Talking Heads by Alan Bennett: A Chip in the Sugar performed by Kevin Harrington; A Lady of Letters performed by Joan Sydney. HIT Productions directed by Gary Down. Tuggeranong Arts Centre September 16.
Yorkshire, England 1987. On the telly you're watching this middle-aged man rabbiting on about his Mam. Still living with her, you know, this Graham. And he gets all upset because, at her age of 72 mind you, she meets up with an "old flame" from "before your time". Before Graham's father's time, too. Calls her Vera, but Graham's Dad never did. But it turns out alright when the old flame's daughter turns up and takes him away. He's always doing this, she says. Graham's Mam cries a bit, but she's forgotten him the next day, and says she still loves Graham.
A sad little story of circumscribed lives. Next week you watch this lady Miss Ruddock telling you all about the letters she writes and the replies she gets, and how she ends up in gaol. And it's funny because on her own at home she's so spiteful, but amongst the women in gaol she brightens up no end. But you wonder what she'll be like when she gets out: she won't really get a job typing letters, will she? She'll be round the bend again in no time.
Kevin Harrington (SeaChange) and Joan Sydney (A Country Practice) received what they said was the ultimate praise in the forum, after performing these monologues on stage in Canberra in 2002: "You were real for me" and "My mother was just like that", and it was generally agreed that these little scraps of English, even specifically Yorkshire, lives were given universal humanity by Alan Bennett.
We're just jobbing actors, explained Sydney, taking what work we can get. It's all in the writing, even the pauses. Bennett makes it easy for us. But it's not our job to tell you what we think about the interpretation of the plays, said Harrington. We just act, and it's your job to decide what you think.
"It was really good to see famous actors in the flesh," said a couple of TCA regulars. "We've never been to a forum after a show like this. A great night out."
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday 16 September 2002
Friday 13 September 2002
2002: National Institute of Circus Arts. Feature article.
We are all aware of NIDA, whose graduates we see every night on television, as well as on the live stage. Now the new acronym is NICA - National Institute of Circus Arts. Based at Swinburne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, the 3-year Bachelor of Circus Arts began in 2001 and already has over 40 students, including Canberran Christian Reid.
Like Alex O'Lachlan and Gordon Rymer, currently at NIDA, Christian did not train for the circus at school in Canberra: but he spent years as a teenage member and coach in the Woden Valley Gymnastics Club, with support he still values from Alfred Deakin High School. Like the others he travelled after Year 12 to Europe where bar work (not the gymnastic type) sustained him, and came home looking for a new direction to take his gymnastic skills. What could be better than the circus for a gymnast who had never specialised but who loved floor work, the parallel bars, the trampoline and aerial work?
So what's the difference between circus and gym? Nowadays, it's about making meaning through theatre. It's called "new circus" and Circus Oz is the innovator and the continuing example in the Australian tradition. In France, nouveau cirque comprises 500 companies and 250 schools. In Italy the scene is similar. And in Canada and in .... In March this year, NICA hosted the Cirque du Monde's Social Circus Instructor's Program. Participants came from Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Broken Hill to join with local Melbourne people to "share their experiences of working through circus with young people defined as being at risk". The program is currently taught in Montreal, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Cape Town. So new circus is not just about entertaining people by twirling yourself and other things around in space.
In a recent industry forum, chaired by Pam Creed, director of NICA, Geoff Dunstan of Dislocate Circus explained "I feel it's really important in physical theatre, especially new circus theatre - and I think this is the greatest hurdle that we have to get over - is the ego of the acrobatic act itself. The trick can be fantastic, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the show, you have to leave that [the ego] aside." He also described a "great piece of theatre I saw was on the news, with a bunch of uranium cans with people - protestors - jumping inside them through one of the gates [of Lucas Heights nuclear reactor]. The message was 'if you are a terrorist you can walk into this place', the form was protest and the medium was the media ... and I think it is really important that we don't limit ourselves in terms of where we can go in our theatrical expression."
So this is why Christian Reid works 40 hours in class each week, plus doing bar work and gym coaching despite the physically tiring days - and he still claims to have a social life. In vacations he returns to Canberra for a break in the gym to keep up his fitness and strength. Classes are not just in circus tricks, but include clowning, character work, ballet, modern dance as well as business administration. And that's not mentioning helping set up the Big Top for Ashton's traditional family circus. As Becky Ashton said: "It's not a job where you turn up and perform and that's it. I'm a trapeze artist for three minutes each night and the rest of the time I do everything from filling show bags to putting up the tent."
NICA is now calling for applications for the 2003 BCA course, which incorporates a Certificate IV in Circus Arts and a Diploma of Circus Arts. The NICA team, led by the Head of Circus Training, Lu Guang Rong, originally from Shanghai, will conduct auditions in Sydney on September 26 and Melbourne on October 13, travelling to Brisbane, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart in between.
If you want to see NICA in action in early December, call in to Melbourne's Federation Square. Marketing Manager Stan Liacos says NICA offers "exactly the kind of innovative, cutting-edge performances we need to help us activate Federation Square." You can find all the details you need at www.nica.swin.edu.au.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Like Alex O'Lachlan and Gordon Rymer, currently at NIDA, Christian did not train for the circus at school in Canberra: but he spent years as a teenage member and coach in the Woden Valley Gymnastics Club, with support he still values from Alfred Deakin High School. Like the others he travelled after Year 12 to Europe where bar work (not the gymnastic type) sustained him, and came home looking for a new direction to take his gymnastic skills. What could be better than the circus for a gymnast who had never specialised but who loved floor work, the parallel bars, the trampoline and aerial work?
So what's the difference between circus and gym? Nowadays, it's about making meaning through theatre. It's called "new circus" and Circus Oz is the innovator and the continuing example in the Australian tradition. In France, nouveau cirque comprises 500 companies and 250 schools. In Italy the scene is similar. And in Canada and in .... In March this year, NICA hosted the Cirque du Monde's Social Circus Instructor's Program. Participants came from Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Broken Hill to join with local Melbourne people to "share their experiences of working through circus with young people defined as being at risk". The program is currently taught in Montreal, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Cape Town. So new circus is not just about entertaining people by twirling yourself and other things around in space.
In a recent industry forum, chaired by Pam Creed, director of NICA, Geoff Dunstan of Dislocate Circus explained "I feel it's really important in physical theatre, especially new circus theatre - and I think this is the greatest hurdle that we have to get over - is the ego of the acrobatic act itself. The trick can be fantastic, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the show, you have to leave that [the ego] aside." He also described a "great piece of theatre I saw was on the news, with a bunch of uranium cans with people - protestors - jumping inside them through one of the gates [of Lucas Heights nuclear reactor]. The message was 'if you are a terrorist you can walk into this place', the form was protest and the medium was the media ... and I think it is really important that we don't limit ourselves in terms of where we can go in our theatrical expression."
So this is why Christian Reid works 40 hours in class each week, plus doing bar work and gym coaching despite the physically tiring days - and he still claims to have a social life. In vacations he returns to Canberra for a break in the gym to keep up his fitness and strength. Classes are not just in circus tricks, but include clowning, character work, ballet, modern dance as well as business administration. And that's not mentioning helping set up the Big Top for Ashton's traditional family circus. As Becky Ashton said: "It's not a job where you turn up and perform and that's it. I'm a trapeze artist for three minutes each night and the rest of the time I do everything from filling show bags to putting up the tent."
NICA is now calling for applications for the 2003 BCA course, which incorporates a Certificate IV in Circus Arts and a Diploma of Circus Arts. The NICA team, led by the Head of Circus Training, Lu Guang Rong, originally from Shanghai, will conduct auditions in Sydney on September 26 and Melbourne on October 13, travelling to Brisbane, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart in between.
If you want to see NICA in action in early December, call in to Melbourne's Federation Square. Marketing Manager Stan Liacos says NICA offers "exactly the kind of innovative, cutting-edge performances we need to help us activate Federation Square." You can find all the details you need at www.nica.swin.edu.au.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 11 September 2002
2002: The Wish Palace by Eva Kaufman / Kate McNamara
The Wish Palace directed and adapted by Eva Kaufman, based on a play by Kate McNamara. Spandex Theatre at The Street Theatre Studio September 10-14, 7.30pm.
Spandex is new and its members young, heading out from college drama to explore the world through theatre. Eva Kaufman's intentions are sincere and this first production shows intelligence. But the script she chose is flawed. The result is a tension of the wrong kind between McNamara's dated and rather pretentious attempt to present heroin addiction as artistic expression and Kaufman's desire to show something more realistic about human capacity for self-delusion.
The group is entirely amateur, but one actor, Lara Lightfoot, had both the strength and sensitivity needed for these roles. Set in a psychiatric ward, Lightfoot's Julia discharges herself, perhaps now capable of coping outside, after the suicide of the heroin addict Bone (Max Barker) and the collapse into a vegetable state of Chat (Lydia Connell) from shock therapy. The parallels with Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were unavoidable and unfortunate, especially in the nurse's character (Sophie Rutzou).
What Kaufman tried to do was to find a theatrical format or genre to allow issues about using drugs and psychiatric treatment to be brought to our attention, but the melodrama - especially of the writer/addict/depressive Bone - could only lead to a kind of neo-Romanticism. Maybe Chekov could have written what she needed, but, being young, Kaufman perhaps saw more depth and importance in the script than was really there to work on. This also meant that "experimental" features like the appearance of a live string instrument for one scene, or the continuous mime of the conventional wife in another, seemed disconnected from the rest of the action rather than enhancing its meaning.
For Spandex to develop, Kaufman will need stronger material, but this also means training for herself and her actors to match.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Spandex is new and its members young, heading out from college drama to explore the world through theatre. Eva Kaufman's intentions are sincere and this first production shows intelligence. But the script she chose is flawed. The result is a tension of the wrong kind between McNamara's dated and rather pretentious attempt to present heroin addiction as artistic expression and Kaufman's desire to show something more realistic about human capacity for self-delusion.
The group is entirely amateur, but one actor, Lara Lightfoot, had both the strength and sensitivity needed for these roles. Set in a psychiatric ward, Lightfoot's Julia discharges herself, perhaps now capable of coping outside, after the suicide of the heroin addict Bone (Max Barker) and the collapse into a vegetable state of Chat (Lydia Connell) from shock therapy. The parallels with Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest were unavoidable and unfortunate, especially in the nurse's character (Sophie Rutzou).
What Kaufman tried to do was to find a theatrical format or genre to allow issues about using drugs and psychiatric treatment to be brought to our attention, but the melodrama - especially of the writer/addict/depressive Bone - could only lead to a kind of neo-Romanticism. Maybe Chekov could have written what she needed, but, being young, Kaufman perhaps saw more depth and importance in the script than was really there to work on. This also meant that "experimental" features like the appearance of a live string instrument for one scene, or the continuous mime of the conventional wife in another, seemed disconnected from the rest of the action rather than enhancing its meaning.
For Spandex to develop, Kaufman will need stronger material, but this also means training for herself and her actors to match.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Thursday 5 September 2002
2002: Soulmates by David Williamson
Soulmates by David Williamson. Sydney Theatre Company directed by Gale Edwards at The Playhouse September 4-14.
I don't know about you, but I go to the theatre for two reasons.
I want to appreciate the theatrical artistry of actors, designers and directors. As we should expect of STC, I was certainly not disappointed by this production. I loved Amanda Muggleton as the steamy novelist Katie Best, and it was a thrill to see Jacki Weaver's nicely presented changes of mood in a role which some may find a surprise. The post-modern silver set was right for this play (though I wasn't sure of the relevance of all of the paintings projected behind), while the direction moved the play along at the pace it deserves.
Then I want to be "transported", taken into some level of experience beyond my own imagining. No matter how professional the actors are, the writer must give them the material to work on. Williamson, despite much good writing in recent plays, has made fun of his own craft of writing in Soulmates but without making me laugh except at fairly superficial cleverness.
You may think, when you see the play, that my criticism is mere sour grapes, since Danny - played by William Zappa as very Melbourne - is an academic critic seeking always the best of high art and dismissing the commercial entertainment of Katie Best's novels. He refuses to accept the post-modern belief that all that is written is culturally equal and his ideals about art are floored in Act 2, yet Williamson seems to me to be just playing games with the issues for the sake of the laughs. The laughs bring in the bums (and various other parts of the anatomy) on seats, but I found quite a few first night audience members feeling cheated at interval and only a little more satisfied at the end.
So I found myself searching for what was wrong. Act 1, on reflection, was really only a teaser. There were some unsavoury jokes about September 11 which never led anywhere. Yabby coulis got several laughs completely without connection to the rest of the play. It was only in Act 2 that the characters were given some sense of having real relationships that we might identify with. I suppose the last line about the pragmatic, perhaps cynical approach of writers' using people they know as material - "That's what writers do!" - might have been meant to be satirical. I thought it left Williamson trapped in his own post-modern mire.
But then, I'm just the critic. You'd better go and decide for yourself.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
I don't know about you, but I go to the theatre for two reasons.
I want to appreciate the theatrical artistry of actors, designers and directors. As we should expect of STC, I was certainly not disappointed by this production. I loved Amanda Muggleton as the steamy novelist Katie Best, and it was a thrill to see Jacki Weaver's nicely presented changes of mood in a role which some may find a surprise. The post-modern silver set was right for this play (though I wasn't sure of the relevance of all of the paintings projected behind), while the direction moved the play along at the pace it deserves.
Then I want to be "transported", taken into some level of experience beyond my own imagining. No matter how professional the actors are, the writer must give them the material to work on. Williamson, despite much good writing in recent plays, has made fun of his own craft of writing in Soulmates but without making me laugh except at fairly superficial cleverness.
You may think, when you see the play, that my criticism is mere sour grapes, since Danny - played by William Zappa as very Melbourne - is an academic critic seeking always the best of high art and dismissing the commercial entertainment of Katie Best's novels. He refuses to accept the post-modern belief that all that is written is culturally equal and his ideals about art are floored in Act 2, yet Williamson seems to me to be just playing games with the issues for the sake of the laughs. The laughs bring in the bums (and various other parts of the anatomy) on seats, but I found quite a few first night audience members feeling cheated at interval and only a little more satisfied at the end.
So I found myself searching for what was wrong. Act 1, on reflection, was really only a teaser. There were some unsavoury jokes about September 11 which never led anywhere. Yabby coulis got several laughs completely without connection to the rest of the play. It was only in Act 2 that the characters were given some sense of having real relationships that we might identify with. I suppose the last line about the pragmatic, perhaps cynical approach of writers' using people they know as material - "That's what writers do!" - might have been meant to be satirical. I thought it left Williamson trapped in his own post-modern mire.
But then, I'm just the critic. You'd better go and decide for yourself.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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