Opening December 5, Canberra Youth Theatre will present their end-of-year major production The Moth Tree: An Awesome Adventure at Gorman House Arts Centre.
16 students, ranging in age from 8 to 12, have worked since July with director Tim Hansen, Sydney writer Shiereen Magsalin, designer Hilary Talbot and combat trainer Elena Kirschbaum. For these young people,learning how to create and present The Moth Tree has been an awesome adventure in its own right.
Hansen has tutored and directed at CYT for the past 4 years. With qualifications in theatre/media from Charles Sturt University, Bathurst and in music composition from ANU School of Music, he takes an interesting approach to the production process. Through regular workshops, including weekend and week-long intensive sessions, he takes on board the students’ ideas, working with them to create theatrical “beats”, which he describes as major points of emphasis to form a dramatic “score”.
With this group, all of whom have shown great initiative, energy and determination, CYT has employed a young emerging writer in an interactive process – sometimes directly working with the students and their director, sometimes using email to pass on ideas and sections of script – to come up with a completed play. The copyright is owned by CYT, so that the script will be available for other groups, but in the most important sense The Moth Tree is owned by all those involved.
Hansen and his student group have had the same kind of relationship with Talbot and Kirschbaum, with the result that there has been great excitement among the young people when a professional adult arrives to work with them. In parallel with the way a director of a professional production might operate, the students create the vision and have the services of dramaturg, writer, stage manager, production manager, designer and trainer available to help them turn their ideas into theatrical reality.
This is surely a quality learning experience, with CYT’s aim, as Hansen puts it, “to create the next generation of theatre creators.”
The Moth Tree is a quest story in the tradition of ancient myth, especially appropriate for this age group. Hansen’s adventure included its own challenges: cast members have sustained a broken thumb and 2 broken wrists. Neither injury occurred at CYT, who say they are now considering asking parents to wrap their children in cotton wool between rehearsals.
The story that has evolved began from the significance of bogong moths. Set, like Canberra, in a quiet part of the world is the city of Algoma. In the surrounding countryside is an enchanted tree on which grow moths who protect the city, a haven of harmony and gentle joy. But at the Festival, held every 10 years, the people discover the moths have disappeared. The twins, Asha and Caleb, must find out what has happened, face up to the challenges of their quest, and hopefully return the city and all its people to the protection of the moths.
Wonderful trees, lit up internally, create a magic forest for the Awesome Adventure. Every student has found their niche on stage among the huge number of characters they wrote about in their first exercise of imagination. It produced a wad of papers at least half a metre thick, so Hansen says. “A bit of every single one of these kids is in the script.”
Live characters, puppets and, of course, beautiful moths abound. Let the awesome adventure begin.
The Moth Tree: An Awesome Adventure
Canberra Youth Theatre
December 5-12 at 7pm (matinee Saturday December 9, 2pm)
C Block Theatre
Gorman House Arts Centre, Braddon
Bookings and information: 6248 5057
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 29 November 2006
Friday 17 November 2006
2006: I'll Be Back Before Midnight by Peter Colley
Ill Be Back Before Midnight by Peter Colley. Canberra Rep directed by Walter Learning at Theatre 3, November 17 – December 9. Bookings: 6247 1950
O what foul and fearful farce is this, what theatrical self-indulgence. You will certainly scream and laugh in the same breath. O horror – a play to be enjoyed!
Just the right illusion of reality in the midst of ludicrous twists of plot is achieved by all the actors. Leah Baulch plays Jan, who knows she is sane after experiencing a nervous breakdown. Ian Croker plays Farmer George, so warm-hearted, sympathetic and helpful, and – but I must not give the plot away. Lucy Goleby’s Laura and Duncan Ley’s Greg are brother and sister of the most awful kind. The trick is to make us suspend our disbelief to create feelings of terror, and then to suspend our belief to make us laugh.
Learning directed the original Rep production 20 years ago. I didn’t see it then, but I suspect that he has taught today’s actors perhaps even more skilfully than before. Without the correct finesse in timing and emotional expression, all the technical tricks in the world would not make the play work. But work it does.
You can’t help but be entertained by this spoof of an Agatha Christie, without a detective to help you work out the devious logic. Every character did it, except the butler because there isn’t one.
For people who want a justification for going to the theatre, a bit of academic effort shows the play actually reveals how politicians and terrorists can tap into our fears so easily. Remember the weapons of mass destruction which never existed, or how to respect women by killing them in a soccer stadium just before the afternoon game?
Of course I’ll Be Back Before Midnight was never meant to bear responsibility for such heavy thoughts, so don’t worry, be happy and you will indeed have as the program advertises “A wonderful night of blood-curdling fun!”
© Frank McKone, Canberra
O what foul and fearful farce is this, what theatrical self-indulgence. You will certainly scream and laugh in the same breath. O horror – a play to be enjoyed!
Just the right illusion of reality in the midst of ludicrous twists of plot is achieved by all the actors. Leah Baulch plays Jan, who knows she is sane after experiencing a nervous breakdown. Ian Croker plays Farmer George, so warm-hearted, sympathetic and helpful, and – but I must not give the plot away. Lucy Goleby’s Laura and Duncan Ley’s Greg are brother and sister of the most awful kind. The trick is to make us suspend our disbelief to create feelings of terror, and then to suspend our belief to make us laugh.
Learning directed the original Rep production 20 years ago. I didn’t see it then, but I suspect that he has taught today’s actors perhaps even more skilfully than before. Without the correct finesse in timing and emotional expression, all the technical tricks in the world would not make the play work. But work it does.
You can’t help but be entertained by this spoof of an Agatha Christie, without a detective to help you work out the devious logic. Every character did it, except the butler because there isn’t one.
For people who want a justification for going to the theatre, a bit of academic effort shows the play actually reveals how politicians and terrorists can tap into our fears so easily. Remember the weapons of mass destruction which never existed, or how to respect women by killing them in a soccer stadium just before the afternoon game?
Of course I’ll Be Back Before Midnight was never meant to bear responsibility for such heavy thoughts, so don’t worry, be happy and you will indeed have as the program advertises “A wonderful night of blood-curdling fun!”
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Monday 13 November 2006
2006: Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo. Preview feature article.
The latest theatrical incarnation in Canberra – Australian Capital Theatre Inc – has a clever logo of its initials representing a figure standing in a spotlight.
To find out about this new company I turned the spotlight onto Peter Copeman, co-director with Dione McAlary of their first production, Norm and Ahmed. By Alex Buzo, who sadly died of cancer recently, the play was famously banned 40 years ago for its use of f*** on stage. But the real controversy should have been about the traditional Australian racism seen in the character Norm against the Pakistani Ahmed.
Today, the theme of the play has become more terribly relevant than ever. Copeman explains that this theatre is “of passion rather than profit” and that this production is a “toe in the water” in the hope that ACT Inc will continue “in and for the capital and for Australia”. A community needs to be “telling its own stories to itself”, especially in a globalised world, where people “crave a sense of locality and local identity”.
Though he admits he hasn’t yet read In Good Company - A manual for producing independent theatre by Lyn Wallis (reviewed in The Canberra Times last March), where warnings abound about planning for sustainability, I discovered that Copeman’s range of experience should stand the company in good stead. He began by training as a director at NIDA, has a masters degree in dramaturgy from Canada, became a writer largely through work in community theatre, particularly with Melbourne’s Jika Jika Theatre with Australia Council and Community Employment Program funding in the 1980s.
Learning discipline in writing came from an Australian Film and Television School course and 18 months writing television scripts for the second last series of Prisoner, including the first script with an Aboriginal woman’s role based on experiences at Fairlea Women’s Prison.
John Clark, recently retired director of NIDA, persuaded Copeman to accept an appointment as executive director of the Northern Territory Theatre Company in Darwin, the short-lived attempt by then Country Liberal Party Chief Minister Paul Everingham to set up a state theatre company to match the southern states. A top-down decision, facing considerable hostility from the incumbent pro-am Darwin Theatre Group and funding cuts by the Federal Labour government meant pensioner concessions on buses were subsequently preferred over an expensive theatre company. Not even its first year’s program could be completed.
In Brisbane, writing and teaching at Queensland University of Technology led to a production of Sinakulo, a play about Australian / Filipino relations, which received an AWGIE in 2003. In Canberra since 2004, Copeman directed the registered vocational training course Theatre Arts Diploma in Entertainment for ANU Enterprises, which won an ACT Training Excellence Award for a training initiative while one student was named Vocational Student of the Year.
The lack of a standard apprenticeship system in theatre, however, saw the course funding cut, so Copeman and graduate students tried in 2005 for a grant to re-present Sinakulo, working with Canberra’s Filipino community, but without success despite their previously successful production of House Arrest at Old Parliament House. Though some of the original group have inevitably moved away from Canberra, ACT Inc is the result of an 18 month gestation period.
Relying entirely on private funds, Norm and Ahmed is a deliberate choice. It has only two actors (Peter Fock and Ian Fallon). Its presentation on the Kingston Foreshore of the Old Bus Depot Markets means no set building is required, since the architecture creates the right imagery as Buzo pictured his play. Using a “found” space rather than a purpose built theatre is consistent with Copeman’s community theatre interests, while the play is an excellent example of telling our story to ourselves.
With this theme in mind, Australian Capital Theatre Inc plans to follow on with other works of the Australian canon, as well as other Australian plays which may have had one professional run and then become forgotten, and may not have been published, yet should be seen again especially in the National Capital.
One concept of ACT Inc is to become an attraction for visitors to Canberra, from Australia and overseas, to see Australian culture in action, while our discussion also led to the need for unpublished scripts from around the country to be retrieved from people’s sheds, cardboard boxes and filing cabinets – even their hard drives – to be collected and archived in one place such as the National Library.
In a previous article I have noted more than 70 theatre groups that of have come and mostly gone in Canberra over the past decade. Perhaps ACT Inc will establish a niche and survive against all the odds.
Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo
Australian Capital Theatre
Old Bus Depot Markets
Wentworth Ave (on the Kingston Foreshore)
Tuesday to Friday November 21 – December 1, 8.30pm
$16 / $12 / $10 groups of 10 or more
Bookings 0417 639 521
© Frank McKone, Canberra
To find out about this new company I turned the spotlight onto Peter Copeman, co-director with Dione McAlary of their first production, Norm and Ahmed. By Alex Buzo, who sadly died of cancer recently, the play was famously banned 40 years ago for its use of f*** on stage. But the real controversy should have been about the traditional Australian racism seen in the character Norm against the Pakistani Ahmed.
Today, the theme of the play has become more terribly relevant than ever. Copeman explains that this theatre is “of passion rather than profit” and that this production is a “toe in the water” in the hope that ACT Inc will continue “in and for the capital and for Australia”. A community needs to be “telling its own stories to itself”, especially in a globalised world, where people “crave a sense of locality and local identity”.
Though he admits he hasn’t yet read In Good Company - A manual for producing independent theatre by Lyn Wallis (reviewed in The Canberra Times last March), where warnings abound about planning for sustainability, I discovered that Copeman’s range of experience should stand the company in good stead. He began by training as a director at NIDA, has a masters degree in dramaturgy from Canada, became a writer largely through work in community theatre, particularly with Melbourne’s Jika Jika Theatre with Australia Council and Community Employment Program funding in the 1980s.
Learning discipline in writing came from an Australian Film and Television School course and 18 months writing television scripts for the second last series of Prisoner, including the first script with an Aboriginal woman’s role based on experiences at Fairlea Women’s Prison.
John Clark, recently retired director of NIDA, persuaded Copeman to accept an appointment as executive director of the Northern Territory Theatre Company in Darwin, the short-lived attempt by then Country Liberal Party Chief Minister Paul Everingham to set up a state theatre company to match the southern states. A top-down decision, facing considerable hostility from the incumbent pro-am Darwin Theatre Group and funding cuts by the Federal Labour government meant pensioner concessions on buses were subsequently preferred over an expensive theatre company. Not even its first year’s program could be completed.
In Brisbane, writing and teaching at Queensland University of Technology led to a production of Sinakulo, a play about Australian / Filipino relations, which received an AWGIE in 2003. In Canberra since 2004, Copeman directed the registered vocational training course Theatre Arts Diploma in Entertainment for ANU Enterprises, which won an ACT Training Excellence Award for a training initiative while one student was named Vocational Student of the Year.
The lack of a standard apprenticeship system in theatre, however, saw the course funding cut, so Copeman and graduate students tried in 2005 for a grant to re-present Sinakulo, working with Canberra’s Filipino community, but without success despite their previously successful production of House Arrest at Old Parliament House. Though some of the original group have inevitably moved away from Canberra, ACT Inc is the result of an 18 month gestation period.
Relying entirely on private funds, Norm and Ahmed is a deliberate choice. It has only two actors (Peter Fock and Ian Fallon). Its presentation on the Kingston Foreshore of the Old Bus Depot Markets means no set building is required, since the architecture creates the right imagery as Buzo pictured his play. Using a “found” space rather than a purpose built theatre is consistent with Copeman’s community theatre interests, while the play is an excellent example of telling our story to ourselves.
With this theme in mind, Australian Capital Theatre Inc plans to follow on with other works of the Australian canon, as well as other Australian plays which may have had one professional run and then become forgotten, and may not have been published, yet should be seen again especially in the National Capital.
One concept of ACT Inc is to become an attraction for visitors to Canberra, from Australia and overseas, to see Australian culture in action, while our discussion also led to the need for unpublished scripts from around the country to be retrieved from people’s sheds, cardboard boxes and filing cabinets – even their hard drives – to be collected and archived in one place such as the National Library.
In a previous article I have noted more than 70 theatre groups that of have come and mostly gone in Canberra over the past decade. Perhaps ACT Inc will establish a niche and survive against all the odds.
Norm and Ahmed by Alex Buzo
Australian Capital Theatre
Old Bus Depot Markets
Wentworth Ave (on the Kingston Foreshore)
Tuesday to Friday November 21 – December 1, 8.30pm
$16 / $12 / $10 groups of 10 or more
Bookings 0417 639 521
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Friday 10 November 2006
2006: “Are You Being Served?” by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft. Preview feature article.
Who, we may well ask, is being served when Nina Stevenson as Mrs Slocum refers pointedly to her pussy in “Are Your Being Served?” at the Gallery Café, University of Canberra, opening this Friday?
Asking this of director Jasan Savage revealed much more than even he expected. How is it possible that he has attracted full theatre-restaurant houses to some 45 shows of this kind over 9 years? Who goes so far, usually finding themselves lost in the out-of-the-way confusion of UC buildings, to see old television favourites? And who is Jasan Savage anyway?
Way back in the mists of time (the 1950s) Young Jasan began a quest to become a theatre designer. The famous stage hypnotist The Great Franquin, after putting him under, invited Jay, as he became known, to be his advertising illustrator. From Melbourne, Franquin took Jay all over Australia, New Zealand, and, on one trip, to 40 American cities in 40 days. 7 years later, when Franquin retired, having reached his target of amassing a million pounds, Betty Pounder of J C Williamson’s theatre pushed Jay into auditioning and his life as an actor began, taking him all over the world (except Russia, he says, regretfully).
For the past 10 years he has worked for University of Canberra Union (UCU) as director (which means doing absolutely everything) at the UCU Theatre in The Hub. The first attempt at theatre-restaurant, in 1997, was The Diary of Adam and Eve, based on Mark Twain’s work, which was a surprising success. Searching for other short plays suitable for a restaurant atmosphere revealed that many television comedy writers had adapted their work for stage. Fawlty Towers was good but needed some changes for the local audience. So Savage rang John Cleese’s agent in London, who passed the phone to Cleese himself. “Do what you like with it,” he said!
And so followed Absolutely Fabulous, Dad’s Army, ‘Allo ‘Allo, The Vicar of Dibley, Black Adder, MASH, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as well as other non-tv scripts like Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels, short pieces by Chekhov (Chekhov’s Funniest), the Wizard of Oz. Even the Vampire Lesbians of Sodom brought in the crowds, averaging about 2600 per show. That’s 117,000 bums on seats in 9 years.
The UCU theatre is dark nowadays, except for rehearsals and university lectures, as the restaurant stage dominates the work. Do people just come for the food and wine? “After all,” says Savage, “I’m just putting on pure entertainment.” But discussion brings us round to the people who come. “Mums and dads from Nappy Valley. They bring the whole family, often ringing to ask if it’s too shocking for Grandma, and then bringing her too.”
Not quite the audience you would expect at a university venue? No, the university people never come, but they are interested in the money the shows earn, even when it costs thousands of dollars to mount them. Gradually we realise that Savage is doing something that theatre has always done – subverting people’s assumptions.
A non-academic audience attends university without thinking “I’m going to university”. But many also then come to other events at UC such as Stonefest. It might be beneath the dignity of the academics to go to these plays, but they are an important bridge between the university and the surrounding society.
“I usually add in some tit jokes,” says Savage, to bring me back to earth. But these scripts “are a bit like the Shakespearean stage where characters talk about what isn’t on stage - like Mrs Slocum’s pussy. It’s about people using their imaginations.” Then when I push further about why families of tv watchers come, Savage at last admits it’s quite different “to see Mrs Slocum in the flesh, talking about her pussy.” They come to see the characters they know. But they want to see them live on stage. This is what theatre can do that television can never do.
So it will be a “screamingly funny night” - judging by the costume rehearsal - when the Grace Brothers staff go to Spain for a Christmas holiday in a non-star hotel which, they discover, hasn’t yet been built. Tent hopping and mistaken identities follow naturally, and the innuendoes … well, say no more.
I’m thinking Canberra society is being surpisingly well served by Jason Savage and his small core of regular actors - Nina Stevenson, Dan Cole, Craig Marvell, Hugh Stevenson and John Rogers - as well as the many occasional performers. UC Players’ dinner theatre is a quirky aberration in a city full of conventional expectations. Light relief, yes - but a bit of the eccentricity which we can all enjoy and which so many of these plays represent. A bit like Jasan Savage himself.
“Are You Being Served” by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft
UC Players at the Gallery Café
UCU Conference Centre
University of Canberra
Fridays and Saturdays November 17 – December 16
Show and 3 Course Dinner $60
Bookings essential: 6201 2645
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Asking this of director Jasan Savage revealed much more than even he expected. How is it possible that he has attracted full theatre-restaurant houses to some 45 shows of this kind over 9 years? Who goes so far, usually finding themselves lost in the out-of-the-way confusion of UC buildings, to see old television favourites? And who is Jasan Savage anyway?
Way back in the mists of time (the 1950s) Young Jasan began a quest to become a theatre designer. The famous stage hypnotist The Great Franquin, after putting him under, invited Jay, as he became known, to be his advertising illustrator. From Melbourne, Franquin took Jay all over Australia, New Zealand, and, on one trip, to 40 American cities in 40 days. 7 years later, when Franquin retired, having reached his target of amassing a million pounds, Betty Pounder of J C Williamson’s theatre pushed Jay into auditioning and his life as an actor began, taking him all over the world (except Russia, he says, regretfully).
For the past 10 years he has worked for University of Canberra Union (UCU) as director (which means doing absolutely everything) at the UCU Theatre in The Hub. The first attempt at theatre-restaurant, in 1997, was The Diary of Adam and Eve, based on Mark Twain’s work, which was a surprising success. Searching for other short plays suitable for a restaurant atmosphere revealed that many television comedy writers had adapted their work for stage. Fawlty Towers was good but needed some changes for the local audience. So Savage rang John Cleese’s agent in London, who passed the phone to Cleese himself. “Do what you like with it,” he said!
And so followed Absolutely Fabulous, Dad’s Army, ‘Allo ‘Allo, The Vicar of Dibley, Black Adder, MASH, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as well as other non-tv scripts like Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels, short pieces by Chekhov (Chekhov’s Funniest), the Wizard of Oz. Even the Vampire Lesbians of Sodom brought in the crowds, averaging about 2600 per show. That’s 117,000 bums on seats in 9 years.
The UCU theatre is dark nowadays, except for rehearsals and university lectures, as the restaurant stage dominates the work. Do people just come for the food and wine? “After all,” says Savage, “I’m just putting on pure entertainment.” But discussion brings us round to the people who come. “Mums and dads from Nappy Valley. They bring the whole family, often ringing to ask if it’s too shocking for Grandma, and then bringing her too.”
Not quite the audience you would expect at a university venue? No, the university people never come, but they are interested in the money the shows earn, even when it costs thousands of dollars to mount them. Gradually we realise that Savage is doing something that theatre has always done – subverting people’s assumptions.
A non-academic audience attends university without thinking “I’m going to university”. But many also then come to other events at UC such as Stonefest. It might be beneath the dignity of the academics to go to these plays, but they are an important bridge between the university and the surrounding society.
“I usually add in some tit jokes,” says Savage, to bring me back to earth. But these scripts “are a bit like the Shakespearean stage where characters talk about what isn’t on stage - like Mrs Slocum’s pussy. It’s about people using their imaginations.” Then when I push further about why families of tv watchers come, Savage at last admits it’s quite different “to see Mrs Slocum in the flesh, talking about her pussy.” They come to see the characters they know. But they want to see them live on stage. This is what theatre can do that television can never do.
So it will be a “screamingly funny night” - judging by the costume rehearsal - when the Grace Brothers staff go to Spain for a Christmas holiday in a non-star hotel which, they discover, hasn’t yet been built. Tent hopping and mistaken identities follow naturally, and the innuendoes … well, say no more.
I’m thinking Canberra society is being surpisingly well served by Jason Savage and his small core of regular actors - Nina Stevenson, Dan Cole, Craig Marvell, Hugh Stevenson and John Rogers - as well as the many occasional performers. UC Players’ dinner theatre is a quirky aberration in a city full of conventional expectations. Light relief, yes - but a bit of the eccentricity which we can all enjoy and which so many of these plays represent. A bit like Jasan Savage himself.
“Are You Being Served” by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft
UC Players at the Gallery Café
UCU Conference Centre
University of Canberra
Fridays and Saturdays November 17 – December 16
Show and 3 Course Dinner $60
Bookings essential: 6201 2645
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Wednesday 8 November 2006
2006: Australian National Playwrights’ Centre is dead. Feature article.
Buried alongside its younger sister Playworks, the Australian National Playwrights’ Centre is dead.
Deep sadness wells up within me, remembering my own rough and tumble treatment 25 years ago. Every day for two weeks my script - the avant-garde play of 1981 according to ANPC founding member Katharine Brisbane - was tried and tested by top actors like Helen Morse, shredded by the famous Nimrod director Ken Horler, while I was personally advised by iconic writer Barry Oakley. Every night I added, subtracted and reorganised ready for the next day’s flagellation. I’ll never forget the satisfaction I felt when the public reading created the exact feeling in the audience I had aimed for.
Depression, unfortunately, did not a theatrical success make. The Death of Willy died after one Sunday night reading at Anthill Theatre in Melbourne. A man in a raincoat and I were the only audience.
I apologise for this personal intrusion, but this was what the ANPC was about - bringing the reality of theatre production to bear on the work of new writers, as well as developing new works by established playwrights. In my year I watched Dorothy Hewett receive the same kind of treatment.
But can the Australia Council, by taking the money previously given to Playworks and ANPC to fund the new national script development organisation PlayWriting Australia, expect to ever engender the old excitement, tears and driving force?
Money isn’t everything, as politicians in power regularly tell the rest of us. PlayWriting Australia will begin with $330,000, a little more than the defunct bodies received between them. If you were to operate a business servicing a constant demand in every state and territory, plus running an annual two-week day-and-night practical development program employing the professionals needed to work with perhaps 20 new writers, how would you go with a budget of less than $150,000?
ANPC director Mary-Anne Gifford told me this level of funding over the past few years has meant the annual Playwrights Conference was almost all that was left of the wide-ranging work which is needed to support new theatre across Australia. How much should it be? At least $500,000, preferably a million to cover the work of both ANPC and Playworks.
Is our culture worth funding properly? May-Brit Akerholt directed ANPC from 1992 to 2002, a powerhouse of energy, I remember, at conferences in those days held at ANU. Canberra’s Carol Woodrow, with Timothy Daly, focussed on new script development for many years in special programs outside the annual conference. Both are adamant that the Australia Council funding must be seen as an investment in this core support function.
Akerholt’s key point is that innovation and risk-taking is essential. The freedom to fail underpins the success of the ANPC and Playworks in getting scripts to professional production stage. Woodrow notes that Tom Healey, 2006 Conference director, had to rely on workshop directors being offered free by the large established theatre companies. Risky work is of less interest in these circumstances. Even the name PlayWriting Australia smacks of bureaucratic fashion rather than challenging theatrical guts.
Up and coming young director, based at ANU Arts Centre, Rhys Holden organised the first Australian Theatre Directors’ Conference in September this year. The university had to pick up the shortfall, though all staff were volunteers, the keynote speakers, including leading director Aubrey Mellor, were not paid apart from fares and accommodation while the other 80 participants paid their own way entirely. Mellor said, “Over-worked and under-paid, we work in isolation in an atmosphere of general artistic timidity and in a climate where political passion is scorned, where writers lack ambition and where the media tends to see anything ‘Australian’ as box-office disaster.” He also said of the annual Australian National Playwrights’ Conference, as Holden recalls, “As a director, if you’re not there you don’t exist on the Australian theatrical map.”
In Akerholt’s view, the one good thing is that the very well regarded playwright Michael Gow, currently artistic director of Queensland Theatre Company, has accepted the chair of the interim board of PlayWriting Australia. His reputation was established when his play The Kid went on through the ANPC process to critical and commercial success, followed by the even more widely known Away.
I found myself in agreement when Gow told me that he has the same concerns. The Australia Council, representing government, commissioned a report, saw that both ANPC and Playworks were struggling, and is acting as broker to ensure that support for new playwrights will continue. The interim board has Council staff and facilities available to it until the end of the year, when the old bodies are finally wrapped up and PlayWriting Australia begins its independent incorporated existence. Death and resurrection is an ancient theatrical theme. (The new name, by the way, was decided by the interim board, not imposed from above.)
The call is out for an artistic director and administrator. The first annual conference in July 2007 will accept some new plays for showcasing, but its main purpose will be to plan how to rejuvenate, reinvigorate and recreate the atmosphere, the excitement and the process that Gow remembers as such a positive force when he was the new kid on the block in 1982.
Gow believes that there is political indifference, but the ball is still in play. His aim is for “a bigger and better ball, and more fun to play with”. More news early in the new year.
And, I was pleased to hear, with Gow’s fond memories and because a fixed place and time on everyone’s calendar is essential for success, PlayWriting Australia will return the annual playwrights’ conference to Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
Deep sadness wells up within me, remembering my own rough and tumble treatment 25 years ago. Every day for two weeks my script - the avant-garde play of 1981 according to ANPC founding member Katharine Brisbane - was tried and tested by top actors like Helen Morse, shredded by the famous Nimrod director Ken Horler, while I was personally advised by iconic writer Barry Oakley. Every night I added, subtracted and reorganised ready for the next day’s flagellation. I’ll never forget the satisfaction I felt when the public reading created the exact feeling in the audience I had aimed for.
Depression, unfortunately, did not a theatrical success make. The Death of Willy died after one Sunday night reading at Anthill Theatre in Melbourne. A man in a raincoat and I were the only audience.
I apologise for this personal intrusion, but this was what the ANPC was about - bringing the reality of theatre production to bear on the work of new writers, as well as developing new works by established playwrights. In my year I watched Dorothy Hewett receive the same kind of treatment.
But can the Australia Council, by taking the money previously given to Playworks and ANPC to fund the new national script development organisation PlayWriting Australia, expect to ever engender the old excitement, tears and driving force?
Money isn’t everything, as politicians in power regularly tell the rest of us. PlayWriting Australia will begin with $330,000, a little more than the defunct bodies received between them. If you were to operate a business servicing a constant demand in every state and territory, plus running an annual two-week day-and-night practical development program employing the professionals needed to work with perhaps 20 new writers, how would you go with a budget of less than $150,000?
ANPC director Mary-Anne Gifford told me this level of funding over the past few years has meant the annual Playwrights Conference was almost all that was left of the wide-ranging work which is needed to support new theatre across Australia. How much should it be? At least $500,000, preferably a million to cover the work of both ANPC and Playworks.
Is our culture worth funding properly? May-Brit Akerholt directed ANPC from 1992 to 2002, a powerhouse of energy, I remember, at conferences in those days held at ANU. Canberra’s Carol Woodrow, with Timothy Daly, focussed on new script development for many years in special programs outside the annual conference. Both are adamant that the Australia Council funding must be seen as an investment in this core support function.
Akerholt’s key point is that innovation and risk-taking is essential. The freedom to fail underpins the success of the ANPC and Playworks in getting scripts to professional production stage. Woodrow notes that Tom Healey, 2006 Conference director, had to rely on workshop directors being offered free by the large established theatre companies. Risky work is of less interest in these circumstances. Even the name PlayWriting Australia smacks of bureaucratic fashion rather than challenging theatrical guts.
Up and coming young director, based at ANU Arts Centre, Rhys Holden organised the first Australian Theatre Directors’ Conference in September this year. The university had to pick up the shortfall, though all staff were volunteers, the keynote speakers, including leading director Aubrey Mellor, were not paid apart from fares and accommodation while the other 80 participants paid their own way entirely. Mellor said, “Over-worked and under-paid, we work in isolation in an atmosphere of general artistic timidity and in a climate where political passion is scorned, where writers lack ambition and where the media tends to see anything ‘Australian’ as box-office disaster.” He also said of the annual Australian National Playwrights’ Conference, as Holden recalls, “As a director, if you’re not there you don’t exist on the Australian theatrical map.”
In Akerholt’s view, the one good thing is that the very well regarded playwright Michael Gow, currently artistic director of Queensland Theatre Company, has accepted the chair of the interim board of PlayWriting Australia. His reputation was established when his play The Kid went on through the ANPC process to critical and commercial success, followed by the even more widely known Away.
I found myself in agreement when Gow told me that he has the same concerns. The Australia Council, representing government, commissioned a report, saw that both ANPC and Playworks were struggling, and is acting as broker to ensure that support for new playwrights will continue. The interim board has Council staff and facilities available to it until the end of the year, when the old bodies are finally wrapped up and PlayWriting Australia begins its independent incorporated existence. Death and resurrection is an ancient theatrical theme. (The new name, by the way, was decided by the interim board, not imposed from above.)
The call is out for an artistic director and administrator. The first annual conference in July 2007 will accept some new plays for showcasing, but its main purpose will be to plan how to rejuvenate, reinvigorate and recreate the atmosphere, the excitement and the process that Gow remembers as such a positive force when he was the new kid on the block in 1982.
Gow believes that there is political indifference, but the ball is still in play. His aim is for “a bigger and better ball, and more fun to play with”. More news early in the new year.
And, I was pleased to hear, with Gow’s fond memories and because a fixed place and time on everyone’s calendar is essential for success, PlayWriting Australia will return the annual playwrights’ conference to Canberra.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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