Something Natural But Very Childish. 

Short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Adapted, written and directed by Gary Abrahams.    

 Dirty Pretty Theatre is creating quite a following in Melbourne after the extended season of ‘Acts of Deceit’, also at La Mama, in January of this year. The style of both ‘Acts of Deceit’ and ‘Something Natural But Very Childish’ stems from a well crafted adaptation of a classic text while staying true to the aesthetics of the time in both set and costume. ‘Something Natural But Very Childish’ is based on the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, a short fiction writer from New Zealand, writing in around the 1920’s. Abrahams, in his overly long director’s notes, explains that the production is an ‘exploration’ of Mansfield’s short stories and has taken bits and pieces from over ten stories to create four new ones.

            The general theme to the four stories is love; unrequited, new found, old and tired, and forbidden. A hyper- active young man (Thomas Conroy) falls in love with a blushing young woman on a tram (Amanda Folson) and they fall almost instantly in love. A married couple (Zoe Ellerton Ashley and Cameron Moore) have endless arguments until her eye wanders onto the piano teacher (Luke Jacka). A gentleman (Josh Price) tries to woo his female friend (Luisa Hastings Edge) but to no avail. Generally, the pace of the pieces attempts to keep time with the jumping piano played live by Luke Jacka. There are short scenes from each storyline cut together creating a series of bite size updates and endless entrances and exits. This is quite carefully constructed to create seamless transitions and is excellently staged using a traverse stage in La Mama’s tiny theatre.

            An unashamed look at love could be quite refreshing to see on a Melbourne stage, where bold demonstrations of love and longing are sometimes lost amongst all the self-referentiality of independent theatre, but the over-the-top nature of the performances rarely let the audience absorb the complex, nuanced and sometimes subtle nature of love. Given that the pieces were adapted from short stories could be a reason enough why there were not many performances that ‘grew’ over the course of the night, however, the performance was also two hours long on the night I saw it (mid-season).

Josh Price, as the reserved and devoted Reggie, delivered one of the better performances as we were allowed to see him as a deep thinking, intense and vital personality to oppose the pitying way his friend Anne saw him. On the opposite scale, Thomas Conroy’s high camp portrayal of the young lover, Henry, did not seem believable. The manic style, nervous tic’s and all, with which he threw himself around the stage seemed like it could develop into a deep, resonant love for Edna but instead it went close to ridiculous. I appreciate that love can do infinite and impossible things to people but at the end of Henry and Edna’s tale it was baffling as to whether he had scared her off by acting like a frightening bouncing ball or she had never loved him anyway.

            Jane Noonan’s set design and Katie Sfetkidis’ lighting design worked well with the period style of the performance. The set highlighted the floral and delicate by using ivy tendrils pinned along the walls and leaf litter like material strewn over the floor. The lighting opened up little pockets of performance areas at either end of the traverse and warmly lit the actors.

             Abrahams appears to have a strong vision for all elements of the performance but I am always puzzled by the need to use accents, in this case British, which appear unnecessary. The period costume in hand with the accents does not enhance the words and themes but makes it harder for an audience to form attachments to them. The words are so strong and timeless that I wonder if I would have been hit harder in the heart had the piece been allowed a more simple staging. Having recently seen, and really enjoyed, Marion Potts’ simple staging of ‘King Lear’ for Bell Shakespeare, I am yet to fault a simple interpretation of a classic text that allows the full force of the words to fall into an audiences lap.

            Overall, a strong piece that attempts to capture a frightening, bold and chimerical aspect of life but one that also allows production values to cloud the true clarity of the words.

Created by Rachel Feery, Lisa Stewart and Ed Gould.

A show like this is rare. Crafted and presented with great skill and care, it takes you on a slow journey over rolling emotional hills and leaves you with warmth (and caramel sweets) in your belly and fire in your heart as you step back out onto the cold street.

The performance experience begins upon entering a small cardboard covered room with the eleven other audience members where we are instructed by a silent performer to remove our shoes and quieten down. A cardboard covered dictaphone plays tinny music as we slowly relax and silently wait further instructions. Although we have seen many Melbourne groups over the years use cardboard and embrace the D.I.Y. aesthetic, Sunset Over Cardboard Mountains is a sturdily built performance inhabiting a space that does not ooze slapped together props or set. In fact, that is the nature of the whole show. It embraces the aesthetic of D.I.Y. but puts it together with such skill that it feels fresh.

We are silently led through a tiny door into a huge tent made of sheets, tucked into a cardboard box of our own (with a pillow and all) and left alone. The lights dim. Music starts up and wind starts blowing the tent. It is hard to describe this moment and the effect it had. A mixture of emotions start burbling inside me; happiness at being tucked safe into my own little box and fright at the giant undulating tent around me. It is dream like, you forget where you are and I am washed over with memories of camping as a kid and being left alone in the tent surging through me. The music, played live outside the tent space, encourages free-falling memories and emotions. It is provocative without being over the top.

Outside of the walls of the tent giant tree like beings start slapping, scraping and almost pushing right through to touch us. They have crept up out of the darkness and appear like monsters under the bed. I’m not sure if I imagined them or not. The creators demonstrate an excellent understanding of knowing when to introduce a new performance element. At one point four performers enter the tent and do a simple walk around the space, dressed in cardboard coloured dresses, and return to distribute small paper bags with a caramel sweet inside. Later, the performers bring in folding screens, like a train carriage concertina, upon which a projection of changing hand-made landscapes jets past. The performers are silent and move assuredly as they bring in and out the screens. All the while the music encourages emotions and prompts us to get lost in the rolling images and coloured moving landscapes.

Perhaps my favourite bit was when, after the train carriage journey, the music slowed and from the darkness outside of the tent glowing blobs appeared to be floating past. It is like a David Attenborough documentary, you can’t quite make out what the shapes are that appear out of the pitch black but they are not threatening or frightening just intriguing. The performers then enter the tent space and the shapes are revealed as blobs of stuffing like material with glowing lights inside them. The performers slowly move around our boxes and the jellyfish looking blobs are left glowing on the floor. Then the tent is opened up and the band is revealed along with a pile of stuffing. The performers build more of these jellyfish creatures in the now big room. I spy one of the performers pulling the tent so the roof undulates. It doesn’t burst my imagined bubble that we were lost in a room where the wind blows at exactly the right time; it just subtly prods me to remember that this is a performance. Again, the subtlety of this was perfect and not in any way pretentious or gratuitous. I also want to point out that this is a multi-sensory, installation and performance piece and rather than following a narrative structure it impacts using sensorial elements. We are encouraged to experience an emotional journey pushed along by the emotive music, rich film and engulfing space rather than look for a particular narrative or idea. The performance doesn’t want for anything and, being one who looks for stories in anything, I loved remembering small pockets of memories, fleeting feelings and being encouraged to float through images and ideas.

Overall, I was well and truly humbled by this performance. Every element seemed well thought through and lovingly presented. The fine line that separates fairy-floss-candy-too-sweet-and-overbearing performances to that of a performance that is trying to capture an indescribable feeling in an honest and brave faced way is demonstrated by the creators of this piece. They are careful not to spiral into clichés by using the space in inventive ways and by reminding us that they are pushing and pulling at our emotions. Being guided with the calm hands of the creators and performers on an emotional, sensorial journey throughout the performance made this piece one of the most effective and wonderful performances I have seen in a very long time.

Peeking Behind the Curtain

Where are the women in the theatres of Australia? This question has recently burbled up from the depths of bars all the way to the national press, ultimately sparking the start of an upheaval of the employment processes of major and independent theatre companies around Australia. The result of providing women with opportunities across all aspects of the industry is to be acclaimed. But just how did it all come about, and how did I become involved?

In August of last year on a rainy evening in a brightly lit pub there was a small gathering. Women of all ages, from mid-twenties to ages where numbers are less likely to be mentioned, sat ready and excited. They were all there to talk about why there were no jobs for them and why their industry, which they stoked so passionately for little gain, was rejecting them based on their gender.

Discussion, arguments and decisions followed, and from out of the evening there emerged a determined path forward. With a little inquiry into the power structures of the major theatre companies the action began. It started with some letters to major theatre companies inquiring about their equal opportunity policies, and this provoked interest from the press and subsequently articles began being printed in the national papers. In the following weeks the issue burst forth into a surging wave as discussion bristled online. Programming for coming years by the major national companies was questioned and condemned. Across the country, radios, papers and computers published news of inquiries into institutions such as the Melbourne Theatre Company for not adhering to their equal opportunity policy. The whole industry crackled and fizzed. What had been an unspoken and quiet elephant in the room was now being boisterously pushed to the front of the crowd.

 Particularly disappointing was the Melbourne Theatre Company. Out of eleven main stage shows in 2010 only one is written and directed by a woman, while two are written by women and the rest are written and directed by men. Also, Belvoir St Theatre has seven out of their eight 2010 shows written and directed by men. Major theatre companies attempting to rectify this are Black Swan in Perth and Red Stitch in Melbourne. Black Swan has programmed, in the first half of the year, three productions directed by Kate Cherry and two written and directed by a male. Red Stitch has three female directors out of four performances with one written by a woman.

 Independent companies around Australia have been working steadily to reverse these statistics and create spaces for women to work and train. The best are companies such as The Duck House in Perth, run predominantly by women, and Vitalstatistix of Adelaide, who work only with women at the helm:

Vitalstatistix holds a unique place in the history of Australian Theatre in that it is the only theatre company in Australia that has constantly produced, promoted and supported new work by women, while providing professional opportunities for women and men theatre artists nationally.

However it is not all dancing and singing in the aisles just yet. This is just the beginning of an examination into some ‘old school’ ideals that stifle our small theatre scene. No longer is there a place for an industry that employs only males into the top jobs, and especially not in state-run theatre companies. Out of the six states and territories there is one company run solely by a woman (Kate Cherry at Black Swan Theatre in Perth), one run as a partnership (the Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton union for the Sydney Theatre Company) and one out of the five Artistic Directors at the Queensland Theatre Company is a woman (Robin Nevin). This is not particularly surprising but when coupled with the small amount of female writers and directors that these companies employ it becomes a problem. Bringing attention to such statistics has started what needs to be a constant, truthful examination into equality on our stages.

 Structures need to change from as far back as training courses and universities. Institutions train as many, if not more, women than men but the women disappear after university with minimal opportunities or ongoing training open to them. Arguments that there are equal opportunities open to women and men after the completion of training courses are valid but the simple fact is, somewhere along the way, women disappear.

Since the inception of this debate there have been many suggestions put forth to solve this problem, most notably by the Australian Women Directors Alliance (of which I am a member) in their letter to Glyn Davies, Vice Chancellor of Melbourne University in late 2009. Melanie Beddie and Lucy Freeman, on behalf of the sixty or so members, state that the purpose of the alliance is “to offer professional development and networking opportunities for female theatre practitioners and to work in areas of advocacy for our members”. They proposed that the Melbourne Theatre Company’s equal opportunity policy be revisited and programs put in place to assure the equal employment, training and development of men and women within the company.

And how did I become involved? It was towards the middle of last year after watching many incredible shows by all male independent theatre companies that I began to get restless. Where were all the women? Where were the female technicians? The sound designers? I knew they were out there but why weren’t they getting jobs? Rather than get worked into a sweat complaining to other theatre going thespians I thought I would do something about it myself. I gathered a dinner party of women I knew from around my local theatre scene and pitched them my idea: to create an all-female theatre company, which aims to fill every role – technical and creative – with women. On top of that we also hoped to provide mentorship and assistant roles to other young women interested in theatre. It was to be a company that would shamelessly (and with great gusto) shout about all the talented theatre-related women in our town.

Thus, on a wintery night over some home-made soup the company forty forty home was created – a Melbourne-based company set to produce high quality theatre productions made by an all female creative team. The aim is to produce original performances that facilitate creative collaboration between emerging and established female theatre practitioners.

We started spreading the word, talking in the hallways, telling our friends. However, with no performances under the name of the company, we knew it would be tough getting our feet off the ground. But lo and behold, our mission statement has guided us and we are happily planning our packed 2010 program which involves original productions at the Searchlight Festival, a season at The Dog Theatre, and two gigs in the Next Wave Festival. What we have discovered from this is that people are immensely supportive of a company who have been bold enough to admit there is something wrong with the way the theatre scene is currently operating. They want to support us because we want to create awesome theatre whilst changing the way audiences and the industry view female theatre practitioners.

With the appointment of Marion Potts as the new Artistic Director of the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne there is an excitement in the air as women demonstrate and become noticed for the talent and ability they posses. Around the country there is now the opportunity for the women who have been working behind the scenes, unable to get work as directors, designers and producers to step forward into the spotlight. It’s only uphill from here.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Presented by Winterfall Theatre Company

Winterfall Theatre Company, a new company taking up residence in The Theatre Husk in Northcote, debuts the company and its’ aims of ‘providing professional practitioners with the opportunity to work together and present high quality productions’ with this production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

            As You Like It, believed to be written in 1600, is a comedy that follows our heroine, Rosalind, after she has been banished along with her cousin Celia, by Celia’s father into the Forest of Arden. Rosalind poses as a man, which makes for comedy fun, until she discovers Orlando, whom she fell in love back in her Uncle’s Court, has been writing love poems to her all over the trees in the forest. More fun ensues as Rosalind, in her disguise, decides to counsel Orlando about his love. Eventually, she hatches a plan to marry all the couples in Arden, and reveal herself as who she truly is. They all get married. Everyone is happy.

            The production by Winterfall is performed in two locations within the theatre. The first, to highlight the suffocating, grey landscape of the Duke Frederik’s Court, it is performed in a corner upstairs lit only by unflattering fluorescent tubes. To make the audience feel they are living the back breaking horror of Margaret Thatcher’s reign (the lens through which Winterfall would like us to view the play) we are not provided with chairs. Given Shakespeare is hard to attune you ear to, and that we were required to stand for what felt like more than half an hour, it became some kind of survival battle that distracted from the performance. The sound, which trickled through the audiences’ legs, was provided by a small CD player at the back of the room. These aspects contrived to distract from watching and listening wholeheartedly to the performers. Eventually, we were called downstairs and asked to provide I.D. to get into ‘Club Arden’, although a funny device, this halted the already stop/start flow of the play.

            Downstairs, the New Romantic theme was amped up by a solid soundtrack of 80’s tracks and costumes that glittered with the disco lighting. This was a plausible setting for the play and the team obviously had fun slotting in some dance numbers and making full use of bold make-up and costume. Shakespeare is easily updated to a modern era, to illuminating effect, but within this production, there is often a perceived need to add fluff to the fire with dance numbers, drawn out joke moments and making the audience uncomfortable. The words, no matter the setting, are still relevant and resonant with each audience member. The actors employ a natural way of speaking. This is also very good, no accents, just performers saying the words. There were some top performances with special mention going to Mark Wilson for his fabulous fool (with excellent make-up), Liza Dennis for her oh-so-adorable performance of Audrey and Joel Davey for his subtle and heartbreakingly melancholy portrayal of Jacques. However, the majority of movements and gestures all seemed to come from a How-To-Shakespeare book. Movements that could equally accompany old versions of Shakespeare or Jane Austen are still employed in this modern adaptation. That means the two cousins Rosalind and Celia act how cousins do in the BBC version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with all the tickling, holding each other, holding hands and gestures of ye olde times. Gestures, movements change over time and instead of this mother/daughter type of  intimacy which appears dated on our modern stages, find another way of demonstrating their closeness as modern life demands. Strip away the assumed gestural movement and allow the words to bloom without force.

Winterfall Theatre, by providing a place for professional practitioners to present their skill and technique, will no doubt grow into a company who presents solid productions with a strong team behind them. There were some teething problems but with a talented bunch of actors, and more popping out of training places every day, they will not go hungry for great performers and a highly coveted, dedicated performance space.

The Flood opens with an elderly lady (Shirley Cattunar) cutting, happily to bits, a magazine from the piles and piles that surround her arm chair. The spooky, blurred backdrop of trees outside the mesh room (designed by The Sisters Hayes) suggests a slowly creeping darkness coming closer and closer towards her. This silent moment, perhaps with some subtle sound design by Natasha Anderson, depicts the last moment of peace, of safety and of happiness before the calm is upset by the return of Catherine (Caroline Lee) from London after twenty two years, home to see her mother and sister. She is forced to stay at the house after the river breaks and floods the road rendering the house completely isolated. None of the women are happy with this arrangement and, as night falls, the truth starts seeping out of the darkness forcing them to remember long since buried memories.

            The engrossing element in this production written by Jackie Smith (Patrick White Playwright Award winner for The Aliens in 2001) is the accuracy of the language. The interactions between the two sisters and their mother are, at times, heartbreaking in the swift shifts between attack and defend. The often hard to capture complicated relationships, stories and subtle games that exist within families are handled with delicacy and honesty by Smith. However, without giving too much away, the revelation towards the end of the piece is startlingly washed over. It is here that the words fail the performers and what is scripted does not ring true.

            Contending with heavy themes, overwhelming emotions and an imagined dark presence, stuffily portrayed with awkward poltergeist moments, stalking around the house, the three performers are tough and talented and handle the material with strength and subtlety. Maude Davey, seen previously in Finucane and Smiths’ hugely successful touring work The Burlesque Hour (The Flood is produced by Moira Finucane) became a dowdy, rude and drunken older sister, Dorothy. She flew between an aching older sister trying to protect the little family to a self-involved drunk spitting out old childhood taunts to barb her sister’s heart. Shirley Cattunar provided a quixotic mother caught between the failings of her mind and trying to save her daughters from the truth. Some incredible moments occurred between the crude yet enchanting and leprechaun like mother and youngest daughter played by Caroline Lee giving a wide-eyed performance of innocence slowly corrupted.

             Laurence Strangio’s direction was assured and did not hamper the text by overplaying the highly emotive moments. The performers bloomed with the complex power plays and wove around the cluttered set flinging acid lines towards each other in a way so recognisable the audience laughed at the obscene familiarity. The set design made the small, history saturated space of La Mama seem bigger with clever backdrops that projected the feeling of a wild, untamed land surrounding the house. This was a well interpreted design that helped to convey the family as being trapped by both the impenetrable wild outside and the horrible, rotting truth inside. Although the writing is too heavy handed with the closing revelations, it is a truthful portrayal of a family trying to break free from a frightening Australian landscape and the memories that fester inside each of them.

Walking through the baby bed sheet corridor up to the tower theatre, my heart was smiling and excitement clung at my shoulders. I had heard such exciting things about this company that I was ready to feel jealous, happy and in awe all through the show. The bed sheet curtain fell to the ground revealing an incredible stage structure. A tiered , lino covered, ‘house’ complete with a half covered glass section and two doors leading off the sides of the stage. When the puppets appear it becomes clear that this is the element that will hold the audience enraptured. The puppets, a young boy, young girl and a baby are life-like and utterly incredible to look at. Two adults, flirting and drinking, appear behind the glass section at the top of the stage, we can see their legs and only silhouettes of their upper bodies. This creates a fantastic contrast to the soft puppets wriggling around and playing together against the shiny, sharp movement from the faceless adults. 

The true story that this play is based on is an amazing story about three little kids who really tried to get to Africa from their home town in Germany. My Darling Patricia have taken this story and taken it in a new direction, instead they invent and then focus on the neglect and abuse that lead the children to want to leave their home. As a result the narrative feels too contrived and trying to force the point, that children will retreat into an imaginary land when bad things start happening. Using abuse and neglect as the main theme and narrative seemed to reduce the effect of those themes. It was too obvious. Had we seen a performance where the children get to Africa and in the background are these horrible hints as to why they left the audience would have been greatly affected. Instead, I felt like I was not allowed to use my imagination as an audience member. This was a show for adults, as the company says in the program, but adults are also imaginative and capable of understanding deeper meanings.

There were a few red herring scenes that could have been omitted in order to keep the narrative tighter and clearer. The performances by the two ‘adults’ were hampered by terrible and clichéd dialogue. They were at their best in the incredible movement sections with one in particular when they were a lion and a gorilla engaged in a lusty dance routine. The elements for a fantastic show were all there but some strange decisions were made that didn’t quite gel with the whole. Had the adults been kept masked and only visible as menacing elements, as was the set up in the beginning, this would have been far more engaging.

The ending was the most heart wrenching and fantastically realised end to a show I had seen in a while. The set revealed more than I thought possible and the puppet left alone on stage exuded soulful solitude and isolation. Overall, the piece had problems that could have been avoided by some serious feedback and dramaturgy but the innovation, originality and that ending made up for it.

The party was well and truly over, the clues to this were strewn about the stage. The audience stepped over a sleeping girl sprawled on a bean bag to get to their seats. Bottles and party decorations littered the loft like theatre. The play began with a familiar conversation harking back to hungover after party mornings with the two performers engaging in some negotiations about what the hell happened the night before. So began the trawl through memories, drunken revelations and disasters from the night before.

The two writers and performers, Anna McCarthy and Zoey Dawson, are surely taking a great leap in this very self conscious theatre world. The writing is bold, raw and, at times, heartbreakingly good. The performers match the writing with a performance style to equal the sometimes absurd, non-sensical conversations. They were both striking in their acting styles with Zoey Dawson performing an intense, loud and invasive character to combat the ethereal, delicate style of Anna McCarthy. In places the performers could have benefitted from a stronger director to balance out the styles of performance and allow the some subtle moments from Anna McCarthy not to become lost in the loud and obnoxious character of Zoey Dawson.

The play seemed too long at fifty minutes and could have benefitted from some severe editing. I say this only because I think these two talented young women have the potential to shake up the theatre scene with their honest, no bones about being young, writing style. The narrative, at times, seemed to be too contrived and with the classic , ‘it was a dream’, at the end, I felt a little cheated. They were taking bold steps in terms of style but shyed away from a better performance by tying in a flimsy narrative. I encourage longer rehearsal times, tough editing and a director who is not afraid to push and pull at the performers exploding personalities. For a new company they are on their way to grand and super exciting things.

Worth a mention is the sound design by Andre Dao which was subtle, at times arresting and greatly affective.

So struck was I by the opening monologue I had to hold my own hands to stop myself reaching for a pen to write it down word for word. One of the cleverest, simplest and most beautiful of opening monologues I have seen in a long time. A man, played wonderfully by Neil Pigot, stands in a self-deprecating manner in a little puddle of water holding a fish that has just fallen from the sky. He starts talking about books he is reading, how it hasn’t stopped raining in Alice and how he got a phone call late at night from his only son whom he hasn’t spoken to for years. With a hesitant catch in his voice he recounts the converstation in a fast and funny way. Then he recounts how it really went and all the life drains from my face. It is bone shatteringly sad to listen to this man in his crumpled suit try to find the courage to tell this story. This remains the most well-realised theme of the piece; Australian man trying to understand his child and how the passing of time doesn’t wash away the sins of the past.

The potential for the rest of the play was a palpable, excited lump in my stomach. Maybe this time I would be reminded of why the MTC and theatre in general can be so moving. However, as soon as the opening monologue was complete and the other six actors wandered around the three wooden tables in a moment of movement and music until they all came together sitting at one of the tables with a bowl of soup in front of each of them. In unison they lifted their spoons to their mouths, three times, and then dispersed. The over emphasis on connections, coincidences were hammed up in the direction casting an exaggerated and unbelivable cloud over the whole piece.

The narrative was complex and cross-country spanning different generations of the same family. This was initially an engrossing idea but by the end when those complex and coincidental meetings between family members were neatly tied up and explanied I ached to be left some section that was not resolved. This neat ending to what started as a mind-boggling narrative seemed reductive and patronising to a smart audience, well-travelled through the complexities of theatre.

The performances of the actors were hampered by the style of direction which requires an actor to lay everything on thick. The choices to have actors mirroring each other in a freeze or in movement can work when it is added to the piece in a subtle way. This had moments that left me a little incredulous such as the moment when all the female actors held their stomachs as a way of displaying their grief. It was a little too much.

The themes were as bold as the performance style. Pedophilia, climate change, family relationships, grief and so on. The play, though lengthy at two hours, seemed to give only a reduced version of the complexities of each of these. Instead of offering a stance, an opinion, it simply offered the water-down version thus barring the audience from feeling anything but complacency with most of the themes.

Through all this, my theatre going pal and I still agreed that it had and would make us think about creating good theatre. There were moments that were incredibly good and were inspirational for young theatre makers excited about making some bold, boisterous theatre. We rode home talking about our funny, complex lives and ridiculous and strange families. It tried for big, big things but really could have let those peccaddiloes within human beings peep out from underneath the big Theatre of it all.

 a response to

SHAMELESSLY GLITZY WORK by post at Arts House Meat Market on 15th August 2009

            The audience sweats, slick hangover hot flushes radiate out and everyone laughs as we enter the theatre to the sound of techno music. We are young, hung over and going to the theatre with a banging headache feels cool. I sit, with sparkling apple juice, and contemplate the sparkly, sequined curtain hanging in front of the stage. I think of the fun times to be had in Spotlight shopping for metres and metres of shiny fabric. It’s the stuff I used to wear in school concerts at primary school and now, here we all are in a serious theatre, watching a shiny curtain wiggle in the air to techno music. I haven’t much more time to dwell on the cyclical nature of life as the performers enter and stand in front of the curtain, behind three microphones and start to smile. The sounds of smiling, bubbles of saliva exploding and wet lips moving, pulling back over teeth, start climbing up over the audience. This smiling is infectious, this smiling is hilarious, and this show is going to be good.

            The curtain falls and a huge, bare stage is revealed. The three performers dance in garbage bags and then reveal primary coloured, tailored suits underneath. The dialogue, delivered in dulcet bogan tones, begins to send jolts through the audience, the words about drug fuelled nights filled with repetitious statements of love, understanding and belief, create uncomfortable twinges and understanding titters in the audience. It starts a tickle of recognition and I am reminded of thousands of conversations had drunk on the steps talking about love, paranoia that people might guess what you’re really thinking, sticking close to your friends, furious and fighting and taking flight with a body filled with who-knows-what.  The performers keep talking about micro-chips and monitoring while scattering confetti and moving in a stilted yet mesmerising way. They all adopt a distanced performance style which separates them from being implicated directly as the ‘characters’ they portray. Their faces say, ‘you see, I know. You know, we all know.’ I start to get the uncomfortable feeling in my belly that this company is digging into something very, very sticky, truthful and embarrassing. Are we looking into a shiny mirror that shows us who we really are?

            Themes start to emerge out of the colourful assault of props, costumes and shiny primary coloured material. We are stuck in a night on the town where grotesque characters enter in and out of the dialogue spouting stories of vomit, burgers and drinking. False words and exaggerations come thick and fast and as the stage slowly changes into a huge demonstration of stage design winning us over; little tickles of political performance start to seep in. We are buying and eating up everything they say even though, with their gaze remaining cool and distanced, they are telling us we are wrong to think that. Again and again this point is punctuated by the appearance of a magician who shows us tricks using sleight of hand until eventually this withers down to watching a top made of lights spin. It is so amazing we cheer. It is so ridiculous we cheer. We will cheer and cheer and cheer. I feel we have been duped and bought into our own complicity. Scary stuff when I wake up from blissful adoration of the shining, spinning light and attempt to get some perspective. As we all know, this is how it starts. Step by step closer to believing the lies, believing the tricks and forgetting to question.

            The performance gets scary and stomach churning when the jumping starts. The three performers start jumping in unison, on towels, to loud music. It keeps going. We laugh, and then suddenly stop because we are amazed they haven’t vomited. They take their jackets off revealing white singlet tops, they take their hair out, they pour their Smirnoff Blacks over their singlets, two performers start bleeding from the mouth. During this time the other performer has narrated the jumping with leering, gross comments encouraging, ‘come on ladies, fuck yeah, come on.’ I laughed when she started this shouting monologue but by the end I was shivering in my seat with a sick feeling blurring at the bottom of my belly. It’s real, this horrid feeling, you get it when you walk down the street in a city on a Saturday night. It’s a menace that cuts right to the guts and they have caught it, bang on.

            By the end, my hangover has fallen by the wayside and has been replaced by a buzzing in my brain as I try to keep up with the circling thoughts. Post has turned my brain into a pile of haphazard mash. I feel better now, revitalised by the performance, and cheered by the thought that people are still trying to push things and needle into the psyche of human beings. I did have some reservations about the repetitious text that was used. Ordinarily I love the use of repeated text and cyclical images and words in performance but this time it may have included a little too much without much effect. Although, as with another recent performance at the meat market by a famous British company, sometimes you think that they just might be having the last laugh and that we are intended to feel the grate of hearing the dulcet tones of, ‘like, yeah, chicken burgers, like’ again and again and again.

            Overall, I am glad a younger performance company is tackling something that resides outside of their imagination and a little bit more in the public sphere, the very political story in the program was misleading to an extent but I feel like Post are engaged with some deeper debates. They kicked the pants off a lot of the other performances happening around town because they bit their teeth into something that required a bit of gnashing, a bit of guts and I would gladly doff my sparkling hat to them for digging into the ribs of a crowd of hung-over kids and giving them a bit of their own medicine.

VOMITING ON SHAKESPEARE: HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

YOU ARE:

            Fresh out of university and eager to prove you have some creative beef in you. Starting out in a land full of frightening thespians who laugh in a hoighty-toighty way at jokes about breaking the fourth wall and when anyone mentions Robert Wilson. You have discovered the joys of creating devised theatre with your new friends but have already gotten over words like ‘contact impro’. You go to La Mama and feel like you might be included in the history books for even setting foot in the door. You drink red wine out of anything but wine glasses. You read the arts section of The Age every day. You have raucous dinner parties in order to talk about your opinions on the latest shows at Red Stitch. You love pretending to have read classic texts. You don’t give a fuck about the MTC but wish you could be in a show there just once. You know about Dancehouse but can’t dance beyond a wild drunken trundle. You love talking about tea but drink it once every two weeks. You are on the Dole and find it cool. Your heart palpitates when you set foot in a theatre. You wish to make a living touring the world. You love reading theatre blogs online. You are starting to feel the burn in your stomach to make something. Make something that twitches and wriggles in the theatre scene and gets you just enough attention to get the word of mouth buzzing. You don’t want it to sell out. You just want the right people to see it. You want to talk about your own theatre, not someone else’s.

WHAT YOU HAVE:

            On the kitchen table you have two things in front of you. One is a collection of Shakespeare, your Dad’s copy, revered and never read by you. The other is a collection of scrappy writing. Re-read and re-read and written by you. The Shakespeare has things in it that make your head spin, ideas and possibilities jumping and carousing over the pages, well, from what you have heard and remember from year 12 English. There are battles, romances bigger than anything that you have had, betrayal and beauty, and words that make your toes curl. You consider The Tempest. You loved it when your Dad used to tell you the story. All lost on an island. You could cover the stage in sand. You could perform it on a boat. You could throw sea water in the faces of the audience. You feel your mind swoop over possibility after possibility. The kitchen table disappears and instead a rickety boat built for one casts you over huge seas. The language swelters in your mind aching to be let out. You are sailing for a place far, far away.

The sharp prick of sunlight through the window brings you back down to the kitchen table. You glance over at your scrawled words, so delicate and mis-spelt. A little word peeks out, a seagull. Strange, heavy nights creep off the page, wandering lonely and drunk through the bright city, tears and smiles, crepe paper parties and French toast, small doorways of sunlight after a rainstorm, notes left in your window. You take a look out the kitchen window. Which pile matters more? Well, you already know the answer to that one don’t you?

WHERE ARE YOU?

            At the moment in Melbourne there are a few companies that dedicate themselves to the reinterpretation of classic texts and the exciting performances of old words made new again. This is, of course, not limited to Melbourne. In fact, worldwide there are innumerable theatre productions of Shakespeare, Chekov, Ibsen, Beckett etc…going on at any one time. It is certainly almost a rite of passage to cut your directorial or acting technique on a classic text, to do dastardly things to it and establish your glowing entrance into the theatre world.   Hunting through the endless internet for statistics about how many classic texts are performed each year was impossible. However, there was a website from the UK that listed the current and forthcoming production of Shakespeare, both new and adapted versions, from October 2009 onwards and I counted over 80.[1] That was just productions of Shakespeare and not all of his other pals so throw-me-over-the-back-of-a-horse-and-cart there must be loads of productions of classic plays occurring around the world at any one time.

When I did some delving into the Australia Council website to find some more information on the attendance at theatre performances there were the usual comments, there is still a steady decline in new productions and a decline in Australian works being presented on major stages around Australia. That was not the most surprising; we all know that there is a constant battle within the major theatre companies to keep up the programming of new Australian productions. They all seem to sweat a lot about it. But we have come to expect that. Instead, I quite enjoyed these two comments from the surveyed anonymous:

            I’ll often go along to plays, if I’m studying them, or I know someone in

            it.

            I read a lot of plays, and I always go and see ‘Shakespeare in the Park’,

            it reminds me of going to school.[2]

Though these were but two comments in the endless sea of statistical data I found them quite arresting, this for a number of reasons. The first comment allows the person plenty opportunities to see theatre. Considering that at a High School or University level the syllabus is still made up of primarily classic texts (universities may have abandoned Shakespeare but they certainly haven’t abandoned Beckett) this means that they can kick along to the theatre almost every night. Then, of course, there is the ‘I know someone in it’ spiel. Well, we all know lots of actors getting bits and pieces in performances all over Melbourne, so providing the person hangs out on facebook to keep up with the steady flow of invites to performances, they will be keeping the creative capital rolling night after night.

The second comment is a little bit harder hitting. The person is obviously sucking up to the statistical information collector as reading plays does not equal lumping yourself off with too much food and not enough alcohol to ‘Shakespeare in the Park’. I happen to know one or two people who actually read plays and they run screaming from the park, Shakespeare or no Shakespeare. Then we move on to the icing on the cake, ‘it reminds me of going to school.’ Wow. I thought they might have stopped sucking up after they dropped the bomb and actually admitted to attendance at romantic, balmy evenings on the Botanical grass. But no. Instead, they claim to have enjoyed being at school and want to be reminded, frequently, that they went there. God, I need a lie down after that awkward display of getting into the pants of the statistical collection machine/person.

            This does point to some worrisome issues for our dearly departed New Australian Productions who have been forgotten in this sucking Shakespeare party. The masses love him and want to get all over him, frequently. The theatre makers want to do him, frequently. This is a very dangerous love match. Yes, you have an audience who clearly love classic plays and want to spend all their spare change on keeping the classic play living in some palatial mansion above the wee plebeians making new work in the swamp. But, if you look closer at the bodies gyrating in the swamp water, you will see something much more creative, much more original and much more engaging occurring there.

YOU CAN:

            Choose. Look at those two piles of paper in front of you on the kitchen table. One holds words spoken thousands upon thousands of times and the other holds some new, baby faced words maybe never uttered at all.

            The companies that rework classic texts range from the successful such as Bell Shakespeare and perhaps Eagle’s Nest for their sheer output, to the Shakespeare-in-the-backyard-for-Mum, but they can never really catch you as you streak ahead, baring all your parts, taking risky jumps over rubbish bins. No matter how good you are at reading in a Shakespearian voice or how well you think you can cast actors dressed as the mafia for your adaptation of ‘King Lear’ you can never really own it. It will never really be yours to be remembered for. If you really need to attack a classic text because you feel like you can be better than it, be better than all the other productions before you, then maybe you need to take a good, hard look at the ego blossoming in the mirror. Yes, you can attack it with a poison pen and rewrite the good bits, cut it up and take the classic away from it but it still isn’t really you, is it? You are incredible, unique and opinionated. You don’t need to bash out another production of something that we have seen before. You can take your scrappy writing book and start to patch together something original and arresting. We’ve all seen Shakespeare but we’ve never seen you.

[2]Major Performing Arts Board, Australia Council for the Arts, Securing the Future. An Assessment of Progress 2001-2006 (2007)