big question for Brown Nose Day: "I want to know how Jeanette got him through (US) customs in his pet box?"
And the International Hotel School's supper was very nice too.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
You thought it was Red Nose Day last week, but no ... Brown Nose Day was celebrated on Friday night with a twinge of Texan hoe-down, performed by Markie Latham's favourite dancer at the White House. Markie himself came in for a bit of stick, to the tune of Little Peter Rabbit, flip-flapping in a conflict situation with a certain Tony Abbott. This involved the audience singing along with actions, of course. Typical Shortis & Simpson lampooning - all good fun so long as you don't take your politics too seriously.
Yet this entertaining 2002 contribution to the Shortis & Simpson tradition of annual political commentary to mark the winter recess of Parliament includes a genuinely affecting song of an asylum seeker which begins "He could have been a doctor in Afghanistan..." In the form of a folk revival song, this one would be well worth recording.
And, for an encore in the Chifley Restaurant, the song of the Death of Chifley is full of irony in today's political scene. Could Howard sincerely say of a political opponent as Menzies did of Chifley: "He was a great friend of mine, and of yours. A True Australian." This to an audience of mixed political persuasions. And where does Mark Latham stand, talking on television of how he hates the other side?
Though S&S talk of satire in their show, most of the humour is too light for such a bite. It's the serious numbers which crunch. They're the ones you remember next day, as you realise how Australia is losing its tolerance in a relaxed and comfortable political fog.
Other images do remain, though. The encouragement of women parliamentarians to build a 100 cubicle toilet block for women (since Old Parliament House had no women's toilets when women finally got there in 1943). John Gorton, besotted with drink and Gotto, singing his version of "I did it my way" on his death bed. And the big question for Brown Nose Day: "I want to know how Jeanette got him through (US) customs in his pet box?"
And the International Hotel School's supper was very nice too.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 28 June 2002
2002: Fame: The Musical
Fame: The Musical. Conceived by David De Silva, book by Jose Fernandez, lyrics by Jacques Levy, music by Steve Margoshes. G-String Productions at The Street Theatre June 27-? 8pm.
The 4 actors I think would have passed in Fame School are Renay Hart as Mabel Washington, Carrol Oormilla as Miss Sherman, Roxane Ruse as Serena Katz and Jessica Taylor as Carmen Diaz. Now I've offended the other 26, let me say that this production of a peculiarly difficult example of musical theatre rocks and rolls along very nicely. On opening night the actors had a strong sense of working together and the orchestra was excellent (plus terrific drumming by Olivia Harkin as Grace 'Lambchops' Lamb) and a good time was had by all on and off the stage.
Fame is, of course, a nightmare for non- or semi-professionals because the student characters are supposed to be young, full of themselves and untrained, but the acting, singing, dancing and musicianship required to create these characters on stage convincingly has to be top-notch. In addition, the script focusses too briefly on too many characters, so making each character stand out requires a high degree of stage presence. This is the quality that each of my 'cum laude' actors had: you felt you had to watch them.
Musical theatre has begun to take its own place in theatre training in recent times. As standards inevitably rise, community based companies like G-String will need to work at higher level skills on stage and improving technical standards. In this show dance and choreography needed to be much more vibrant and original. I hope real New Yorkers close their eyes for the Dancin' on the Sidewalk number. Not all the singing was strong and precisely pitched, and only some numbers were arranged with really dramatic harmonies and cross-rhythms which are essential to American culture. Sound quality has to be a problem when every actor and musician is miked and there is no way enough money for top of the line equipment. Fortunately Chris Neal did well to listen to the flat quality in the first half and get much better definition of the voices for the second half on opening night.
But ignore my quibbles: go for Fame and enjoy.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The 4 actors I think would have passed in Fame School are Renay Hart as Mabel Washington, Carrol Oormilla as Miss Sherman, Roxane Ruse as Serena Katz and Jessica Taylor as Carmen Diaz. Now I've offended the other 26, let me say that this production of a peculiarly difficult example of musical theatre rocks and rolls along very nicely. On opening night the actors had a strong sense of working together and the orchestra was excellent (plus terrific drumming by Olivia Harkin as Grace 'Lambchops' Lamb) and a good time was had by all on and off the stage.
Fame is, of course, a nightmare for non- or semi-professionals because the student characters are supposed to be young, full of themselves and untrained, but the acting, singing, dancing and musicianship required to create these characters on stage convincingly has to be top-notch. In addition, the script focusses too briefly on too many characters, so making each character stand out requires a high degree of stage presence. This is the quality that each of my 'cum laude' actors had: you felt you had to watch them.
Musical theatre has begun to take its own place in theatre training in recent times. As standards inevitably rise, community based companies like G-String will need to work at higher level skills on stage and improving technical standards. In this show dance and choreography needed to be much more vibrant and original. I hope real New Yorkers close their eyes for the Dancin' on the Sidewalk number. Not all the singing was strong and precisely pitched, and only some numbers were arranged with really dramatic harmonies and cross-rhythms which are essential to American culture. Sound quality has to be a problem when every actor and musician is miked and there is no way enough money for top of the line equipment. Fortunately Chris Neal did well to listen to the flat quality in the first half and get much better definition of the voices for the second half on opening night.
But ignore my quibbles: go for Fame and enjoy.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 26 June 2002
2002: 2 Pianos 4 Hands - A Play on Music by Ted Dykstra & Richard Greenblatt.
2 Pianos 4 Hands - A Play on Music by Ted Dykstra & Richard Greenblatt. Directed by Ted Dykstra. Associate Director (Australia), David Lynch. StageWorks in association with Black Swan Theatre. Canberra Playhouse June 25-29 8pm.
This is an autobiographical story of the failure of Canadians Dykstra and Greenblatt to become the great world-renowned pianists that their fathers planned for them. Fortunately the authors have a largely comic view of their lives, becoming successful actors and directors, including playing themselves in this 90 minute two hander.
For the Australian tour, the only two actors who were available and could match the piano playing skills required were Edward Simpson, playing Ted, and Jonathan Gavin as Richard. Both are excellent. Producer Tony Reagan is still keeping his fingers crossed against sickness and accident after 2 years with the show.
2 Pianos is like a concert production of a play. 2 grand pianos are the focus of a simple set with 2 back lit screens. All the characters - Ted, Richard, their parents, and a myriad of piano teachers and examiners - are played by the actor-pianists in an episodic series of vignettes, smoothly strung together without the need for scene or costume changing. Each scene has its appropriate solo and duo piano performance with Bach before and after a bewildering array of classical and pop pieces.
While the characters were still young children, the mixed music somehow reminded me of the comic orchestral concerts put on by Gerard Hoffnung (many decades ago). I began to think that music as the light fantastic was as much as the show would offer. But when it came to the scenes in which each young man, at the age of 17 or so, was confronted by the truth that though they were talented they simply were not going to make it as concert pianists, I certainly felt for them - and wondered about the rights of well-meaning pushy fathers - at least for a few minutes before light-heartedness took over once more.
Though not a great play, 2 Pianos is a neatly constructed musical comedy of a quite different kind, with instant identification for anyone who has faced an audition and, like most of us, failed to become world-renowned.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
This is an autobiographical story of the failure of Canadians Dykstra and Greenblatt to become the great world-renowned pianists that their fathers planned for them. Fortunately the authors have a largely comic view of their lives, becoming successful actors and directors, including playing themselves in this 90 minute two hander.
For the Australian tour, the only two actors who were available and could match the piano playing skills required were Edward Simpson, playing Ted, and Jonathan Gavin as Richard. Both are excellent. Producer Tony Reagan is still keeping his fingers crossed against sickness and accident after 2 years with the show.
2 Pianos is like a concert production of a play. 2 grand pianos are the focus of a simple set with 2 back lit screens. All the characters - Ted, Richard, their parents, and a myriad of piano teachers and examiners - are played by the actor-pianists in an episodic series of vignettes, smoothly strung together without the need for scene or costume changing. Each scene has its appropriate solo and duo piano performance with Bach before and after a bewildering array of classical and pop pieces.
While the characters were still young children, the mixed music somehow reminded me of the comic orchestral concerts put on by Gerard Hoffnung (many decades ago). I began to think that music as the light fantastic was as much as the show would offer. But when it came to the scenes in which each young man, at the age of 17 or so, was confronted by the truth that though they were talented they simply were not going to make it as concert pianists, I certainly felt for them - and wondered about the rights of well-meaning pushy fathers - at least for a few minutes before light-heartedness took over once more.
Though not a great play, 2 Pianos is a neatly constructed musical comedy of a quite different kind, with instant identification for anyone who has faced an audition and, like most of us, failed to become world-renowned.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 20 June 2002
2002: One God, Two Salesmen & Three Humans
One God, Two Salesmen & Three Humans. Opiate Productions at The Street Theatre Studio, June 20-29.
Such a rebellious name for such a tame little group of amateur thespians. Opiate - another new theatre group which Canberra seems to spawn every week or two - claim that in November they will put on The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. Well, they are going to need a lot more theatrical guts and basic skills by then than they presented last Thursday.
The show is in a cabaret format with pre-recorded music (Dave Brubeck, for some odd reason) in between items. There were 3 short plays - Business Lunch by Sean Slater, We Can Get Them For You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman and Man & God, Having a Few Beers & Talking Things Over by Jeffery Scott. I'm guessing that they are all British undergraduate revue items, played here quite nicely. Very pleasantly, in fact. So agreeably indeed that I would like to coin the term Theatre of Innocence for this production.
Though Wholesale was quite a clever script, following the logic of larger sales being cheaper per unit, applied by a company offering to dispose of mammals, including people (finally costing nothing per unit to kill all the world's population), overall rather than an opiate night much of it was soporific. Even live music filling a 30 minute interval in a 90 minute show, quite tunefully done by a group of young men currently called King Prawn & The Seafood Gang - but apparently called something else last week (an in-joke for 2 people in the audience) - only kept me awake because I had a second coffee while they sang.
I suppose I should not expect too much from a group who describe themselves as "a bunch of thespians who like a few laughs, some pretty lights and a good show", but then I only got a few laughs, the lights were very basic, and the show was mildly so-so. Perhaps it's nice not to have to face confrontational theatre, but I would like young bloods to challenge me a little. I shudder when I think of the upcoming Pinter.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Such a rebellious name for such a tame little group of amateur thespians. Opiate - another new theatre group which Canberra seems to spawn every week or two - claim that in November they will put on The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. Well, they are going to need a lot more theatrical guts and basic skills by then than they presented last Thursday.
The show is in a cabaret format with pre-recorded music (Dave Brubeck, for some odd reason) in between items. There were 3 short plays - Business Lunch by Sean Slater, We Can Get Them For You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman and Man & God, Having a Few Beers & Talking Things Over by Jeffery Scott. I'm guessing that they are all British undergraduate revue items, played here quite nicely. Very pleasantly, in fact. So agreeably indeed that I would like to coin the term Theatre of Innocence for this production.
Though Wholesale was quite a clever script, following the logic of larger sales being cheaper per unit, applied by a company offering to dispose of mammals, including people (finally costing nothing per unit to kill all the world's population), overall rather than an opiate night much of it was soporific. Even live music filling a 30 minute interval in a 90 minute show, quite tunefully done by a group of young men currently called King Prawn & The Seafood Gang - but apparently called something else last week (an in-joke for 2 people in the audience) - only kept me awake because I had a second coffee while they sang.
I suppose I should not expect too much from a group who describe themselves as "a bunch of thespians who like a few laughs, some pretty lights and a good show", but then I only got a few laughs, the lights were very basic, and the show was mildly so-so. Perhaps it's nice not to have to face confrontational theatre, but I would like young bloods to challenge me a little. I shudder when I think of the upcoming Pinter.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2002: The Learning Curve by John Foulcher
The Learning Curve based on the poetry collection by John Foulcher. Huitker Movement Theatre (HMT) directed by George Huitker at Theatre 3, June 19-30. Bookings: 6257 1950.
I felt thoroughly immersed in a Barrier Reef night of the big spawn watching this group movement imagist representation of Foulcher's new book of verse, launched just before the show opened last Wednesday. 41 sticky and confrontational poems narrate the life, death and resurrection of a Catholic secondary school, all in 90 minutes.
Life is sex and sexuality, in action and in denial. Death is not only of natural causes, but sometimes the result of human neglect and macho stupidity. As a cynical atheist from way back, I really had to wonder why anyone bothers about God's intentions any more in the face of the fact of our animal nature and the regular tragedy of death.
I noted that a joke by one teacher about leaving the Church and going over to the Anglicans received a roar of laughter. Huitker, Foulcher and HMT cast, crew and front-of-house are closely connected with Radford College. Does this mean that the school represented on stage is a satire at one remove from the daily experiences of staff and students in this apparently upright College, with its neat uniforms and landscaped grounds next door to the University? I just wondered.
From a theatrical viewpoint, Huitker's work in choreographing the movement and creating imagery seems to me too constrained by the need to maintain the narrative. Perhaps he should now move out into a wider theatrical scene. His work is interesting, often original, but needs more discipline of form if it is to match the best professional work we nowadays often see around Australia.
For example, I would love to see Huitker spend some time with, say, Bangarra Dance Company: then I think we would see a shift into stronger allegorical and interpretative movement, where narrative and emotional messages meld. In The Learning Curve it is Foulcher's writing which holds the piece together, and the performance is well worth seeing as a result. But there is more to come from HMT, I hope.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I felt thoroughly immersed in a Barrier Reef night of the big spawn watching this group movement imagist representation of Foulcher's new book of verse, launched just before the show opened last Wednesday. 41 sticky and confrontational poems narrate the life, death and resurrection of a Catholic secondary school, all in 90 minutes.
Life is sex and sexuality, in action and in denial. Death is not only of natural causes, but sometimes the result of human neglect and macho stupidity. As a cynical atheist from way back, I really had to wonder why anyone bothers about God's intentions any more in the face of the fact of our animal nature and the regular tragedy of death.
I noted that a joke by one teacher about leaving the Church and going over to the Anglicans received a roar of laughter. Huitker, Foulcher and HMT cast, crew and front-of-house are closely connected with Radford College. Does this mean that the school represented on stage is a satire at one remove from the daily experiences of staff and students in this apparently upright College, with its neat uniforms and landscaped grounds next door to the University? I just wondered.
From a theatrical viewpoint, Huitker's work in choreographing the movement and creating imagery seems to me too constrained by the need to maintain the narrative. Perhaps he should now move out into a wider theatrical scene. His work is interesting, often original, but needs more discipline of form if it is to match the best professional work we nowadays often see around Australia.
For example, I would love to see Huitker spend some time with, say, Bangarra Dance Company: then I think we would see a shift into stronger allegorical and interpretative movement, where narrative and emotional messages meld. In The Learning Curve it is Foulcher's writing which holds the piece together, and the performance is well worth seeing as a result. But there is more to come from HMT, I hope.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 15 June 2002
2002: 28th Old Time Music Hall 2002
THEATRE BY FRANK McKONE (DINKUS)
28th Old Time Music Hall 2002. Canberra Repertory at The Playhouse, June 13-22, 8pm.
Director Cathie Clelland and choreographer Katelyn Keys have dragged this show into the modern world this year - a bit of a worry because it might go on for another 28 years.
Music Hall is an annual ritual which at times in the past has been both a pale imitation of the original specifically English genre, and also too close to the sexism and sentimentality of a century ago. This year's show deftly fillets the sexist bones from the traditional material, and surprisingly achieves genuine sentiment. A highlight is the presentation of the song Broken Doll by Julie McElhone Hayes as a puppet. "You made me think you loved me in return: / Don't tell me you were fooling after all! / For if you turn away, you'll be sorry some day / You left behind a broken doll" was so quietly and poignantly sung, with strings attached, that no man in the audience could sit there unashamed.
It was good to see the multicultural section - an ethnic Aussie dance scene, The Snake Gully Swagger, with embarrassing reminders for me of the Tibooburra Hospital Ball circa 1963, where the band consisted of piano, trumpet and drums and every dance was played in 3/4 time. The sense of fun, irony and even true satire has filled in all the gaps of Music Hall as I've experienced it before, and indeed the rendition late in the show of musical director Andrew Kay's The Bliss of the Backyard Burkes showed that satirical commentary on our present lives is more than acceptable in this almost ceremonial event. The representation of Parliament House as the one feature which broke the prime rule of Marion and Walter that nothing should be built on hills, topped by an amazing tableau revealing a definitely loopy National Museum drew perhaps the most enthusiastic response of the audience on Friday.
The band has also expanded: piano, piano and drums. But unlike my Tibooburra friends, Pauline Sweeney, Andrew Kay and Dick Cutler are wonderful musicians and have the acoustics of the Playhouse completely under control. Even through my ageing tinnitus I could hear every singer clearly.
An excellent entertainment this year, already well-booked for the season.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
28th Old Time Music Hall 2002. Canberra Repertory at The Playhouse, June 13-22, 8pm.
Director Cathie Clelland and choreographer Katelyn Keys have dragged this show into the modern world this year - a bit of a worry because it might go on for another 28 years.
Music Hall is an annual ritual which at times in the past has been both a pale imitation of the original specifically English genre, and also too close to the sexism and sentimentality of a century ago. This year's show deftly fillets the sexist bones from the traditional material, and surprisingly achieves genuine sentiment. A highlight is the presentation of the song Broken Doll by Julie McElhone Hayes as a puppet. "You made me think you loved me in return: / Don't tell me you were fooling after all! / For if you turn away, you'll be sorry some day / You left behind a broken doll" was so quietly and poignantly sung, with strings attached, that no man in the audience could sit there unashamed.
It was good to see the multicultural section - an ethnic Aussie dance scene, The Snake Gully Swagger, with embarrassing reminders for me of the Tibooburra Hospital Ball circa 1963, where the band consisted of piano, trumpet and drums and every dance was played in 3/4 time. The sense of fun, irony and even true satire has filled in all the gaps of Music Hall as I've experienced it before, and indeed the rendition late in the show of musical director Andrew Kay's The Bliss of the Backyard Burkes showed that satirical commentary on our present lives is more than acceptable in this almost ceremonial event. The representation of Parliament House as the one feature which broke the prime rule of Marion and Walter that nothing should be built on hills, topped by an amazing tableau revealing a definitely loopy National Museum drew perhaps the most enthusiastic response of the audience on Friday.
The band has also expanded: piano, piano and drums. But unlike my Tibooburra friends, Pauline Sweeney, Andrew Kay and Dick Cutler are wonderful musicians and have the acoustics of the Playhouse completely under control. Even through my ageing tinnitus I could hear every singer clearly.
An excellent entertainment this year, already well-booked for the season.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 26 April 2002
2002: Adult Child/Dead Child by Claire Dowie.
Adult Child/Dead Child by Claire Dowie. Performed by Alexis Beebe, directed by Herman Pretorius. Street Theatre Studio April 25 - May 4, 8.30pm.
I'm glad the writer was originally a stand-up comedian: otherwise Adult Child/Dead Child might have remained just a worthy monologue. Actually, the title should be A Dog Called Benjie. It is only at the point of comic self-realisation near the end that the play becomes genuinely theatrical.
This is not a criticism of this production. The writing creates an effect as if the actor is miming the character as she tells her story. This is reinforced by occasional disembodied voice-over repeats of lines reflecting on the child's experience, later picked up by the child as she gains adulthood.
There is a cleverness in this structure, but it is not truly dramatic until the connection is made between the three Benjies: two dogs and an imaginary friend. At this point we stop watching a rather polemical piece about the mistreatment of a child growing up with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and suddenly find ourselves relating to a real character who has found a way to cope in a world which surrounds her with fear.
The skill in Beebe's acting is in her ability to extract every nuance out of the lines, and especially the repeats of the lines. The mood changes with each attempt on the child's part to take control of her situation, and each consequent knockdown. She achieves a nice sense of the changes through childhood and teenage years, and the extra layer of awareness which adulthood provides.
Clinical psychologist Dr Ross Wilkinson seems to make an excuse in the program notes: "one does not necessarily expect a scientifically accurate portrayal of psychological disorders" in a play. However, my concern is more that a monologue restricts us to the character's perceptions of the truth. She leaves us inclined to blame her parents for causing her psychological problem, yet in adulthood she understands she needs drugs to keep her mental state stable. Which are we to believe - nature or nurture? I think a much more complex drama is required to deal properly with this material.
But Beebe's performance is well worth 80 minutes of your time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I'm glad the writer was originally a stand-up comedian: otherwise Adult Child/Dead Child might have remained just a worthy monologue. Actually, the title should be A Dog Called Benjie. It is only at the point of comic self-realisation near the end that the play becomes genuinely theatrical.
This is not a criticism of this production. The writing creates an effect as if the actor is miming the character as she tells her story. This is reinforced by occasional disembodied voice-over repeats of lines reflecting on the child's experience, later picked up by the child as she gains adulthood.
There is a cleverness in this structure, but it is not truly dramatic until the connection is made between the three Benjies: two dogs and an imaginary friend. At this point we stop watching a rather polemical piece about the mistreatment of a child growing up with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and suddenly find ourselves relating to a real character who has found a way to cope in a world which surrounds her with fear.
The skill in Beebe's acting is in her ability to extract every nuance out of the lines, and especially the repeats of the lines. The mood changes with each attempt on the child's part to take control of her situation, and each consequent knockdown. She achieves a nice sense of the changes through childhood and teenage years, and the extra layer of awareness which adulthood provides.
Clinical psychologist Dr Ross Wilkinson seems to make an excuse in the program notes: "one does not necessarily expect a scientifically accurate portrayal of psychological disorders" in a play. However, my concern is more that a monologue restricts us to the character's perceptions of the truth. She leaves us inclined to blame her parents for causing her psychological problem, yet in adulthood she understands she needs drugs to keep her mental state stable. Which are we to believe - nature or nurture? I think a much more complex drama is required to deal properly with this material.
But Beebe's performance is well worth 80 minutes of your time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 12 April 2002
2002: Raining Talent. Free-Rain Theatre Company. Feature article.
Raining Talent. Free-Rain Theatre Company in association with 19th Hole Productions. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 11-13.
Since its inception Anne Somes' Free-Rain has emphasised productions of well-known plays involving young people as actors and technicians, in recent times usually directed by her daughter, Kelly. Putting on Equus (Peter Shaffer) or Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet) has distinguished Free-Rain from other groups like Canberra Youth Theatre, whose work is more usually group devised, or amateur entertainment groups like Supa.
In Raining Talent, Anne Somes is putting her money, with some support from an artsACT grant, into work which looks more like Youth Theatre. The show is a collection of short scripted and choreographed pieces which allow a range of young people between 10 and 21 years of age to display their talents.
Though the material does not make for a thematically cohesive show, the set design by Kelly Somes and choreography by UWS Nepean graduate Kiri Morcombe is stylish and provides a visual frame which holds together well. Individual performances were all up to standard for the age group and levels of experience.
Is there a place for this kind of production from Free-Rain? Somes' position is that she is continuing a mentoring tradition which, for her, began when Jigsaw Theatre Company - the fully professional theatre-in-education team which has now grown into a wide ranging national production company under Greg Lissaman - provided space, technical assistance and administrative help to Free-Rain at the now defunct Currong Theatre.
This backing helped Somes' work become more firmly established and has led to an association with the Canberra Theatre Centre, with technical and administrative support strongly encouraged by David Whitney and his staff. Somes talks of having a "community conscience", looking for opportunities to assist young people to move out of their school environments into the wider world of theatre - and so she has picked up 19th Hole Productions, the ex-Canberra College group led by Soren Jensen.
So Free-Rain's theatrical niche does provide a slightly different experience, complementing Youth Theatre, Tuggeranong Community Arts and the others. Opportunities for young theatricals in Canberra abound.
Free-Rain's next production is Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson, directed by Kelly Somes in August.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Since its inception Anne Somes' Free-Rain has emphasised productions of well-known plays involving young people as actors and technicians, in recent times usually directed by her daughter, Kelly. Putting on Equus (Peter Shaffer) or Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet) has distinguished Free-Rain from other groups like Canberra Youth Theatre, whose work is more usually group devised, or amateur entertainment groups like Supa.
In Raining Talent, Anne Somes is putting her money, with some support from an artsACT grant, into work which looks more like Youth Theatre. The show is a collection of short scripted and choreographed pieces which allow a range of young people between 10 and 21 years of age to display their talents.
Though the material does not make for a thematically cohesive show, the set design by Kelly Somes and choreography by UWS Nepean graduate Kiri Morcombe is stylish and provides a visual frame which holds together well. Individual performances were all up to standard for the age group and levels of experience.
Is there a place for this kind of production from Free-Rain? Somes' position is that she is continuing a mentoring tradition which, for her, began when Jigsaw Theatre Company - the fully professional theatre-in-education team which has now grown into a wide ranging national production company under Greg Lissaman - provided space, technical assistance and administrative help to Free-Rain at the now defunct Currong Theatre.
This backing helped Somes' work become more firmly established and has led to an association with the Canberra Theatre Centre, with technical and administrative support strongly encouraged by David Whitney and his staff. Somes talks of having a "community conscience", looking for opportunities to assist young people to move out of their school environments into the wider world of theatre - and so she has picked up 19th Hole Productions, the ex-Canberra College group led by Soren Jensen.
So Free-Rain's theatrical niche does provide a slightly different experience, complementing Youth Theatre, Tuggeranong Community Arts and the others. Opportunities for young theatricals in Canberra abound.
Free-Rain's next production is Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson, directed by Kelly Somes in August.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 6 April 2002
2002: The Dreamers by Jack Davis
The Dreamers by Jack Davis. Directed by Wesley Enoch. Starring Rachael Mazza and Kevin Smith. Company B Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, March 27 - April 21 8pm.
Reviewing The Price (Ensemble Theatre, Sydney) recently, I lamented the lack of an Australian Arthur Miller. This production of The Dreamers (1982) has put me to shame. Noongar Aboriginal writer Jack Davis (1917-2000) proves to be our equivalent of Miller, Tennessee Williams and the seminal Irish playwright J.M.Synge all rolled into one.
Belvoir B's 2002 program is, I think, the most worth subscribing to within easy reach of Canberra: to come are David Hare, Patrick White, Sam Shepard and new Sydney writer Valentina Levkowicz. There is still time to catch The Dreamers.
Enoch notes "The chance to return to such classic Indigenous plays, as The Dreamers, helps us see what the future can be. They become the measure by which we mark how much we've grown or not. These plays are our history, a written and spoken account of our world. We sit and watch our aunts and cousins and uncles and grandparents played out through these characters on stage, not always how we would want ourselves portrayed but with honesty - warts and all. How else can we change?" With advice from the respected Noongar theatre artist Lynette Narkle, Enoch has created a fitting memorial to the passing of Jack Davis, who wrote and then played the original Uncle Worru 20 years ago.
Here we see the sad ending of an honorable everyman under pressure from insensitive society, just like Willy Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman - and with just as much power in Dolly's final speech as in Linda Loman's last lament. Rachael Mazza brings out Dolly's all-enduring strength, her humour, and her understanding of reality as if such acting is simple to achieve. But we all had tears welling as she carried in Uncle Worru's shoes to symbolically pass on to the next generation. And I have to say I found Kevin Smith's Uncle Worru much more endearing than the salesman in Miller's play.
Then this production shows a play of memories, so much like Williams' The Glass Menagerie - with characters' evocative speeches half out of the frame of the play, yet within it and reflecting on it - that the effect on me was quite eerie. Encompassing all is music and dance of the dreaming, so strongly reminiscent of Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows and the sense that the ancient spirits are drawing the old man away. Uncle Worru, like Deirdre, teaches us to "draw a little back with the squabbling of fools when I am broken up with misery" and can equally say "I have put away sorrow like a shoe that is worn out and muddy, for it is I have had a life that will be envied by great companies."
To create an Indigenous play so meaningful across ancient and modern cultures is a great wonder. I respect the earlier generation of Jack Davis's era who often had to relearn their own languages and teach themselves the ways of non-indigenous theatre; and now the generation of thoroughly professional performers represented in this production of The Dreamers, where truth is experienced as it should be in the theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Reviewing The Price (Ensemble Theatre, Sydney) recently, I lamented the lack of an Australian Arthur Miller. This production of The Dreamers (1982) has put me to shame. Noongar Aboriginal writer Jack Davis (1917-2000) proves to be our equivalent of Miller, Tennessee Williams and the seminal Irish playwright J.M.Synge all rolled into one.
Belvoir B's 2002 program is, I think, the most worth subscribing to within easy reach of Canberra: to come are David Hare, Patrick White, Sam Shepard and new Sydney writer Valentina Levkowicz. There is still time to catch The Dreamers.
Enoch notes "The chance to return to such classic Indigenous plays, as The Dreamers, helps us see what the future can be. They become the measure by which we mark how much we've grown or not. These plays are our history, a written and spoken account of our world. We sit and watch our aunts and cousins and uncles and grandparents played out through these characters on stage, not always how we would want ourselves portrayed but with honesty - warts and all. How else can we change?" With advice from the respected Noongar theatre artist Lynette Narkle, Enoch has created a fitting memorial to the passing of Jack Davis, who wrote and then played the original Uncle Worru 20 years ago.
Here we see the sad ending of an honorable everyman under pressure from insensitive society, just like Willy Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman - and with just as much power in Dolly's final speech as in Linda Loman's last lament. Rachael Mazza brings out Dolly's all-enduring strength, her humour, and her understanding of reality as if such acting is simple to achieve. But we all had tears welling as she carried in Uncle Worru's shoes to symbolically pass on to the next generation. And I have to say I found Kevin Smith's Uncle Worru much more endearing than the salesman in Miller's play.
Then this production shows a play of memories, so much like Williams' The Glass Menagerie - with characters' evocative speeches half out of the frame of the play, yet within it and reflecting on it - that the effect on me was quite eerie. Encompassing all is music and dance of the dreaming, so strongly reminiscent of Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows and the sense that the ancient spirits are drawing the old man away. Uncle Worru, like Deirdre, teaches us to "draw a little back with the squabbling of fools when I am broken up with misery" and can equally say "I have put away sorrow like a shoe that is worn out and muddy, for it is I have had a life that will be envied by great companies."
To create an Indigenous play so meaningful across ancient and modern cultures is a great wonder. I respect the earlier generation of Jack Davis's era who often had to relearn their own languages and teach themselves the ways of non-indigenous theatre; and now the generation of thoroughly professional performers represented in this production of The Dreamers, where truth is experienced as it should be in the theatre.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Saturday, 2 March 2002
2002: Raising the Curtain: Performance in Cultural Institutions. Feature article.
Enlightening or embarrassing? This is what the London Science Museum wondered, back in 1993, about putting theatre performances into its exhibits.
Their evaluation showed embarrassment certainly was not an issue. 95% of visitors thought drama in the museum was a good idea. 90% felt actors made exhibits more memorable. 93% agreed that actors tell more than labels. Enlightenment clearly shone through.
Raising the Curtain: Performance in Cultural Institutions, recently held at the National Museum of Australia (NMA), was Australia's first national conference. 3 exciting, inspiring days brought together museum performers - actors, musicians, storytellers, puppeteers, directors and writers - with museum staff from all over Australia - among others, Sovereign Hill, Old Melbourne Gaol, Powerhouse, Historic Houses, even Melbourne Zoo and, of course, Old Parliament House, Questacon and NMA in Canberra.
Talk and performances were given focus by Catherine Hughes, of Boston's Museum of Science and IMTAL (International Museum Theatre Alliance), who began her keynote speech as Mary Anning (who discovered the first complete fossil remains of an icthyosaur at the age of 11 in the year 1812) and ended the conference with a lecture and workshop on how to evaluate the successes - or failures - of performance programs in museums. People will flock to a show with Titanic in the title, she explained, but how do you present the drama to make people face up to the unpleasant facts of the human errors in sinking the unsinkable. She played a very observant, humorous crab for this purpose, but how do you find out what the audience learned from the play? And was it what you hoped they would learn?
I'll get back to that later, but in the meantime how do you deal with a slight figure in an orange boiler suit and spacesuit-looking hat who asks you about the audition? Audition?? I thought I was attending a session on "Structuring a performance program". Well, said Robert Bunzli (Performance Manager, The Excited Particles, Questacon), the audition was yesterday. Ooops! But I've come all the way from Perth and I was sure it's still Thursday. OK, said soft-hearted Robert, I'll give you five minutes to explain, in your own words, Newton's Laws of Motion.
So we learned that if you stand a cow on the stage it will stay there forever if you don't do anything to it. But if you kick the cow into the audience, not counting gravity and air resistance, it will go on in a straight line forever unless something stops it - like that lady. And if you pretend to be a space ship, and the orange person tries to repair you but drifts away, and she's forgotten to attach herself with a rope, then she can throw her hammer away from the space ship and this will make her drift back towards it again.
So the slight orange person got the job as an Excited Particle, and our evaluation was excellent. And in similar vein we found out about "What's happening in Australia"; "Why do we use performance and how does this add value to the visitor experience:perspectives from cultural institutions"; "Who are the audiences we are trying to reach with performance? What is the nature of the experience for these audiences?"; and "What models have been used for performance partnerships? How are they formed and what are the benefits for each party?" and so on.
Put theatrical people together with these typecast conference topics, and you'd be amazed at the laughter, especially from Canberra Youth Theatre's Linda McHugh. Watch a professional performer, a top-class administrator, and a brilliant academic, all rolled in one Catherine Hughes, and you know this was a rare conference, where you actually learned new techniques for qualitative evaluation (Personal Meaning Mapping by John Falk) which shows you short-term and long-term change in people's understanding before and after the museum visit.
Why all this structuring, evaluation and even name definition (like don't say "theatre" - say "performance" so musicians are not left out; or "cultural institution - ugh!")? Well, museums have a long history of continual diversification, from basically natural history in the nineteenth century, adding technology and science in the first half of the twentieth, and social history in the last 25 years. In Canada they call theirs the Museum of Civilisation. So now we have museums with multifaceted all-encompassing exhibits, and lots of specialist museums in places like old gaols or historic houses. All of which can benefit powerfully from integrating performances into their exhibitions, without embarrassment and lots more enlightenment.
It all costs pots of money, expenditure which needs justification. Performance in museums enhances the visitor's experience - it's money better spent than merely static or even electronic displays. The living performer makes the difference, as proper evaluations show.
Before long there will be IMTAL Australia (we'll host the 2005 International Conference). Go to www.mos.org/imtal if you want to keep up with international developments (that's at the Museum of Science website in Boston). If you really want to know about qualitative evaluation (you could use Personal Meaning Mapping for almost any kind of learning program) go to Dr. John Falk, Director, Institute for Learning Innovation, Annapolis, MD USA
www.iinet.org/communicating/aam2000/falktransform.html. And at the National Museum of Australia contact Daina Harvey d.harvey@nma.gov.au or phone 6208 5000.
Raising the Curtain: Performance in Cultural Institutions, February 28 - March 2 2002, was hosted by the National Museum of Australia, Old Parliament House, Questacon and The University of Western Sydney School of Contemporary Arts.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Their evaluation showed embarrassment certainly was not an issue. 95% of visitors thought drama in the museum was a good idea. 90% felt actors made exhibits more memorable. 93% agreed that actors tell more than labels. Enlightenment clearly shone through.
Raising the Curtain: Performance in Cultural Institutions, recently held at the National Museum of Australia (NMA), was Australia's first national conference. 3 exciting, inspiring days brought together museum performers - actors, musicians, storytellers, puppeteers, directors and writers - with museum staff from all over Australia - among others, Sovereign Hill, Old Melbourne Gaol, Powerhouse, Historic Houses, even Melbourne Zoo and, of course, Old Parliament House, Questacon and NMA in Canberra.
Talk and performances were given focus by Catherine Hughes, of Boston's Museum of Science and IMTAL (International Museum Theatre Alliance), who began her keynote speech as Mary Anning (who discovered the first complete fossil remains of an icthyosaur at the age of 11 in the year 1812) and ended the conference with a lecture and workshop on how to evaluate the successes - or failures - of performance programs in museums. People will flock to a show with Titanic in the title, she explained, but how do you present the drama to make people face up to the unpleasant facts of the human errors in sinking the unsinkable. She played a very observant, humorous crab for this purpose, but how do you find out what the audience learned from the play? And was it what you hoped they would learn?
I'll get back to that later, but in the meantime how do you deal with a slight figure in an orange boiler suit and spacesuit-looking hat who asks you about the audition? Audition?? I thought I was attending a session on "Structuring a performance program". Well, said Robert Bunzli (Performance Manager, The Excited Particles, Questacon), the audition was yesterday. Ooops! But I've come all the way from Perth and I was sure it's still Thursday. OK, said soft-hearted Robert, I'll give you five minutes to explain, in your own words, Newton's Laws of Motion.
So we learned that if you stand a cow on the stage it will stay there forever if you don't do anything to it. But if you kick the cow into the audience, not counting gravity and air resistance, it will go on in a straight line forever unless something stops it - like that lady. And if you pretend to be a space ship, and the orange person tries to repair you but drifts away, and she's forgotten to attach herself with a rope, then she can throw her hammer away from the space ship and this will make her drift back towards it again.
So the slight orange person got the job as an Excited Particle, and our evaluation was excellent. And in similar vein we found out about "What's happening in Australia"; "Why do we use performance and how does this add value to the visitor experience:perspectives from cultural institutions"; "Who are the audiences we are trying to reach with performance? What is the nature of the experience for these audiences?"; and "What models have been used for performance partnerships? How are they formed and what are the benefits for each party?" and so on.
Put theatrical people together with these typecast conference topics, and you'd be amazed at the laughter, especially from Canberra Youth Theatre's Linda McHugh. Watch a professional performer, a top-class administrator, and a brilliant academic, all rolled in one Catherine Hughes, and you know this was a rare conference, where you actually learned new techniques for qualitative evaluation (Personal Meaning Mapping by John Falk) which shows you short-term and long-term change in people's understanding before and after the museum visit.
Why all this structuring, evaluation and even name definition (like don't say "theatre" - say "performance" so musicians are not left out; or "cultural institution - ugh!")? Well, museums have a long history of continual diversification, from basically natural history in the nineteenth century, adding technology and science in the first half of the twentieth, and social history in the last 25 years. In Canada they call theirs the Museum of Civilisation. So now we have museums with multifaceted all-encompassing exhibits, and lots of specialist museums in places like old gaols or historic houses. All of which can benefit powerfully from integrating performances into their exhibitions, without embarrassment and lots more enlightenment.
It all costs pots of money, expenditure which needs justification. Performance in museums enhances the visitor's experience - it's money better spent than merely static or even electronic displays. The living performer makes the difference, as proper evaluations show.
Before long there will be IMTAL Australia (we'll host the 2005 International Conference). Go to www.mos.org/imtal if you want to keep up with international developments (that's at the Museum of Science website in Boston). If you really want to know about qualitative evaluation (you could use Personal Meaning Mapping for almost any kind of learning program) go to Dr. John Falk, Director, Institute for Learning Innovation, Annapolis, MD USA
www.iinet.org/communicating/aam2000/falktransform.html. And at the National Museum of Australia contact Daina Harvey d.harvey@nma.gov.au or phone 6208 5000.
Raising the Curtain: Performance in Cultural Institutions, February 28 - March 2 2002, was hosted by the National Museum of Australia, Old Parliament House, Questacon and The University of Western Sydney School of Contemporary Arts.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 27 February 2002
2002: Catherine Hughes, founder of the International Museum Theatre Alliance. News article
Catherine Hughes, Science Theatre Coordinator at the Boston Science Museum USA and founder of the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTA) arrived in Canberra yesterday (Wednesday 27/2/02). She is the keynote speaker at the National Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions being held at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) from today (Thursday 28/2/02) until Saturday (2/3/02), jointly hosted by NMA and the School of Contemporary Arts, University of Western Sydney.
The Forum is a "self-examination" by museums across Australia of why theatrical performances should be used, what audiences learn from seeing them, and issues about performances such as censorship by funding bodies and sponsors. Institutions represented include Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), Questacon (Canberra), Historic Houses Trust NSW, Old Parliament House, Melbourne Museum and Australian National Maritime Museum, as well as NMA.
Hughes' main theme, based on research into neuroscience and the role of emotions and storytelling in memory and learning, is that theatre-in-education performances should be the core of a museum. Actors may represent conflicting viewpoints relating to museum exhibits, making theatre a "forum for debate, discussion and provocation: a safe place to examine difficult topics." This is in keeping with the new developments in museums, such as NMA whose charter emphasises showing Australian people past and present in the Australian environment.
Featured in the National Forum are well-known local performers John Shortis and Moya Simpson, The Jigsaw Company, Canberra Youth Theatre and Questacon's performance team Excited Particles, as well as CommonGround, Circus Solarus, Epoch Creations and others from interstate.
A key issue for the Forum will be the proper training of theatre professionals for museum performance. Hughes states the need for specialist high quality university courses as strands in drama-in-education and theatre training, to ensure "a more powerful learning experience."
Contact Daina Harvey at NMA for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
The Forum is a "self-examination" by museums across Australia of why theatrical performances should be used, what audiences learn from seeing them, and issues about performances such as censorship by funding bodies and sponsors. Institutions represented include Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), Questacon (Canberra), Historic Houses Trust NSW, Old Parliament House, Melbourne Museum and Australian National Maritime Museum, as well as NMA.
Hughes' main theme, based on research into neuroscience and the role of emotions and storytelling in memory and learning, is that theatre-in-education performances should be the core of a museum. Actors may represent conflicting viewpoints relating to museum exhibits, making theatre a "forum for debate, discussion and provocation: a safe place to examine difficult topics." This is in keeping with the new developments in museums, such as NMA whose charter emphasises showing Australian people past and present in the Australian environment.
Featured in the National Forum are well-known local performers John Shortis and Moya Simpson, The Jigsaw Company, Canberra Youth Theatre and Questacon's performance team Excited Particles, as well as CommonGround, Circus Solarus, Epoch Creations and others from interstate.
A key issue for the Forum will be the proper training of theatre professionals for museum performance. Hughes states the need for specialist high quality university courses as strands in drama-in-education and theatre training, to ensure "a more powerful learning experience."
Contact Daina Harvey at NMA for more information.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 26 February 2002
2002: Museums: Panacea or Provocateur. Feature article
I went along to the panel discussion Museums: Panacea or Provocateur at the National Museum of Australia last Tuesday looking for controversy. Here were Elaine Gurian, former deputy director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Richard West, director of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian, and our own Dawn Casey, director of NMA. Surely from this mix of Jewish, Cheyenne and Aboriginal, provocation would be the order of the day.
I copped it, from Ms Gurian, who complained that the media only look for the bad news, when there is also small news, big news and especially good news which is news too. This arose from the case of the Enola Gay exhibition which, the Smithsonian was told, should be a celebration, not the horrible truth they had planned on showing. I suppose celebrating dropping an atom bomb on thousands of people is like celebrating the more recent September 11 suicide hi-jack bombs, which also became part of the discussion.
This led to good news indeed: how museums in USA "thought for the first time" that this event "had something to do with them". Gurian explained, as examples, how NY citizens went to see the Islam collection at the Metropolitan and children's museums took on a counselling role, seeing these as a good sign "even if the numbers were small" of change in museums away from places of the fusty dead towards what West called "civic spaces".
Somehow the panacea and the provocative merged into the idea of museums as a safe means for all to "engage in broader discourse", as "forums" which to be effective "need to be inclusive so that everybody should feel safe because this enlarges discourse". The Americans were so nice about it all, even though as West, the Cheyenne lawyer, had previously mentioned, the Bush administration could have consulted the Native Americans "who have a great deal of experience of being attacked in their own homeland." And so our Dawn stirred things up by bringing the issue home: "Some people would argue that this (the NMA) is not a safe place" because they find some exhibits disturbing, or believe the truth is not being told.
The philosophical theme settled on the museum - as educational, entertaining, multilayered rather than linear, catering for all communities and differing world views - as an institution whose object is to open minds, not to be a provocateur for its own sake. As more countries become multicultural, each cultural community needs "a place to stand". Geoffrey Blainey and John Mulvaney were mentioned as reaching agreement that the National Museum of Australia should not give coverage to communities according to how long they had been here, but each should have their own exhibitions. Otherwise, by my calculations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would have 99.6% of the Museum or 99.75%, according to which theory you follow: 45,000 or 80,000 years in Australia.
It was Casey who was upfront: "If we didn't offend anyone, we would be a very bland museum indeed"; and it was an astute questioner who recalled how public perception is still stereotyped, represented by the Prime Minister exclaiming at the opening of NMA "It's not at all like a museum!", which she thought was a "very positive view - for him."
Led by the ABC's Michelle Rayner (hear the full thing on Hindsight, Radio National 2pm Sunday March 13) the discussion ranged over how a "collection" has to be redefined according to who is the authority and who is responsible. When Hopi people came to see their objects in the National Museum of the American Indian, they took the opportunity to ceremonially scatter pollen and seeds, while according to West, two conservators fainted at the thought of mice in "their" exhibit.
In the end this slight representative of the media found the session rather more bland than he had hoped for. As Ms Rayner concluded, it's an "ongoing debate" - except that all three speakers agreed with each other on almost every point. If only there had been someone to stand up for the musty and fusty, for the old-style "cool" museum rather the "hot" modern monstrosity, to defend the ancient and bent researchers of the past who, like some librarians I have known who wouldn't let you touch the books, were described by Mr West as "too proprietary".
So, let the revolution roll on. I wonder if the Prime Minister will go back to see how they treat the Tampa and the "children overboard" episode (as part of the great migration story according to Dawn Casey). And I wonder how they will exhibit the Governor General, the Queen and the special CHOGM goblets. I think I could get quite excited by a "hot" museum, after all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I copped it, from Ms Gurian, who complained that the media only look for the bad news, when there is also small news, big news and especially good news which is news too. This arose from the case of the Enola Gay exhibition which, the Smithsonian was told, should be a celebration, not the horrible truth they had planned on showing. I suppose celebrating dropping an atom bomb on thousands of people is like celebrating the more recent September 11 suicide hi-jack bombs, which also became part of the discussion.
This led to good news indeed: how museums in USA "thought for the first time" that this event "had something to do with them". Gurian explained, as examples, how NY citizens went to see the Islam collection at the Metropolitan and children's museums took on a counselling role, seeing these as a good sign "even if the numbers were small" of change in museums away from places of the fusty dead towards what West called "civic spaces".
Somehow the panacea and the provocative merged into the idea of museums as a safe means for all to "engage in broader discourse", as "forums" which to be effective "need to be inclusive so that everybody should feel safe because this enlarges discourse". The Americans were so nice about it all, even though as West, the Cheyenne lawyer, had previously mentioned, the Bush administration could have consulted the Native Americans "who have a great deal of experience of being attacked in their own homeland." And so our Dawn stirred things up by bringing the issue home: "Some people would argue that this (the NMA) is not a safe place" because they find some exhibits disturbing, or believe the truth is not being told.
The philosophical theme settled on the museum - as educational, entertaining, multilayered rather than linear, catering for all communities and differing world views - as an institution whose object is to open minds, not to be a provocateur for its own sake. As more countries become multicultural, each cultural community needs "a place to stand". Geoffrey Blainey and John Mulvaney were mentioned as reaching agreement that the National Museum of Australia should not give coverage to communities according to how long they had been here, but each should have their own exhibitions. Otherwise, by my calculations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would have 99.6% of the Museum or 99.75%, according to which theory you follow: 45,000 or 80,000 years in Australia.
It was Casey who was upfront: "If we didn't offend anyone, we would be a very bland museum indeed"; and it was an astute questioner who recalled how public perception is still stereotyped, represented by the Prime Minister exclaiming at the opening of NMA "It's not at all like a museum!", which she thought was a "very positive view - for him."
Led by the ABC's Michelle Rayner (hear the full thing on Hindsight, Radio National 2pm Sunday March 13) the discussion ranged over how a "collection" has to be redefined according to who is the authority and who is responsible. When Hopi people came to see their objects in the National Museum of the American Indian, they took the opportunity to ceremonially scatter pollen and seeds, while according to West, two conservators fainted at the thought of mice in "their" exhibit.
In the end this slight representative of the media found the session rather more bland than he had hoped for. As Ms Rayner concluded, it's an "ongoing debate" - except that all three speakers agreed with each other on almost every point. If only there had been someone to stand up for the musty and fusty, for the old-style "cool" museum rather the "hot" modern monstrosity, to defend the ancient and bent researchers of the past who, like some librarians I have known who wouldn't let you touch the books, were described by Mr West as "too proprietary".
So, let the revolution roll on. I wonder if the Prime Minister will go back to see how they treat the Tampa and the "children overboard" episode (as part of the great migration story according to Dawn Casey). And I wonder how they will exhibit the Governor General, the Queen and the special CHOGM goblets. I think I could get quite excited by a "hot" museum, after all.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 13 February 2002
2002: Your Slip is Showing by Christa de Jager and Liliana Bogatko
Your Slip is Showing by Christa de Jager and Liliana Bogatko. Empty Spaces Theatre Company at The Street Theatre Studio February 12-14 7pm. 2002 National Multicultural Festival.
What a little surprise! - a kind of light version of Waiting for Godot from a women's perspective with a reverse twist at the end. Called "uniquely weird" in the program, sometimes absurdly opaque like Beckett's play, here are an ex-South African and an ex-Pole waiting for a dream which they can't define.
Is "Mr Man" - in European seductive mode, or as tough Boer macho, or even as Aussie cork-hatted beery couch potato Norm - the dream come true? Well no, not really - just as Pozzo and Lucky can never be Godot, who, as the little boy tells Estragon and Vladimir, will not come today.
But our women tonight, reduced to their underwear by Mr Man's mean saxophone, hear the wind in the fog, and find the gates of emigration and immigration. Only when they understand that they cannot know where they are going, do they pass through the final gate to independence from Mr Man, shuffling him off to a lonely dim spotlight for his last expiration on the sax. Godot comes for these women: maybe this is what Australia offers? The Lucky Country indeed!
Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven - Mr Man - of Dutch-Indonesian origin, says nothing except through mime and his saxophone. His improvisations would do Clinton proud in his relations with Monica, and are certainly a gem to watch and hear. Bogatko is beguiling, extracting a virtual cheer from the opening night audience especially for her vacuum cleaning climactic. While de Jager, always with proper reservations, held the play together thematically with a kind of lean strength.
Termed a "workshopped play", without a separate director, Your Slip is Showing is the first production for this new local company. If a Multicultural Festival draws such people out of our community to explore their experiences in such interesting ways, then it has fulfilled a valuable role. I look forward to more work from Empty Spaces. To rephrase Peter Brook: A woman walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching her, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
What a little surprise! - a kind of light version of Waiting for Godot from a women's perspective with a reverse twist at the end. Called "uniquely weird" in the program, sometimes absurdly opaque like Beckett's play, here are an ex-South African and an ex-Pole waiting for a dream which they can't define.
Is "Mr Man" - in European seductive mode, or as tough Boer macho, or even as Aussie cork-hatted beery couch potato Norm - the dream come true? Well no, not really - just as Pozzo and Lucky can never be Godot, who, as the little boy tells Estragon and Vladimir, will not come today.
But our women tonight, reduced to their underwear by Mr Man's mean saxophone, hear the wind in the fog, and find the gates of emigration and immigration. Only when they understand that they cannot know where they are going, do they pass through the final gate to independence from Mr Man, shuffling him off to a lonely dim spotlight for his last expiration on the sax. Godot comes for these women: maybe this is what Australia offers? The Lucky Country indeed!
Dirk Zeylmans van Emmichoven - Mr Man - of Dutch-Indonesian origin, says nothing except through mime and his saxophone. His improvisations would do Clinton proud in his relations with Monica, and are certainly a gem to watch and hear. Bogatko is beguiling, extracting a virtual cheer from the opening night audience especially for her vacuum cleaning climactic. While de Jager, always with proper reservations, held the play together thematically with a kind of lean strength.
Termed a "workshopped play", without a separate director, Your Slip is Showing is the first production for this new local company. If a Multicultural Festival draws such people out of our community to explore their experiences in such interesting ways, then it has fulfilled a valuable role. I look forward to more work from Empty Spaces. To rephrase Peter Brook: A woman walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching her, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
2002: Flowers Aren't Enough by Naomi Ackerman
Flowers Aren't Enough written and performed by Naomi Ackerman. 2002 National Multicultural Festival at The Street Theatre Studio February 12-14 8pm.
Naomi Ackerman, as an experienced professional actor, was engaged by the Jerusalem Ministry of Welfare to research, write and perform a theatre-in-education piece dealing with domestic violence and abuse. Flowers Aren't Enough weaves together elements of true stories of women in refuges in Israel into the fictional Michal's story of her ideals of love and marriage destroyed by a lover and husband for whom power over her is a social necessity. Verbal put downs, anger and steadily escalating physical violence are played out between bouts of apparently real contrition, promises never to do such things to her again, and loving behaviour which leave her feeling guilty, powerless and finally suicidal.
Only at this point is her plight made visible to her parents, and only because her husband leaves her alone in the hospital for ten days, is she able to think clearly: he has no right to take her life; she has no right to take her life; and she has every right to seek professional help and to escape the cycle of violence imposed on her.
Ackerman's script and her performance of it is rivetting for all its 50 minutes, but she makes it clear, coming back on stage out of character, that the follow-up discussion of the issues in the story is the most important part of the evening. Certainly on opening night there was no limit except time constraints to the questions. In her answers, Ackerman was able to draw on her experiences in performing some 400 times, to women's groups, police, prisoners, high school students in Israel (where she stated that dealing with men's use of violence for power is an "interesting issue"), in USA, in India and now in Australia, with her current tour to take in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hawaii and North America.
She has found everywhere the same conflict over the assumption of power by men over women, with different responses in different cultures, according to the opportunities for women and men to seek professional help, and for women to leave abusive situations. Her work is a powerful and sobering message: respect requires restraint from violence, physical and especially verbal, for "words can destroy your soul".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Naomi Ackerman, as an experienced professional actor, was engaged by the Jerusalem Ministry of Welfare to research, write and perform a theatre-in-education piece dealing with domestic violence and abuse. Flowers Aren't Enough weaves together elements of true stories of women in refuges in Israel into the fictional Michal's story of her ideals of love and marriage destroyed by a lover and husband for whom power over her is a social necessity. Verbal put downs, anger and steadily escalating physical violence are played out between bouts of apparently real contrition, promises never to do such things to her again, and loving behaviour which leave her feeling guilty, powerless and finally suicidal.
Only at this point is her plight made visible to her parents, and only because her husband leaves her alone in the hospital for ten days, is she able to think clearly: he has no right to take her life; she has no right to take her life; and she has every right to seek professional help and to escape the cycle of violence imposed on her.
Ackerman's script and her performance of it is rivetting for all its 50 minutes, but she makes it clear, coming back on stage out of character, that the follow-up discussion of the issues in the story is the most important part of the evening. Certainly on opening night there was no limit except time constraints to the questions. In her answers, Ackerman was able to draw on her experiences in performing some 400 times, to women's groups, police, prisoners, high school students in Israel (where she stated that dealing with men's use of violence for power is an "interesting issue"), in USA, in India and now in Australia, with her current tour to take in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hawaii and North America.
She has found everywhere the same conflict over the assumption of power by men over women, with different responses in different cultures, according to the opportunities for women and men to seek professional help, and for women to leave abusive situations. Her work is a powerful and sobering message: respect requires restraint from violence, physical and especially verbal, for "words can destroy your soul".
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 31 January 2002
2002: A Tribute to Black by Tara Mocktari
A Tribute to Black by Tara Mocktari. 19th Hole Theatre Productions at Tuggeranong Community Arts Centre January 30 - February 2, 7.30pm.
Canberra's colleges' drama programs continue to spawn intelligent and interesting little theatre groups among their ex-students, some of which - like Project Theatre 20 years ago - briefly flare and fizz, while some - such as the Acting Company - seem to become part of the furniture. This is the second production of 19th Hole, who are mainly from Canberra College, Woden Campus: a group of actors, technicians and musicians now mostly students at uni, but who still give thanks to their previous teachers, including Richard Manning.
Talking to Manning, himself a product of Hawker College in the late 1970s, made me aware of this theatrical niche, different from Youth Theatre, or REP, or the amateur groups like Phoenix Players, or being in the ANU Theatre course; and different of course from professional training courses away from Canberra. These are brave young people, like Bohemian Productions reviewed last week and still showing at The Street, who raise their own funds, manage their own affairs and take real risks to present work they feel is worthwhile.
Mocktari's play explores a philosophical idea - that black, being the absence of colour, represents the space in the universe which is open to infinite possibilities; and that love is the energy which can play upon the negatives, our usual experience of the black in our lives, and help us find the positives. She writes in her program notes of "the beautiful blackness that surrounds each of [the characters'] lives and brings matters to terms at their own pace".
The work combines an excellent live band, Crevona, with video, recorded soundscape, separated spotlighting of action in the audience space as well as on stage, and a mix of performance styles - largely presentational, but with some direct address, some more expressionist, snippets of apparent naturalism, and even a very funny cabaret dance routine. There are also drama workshop nightmare figures with uv lighted white masks a la Phillipe Genty.
This could be a fragmented mess, but gradually things defrag in a quite moving way. A worthwhile project indeed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Canberra's colleges' drama programs continue to spawn intelligent and interesting little theatre groups among their ex-students, some of which - like Project Theatre 20 years ago - briefly flare and fizz, while some - such as the Acting Company - seem to become part of the furniture. This is the second production of 19th Hole, who are mainly from Canberra College, Woden Campus: a group of actors, technicians and musicians now mostly students at uni, but who still give thanks to their previous teachers, including Richard Manning.
Talking to Manning, himself a product of Hawker College in the late 1970s, made me aware of this theatrical niche, different from Youth Theatre, or REP, or the amateur groups like Phoenix Players, or being in the ANU Theatre course; and different of course from professional training courses away from Canberra. These are brave young people, like Bohemian Productions reviewed last week and still showing at The Street, who raise their own funds, manage their own affairs and take real risks to present work they feel is worthwhile.
Mocktari's play explores a philosophical idea - that black, being the absence of colour, represents the space in the universe which is open to infinite possibilities; and that love is the energy which can play upon the negatives, our usual experience of the black in our lives, and help us find the positives. She writes in her program notes of "the beautiful blackness that surrounds each of [the characters'] lives and brings matters to terms at their own pace".
The work combines an excellent live band, Crevona, with video, recorded soundscape, separated spotlighting of action in the audience space as well as on stage, and a mix of performance styles - largely presentational, but with some direct address, some more expressionist, snippets of apparent naturalism, and even a very funny cabaret dance routine. There are also drama workshop nightmare figures with uv lighted white masks a la Phillipe Genty.
This could be a fragmented mess, but gradually things defrag in a quite moving way. A worthwhile project indeed.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 23 January 2002
2002: Bonesyard by Stuart Roberts and One For The Road by Harold Pinter
Bonesyard by Stuart Roberts and One For The Road by Harold Pinter. Bohemian Productions directed by Nick Johnson, at The Street Theatre Studio. January 23 - February 2, Wednesday to Saturday, 8pm.
"We want you to leave this play feeling raw and hateful, as if you've peeled a scab prematurely" is an invitation sorely missed in most evenings at the theatre. Being an "innovative young theatre company" makes such demands an obligation on company and audience, perhaps, but I'm not sure that Bonesyard came up to scratch.
On the other hand, Pinter's masterful theatre of menace in One For The Road - with all its overtones for politics from our Minister for Immigration's wonderful twisting of the Woomera reality in absolutely legalistic terms to all the extremities of absolutist autocrats like Suharto, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Saddam and many others (you can decide where to place Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yasser Arafat or George Bush on this sliding scale) - lived up to the promise. George Huitker as Nicolas, the interrogator, nicely underplayed the role, exactly as real interrogators do and we certainly felt raw and hateful in sympathy with Victor (Arran McKenna), his wife Gila (Claire Bocking) and son Nicky (Simon Read).
In Bonesyard, only Gina Guirguis spoke with the clarity of diction the script needed - and created a well-rounded character - while the three men (David Finnigan as Will, Jack Lloyd as Ferguson and Ben Hamey as Parker) need to develop precision in their acting.
The script is a quite interesting idea - a rather ghoulish fascination with people being murdered and their bodies being sold for medical experimentation, Mary the whore being the unwitting victim on this occasion who realises what is happening only after she has been poisoned and it is too late. Ferguson the surgeon is the ringleader, in a setting that seemed to be England 200 years ago. The script probably needs tightening, cf Pinter, but the presentation of the male characters also needed better direction.
It's good to see groups like Bohemians take the theatrical reins into their own hands, but I look forward to their writing a program which avoids weak "humour": it diminishes the work they present on stage, especially Pinter.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"We want you to leave this play feeling raw and hateful, as if you've peeled a scab prematurely" is an invitation sorely missed in most evenings at the theatre. Being an "innovative young theatre company" makes such demands an obligation on company and audience, perhaps, but I'm not sure that Bonesyard came up to scratch.
On the other hand, Pinter's masterful theatre of menace in One For The Road - with all its overtones for politics from our Minister for Immigration's wonderful twisting of the Woomera reality in absolutely legalistic terms to all the extremities of absolutist autocrats like Suharto, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Saddam and many others (you can decide where to place Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yasser Arafat or George Bush on this sliding scale) - lived up to the promise. George Huitker as Nicolas, the interrogator, nicely underplayed the role, exactly as real interrogators do and we certainly felt raw and hateful in sympathy with Victor (Arran McKenna), his wife Gila (Claire Bocking) and son Nicky (Simon Read).
In Bonesyard, only Gina Guirguis spoke with the clarity of diction the script needed - and created a well-rounded character - while the three men (David Finnigan as Will, Jack Lloyd as Ferguson and Ben Hamey as Parker) need to develop precision in their acting.
The script is a quite interesting idea - a rather ghoulish fascination with people being murdered and their bodies being sold for medical experimentation, Mary the whore being the unwitting victim on this occasion who realises what is happening only after she has been poisoned and it is too late. Ferguson the surgeon is the ringleader, in a setting that seemed to be England 200 years ago. The script probably needs tightening, cf Pinter, but the presentation of the male characters also needed better direction.
It's good to see groups like Bohemians take the theatrical reins into their own hands, but I look forward to their writing a program which avoids weak "humour": it diminishes the work they present on stage, especially Pinter.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 18 January 2002
2002: Oliver! by Lionel Bart
Oliver! by Lionel Bart. Alpha Theatre directed by Cathie Clelland. Choreographer: Belynda Buck. Musical Director: Pam Connor. ANU Arts Centre January 18 - 27, 7pm.
Probably I was the only person at opening night over the age of 10 who had never seen Oliver!, though I knew all the songs out of context. In context, some seemed a bit odd, and I faced the question about how turning Dickens into a musical makes his stories of social class division even more sentimental than his original novels. Like Dickens, Bart knew he had to keep up the entertainment level, so it was hard to feel the depth of anger we should at Nancy's murder.
However, Clelland's direction achieved perhaps as much as the script allows. Her casting was excellent, especially of Jordan Prosser as Oliver, Linda Francis as Nancy, Tony Falla as Fagin and, in a small but effective role, Anna Wise as Mrs Bedwin. Musicality in their singing and clarity in their acting stood out in these performers, but there was also great strength in chorus and smaller singing roles, coming together particularly well in "Who Will Buy?"
Obviously an important feature of a musical is the quality of the orchestra which Pam Connor directed with energy and strong rhythmic effect, carrying the action along on stage. All sections of the orchestra sounded good, except for some lack of tuning in the strings. However, John Ma's solo violin for Fagin's reconsidering of his situation was spot on.
Good music without movement would still make a fatally flawed show, and Belynda Buck missed no opportunities to choreograph every head and arm gesture, with lots of group and individual dance steps which, though they looked to me more colonial than mid-nineteenth century London, kept my attention throughout. Especially impressive was how the younger children enjoyed their movement, every one thoroughly engaged in the performance. In Brian Sudding and Cherylynn Holmes' excellent set, and wearing Rosemary Synnott's thoroughly colourful costumes, all the set-piece numbers received justified applause.
An effective Alpha production, the show gained strength in the second half. Everyone clapped along with the curtain call reprises - but I still kept wondering why Nancy had ever loved Bill Sykes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Probably I was the only person at opening night over the age of 10 who had never seen Oliver!, though I knew all the songs out of context. In context, some seemed a bit odd, and I faced the question about how turning Dickens into a musical makes his stories of social class division even more sentimental than his original novels. Like Dickens, Bart knew he had to keep up the entertainment level, so it was hard to feel the depth of anger we should at Nancy's murder.
However, Clelland's direction achieved perhaps as much as the script allows. Her casting was excellent, especially of Jordan Prosser as Oliver, Linda Francis as Nancy, Tony Falla as Fagin and, in a small but effective role, Anna Wise as Mrs Bedwin. Musicality in their singing and clarity in their acting stood out in these performers, but there was also great strength in chorus and smaller singing roles, coming together particularly well in "Who Will Buy?"
Obviously an important feature of a musical is the quality of the orchestra which Pam Connor directed with energy and strong rhythmic effect, carrying the action along on stage. All sections of the orchestra sounded good, except for some lack of tuning in the strings. However, John Ma's solo violin for Fagin's reconsidering of his situation was spot on.
Good music without movement would still make a fatally flawed show, and Belynda Buck missed no opportunities to choreograph every head and arm gesture, with lots of group and individual dance steps which, though they looked to me more colonial than mid-nineteenth century London, kept my attention throughout. Especially impressive was how the younger children enjoyed their movement, every one thoroughly engaged in the performance. In Brian Sudding and Cherylynn Holmes' excellent set, and wearing Rosemary Synnott's thoroughly colourful costumes, all the set-piece numbers received justified applause.
An effective Alpha production, the show gained strength in the second half. Everyone clapped along with the curtain call reprises - but I still kept wondering why Nancy had ever loved Bill Sykes.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 16 January 2002
2002: The Price by Arthur Miller
The Price by Arthur Miller. Daniel Mitchell, Toni Scanlan, Warren Mitchell, Henri Szeps directed by Sandra Bates. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, November 8 2001 - January 19.
If you assumed that any play at the Ensemble starring this cast would be a near-perfect production, you'd be right. I squeezed in to the matinee in the last week of the run, and arrived to a justifiable "House Full" sign - through to closing night.
To say The Price is classic Arthur Miller is to dismiss too easily his creation of characters whose complexity is rooted in both their natural personality differences and their familial relationships. To see Henri Szeps as elder brother Walter in tears of apparent self-recognition, frustrated at not being able to explain to younger brother Victor why he hadn't provided the cash for Victor's university education, despite his own success as a surgeon, while he had to admit to failure as a father and husband - and to see this a few short metres away in the intimate Ensemble setting - is an unforgettable experience.
Though Hayes Gordon, the founder of the Ensemble, is no longer with us, his exacting theatrical spirit lives on. Since he introduced in-the-round staging to Sydney more than 30 years ago, the fly-on-the-wall effect for the audience is still as strong. Watching invisibly in such close proximity creates a fascinating double-effect: your emotions are directly engaged in Walter's tears, yet concurrently your capacity for objective observation is not diminished. Walter's tears may be real, yet are also disingenuous: he can only offer Victor a superficial, basically commercial, proposition - a measure of why he failed Victor in the first place 28 years in the past.
Sandra Bates' direction has allowed the actors all the silences they need for us to sense and contemplate such detail in all four characters, and all four actors waste no opportunity. I wish, I wish, we had an Australian Arthur Miller to reveal such characters in our cultural context, but I fear our fascination with "physical" theatre (which I love too) leaves a space to be filled. It's not just warmth of feeling we miss, but the analysis of family, social, political and economic relations which are all built in to Miller's characters.
Did I say a "near-perfect" production? Let's just say perfect and be done with it.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
If you assumed that any play at the Ensemble starring this cast would be a near-perfect production, you'd be right. I squeezed in to the matinee in the last week of the run, and arrived to a justifiable "House Full" sign - through to closing night.
To say The Price is classic Arthur Miller is to dismiss too easily his creation of characters whose complexity is rooted in both their natural personality differences and their familial relationships. To see Henri Szeps as elder brother Walter in tears of apparent self-recognition, frustrated at not being able to explain to younger brother Victor why he hadn't provided the cash for Victor's university education, despite his own success as a surgeon, while he had to admit to failure as a father and husband - and to see this a few short metres away in the intimate Ensemble setting - is an unforgettable experience.
Though Hayes Gordon, the founder of the Ensemble, is no longer with us, his exacting theatrical spirit lives on. Since he introduced in-the-round staging to Sydney more than 30 years ago, the fly-on-the-wall effect for the audience is still as strong. Watching invisibly in such close proximity creates a fascinating double-effect: your emotions are directly engaged in Walter's tears, yet concurrently your capacity for objective observation is not diminished. Walter's tears may be real, yet are also disingenuous: he can only offer Victor a superficial, basically commercial, proposition - a measure of why he failed Victor in the first place 28 years in the past.
Sandra Bates' direction has allowed the actors all the silences they need for us to sense and contemplate such detail in all four characters, and all four actors waste no opportunity. I wish, I wish, we had an Australian Arthur Miller to reveal such characters in our cultural context, but I fear our fascination with "physical" theatre (which I love too) leaves a space to be filled. It's not just warmth of feeling we miss, but the analysis of family, social, political and economic relations which are all built in to Miller's characters.
Did I say a "near-perfect" production? Let's just say perfect and be done with it.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday, 21 December 2001
2001: The Heart of the Black Sea - An Oceanfaring Kabaret
The Heart of the Black Sea - An Oceanfaring Kabaret. Songs and lyrics by Mikel Simic. Orchestration: Ben O'Loghlin. Set design: Peter Mumford. Lighting design: Ivan Smith. Street Theatre, December 20-22.
Art cabaret in the European style might, at first blush, seem out of place in our bush capital. But in Mikel Simic's creative hands, the Heart of the Black Sea is a surprising, quirky, fascinating blend of Eastern and Western European traditions, drawing on Russian folk tales, Transylvanian pseudo-Gothic mythology and Brechtian social commentary.
Musically, many of the numbers have the contrapuntal and deliberately unfinished lines of the cabaret of Kurt Weill, but the harshness of the German form is rounded out by Magyar rhythms and Slavic harmonies. With trombone (Michael Bailey), trumpet/flugelhorn (Lou Horwood), euphonium (Lucien McGuiness) and Phil Moriarty, as The Great Muldavio on clarinet, we have all the elements of the traditional circus band and sad clown. Then across the stage the violas (Orson and Larissa Sutherland), violin (Anna Thompson) and cello (Kaija Upenieks) form a modern art quartet. And on stage, with the clarinet, Ben O'Loghlin on double bass, Pip Branson on violin and Mikel Simic on piano accordion form a cafe band of magnificent Romany romance, The Black Sea Gentlemen. O'Loghlin's orchestration ties this remarkable diversity into a wonderful unity of sound.
Dramatically, each number is a scene in episodic form, not linked by an obvious plot or the driving socio-logic of a Brecht, but by feeling. Reversals of our expectations are built into the lyrics, a commentary on the way we live our lives, taking us from ironic humour and gruesome imagery into the sadness of trapped love. Especially the final song, "The Carnival Goes On" seemed to offer some hope until we realise that the carnival has indeed gone on - and we are left, bereft, wondering how we are to cope.
This is strong stuff for cabaret - very satisfying original theatre - and matched in performance quality by Simic as Mikelangelo, Anna Simic (Anna Conda, the Snake Woman) and Undine Sellbach (Undine the Mermaid Tealady), in a cleverly designed set and great mood lighting.
Special appreciation must go to Pip Branson for his bravery in filling in so well for his brother David: The Heart of the Black Sea is a fitting memorial. I can only hope its shortened season can be followed by a revival in the fullness of time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Art cabaret in the European style might, at first blush, seem out of place in our bush capital. But in Mikel Simic's creative hands, the Heart of the Black Sea is a surprising, quirky, fascinating blend of Eastern and Western European traditions, drawing on Russian folk tales, Transylvanian pseudo-Gothic mythology and Brechtian social commentary.
Musically, many of the numbers have the contrapuntal and deliberately unfinished lines of the cabaret of Kurt Weill, but the harshness of the German form is rounded out by Magyar rhythms and Slavic harmonies. With trombone (Michael Bailey), trumpet/flugelhorn (Lou Horwood), euphonium (Lucien McGuiness) and Phil Moriarty, as The Great Muldavio on clarinet, we have all the elements of the traditional circus band and sad clown. Then across the stage the violas (Orson and Larissa Sutherland), violin (Anna Thompson) and cello (Kaija Upenieks) form a modern art quartet. And on stage, with the clarinet, Ben O'Loghlin on double bass, Pip Branson on violin and Mikel Simic on piano accordion form a cafe band of magnificent Romany romance, The Black Sea Gentlemen. O'Loghlin's orchestration ties this remarkable diversity into a wonderful unity of sound.
Dramatically, each number is a scene in episodic form, not linked by an obvious plot or the driving socio-logic of a Brecht, but by feeling. Reversals of our expectations are built into the lyrics, a commentary on the way we live our lives, taking us from ironic humour and gruesome imagery into the sadness of trapped love. Especially the final song, "The Carnival Goes On" seemed to offer some hope until we realise that the carnival has indeed gone on - and we are left, bereft, wondering how we are to cope.
This is strong stuff for cabaret - very satisfying original theatre - and matched in performance quality by Simic as Mikelangelo, Anna Simic (Anna Conda, the Snake Woman) and Undine Sellbach (Undine the Mermaid Tealady), in a cleverly designed set and great mood lighting.
Special appreciation must go to Pip Branson for his bravery in filling in so well for his brother David: The Heart of the Black Sea is a fitting memorial. I can only hope its shortened season can be followed by a revival in the fullness of time.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Tuesday, 18 December 2001
2001: The Monkey Show. Installation by Elizabeth Paterson
The Monkey Show. Installation by Elizabeth Paterson at Canberra Museum and Gallery until January 27, 2002. Visible day or night in Gallery 4 at CMAG entrance.
Liz Paterson has a long tradition as a fabric artist exploring the relationship in theatrical performance between the performer and her costume and set. Often the costume might become a character in its own right. Aspects of the costume or set then become symbolic of aspects of the character manipulated by an inner spirit - the hidden or partially hidden performer.
In this installation we see a set peopled by South American-looking monkeys, some wearing parrot costumes a little bit like rosellas but perhaps also South American. One wears a Father Christmas costume, appearing and disappearing down and up a colonial style plastered chimney.
Two wear nothing - one absolutely relaxed and comfortable in an extensive armchair; the other at the window looking out and away from the scene, as if stuck on a bland island, seeking fulfilment elsewhere.
Sailing boats cruise in through colonial French windows, airborne with clouds for sails - new arrivals expectant with ideals, perhaps.
A series of early model utes pass the scene as if on a hillside track. At random, one stops, for a sandwich, I wonder: maybe the insignificant driver stares at the view.
A river flows from a second French window, raising itself up like a serpent, becoming an old-fashioned ear trumpet. The comfortable monkey may be listening; or on the other hand may not be listening. Who can tell?
Trees, of no particular species, larger in the foreground, diminishing in the distance, lead into the fireplace beneath Monkey Santa's chimney. Is this a foreboding image of a charcoal factory?
The citation claims that "The Monkey Show alludes to Western culture's long fascination with the exotic and its relevance to the way that Australia has been perceived and how Australians perceive the world today." Maybe it does, but whatever perceptions you have are entirely your own. What you find in the images and what they symbolise may "allude" to bigger thoughts, and perhaps that's all you can expect from this kind of work. It's not a grand work of art (perhaps that's one image of Australia) and it's all made of cardboard, papier mache and bits of wire (that sounds like Australia, too).
Although I can't be sure I understand what meaning was intended, the images leave me less relaxed and comfortable than the monkey in the armchair, and feeling more like the monkey on the edge looking for something new. See what you think.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Liz Paterson has a long tradition as a fabric artist exploring the relationship in theatrical performance between the performer and her costume and set. Often the costume might become a character in its own right. Aspects of the costume or set then become symbolic of aspects of the character manipulated by an inner spirit - the hidden or partially hidden performer.
In this installation we see a set peopled by South American-looking monkeys, some wearing parrot costumes a little bit like rosellas but perhaps also South American. One wears a Father Christmas costume, appearing and disappearing down and up a colonial style plastered chimney.
Two wear nothing - one absolutely relaxed and comfortable in an extensive armchair; the other at the window looking out and away from the scene, as if stuck on a bland island, seeking fulfilment elsewhere.
Sailing boats cruise in through colonial French windows, airborne with clouds for sails - new arrivals expectant with ideals, perhaps.
A series of early model utes pass the scene as if on a hillside track. At random, one stops, for a sandwich, I wonder: maybe the insignificant driver stares at the view.
A river flows from a second French window, raising itself up like a serpent, becoming an old-fashioned ear trumpet. The comfortable monkey may be listening; or on the other hand may not be listening. Who can tell?
Trees, of no particular species, larger in the foreground, diminishing in the distance, lead into the fireplace beneath Monkey Santa's chimney. Is this a foreboding image of a charcoal factory?
The citation claims that "The Monkey Show alludes to Western culture's long fascination with the exotic and its relevance to the way that Australia has been perceived and how Australians perceive the world today." Maybe it does, but whatever perceptions you have are entirely your own. What you find in the images and what they symbolise may "allude" to bigger thoughts, and perhaps that's all you can expect from this kind of work. It's not a grand work of art (perhaps that's one image of Australia) and it's all made of cardboard, papier mache and bits of wire (that sounds like Australia, too).
Although I can't be sure I understand what meaning was intended, the images leave me less relaxed and comfortable than the monkey in the armchair, and feeling more like the monkey on the edge looking for something new. See what you think.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday, 26 November 2001
2001: The Long Time 'til Tea by Greg Lissaman
The Long Time 'til Tea written and directed by Greg Lissaman. Jigsaw Theatre Company November 20 - December 1.
"I liked all of it" said one 4-year-old to her parent at the end, though there were many who didn't want to see the "crab" again when the puppets were revealed after the show.
In fact there were times when the long time felt a bit too long for me and by the end I concluded that though there is nothing wrong in the educational principles (encouraging the children's imagination of shapes and colours), something is missing in The Long Time 'til Tea compared with Jigsaw's previous early-childhood winner, The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate. Unfortunately, too, I couldn't forget Geoffrey Rush, Deborah Mailman et al playing 5-year-olds in David Holman's Small Poppies. Rush's entirely imaginary dog grabbed kids and adults in the audience by the throat emotionally in a way that carved foam puppets could never match.
The Long Time is a nice whimsy and excellent "black theatre" puppetry manipulated by Rachael Whitworth, with more than competent technical design and operation by Catherine Wright, but too often John Hunt (entertaining himself in his backyard after school until teatime) seemed to be twiddling his thumbs rather than getting on with the action.
What's missing is a really strong sense of journey to discovery (the key to both those other plays) to give shape to the on-stage child's imagination and the off-stage childrens' understanding. The concept of filling in time is too amorphous, I think too adult, for 4 - 6 year olds. This was why many of them failed to realise that it wasn't a crab that young Peter had to confront in the tunnel he had floated into on his washing basket boat, but a termite. I won't try to explain, but the point is that the young audience's imaginations were more logical in developing the story in their heads than the adults' idea of children's imaginations which led from a boat in the sky to meeting a termite underground.
So, although the season is already booked, and I'm sure the children will enjoy, I think the script needs more development before it deserves a wider exposure.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"I liked all of it" said one 4-year-old to her parent at the end, though there were many who didn't want to see the "crab" again when the puppets were revealed after the show.
In fact there were times when the long time felt a bit too long for me and by the end I concluded that though there is nothing wrong in the educational principles (encouraging the children's imagination of shapes and colours), something is missing in The Long Time 'til Tea compared with Jigsaw's previous early-childhood winner, The Man Whose Mother Was a Pirate. Unfortunately, too, I couldn't forget Geoffrey Rush, Deborah Mailman et al playing 5-year-olds in David Holman's Small Poppies. Rush's entirely imaginary dog grabbed kids and adults in the audience by the throat emotionally in a way that carved foam puppets could never match.
The Long Time is a nice whimsy and excellent "black theatre" puppetry manipulated by Rachael Whitworth, with more than competent technical design and operation by Catherine Wright, but too often John Hunt (entertaining himself in his backyard after school until teatime) seemed to be twiddling his thumbs rather than getting on with the action.
What's missing is a really strong sense of journey to discovery (the key to both those other plays) to give shape to the on-stage child's imagination and the off-stage childrens' understanding. The concept of filling in time is too amorphous, I think too adult, for 4 - 6 year olds. This was why many of them failed to realise that it wasn't a crab that young Peter had to confront in the tunnel he had floated into on his washing basket boat, but a termite. I won't try to explain, but the point is that the young audience's imaginations were more logical in developing the story in their heads than the adults' idea of children's imaginations which led from a boat in the sky to meeting a termite underground.
So, although the season is already booked, and I'm sure the children will enjoy, I think the script needs more development before it deserves a wider exposure.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday, 31 October 2001
2001: Solid by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson.
Solid. A Black N'2 production for Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell, Phil Thomson. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, October 30 - November 3, 8pm.
"How would you like your tea? Black n'2 like you and me." At this point, the end of Solid, Graham settles down to learn his Noongar language from his Nan in Busselton, south of Perth. In Perth he had been "lost in life", facing loss of country, culture and language with no hope, no apparent way forward. Like refugees everywhere he tried to escape - north - with no clear destination. How could he face his Nan when he had not prevented his heroin-using brother from killing himself; when he was himself using alcohol and speed; when he could not care for wife and children; when no-one would employ him?
Meet Carol from Wankatjunka community in the Kimberley, destined for a traditional arranged marriage. She escaped south to Perth, got herself an education and a job. In the Aboriginal support agency, usually she's the only one actually at work - and it's her reports and submissions that get the funding: for other people's projects, of course, but at least it's a real job. She must go back, though, for her grandfather's funeral, and face the possibility of punishment for not fulfilling her marriage commitment.
Carol faces up to her traditional responsibility, and becomes the model for Graham to face his Nan in a play which reveals the truth about the cultures of the real Kimberley woman, Ningali Lawford, and the real Noongar man, Kelton Pell, two people as different culturally as the English and the French. After all you wouldn't catch an Englishman eating snails, would you?
With Graham, we can learn to see the emu in the dark spaces between the stars in the Milky Way, which bright lights and pollution had hidden from Noongar memory. With whimsy, humour and an ability to capture emotional tension in the turn of a word, Lawford and Pell show us human complexity, and human possibilities, as understandable in Wankatjunka as in Noongar country, in Canberra, or anywhere. This play is about country - our country - seen from the inside. All Australians will savour this cup of tea.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
"How would you like your tea? Black n'2 like you and me." At this point, the end of Solid, Graham settles down to learn his Noongar language from his Nan in Busselton, south of Perth. In Perth he had been "lost in life", facing loss of country, culture and language with no hope, no apparent way forward. Like refugees everywhere he tried to escape - north - with no clear destination. How could he face his Nan when he had not prevented his heroin-using brother from killing himself; when he was himself using alcohol and speed; when he could not care for wife and children; when no-one would employ him?
Meet Carol from Wankatjunka community in the Kimberley, destined for a traditional arranged marriage. She escaped south to Perth, got herself an education and a job. In the Aboriginal support agency, usually she's the only one actually at work - and it's her reports and submissions that get the funding: for other people's projects, of course, but at least it's a real job. She must go back, though, for her grandfather's funeral, and face the possibility of punishment for not fulfilling her marriage commitment.
Carol faces up to her traditional responsibility, and becomes the model for Graham to face his Nan in a play which reveals the truth about the cultures of the real Kimberley woman, Ningali Lawford, and the real Noongar man, Kelton Pell, two people as different culturally as the English and the French. After all you wouldn't catch an Englishman eating snails, would you?
With Graham, we can learn to see the emu in the dark spaces between the stars in the Milky Way, which bright lights and pollution had hidden from Noongar memory. With whimsy, humour and an ability to capture emotional tension in the turn of a word, Lawford and Pell show us human complexity, and human possibilities, as understandable in Wankatjunka as in Noongar country, in Canberra, or anywhere. This play is about country - our country - seen from the inside. All Australians will savour this cup of tea.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday, 25 October 2001
2001: Who Cares If I Care?
Who Cares If I Care? by Hidden Corners International, directed by Robin Davidson. Gorman House C Block October 25-27, 7.30pm.
When young people perform I usually look for their sincerity, knowing that for untrained actors it is hard not to pretend to act, rather than really act. If a performance can move me to laughter and tears, make me face reality, and yet still celebrate life, then I know I am not watching a pretence.
Hidden Corners International is a big name for a small group of teenagers who through force of circumstance must care for others - maybe a sick parent, a disabled sibling. Mary Gays from Marymead, aware of the tensions and pressures affecting young carers, asked Robin Davidson to run workshops in creative writing and drama from which grew Who Cares If I Care?, a remarkably strong piece of theatre following George's story dealing with her father's sudden hospitalisation with a brain tumour (while her mother had died when George was young); Kevin's story with a mother who only appears on the end of a phone line while he has to cope with a schizophrenic younger brother; and Claire's story of how angry she becomes with her mother who is disabled with multiple sclerosis.
You can see where the tears come from, but these young people facing such adult responsibilities show us humour with a telling ironic edge, fear without sentimentality, and a wonderful sense of achievement in their lives. The play itself is an achievement of which they can all be proud. The sincerity of their performances, grounded in their real life experiences, has left me wondering how I would cope in their circumstance. It makes me concerned that, though this group have had such a great opportunity in creating and presenting their play, there must be many young - and older - carers who are not given the support they need. Politicians please take note.
Particularly I was worried by the humorous but unpleasant vignettes of a counsellor so concerned with his own childish obsession that he couldn't even listen to his clients' stories, let alone help them. If you would like to help, especially to send Hidden Corners to a Young Carers Festival in UK next year, which makes them International, email Mary Gays at mds@marymead.org.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
When young people perform I usually look for their sincerity, knowing that for untrained actors it is hard not to pretend to act, rather than really act. If a performance can move me to laughter and tears, make me face reality, and yet still celebrate life, then I know I am not watching a pretence.
Hidden Corners International is a big name for a small group of teenagers who through force of circumstance must care for others - maybe a sick parent, a disabled sibling. Mary Gays from Marymead, aware of the tensions and pressures affecting young carers, asked Robin Davidson to run workshops in creative writing and drama from which grew Who Cares If I Care?, a remarkably strong piece of theatre following George's story dealing with her father's sudden hospitalisation with a brain tumour (while her mother had died when George was young); Kevin's story with a mother who only appears on the end of a phone line while he has to cope with a schizophrenic younger brother; and Claire's story of how angry she becomes with her mother who is disabled with multiple sclerosis.
You can see where the tears come from, but these young people facing such adult responsibilities show us humour with a telling ironic edge, fear without sentimentality, and a wonderful sense of achievement in their lives. The play itself is an achievement of which they can all be proud. The sincerity of their performances, grounded in their real life experiences, has left me wondering how I would cope in their circumstance. It makes me concerned that, though this group have had such a great opportunity in creating and presenting their play, there must be many young - and older - carers who are not given the support they need. Politicians please take note.
Particularly I was worried by the humorous but unpleasant vignettes of a counsellor so concerned with his own childish obsession that he couldn't even listen to his clients' stories, let alone help them. If you would like to help, especially to send Hidden Corners to a Young Carers Festival in UK next year, which makes them International, email Mary Gays at mds@marymead.org.au .
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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