Theatre as life and death

"So now it is time to go back into the theatre, and it feels right because I've always been a great believer that one of the functions of theatre is to help us to discover how to live even in the face of death, and that all great storytelling helps to heal."

And so goes Lyn Gardner's beautiful account of what the theatre means to her. It's a stunning blog post that is one of the more touching and passionate entries I have read about this most amazing art form that I love similarly.
It would be refreshing if a bit more theatre criticism was a little more passionate and little more personal. Simply put, why do critics try and pretend to be objective when criticism is nothing more than subjective opinion?

Thankfully there is a bit of passion going around at the moment. Alison Croggon at Theatre Notes brought my attention to a bit of passion from Senator Kim Carr who has always impressed me - especially when he was the number one opposite to the then Arts Minister George Brandis.

His speech at last week's National Press Club address is a ripper and ends with this;

I believe the creative arts – and the humanities and the social sciences – make a terrible mistake when they claim support on the basis of their commercial value.

Whatever they may be worth in the marketplace, it is their intrinsic value we should treasure them for.

We should support these disciplines because they give us pleasure, knowledge, meaning, and inspiration.

No other pay-off is required.

I wonder what Carr would have said about Henson if he had been the Arts Minister?

And the passion continues with the announcement that my dear colleague James Waites has finally sorted out his relationship with the inconsistent Australian Stage Online and set up his own blog. Nothing like going out on your own. Good one James.

In fact, my dream is coming true and the Sydney Cultural Blogosphere is expanding, as one by one more people join the fold. Kevin Jackson, a teacher at NIDA has also recently started a review website which always proffers some interesting perspectives on shows around the city.

Another welcome arrival to the Sydney blog scene is the arrival of Esoteric Rabbit from Melbourne. Even though he is presently juggling the time pressures of his new and fabulous job opportunity at The Australian, I am told that the more important work of blogging will resume in the not too distant future.

And the theatre companies are really engaging with us, appreciating that we are providing a legitimate alternative to the mainstream media. In fact, after nearly two years of running this blog I am reliably informed that it is generating nearly the same amount of hits the arts web pages at the SMH receive. Which is frankly probably not that difficult.

But there is something afoot in Sydney and I am not sure what it is.

Just last night, I attended a cultural forum put on by Clover Moore's independent team who are running in this weekend's Local Government elections. John Wardle, who is on her ticket and is the man responsible for the brilliant Raise the Bar campaign gave a great introductory speech to the forum which was held in an 'illegal' place of public entertainment in Surry Hills.

Moore responded with an excellent and considered speech that appeared to be mostly ad-lib, showing that cultural policy is now at the forefront of the City of Sydney. (Read: we are sick of being jealous of Melbourne).

But the highlight of the night was a speech by local artist and arts organiser Jess Cook who had a fabulous ten minute rant about what the arts mean to her in Sydney. I am going to try and get the text of the speech because I wish I had recorded it and uploaded it onto here. Her message was clear - stop importing and start supporting. 

What a great attitude. Something is definitely happening here. 

  

 

Review: Imperial Panda Festival

When you have the ex-Head of Arts, Entertainment and Comedy at ABC TV Courtney Gibson being turned away at the door to a show, you know you must be onto a good thing.

The newly created Imperial Panda Festival, a collective of six shows shown over two weeks has been a huge success in terms of audience numbers and in its creative pursuit.

Filling small gallery spaces through the precinct of Surry Hills and Redfern, organisers Eddie Sharp and Rosie Fisher battled with the rainy and muggy Sydney weather to create a festival which could be the future of showcasing the best and freshest theatre and performance art.

The first week showcased Gifted and Talented from the Post Theatre group (top right). It explores the world of mothers whose lives revolve around their daughters dance classes. A comical piece that pulls the essence out of Kath and Kym type characters it takes a deeper and darker look at what happens when social structures fall away from middle class families.

The three performer/creators Mish Grigor, Nat Rose and Zoe Coombs Mar beautifully blend hyper real mother characters, make them gorge on sausage rolls and Solo all while they chain smoke and pass judgement at their kids dance eisteddfod. (And woe be tide if one of the girls comes home with that 'bloody highly commended prize').

This was followed by Melbourne group Suitcase Royale (middle right), who performed the brand new work The Ghost of Ricketts Hill, an improvised act that is more slapstick and comedy rather than traditional theatre. It was, unfortunately, the most disappointing show of the first week, undermined by an obvious lack of preparation.

On Sunday, a literary delight was discovered with readings of original Erotic Fan Fiction. Presented by Jay Katz, it was a darkly hilarious afternoon that was a crowd favourite. The highlight was Brendan Cowell’s piece revolving around Ricky Ponting, monkey hallucinations, spiced up Indian yoghurt drinks and the entire Australian cricket team. Need I say more?

During the second week another theatrical gem was discovered in Pig Island’s hilarious production of Parties 4 Eva. Centred around a stereotypical British aristocrat trying to have a white tie event, it is an absurd piece that is as ridiculous as a Monty Python sketch and as charming as Noel Coward song. The writing is swift, quick and sublime. This is a comedy group to watch.

The weekend then finished off with Cab Sav, a very hit and miss collection of small variety style pieces. Despite a fantastically vibrant atmosphere with a full house, the shows were under developed in their concepts and their delivery. You could see the potential of each of the groups who are clearly talented, but relying on supporters in an audience rarely guarantees a more broad appeal. This was all the more highlighted with the clear professionalism of Martin del Amo (right) who performed a beautifully raw and delicate piece that was enchanting.

The Imperial Panda Festival is a name you should look out for soon. I believe they intend to produce small two week festivals every six months or so. And if this first collection is anything to go by, it will be one of the most popular and successful arts events on the circuit.

Get your head around this bit of kulcha!

"A 45 minute performance, featuring over 200 young performers and famous artists representing Australia's contemporary arts industry, culture and heritage will be showcased to Leaders, delegates and officials during APEC Leaders Week," the APEC media release says.

"750 guests, in addition to Leaders from the 21 APEC Member Economies, will gather at Sydney Opera House on Saturday 8 September to view the performance which crosses many genres from Classical Music, Modern Dance, Music Theatre, Ballet and Opera.

"Under the direction of Artistic Director, Stuart Maunder, Executive Producer of Opera Australia, the performance, titled My Island Home will provide a snapshot of modern Australia and feature a show stopping finale of the classic song sung by the well-known recording artist Christine Anu.

"At the conclusion of the cultural performance, a brief "River of Fire" fireworks display will light up Sydney Harbour to mark the conclusion of the APEC Australia 2007 year, at the same time as Leaders and VIPs attend official dinners. "

How bloody awful. If I was a delegate, I'd be avoiding that engagement like the plague and heading up to Surry Hills to get a taste of the local action. Just imagine what Vladimir Putin would be thinking as he listened to Christine Anu pumping out My Island Home. Checkov - eat your heart out!

Not, that I imagine, this is any of Stuart Maunder's fault. He was probably given a brief from the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet which probably said something along the lines of "we want the kulcha bit to be like the Olympic opening ceremony. We can't give you too much money but singing is good. Dancing is good. Kids are good (especially curly headed ones coming down from the roof). Didgeridoo's are good. But if we see that bloody Peter Garrett in some pyjamas any where near that bloody stage, you'll get it!"

One of the acts that will be presented to the APEC leaders on Saturday will immerse the Concert hall in darkness as "young soloist, Robert Adam, will begin an unaccompanied version of the iconic Australian song, 'You're the Voice'".

Dear god.

Maunder appears to have used his influence to get a bit serious, pulling rank and acquiring the skills of Simon Tedeschi, Bangarra Dance Company, the wonderful Emma Matthews and the Australian Ballet, but it's clear where most of the directive has come from.

In fact, it appears that Putin nor Bush will be anywhere near the kulcha activities. Bush is jetting off home early and Putin might be getting a dose of kulcha in his own special way.

As Crikey reported yesterday, "while many Sydney CBD businesses are crying fowl because of the APEC presence, some of Sydney's brothel barons are cock-a-hoop at the potential for big business during the forum. Brothels located outside of the city's declared and restricted zones, particularly in Surry Hills, have been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks."

In fact "due to the expected increase in patronage many of Sydney's best ladies will not be availing themselves of the APEC public holiday on Friday as it is a peak earning period."

So for those delegates getting their hands dirty around Surry Hills over the week, there are a plethora of other cultural events in Sydney. I hear the drag shows down the road in Erskineville are excellent. There's a fantastic show only a stones throw away in Redfern which explores the Australian culture of paying bribes to Saddam Hussein and there's another very good show on at the Darlinghurst Theatre that follows the adventures of four marines on assignment to assassinate a Middle Eastern leader known as 'the bearded lady'.

River of Fire indeed.

SMH goes for the cynical approach

The Sydney Morning Herald decided to portray last night's excellent discussion about the creative future of Sydney as a bit pie in the sky today.

"In 2030 postcards of Sydney will feature the streets of Marrickville, Darlinghurst and Cabramatta as well as the Opera House," Ben Cubby's page 7 story started.

"Poker machines will be turfed out of pubs, painters will sell their work tax free and stockbrokers will be sent by their bosses to study fine arts instead of business administration," Cubby wrote.

It's such a shame that just to grab a bit of headline they had to go for the over written first paragraphs. If you had been there, you would have realised that the event was so much more than the asides that the Herald has decided would make a better story opening. It all ends up making the arts community, AGAIN, look like idealistic fools.

The Daily Telegraph* ran a page 3 news item that centred around a major theme of the evening - that of gambling and poker machines.

"Sydney is doomed to be a cultural wasteland because poker machines and prohibitive licensing fees are killing our culture, Belvoir St theatre boss Neil Armfield said last night," Simon Ferguson, Arts Editor wrote.

"In a deliberate attack which drew gasps and applause from a packed Town Hall conference," Ferguson went on. "Mr Armfield said Melbourne had a bright artistic future while Sydney's was in doubt, thanks to the State Government's reliance on gambling and licensing revenue."

Ferguson went on to quote Armfield - "'The government feeds on our city's addiction to gambling like a dealer feeds on a junkie's addiction to smack,' he said, slating home the blame for this to "the pubs, clubs and their unholy alliance with the NSW ALP'."

Now, THAT was one of many serious ends of the evening. Ends which proposed serious recommendations to the community and to the Lord Mayor to sort out our creative future. It was not, as the Herald reported an event where 'solutions and detail were perhaps a little thin on the ground'.

Here are just some of the recommendations made last night;

• an audit of all abandoned buildings in the city centre with a view to designating some of them for the use of arts communities,
  
• a stop to further arts infrastructure funding which should now be directed towards the development of artists themselves,
  
• advise to introduce some protections for artist communities that already exist in the city centre,
  
• an investment in the training of arts educators with a view to stand as the best arts training ground for our neighbours,
  
• a review of liquor and gambling laws to allow musicians back into pubs,
  
• proposals to use more public spaces cleverly so that art and the urban landscape can co-exist more,
  
• proposal to allow buskers back onto the streets of Sydney,
• the advocacy by government to business to promote the funding of events that aren't necessarily multi-million dollar events,
• advise to arts communities to communicate better with politicians,
• and (ironically) a plea to the media to start profiling the arts more positively.
  

Solutions thin on the ground indeed!

There was also a call last night for an advocate for the arts and artists to be a bit more public, with most pointing to the Lord Mayor. I think, however, Neil, that you have just promoted yourself.


*I write reviews for The Daily Telegraph, so could be accused of bias... but then again, I have been rabbiting on about the quality of arts journalism in the Herald for a while now.


Image: The now defunct artist community at Lanfranchi's.

Emo Theatre

Over the last week, the media suddenly got wind of a small sub-culture of adolescents known as Emo. This came about after the tragic double suicide of a young 16 year old girl and her friend, who were found in a parkland region of Melbourne.

The Emo culture which has probably been around for at least ten years, is your typical youth angst culture that can probably be most associated with the goths. They have a leaning towards dying their hair black and wearing black clothes.

There was a touching article in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald by Neil McMahon, a writer in Melbourne who not only covered the reaction to the girls deaths but also gave a comprehensive overview of the culture, the school bullying and their communities.

In the piece, McMahon spoke to the Editor of street magazine Drum Media, saying:

An emo, broadly speaking, dresses a certain way, listens to certain music, and is inclined to gloom. "It's become a derogatory term," says Andrew P. Street, associate editor of The Drum Media, an alternative music paper and website. As an insult, it's crudely dismissive: "You're a mopey little teen." What started as a musical genre in the 1980s - an offshoot of hard-core, says Street, noted for "songs with loud guitars and lyrics about girls who didn't like them" - has a far less definable musical core these days. "It's become a culture more than a genre."
The music is no longer exclusively self-pitying, and if it has a common theme it's the inclination to "eschew the political for the personal" - a statement, as Street notes, that could apply to 99 per cent of mainstream pop music.

I have taught a lot of theatre to Emo kids, and they are intuitive students who take the classes seriously and provide intelligent feedback constantly.

Recently I took a class that devised performances based around the influence of technology on young people and the social affects felt by them as individuals and as a collective. To be honest, most of the feedback I received is centred on an absolute disgust of the commercial, advertising driven consumer community that they live in. It is a deep distrust of government, advertisers, big business and flagrant nationalism.

Most of the performance that they devised was extremely humourous - darkly humourous - but what came through all of the performances was a deep concern for their community. One would almost say, too concerning.

It is such a shame that Emo's have a grave intolerance aimed towards them within schools or within their own community. There is a great amount of misunderstanding and it is a tragedy that it took the deaths of two of their sub-culture to bring this understanding and appreciation to the mainstream and for people to start taking notice. They are typically adolescent, but with a touching and (emo)tional outlook on the world that anyone can relate too.

There is a large emo culture in the Campbelltown area of Western Sydney. What will be interesting over the coming years is how these kids start to express themselves in a more defined and creative way.

There is now a huge creative arts complex in its finishing stages with galleries and a small performance space in the Campbelltown area. It would be an extraordinary thing to see this sub-culture flower and take their creativity and insight further through an expression of film, music, writing and art. Whether they can be engaged through the space, however, is another thing entirely.

If they can take it out of the youtube and myspace world it would provide their peers and the people around them with an even more beautiful and opaque window into their ideas, thoughts and share the frustrations common amongst the young people of Sydney. It would lift a cloak on this most misunderstood group and properly portray it before the marketeers and profiteers start to devise their own version of it and they end up becoming a victim of the very thing that they most despise.


Image: from youwantoknowme.blogspot.com and wearmalachai.com

Review: RAW - Shaken & Stirred

RAW - Shaken & Stirred
Shopfront Theatre for Young People
6 March 2007


My friend and long time colleague's girlfriend said to me, 'Come on. We're going down on Friday night. Why don't you come and check it out?'

He was a directing mentor for a bunch of students who were honing their skills at Shopfront Theatre for Young People in Carlton. From what I knew, it was an evening of short skits and experimentation that would eventually lead to a more comprehensive show towards the end of the year.

I hadn't been to Carlton, in the heart of Sydney's southern suburban sprawl, for the longest time. An old colleague of mine had been the artistic director there and I had regularly made the journey down to see what the young actors and directors were getting up to. But since her departure, I have been out of the loop.

If you have never been there before, the theatre is out the back of a converted shop and home just next to the train line that stretches from the centre of Sydney all the way down to the Southern Highlands of New South Wales and beyond. There's a barbie out the back, an outdoor loo and a fantastic black box theatre that provides a palate for all these young creatives to gel and create.

It really is a magnificent venue that is the home to the yearly intake of young talent, throwing ideas around, putting on shows, attending classes, making sets, costumes and above all else... theatre.

We all pile in the car, ready for the drive through the bumper to bumper Friday night traffic of King Street and straight down the Princes Highway. In twenty minutes we are there. A crowd is loitering in what appears to be an old garage, hugging polystyrene cups of tea and chocolate wrappers.

On the left of the makeshift box office is an art installation that you can see through a window, as the light pours out, casting a blue and red light over the car park. A quick visit to the bathroom through the kitchen and out the back to where the performers are getting ready and smoking a few cigarettes. There isn't any pretension here.

We all go in. The smell of a freshly painted black floor and walk in music of some new release lounge music.

At first, I was a little ambivalent. What are we going to be fed tonight? You often assume that youth theatre is kind of like the audition theatre that many actors try and produce.

The surprise is that from the moment it started I was drawn in. Astonishing creativity, originality and risk taking theatre that pushed boundaries of bodies in space and played with the theatricality of ideas.

My mind flickered back to an event I went to in Slovenia, just after I arrived to start my year or so of study. A youth theatre festival that brought together troupes of young performers from Romania, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia and Hungary. A week long event that celebrated theatre and performance and showed the best of the best from each country, converging together to showcase their ideas and concepts.

And yet, here I was seeing the same originality and bold decisions that made that festival in Slovenia such a highlight of my time there. The type of performance that opens your minds to the possibilities of complicated ideas, executed so beautifully in a celebration of simplicity.

Each of the performances were directed, devised, written and acted by all the young members of this theatre. And they attacked their subject matter bravely and with beautiful results. Each was no longer than about five or ten minutes long and many of them contained unique voices in theatre.

Certainly, some of the ideas didn't quite work and certain character based confidence needed to be injected into some of the performances, but if this is the next generation of directors and performance art devisers, Sydney's theatre scene has a bright future. I'll happily go back to Carlton and see what they do next.


Image: Courtesy STYP

David and Goliath

Sydney Morning Herald journalist David Marr gave a speech in 2005 entitled Theatre Under Howard.

Delivered as the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture, the event has become a highlight calendar event of Sydney's theatre community. It is a time to open up the umbrella of our industry and to take stock of where we sit amongst our society.

Central to his argument was a stunning illustration of the way that the Liberal Party see the arts as infrastructure.

"In John Howard’s Australia, libraries, museums, theatres and orchestras are on the same list as ports and roads and hospitals – traditional institutions, and necessary parts of the civic fabric."

Marr recalled the revolt of government back benchers over the proposed elimination of state symphony orchestra's as a beautiful example of how much government MP's stick up for arts as infrastructure. The Arts Minister of the time, Rod Kemp, was given a report by James Strong, now Australia Council Chair. It called for the reduction in state orchestra's and the back bench were united by outrage and the suggestion swiftly buried.

But as Marr points out: "To understand what’s happened under Howard to the arts in general and theatre in particular – the odd mix of generosity and meanness, celebration and indifference, abuse and support – it’s best to keep in mind the lessons learnt in the kerfuffle over the orchestras: that the bedrock arts policy of the Howard government is not support for the arts – it’s support for arts institutions. Big, traditional institutions."

Immediately this brings to mind all the Major Performing Arts organisations with their big share of the arts funding pie. State orchestra's, theatre companies, galleries, museums and opera companies.

The Liberal Party-arts-as-institution idea is clearly starting to fall apart at the seams. In The West Australian this week, an article exposed the efforts of Western Australian ballet dancers to go on strike. This astonishing news that you would think would only come out of Europe didn't really make headlines in the east. Essentially, junior dancers were asking for a pay rise from their $674 per week pay packet and senior dancers from their $822 pay packet.

This is the oldest ballet company in Australia and a true pinnacle of the Howard government's institutional arts policy. And WA Ballet would love to pay their dancers more. But they simply can't.

Where does this leave the emerging artist?

Certainly these companies do what they fiscally can to keep turning over the omelette of their creativity, but that is certainly not enough to allow the great fabric of artists harness their skills. They are lucky to pay the people already on the payroll, let alone see new and adventurous artists discover new forms or methods.

As a bi-product emerging artists, particularly in Sydney, rely on underground channels, alternative audiences, cobwebs and dust to spread their wings, to fly from the coup, to create their own individual nest of their expression.

What the Federal Government's half sighted policy does is treat the emerging artist as an after thought in the development of the arts in this country.

Which is why the closure of three important Sydney venues this month is a catastrophe.

The first is Lanfranchi's in the inner city which has for the last five years "been a dedicated studio and performance space for a diverse collective of musicians, visual, sound and new media artists, as well as writers, journalists, arts workers and music publishers".

The second is a dance rehearsal studio in Enmore known as the Arts Space. A venue for the creation of new dance, theatre and music. A place for collaboration and creativity, it is yet another victim to the gentrification of the inner city as developers use their persuasive powers over councils.

The third is an underground jazz and music venue in Surry Hills which was shut down by the local council over a zoning issue.

This first thing that Government bodies do is argue with one another over whose problem it is. That it is either a local problem or a state problem of a federal problem... and on and on and on.

They then attempt to justify the closure and argue that with the elimination of these venues, funding will then go into other institutionalised arts spaces. But with the creation of new institutions, marketing and audience numbers begin to dictate method and curatorship. Neither of which have been well known in the history of the arts as being the originators of creativity.

You won't see this news in the Sydney Morning Herald or the ABC. It's far too peripheral.

But that's the important point. It's the periphery that feeds the centre and if we discard it, the centre will be the ones to lose out in the end.

A more concerted effort to protect the increasingly rare and precious space on the periphery needs to be central of any arts policy - local, state or federally.


Image: Bunny and her hula hoops at Lanfranchi's
Photo by: Alex Davies