Monday 29 April 2013

2013: 35º 17 South - Gaming Theatre by Karla Conway. Interview feature article.

35º 17 South created by Karla Conway.  Canberra Youth Theatre at the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden, Saturday April 13 to Saturday April 20, 2013.

Frank McKone in discussion with Karla Conway.

When I reviewed 35º 17 South (on Canberra Critics' Circle blog and this blog Sunday 14 April, which you may like to refer to as you read on) I found myself asking questions about drama games, audience involvement, risks, and results of experimenting with new technology.  After being present for just the very beginning of a work that continued over a whole week, I was keen to meet the creator, artistic director of Canberra Youth Theatre, Karla Conway, to find some answers.

What I discovered is a new kind of theatre.  In recent times theatrical forms have been merging in new ways: I have been particularly interested in the new forms of Dance Theatre, for example.  But here we have “location gaming theatre”.  As Karla explained the process of creating the work and told stories from the experiences of the 400 people who took part over the week, I bit by bit saw my understanding come into focus.

Gaming Theatre sets up a new relationship between the audience (or “players”), the actors, and the location (in this case the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia).

A starting point for discussion was whether 35º 17 South was really no different from a large-group drama improvisation workshop, of the kind often used in drama education and theatre rehearsals.  Were the paying “audience” simply participants alongside the CYT “actors”, all improvising in an unstructured way on a theme of refugee issues?  In this kind of process, I would have established the theme via some kind of stimulus in an acting space, let the improvisation develop, and follow up with a reflection and debriefing session to explore what happened and what the participants learned about themselves and the theme.

But, no, explained Karla.  She was the author of a complete narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end.  In fact she holds the copyright on that creation, which in its final form looks rather like a flow chart, with optional pathways at certain points, rather than a single-spine narrative.  The structure is supplied by the game, which is played by the audience – that is why they are called “players” rather than being a static observing “audience”.  They pay for a theatre experience as they actively play the game, rather than for a conventional passive absorbing of theatre.

Each player in Gaming Theatre has the same objective – to complete the narrative and find out what happens in the end – just as an audience member has in a conventional play-watching situation.  What the game provides are multiple possible choices after the first task (counting the bolts on the Diamond sculpture), taking each player through the flow chart on an individual set of pathways.  This process is dramatically enhanced by the basic scripting of each of the characters they meet, allowing the actors to improvise, strictly in character, in response to each player’s questions or expectations of them.  One of the major successes of the week’s work for the Canberra Youth Theatre as a training institution was that so many players were surprised and very impressed by the actors’ maintaining their characters so well in the face of unknown and often highly unexpected demands made by players who were trying to work out how they, as refugees, could find the shelter they needed.

It is at this point that I recognised what is new in this form of theatre, especially compared with experiments in the past about changing the relationship between the audience and the actors.  In the Open Theatre of the 1970s, or action taking place in the auditorium or the foyer, or in street theatre of all kinds, including all those different arrangements of audience participation, the actors are in control.

In this Gaming Theatre, the players are in control, making their own decisions as they seek out the codes to take them further, and decide what to say to an actor and how to respond to the actor’s character’s decision in return.  All this takes place within the game structure with its explicit and sometimes hidden rules, and so the theatrical experience is much more like playing out situations in real life than can happen in conventional theatre.

Here it is important to recognise the crucial role played by the writers of the code for the game, the Academy of Interactive Entertainment team, who worked over a lengthy period to make the game work consistently with Conway’s original narrative.  This was more than a clerical exercise, of course, but a creative work complementary to hers.  (I didn’t ask who holds the software copyright!)  As Karla pointed out, one of her disappointments in theatre of recent times has been the use of multi-media which is no more than illustration or distraction, instead of being fully integrated into the creation of the drama.

Here, the gaming code, the use of the tablets to find one’s way, and the narrative are all integral to the action and the player’s sense of satisfaction with this new form of theatre.   The location might be seen as more peripheral, since the main achievement here was to open up the players’ and the actors’ awareness of the artworks.  I suppose the only other way to integrate the location would have been to do what SBS did with Go Back to Where You Came From – and play the game for real starting in Afghanistan and ending up in Canberra!

But something like that reality happened, on occasions that Karla observed.  In the story there is a baby – represented physically by a doll – in “radioactive” mist.  To rescue the baby (and save themselves from the radioactivity) a player must find the code as quickly as possible and move to the next position with a digital “saved child”.

However, one player, male, took the doll physically to the actor who was a black market trader and tried to sell it to him to obtain other resources, like a weapon, to get further along the road to safety.  How’s that for something Brechtian.  Mother Courage and her Children you could say.  After negotiations, in character, the baby was returned to its “radioactive” location for another player to find it.

But then (I think on a different day), a woman picked the baby up to comfort it, refusing to hand it to the nearby actors because, she said, she couldn’t trust them to treat it properly.  So the actors had to improvise, within their various characters, bringing in others to help, until they established trust enough for the player to hand over the baby – so it again could be returned to its location.  So there you go – The Caucasian Chalk Circle in the Sculpture Garden, except that empathy provided a positive solution to who owned the child, rather than the threat of cutting it in half.

Other stories too showed how deeply players became immersed in the ethics of the drama and the emotional effects of the situation of being a refugee.  There was no formal de-brief for the players, just as they would have left a conventional theatre having to work out for themselves whether it was right or naive of Mother Courage’s daughter Kattrin to bang the drum which warned the village below of impending attack, from the very soldiers who then killed her as a traitor.  But then, Karla reported, every player completed the game, and so reached the safety of the Skyspace – both as a player in the role of refugee, and in a different sense, as a person experiencing theatre.

Not only, then, is Gaming Theatre an exciting original new form, especially for the young for whom apps and tapping tablet screens is entirely normal, but – in the right author’s hands – is as valid and powerful as any other good quality theatre.


© Frank McKone, Canberra

Wednesday 24 April 2013

2013: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts.  Presented by Queanbeyan City Council at The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, directed by Stephen Pike; musical director: Lucy Bermingham; choreographer: Annette Sharpe; set designer: Brian Sudding; costume designer: Christine Pawlicki; lighting: Hamish McConchie; sound: Evan Wythes.  Wednesday – Sunday April 24 – May 5, 2013-04-25

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 24

This is an up-front musical, quite explicit on matters sexual (and a few other bodily functions), very American culturally speaking, mostly very funny and occasionally touching.

It’s also very well-known, having reached Queanbeyan after productions in more than 400 other cities in at least USA, Britain, Israel, Mexico, Spain, Holland, Hungary, Czech Republic, South Korea, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, Ireland, Argentina, Germany, Hong Kong, mainland China and Taipei, as well as Sydney and its original run of 5003 performances in the off-Broadway Westside Theatre.  This production certainly stands up very well in this company, if the various You Tube efforts I’ve viewed represent the standard.

First is the music.  Lucy Bermingham on the grand, Vanessa Driver, violin, and Jason Henderson, bass, captured each of the American musical styles perfectly for each song, and for the interludes as scenes shifted from one vignette to the next.  Quality here gave the edge to the singing, lifting the performers – Dave Evans, Jenna Roberts, Christine Forbes, Krystle Innes, Nick Valois and Greg Sollis – often to an operatic level, which gave the stereotyped characters in many scenes an extra dimension.

Add to the music a wonderful sense of comedy in Annette Sharpe’s choreography, and precision in the timing which showed Stephen Pike’s strong direction, and we ended up with a show better than might be expected from what is, after all, not much more than a series of revue sketches.  The greatest depth, though, welled up unexpectedly – but wonderfully – in the non-singing scene “The Very First Dating Video of Rose Ritz”.  Jenna Roberts was awarded a special round of applause for her characterisation showing guts and integrity in a very vulnerable Rose.

At a different end of the spectrum was the performance of Ted, the bear, as he cheerfully but in a certain sense rather sadly waved us goodbye, manipulated by Nick Valois, as the father reverting to childhood.  Very nice work.

I think a reason behind the success of this Australian production is that we are not Americans.  There was some discussion during interval about the decision to use American accents, but in the second half the culture, perhaps especially of the American Jewish characters, is so specific that Australian voices just would not do.  What we have to offer, instead, is a view of these characters from the outside looking in, and a picture of the absurdity of their behaviour against what we would expect in our culture.

The result is more than a humorous reflection on love and marriage, but a more biting level of comedy approaching satire.  In other words, more satisfying theatre rather than mere light-hearted entertainment.  Some of those You Tube videos seem to present the latter and miss out on the former.  Much of the script and the libretto can easily fall into the guffaw laughter trap, but scenes in this production – such as Christine Forbes’ country and western “Always a Bridesmaid” and Dave Evans’ and Jenna Roberts’ “Marriage Tango” – showed what an Australian perspective could bring to this American life.

So gird your loins and see for yourself at The Q.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Pea! by David Finnigan

Pea! by David Finnigan.  Serious Theatre – director: barb barnett; designer:Gillian Schwab; audio designer: Seth Edwards-Ellis.  At The Street Theatre, April 20-27, 2013, 10am and 2pm.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 24

If there is one lesson which should be taught to all young Australian children, surely it must be irreverence.  Pea! does it nicely.

On the other hand, children’s theatre must treat its trusting audience with respect – as indeed should all theatre.  Pea! does this too.

The Hive Program at The Street Theatre encourages new writing and, with dramaturgical assistance, offers a season on stage.  David Finnigan’s work in Pea! is perhaps the most assured and sophisticated product that I have seen so far from The Hive.

He has taken the moral behind the Hans Christian Andersen fable of the princess and the pea – that those absorbed in their own self-importance should be brought down to earth – and turned it on its head.  “Princess” is no more than the name given Gwendoline by the wolves who kindly brought her up when her parents had abandoned her in the Wild Wood of the West.  Gwen satisfies Prince Gregor’s pea-brained mother’s Princess Test, which she learned from daytime Royal Weddings television, precisely because Gwen is not full of self-importance but only wishes to save everyone from the Dragon-with-One-Nostrilled-Snout.

Gregor is certainly lucky to be taken in hand by a woman who can look after herself and sleep as comfortably on the ground as on 40 mattresses – and can solve the problem of how to use the pea to stop up the One-Nostrilled Snout.  The whole kingdom is saved as the fiery Dragon’s internal gas pressure forces explosive farts from his other end, and he flies home in shame to his mother.  It wasn’t just the children who could not contain themselves at this point in the story.  I’m sure the laughing adults around me were thinking of a number of figures of seeming social importance whose snouts they might like to stop up with a pea, or three….

But the respect and care for the children was there from the beginning, as the actors – Cathy Petöcz and Josh Wiseman – made sure they had found out just about every child’s name and engaged them in conversation – about the other theme of the play: what’s your favourite vegetable?  The Pea becomes the narrator, from his pedestal in the Museum of Famous Vegetables, and is even rather boastful of having saved the kingdom – except that everyone soon learns that it was really Gwendoline with a little help from Gregor.  But, significantly, when there is thunder and lightning as the Dragon approaches, Pea stops the action to check if anyone is scared – because he or she (according to which actor is puppeteering at the time) is a bit scared too.  “No, of course not,” the children reply.  “We’re not afraid of the Dragon!” – and on we go to the explosive farts.

Carefully thought-out touches such as this were in themselves educational – for the children and even perhaps for parents.  The script, and I suspect work done during the workshop and rehearsal process, shows how theatre can manipulate an audience’s reactions, but good theatre does this ethically.  It’s this, the irreverence of the script, and the originality of the set design and use of puppetry, that I would like to praise the whole team for, in Pea!


© Frank McKone, Canberra

Saturday 13 April 2013

2013: 35º 17 South created by Karla Conway

35º 17 South created by Karla Conway.  Canberra Youth Theatre at the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden, Saturday April 13 to Saturday April 20, 2013.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Drama games as I used to know them are being taken to a new space by this CYT experiment.  From the drama workshop studio to an outdoor venue, like the Sculpture Garden at the NGA, is one thing.  Setting up a kind of treasure hunt, with clues to be discovered and directions to be understood and followed, is another.  But to have all this set in the context of a semi-scripted scenario which can only be understood via an up-to-date tablet device is one step further than I had previously imagined.

Computer, keyboard and mouse I can cope with, but a blank screen on a tablet is pure mystery to me.  Fortunately a one-time student from my days at Hawker College spontaneously appeared to save my reputation as a drama expert.  Catherine Prosser is now CEO and Co-Founder of stagebitz.com, (http://stagebitz.com/)  providing software which can make running all the technical side of theatre a whizz.  She had no trouble tapping the right bits on the tablet provided by CYT’s front of house coordinator Jim Adamik, and off we went to find the first of those other little mysteries (at least to me) – the black and white squares which look like miniature maps of mazes, stuck on the wall near the Diamond sculpture (Neil Dawson, Aotearoa New Zealand born 1948: Diamonds 2002).  The tablet read the coded maze, only to tell us that we couldn’t go further until we had correctly counted the number of bolts which hold the sculpture together.

After four goes we got it right (37 in case you’d like to know), typed it in and then began the game for real – well, sort of real, except that at that stage we only knew that we had to find clean water.  Why?  Because the only safe place to be was in the Skyspace (James Turrell: 'Within without' 2010) on the other side of the Gallery.  We knew this because we had been there with others who were desperate to get in because they were starving and had travelled so far and for so long to find a safe haven.  We were now in their situation, but we didn’t know why.  But we had not been allowed in until we could find resources like food and water to bring with us.  We couldn’t eat the tablets, but we needed them to find what we needed for entry to the only place of safety.

Catherine and I collected some useful resources like toilet paper and chocolate, and discovered with help from CYT writer Morgan Little that there were not only actors as desperate refugees, but others such as a trader who might exchange our chocolate for a weapon which we would need to help defend the community.  Not all the game concentrated on the immediate objective of survival: there are some codes which are games in themselves, like one which showed insects flying around in the Sculpture Garden which needed to be sprayed to prevent people being bitten by them.

After an hour or more, we had got nowhere near completing the game – we hadn’t even found the clean water – but as responsible adults we had to leave.  The younger members of Youth Theatre were by this time absolutely engrossed in the activity: if they didn’t complete the game on Saturday, they could continue each day next week!  This is one very big school holiday activity.

But is it as ground-breaking an experiment as it seems?  Is it a worthwhile way of teaching drama?  Is it suitably educational more broadly?

I think the answer to the last question depends on the content of the game.The story assumes a “Lucas Heights incident” in 2032 which means the east coast has become unliveable.  The refugees are escaping to Canberra as the only safe haven.  The refugee theme is, of course, entirely relevant in considering the position of those who recently arrived at Geraldton, after some 44 days in a small boat, from Sri Lanka.

However, there is a further assumption that in 2032, those managing the place of safety, the actors refusing entry to the refugees at the beginning of the game, would be openly aggressive with defensive weapons, and would arbitrarily lay out their demands to be satisfied by starving refugees.  Of course, there is a parallel with the way refugees are being treated by officialdom.

But what I wanted to know was, where in the game will the audience/participants have an opportunity to be debriefed and to reflect on the storyline, its implications and truthfulness.  This game, by having an “audience” attending, is different from a large group improvisation workshop where everyone participating takes part in the devising, the role-playing, and the reflective debriefing.  In this case, only the CYT actors and staff are in the know.  Of course, it is true that when an audience leaves a standard theatre production, they are not debriefed but have to sort out what they think about what they have seen for themselves.  This game, though, is more like some of the audience participation experiments of the late 1960s / early 1970s such as New York’s Open Theatre (Robert Pasolli: A Book on the Open Theatre.  Discus Books, 1970) where the actors imposed themselves on the audience members in an undifferentiated space.  These experiments lasted for only a few years, because audiences preferred enough degree of separation from the action to feel they were safe.

Because 35º 17 South is a pre-programmed game, there is a degree of safety for participants, since they have to follow the rules to complete the task.  Usually, of course, electronic games are entirely on screen, while this one involves interaction with real actors in a large relatively unconfined space where immediate supervision by CYT staff is problematic.  Though things like the weapons are no more than images on the tablet screen, what if a non-prepared participant (as opposed to the partially scripted and rehearsed actors) – a member of the public – were to take on the role of a desperate refugee to the point of a physical argument, say, with the trader of weapons who refused to accept chocolate in payment?  What would be the learning, on either side, from this experience?  And what are the safeguards?

At this stage I’m willing to keep an open mind until the conclusion of the game, next Saturday.   But I would be interested to know how the follow-up, what used to be called the backstage post-mortem, will be done – not only for the young adults and late teenagers in the acting roles, and of course for the CYT staff and the people from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment who wrote the computer code, but also for all those people, and perhaps their parents, who were audience/participants.

Since Karla Conway, the CYT Artistic Director, has invited us to “experiment alongside us and embrace the possibilities that technology can play in the evolution of our artform”, I think it should be encumbent on CYT to see the “experiment” as the lab research, requiring a careful analysis of the results and a public report of the findings.




© Frank McKone, Canberra

2013: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.  Canberra Rep directed by Duncan Ley at Theatre 3, Canberra, April 12-27, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 13

For 50 years I have heard the words of Under Milk Wood and allowed them to fill the spaces in my mind with a myriad of images – of the characters and even of their dreams.  Now I have a new set of visual and audio memories, created by Duncan Ley and his designers Anne Kay (set), Heather Spong (costumes), Chris Ellyard (lighting), and Neil McRitchie (sound) to add to and renew my old imagination.

This is a great achievement on Rep’s part, and a great joy to me.

Ley’s directing is exquisite.  Using Duncan Driver as 1st Voice, physically present but unseen by the village dwellers, as the close-up observer on our behalf, he has created for us a solid personality in place of the traditional disembodied voice of the original radio play.  Having an experienced and skilled ensemble cast of 10 – Geoffrey Borny, Alice Ferguson, Sian Harrington, Peter Holland, Terry Johnson, Adele Lewin, David McNamara, Erin Pugh, Steph Roberts and Graham Robertson – enabled Ley and his design team to work out a highly complex scheme to present just about all the characters physically, including the children (the “kiss me for a penny” scene was especially wonderful) and even more detail in the daily life in the street than Thomas’s words describe.

This is done so well because Ley has a clear concept of the theatrical form he is using.  Essentially it is expressionist in style, with all that tradition of black, light and shadow, but given what I might call a gentle touch.  The only harshness was to throw the main switch to shock us out of the reality of seeing actors out of role and into the black of night to begin the action; and to do the same in reverse at the end.  Yet this risky device worked perfectly.

I should also add the properties person, Helen Vaughan-Roberts, to the list of credits because the collecting of all those props hung on the moveable scene sections, representing characters’ kitchens, bedrooms, shops and so on must have been a daunting task.  They made the set a visual feast in its own right.

A completely new thought for me was to use recordings of the Welsh crowd singing at  a rugby match, and of the traditional Welsh male voice choir at significant points.  I wondered about this at first, but the ending especially took any of my doubts away.  The sound track put the play into its proper context, and gave it extra strength on stage.

If Dylan Thomas, high up in Rev Eli Jenkins’ idea of heaven, is watching this production, I’m certain he would not be saying the village’s name backwards.  He may be wishing he could be here to take part in an exciting improvement on the limited first performance he was able to offer at the YMHA Poetry Centre, New York, May 14, 1953, with only five actors and himself standing stock still, except for when he stepped forward two paces to deliver Rev Eli Jenkins’ morning poem.  I now have that recording and Ley’s staging to keep my imagination going for another, perhaps not 50, years.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Friday 12 April 2013

2013: Wulamanayuwi / Once and Future Landscape Care



 Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui by Jason De Santis.  Presented by Centenary of Canberra as Northern Territory’s contribution, from Darwin Festival, directed by Eamon Flack at The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, April 10-13, 2013.

Once and Future Landscape Care forum with Bill Gammage, Bruce Pascoe and Ben Gleeson at Two Fires Festival, Braidwood, April 12-14, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 12

What a wonderful day was Friday April 12, 2013.

In the evening, Canberra Playhouse became a centre of Australian cultural life, as Jason De Santis – of Tiwi Islander and Italian heritage – presented his often amusing yet emotionally engaging version of the traditional story of Wulamanayuwi, the daughter of Jipmarpuwajuwa.  Though superficially De Santis has made a connection with the European story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there is even more significance behind the myth of how death first happened to humans.

Here we see how universal – from Genesis in the Bible to this even nowadays remote community – is the fear of evil and death, and the determination to live and to love.  For an audience in the National Capital, representing a wide range of cultural traditions, responding with great warmth and communal laughter to the originality of this first Tiwi play, and to its author speaking to us in the foyer afterwards, came naturally.  Just as in the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, there is tragedy and a recognition of human failings in this Tiwi story – but I must say I felt more positive about the future of humanity as Wulamanayuwi finally came through her troubling times, making her own decision to begin her adult life with her chosen husband, Awarrajimi.   Her seven brothers, the Panamui, are mischievous but ultimately spirits of family support, rather than competitive and murderous as in the ancient Middle Eastern Biblical story.

Natasha Wanganeen as Jirrakilala and Kylie Farmer as Wulamanayuwi
 If you would like to read more about “Tiwi Art and Culture and the First Old Lady”, Pedro Wonaeamirri (puppet maker and set maker, with John Peter Pilaukui and Linus Warlapinni) has written his version of the story: of Purrukuparli, his wife Waiyai, and of his brother and her lover, the moon man, Taparra, and its importance in his life – available at

http://site.jilamara.com/~jilamara//images/articles/kitty_pedro_1_mar.pdf

The program notes describe the production, saying “The approach is to embrace the classic traditions of Western theatricality to excess, and to allow the clash between Western theatre and Tiwi culture to energise the work....brightness and colour, sound and movement, character-doubling, live music, minimal “acting” and lots of performing and storytelling, things popping out from behind corners, drop-cloths, shadow-puppetry, scrolling landscapes etc.  Everything we can possibly achieve with very few resources – Tiwi style.”  All I can add is to say that they achieved everything!

The actors – Kylie Farmer as Wulamanayuwi; Natasha Wanganeen as her evil stepmother Jirrakilala; Kamahi Djordan King as her father Jipmarpuwajuwa; Jaxon De Santis as her husband Awarrajimi; and Jason De Santis as the Narrator and Evil Spirit of the Water – were hardly “minimal” in effect.  It took no time for connection to be established firmly with the audience, and not a beat was missed from then on.

Then more connections were made for me as, in the foyer, Ngambri father Paul House, with his children, welcomed us all to his country (noting that he was born in the centre of his country, at the old Canberra Hospital – did he mean that was why it was blown up, to be replaced by the National Museum?)  and Jason De Santis spoke, thanking the Ngambri elders for permission for him to tell his Tiwi story here.

All at once it came home to me again that we are living in Aboriginal land, just as it had that very afternoon, in Braidwood, an hour’s drive to the east.

The Two Fires Festival – Fanning the Flames of Arts and Activism – included three speakers, in the presence of Yuin Elder, Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison, on the topic Once and Future Landscape Care

Bruce Pascoe, of Bunurong and Tasmanian heritage, a novelist, short story writer and researcher into indigenous history and language revival, spoke of the invisibility, in conventional histories, of Aboriginal technology, such as in house construction, river flow and fishery management, crop growing, and maintaining a surplus of goods for trading – the very activities that showed traditional Aboriginal culture to be “civilised”.  The refusal to recognise these activities – despite their being described in great detail by well-known European explorers – was the basis for Australia to be treated as “terra nullius”, and the people already living here as so “primitive” they did not count.

Bill Gammage, an academic historian at the Humanities Research Centre at ANU, spoke about his recent publication The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, filling out – for me, at least – this study of the careful and precise use of fire management by Aboriginal people all over Australia, prior to the intervention of Europeans from 1788, with an understanding of the complementary religious beliefs and ceremonial practice developed over many tens of thousands of years.  Once again, here was evidence of a civilisation, rather than an haphazard existence.

Ben Gleeson lives locally, with a degree in Ecological Agriculture and doing honours in Restoration Ecology.  He put together the previous speakers’ themes in emphasising that the essential difference between traditional Aboriginal culture, beliefs and practice and the more recent European approach is that in the one, all forms of life, including us humans, are intimately related; while in the other we humans pretend we are separate from all other forms of life – and try to control everything else.  His most telling example, perhaps, is the development of industrial monoculture agriculture, and his main concern for the future is that greater and greater urbanisation means that our chance of people recognising the imperatives of our interdependence may not come in time to save our species. 

Yet it is the understanding of evolution that Charles Darwin’s theory gave us, and that modern science is beginning to put into practice, which gives us the chance after all.

When Uncle Max spoke, in concluding the session, he praised the young men, like Johnny Huckle, of Wiradjuri heritage, who participated in the earlier welcome to country ceremony with his song to honour the Festival – Two Fires Light our Hearts.  This represented for me the theme of the day: respect the ancient culture, study history honestly, connect science to our humanity in harmony with all the rest of nature.

What a day was Friday April 12, 2013!

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Tuesday 9 April 2013

2013: Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

CDP presents Tall Stories’ magical musical adaptation of Room on the Broom adapted from the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.  Original director: Olivia Jacobs.  Music and lyrics by Jon Fiber, Andy Shaw and Robin Price.

Director for Australia: Morag Cross;  Resident Director: Jane Miskovic; stage design by Morgan Large; lighting design by James Whiteside; puppets by Yvonne Stone.  At The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, April 8-12, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 9

It is a great satisfaction to see a show for young children which is entirely appropriate both theatrically and educationally.  And the business behind the scenes, I discovered, was a complicated mystery in itself.

The opening of the show cleverly takes the audience – young children who cannot be expected to automatically respond to standard conventions – through the transition from ordinary life (where they even had to be taught by their adult minders that each person has just one seat) to the fictional world of theatre.

With house lights still up and children still being brought in and seated, and the stage open but in shadow, the four actors – Andrew Threlfall (understudy for Stephen Anderson): Dog; Josie Cerise: Cat; Crystal Hegedis: Witch; and Damien Warren-Smith: Bird, Dragon – appear without fanfare.  They are playing hide-and-seek (“Coming, ready or not!) among the children in the audience, who become involved in the game, pointing out where someone is hiding.

The set on stage is highly evocative – a large rising full moon seen dimly through a chunky forest, with an owl calling – and the “children”, who are camping out, don sleeping bags and form a sleeping heap on stage; except for excited and fully-awake Josie, who comes out of hiding, realises she must join the others, gets a front-row audience member to help zip up her sleeping bag and joins the heap.  I think this is the first play I can remember which begins with everyone going to sleep, as the house lights fade.  Now everyone, on stage and in the auditorium is silent.  Now the drama can begin.

Already the children watching have learned by osmosis what theatre is all about, and have no trouble going along with the next transition by the actors from the camping children to the witch and her cat flying on the broom stick, through all the characters in costume and puppet form, or even occasionally as briefly out-of-role narrators, and finally back to the sleeping children.  Josie, of course, having played the Witch, puts a spell on the boys to stop them snoring, and everyone, on stage and off, joins in the accompanying spellbinding song to bring this lively entertainment to a thoroughly enjoyable end.

At the same time, of course, the text of the book is teaching rhyme, rhythm and vocabulary, while the story is teaching about positive relationships, scary situations, and even tricks to save friends from fiery dragons.

We adults may know, of course, that even to mention a witch is a strict no-no.  Women were actually accused of riding on a broomstick in the 16th and 17th Centuries in Europe and often had to face their own kind of fiery dragon, but the children here are safe with a witch who has friends and makes room on the broom for them all – even to the point where it breaks in half!

Mentioning Europe is my fashionable “segue” into the mystery of who were these performers, and why was the owl clearly of the English barn variety?  Where was the mopoke or the boobook, or even the tawny frogmouth?  Yet there were the occasional Aussie references:  Damien (I think it was) couldn’t quite read the label on his sleeping bag which seemed to say “flec bag”, but of course we bushwalkers knew it was really “flea bag”.

So I found out from director Jane Miskovic that the UK company Tall Stories, whose team had devised the original adaptation, as well as of the Gruffalo stories, tour their productions world-wide – except that, in Australia, CDP and Tall Stories have negotiated an arrangement where the plays are directed and performed by our local professionals, allowing them to include some humorous Australianisms in the text to complement the exuberant physicality of the Australian acting style.  This makes the show a family affair, including the adults in the fun.

Jane has a degree in education and psychology and several others in the team have similar education and training, including at NIDA.

So it was no wonder that I was seeing a top-class performance.


http://tallstories.org.uk/shows/room-on-the-broom
http://www.cdp.com.au/home.html

If you miss the show in Queanbeyan, on 14 April 2013 – 27 April 2013 it will be at
the Playhouse, Sydney Opera House (whose image I have borrowed above).



© Frank McKone, Canberra

Friday 5 April 2013

2013: Richard, Professor of Literature by Stéphane Georis and Francy Begasse

 Richard, Professor of Literature written and performed by Stéphane Georis; written and directed by Francy Begasse, at The Street Theatre, Canberra, April 4-7, 2013.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 5

Georis, visiting from Belgium, clearly works out of the French mime tradition and the European background of puppetry (which in England is represented by Punch and Judy).  I remember a puppet version of Blanc Neige for children in Paris some decades ago.  Somewhere there’s a memory of commedia dell’arte in Georis’ style as a comedian, as well.

I could say, street theatre at The Street rather than in the street :-)

The role of Richard, Professor (as in Professeur) of Literature is played by Georis as if he is not acting, but is merely a person talking directly to us – and interacting with the front row of the audience – out of role.  I’ve called him Professeur rather than Professor because his “lecture” on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III, is more in the style of a teacher of younger children than as a university academic.

But this is not a children’s show, though I would certainly recommend it for senior secondary students.  It deals with death as failure, death for love, and death for power.  It begins with the question “To be, or not to be” as an intellectual study of angst, works through the tragic sadness of the Montague and Capulet story, becoming gross in the gore of chopping up fresh meat to represent the Lancaster and Plantagenet families’ murderous history.

The lesson’s conclusion is “Why don’t we just stop the killing?”

Yet, to reach this conclusion, Richard uses his books, newspapers, cooking implements and ingredients (I could call this “kitchen bench drama”) to create the characters of Hamlet, Romeo, Juliet – and finally a piece of meat for Richard III, while he himself travels from point to point in time and space on a motorbike (or rather on a Vespa motor scooter as I imagined it).  As well, the Professor wears hats and masks, playing himself and William Shakespeare – every now and then revealing himself to remind us “It’s me”, like playing peek-a-boo.

So we are at times a bit embarrassed by his childishness, yet we can’t stop laughing at his ridiculousness – and nor can we ignore his message: don’t take things or ourselves too seriously, for that’s how we end up killing people.

I can only agree with the quote in the program notes from Ouest-France reviewing Richard, le polichineur d'écritoire, de Stephane Georis: “ingenious, full of surprises and screamingly funny.”  Just watch his upside-down coffee pot tell you about Life, and you’ll see what I mean.

© Frank McKone, Canberra

Thursday 4 April 2013

2013: An Idea Takes Flight - NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) showcase

An Idea Takes Flight: showcasing the work of NIDA’s Directing, Acting, Costume, Properties and Production students and graduates.  At Gorman House Arts Centre, Canberra, April 4-6, 2013

By Frank McKone
April 4

The NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) showcase consists of an interesting exhibition of costumes, set and costume designs and portrait paintings, and three short performances: Play House by British playwright Martin Crimp; selections from I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change! by US musical team Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Robert; and a solo peformance of Roal Dahl’s children’s story, The Witches.

The visual art work in the exhibition was excellent quality, as were the skills demonstrated in the technical work in lighting and sound, the live musicians in I Love You..., and the acting, but I felt rather as though I was watching an audition session.

When I looked more closely at the program notes by NIDA’s Director/Chief Executive Officer, Lynne Williams, I found that the only purpose of the tour is to give experience to the creative and production teams, led by three of the six directors who studied and graduated from NIDA in 2012 – Luke Rogers, Derek Walker and Lucas Jervies.

Each of the actors and the musicians is labelled ‘Guest Artist’, but without biographies or any other kind of recognition.  Very strange!

The pieces chosen for what now I understood to be demonstration exercises were suprisingly light-weight.  Play House was a good exercise for the actors Sam O’Sullivan (Simon) and Kate Skinner (Katrina) who competently handled the instant changes of relationship; I Love You... required strong singing and musical comedy skills, again well demonstrated by Nat Jobe, Simon Brook McLachlan, Cinzia Lee and Canberran Amy Louise Dunham; while Guy Edmonds playing all the roles in a quite manic mime/movement format in The Witches turned the children’s story into almost a holocaust scenario.  Here the director, Lucas Jervies, tried too hard: Edmonds had to work hard to keep up the momentum when simple story-telling would have done the trick.

But since the actors were not the point of the productions, I’m left having to wonder why NIDA chose these items.  Surely there is Australian writing, for a start, of much greater significance than any of these pieces.

According to Lynne Williams’ notes “The recently launched National Cultural Policy ushers in an era of renewed vision for the arts in Australia.”  Really?  If this is meant to be NIDA’s contribution – and I assume that bringing the “showcase” to the Federal Capital has something to do with policy pushing – then I couldn’t see any “vision” taking flight here.

© Frank McKone, Canberra