Kate Foy – Page 17

10 March, 201110 March, 2011

Review: Dead Cargo – !Metro Arts Independents 2011

Another week, another show – this time from the !Metro Arts Independents 2011 series. It’s always fun to be at the first performance of a premiere play; there are no preconceptions, nothing to prepare you for what is to come. Well, I lie (a little) about this, having chatted last week with Nigel Poulton the director and also co-writer (along with long-time collaborator Tim Dashwood).

Nigel warned me that some audiences may be confused by the play. He went on that it was, among other things, ‘about’ hanging on to things long past their use-by date – whether those things are psychological or material – obsessions, preconceptions, needs, words, things, and even people. So, as I sat pre-show looking at the dozens and dozens of suitcases on the set of Dead Cargo, I began to start threading together the clues Nigel had given me with what I could see in front of me. I had the suitcases sorted; they were the material expressions – symbols – of the ‘invisible baggage’ we carry about with us. Right. I was starting to feel a bit more confident – getting my head ready for the kind of play that I’d be seeing. I fancied it would be a bit of psycho-realism with expressive movement.

I knew about the movement – see the aforesaid interview re Meyerhold’s Theatrical Bio-Mechanics in Related Articles (below). I knew the script had been written by Messrs Poulton and Dashwood – what to expect in that regard? No idea – this would be a first exposure to their work, at least for me. The set – great by the way – looked messy, deliberately so. Was it meant to stand for the detritus of our lives, maybe? At this point I ran out of clues and started chatting with a friend. What I didn’t do was to read the program. As it turned out, I’m glad I didn’t because there was a clue in the Director’s note which would have sent me on quite another track to the one I pursued during the show and on the drive home. So I’m going to riff a little in this review on how a play – or this particular play – worked on me, about how it sent me down particular tracks in my head. Continue reading “Review: Dead Cargo – !Metro Arts Independents 2011”

6 March, 201113 April, 2011

Review: Man=Man & The Elephant Calf – Queensland Theatre Company

Trimmed version of photograph released into th... — Image via Wikipedia

Photo: Amelia Dowd (Bille Brown Studio – after the flood)

Off to the theatre last night to see QTC Ed’s (the Company’s education ‘wing’) production of two small Brecht pieces: Man=Man and The Elephant Calf. The mostly grown-up audience responded well to Director Joe Mitchell’s cleverly recalibrated, joyously performative and wonderfully funny examination of Brechtian theatre techniques.

If you have been as underwhelmed as this theatre-lover has been over the years at the near-veneration afforded Brecht, especially in the state’s drama syllabus, then this production is a revelation. It’s irreverent and also Brechtian-authentic to the core. The pickiest of drama teachers are going to love the way it ticks all the boxes in the Brechtian Performance Techniques check-list. It’s also set to stir their classes to ask ‘WTF?’ Oh, and speaking of ‘WTF’ – the text is visibly strewn with the ‘F Bomb’; do schools still have to vet shows for the kind of language found in the playground and on the school bus? I’d love to be a fly on the wall in some of the classrooms where this production is being discussed. I’ve attended several QTC Ed shows over the years with audiences of upper high school-age students. Each time I have been astonished and delighted at the level of sophistication and maturity displayed by these young people during the post-show Q&As.

The ensemble cast of six (Chris Vernon, Helen Cassidy, Nick Cook, Anthony Standish, Leon Cain and Kevin Kiernan-Molloy) are uniformly excellent. Mitchell has set the play in some middle-eastern war zone and the hapless civilian Galy Gay (Vernon) a kind of opportunistic Everyman figure finds himself buffeted by the winds of politics and macho posturing by the soldiers who take him in. The cast are aided and abetted in the onstage mayhem by a very visible crew (led by SM Christopher Horne at the desk). ‘The Director’ remains as an offstage and nicely nameless authoritarian figure who is finally challenged by the team of ‘actors as actors’ in the last 10 or so minutes of the program. This section kicked over any remaining vestiges of the wall separating audience and performer. The meshing of form and content and examination of the nature of reality and performance was, for me, the most interesting and alienating (in the best Brechtian sense of the word) part of the program. Chatting to a cast member afterwards I learned that it had been created in the last week of the rehearsal period. Bravo!

As the standard bearer for a much wider program of education services, QTC’s Ed productions in the Bille Brown Studio, all under Joe Mitchell’s direction, have been one of the best kept secrets for far too long amongst the city’s post-school theatre-going crowd. It’s good to see the Company including one or two of these intelligent and excellent productions in their new Studio program series this year. Joe Mitchell will be missed; he is leaving QTC to take up a new position in the Brisbane performing arts industry. Good luck Joe!

This production (approx 95 mins without interval) plays at the Company’s home premises at 78 Montague Road, South Brisbane until March 12. Check the showtimes from the QTC website. You’ve got a week – give yourself a treat.

Disclaimer: I am currently the Chairman of the Board, Queensland Theatre Company. My opinions are entirely my own and should be understood as distinct from any affiliation I hold with this or any other business or arts organisation. The only barrow I push is that of theatre per se.

4 March, 2011

Theatre jargon – what’s your favourite?

Just hanging out this morning on the Twitter stream, and especially with the #2amt crowd, when the always interesting @DramaDaily wanted to know what ‘to dry’ meant. The information came back fairly quickly.

She’s based in the US and apparently that term isn’t well known there. It means to forget your lines and is quite a common bit of theatre jargon in Australia and the UK. I recall working on a show in the US years ago when they started talking about the ‘get-in.’ I hadn’t a clue at first what this meant, but then realised it probably had something to do with what we call the ‘bump-in.’ Sure enough – same thing.

@DramaDaily then found the term ‘to corpse’ or ‘to go up’ – uncontrolled laughing on stage when you shouldn’t be – and started on a hunt to find where these terms had come from. It all started a bit of a flurry of interest and so I asked what people’s favourite bits of theatre jargon were. Here are some of the responses. What are yours? Add them below or tweet on!

Mine, by the way, is ‘bump-in’

[blackbirdpie id=”http://twitter.com/#!/DramaDaily/statuses/43450344654651392″]

[blackbirdpie id=”http://twitter.com/#!/HESherman/statuses/43480856651767808″]

[blackbirdpie id=”http://twitter.com/#!/stevenmitchellw/statuses/43480789379317760″]

[blackbirdpie id=”http://twitter.com/#!/meganshorey/statuses/43477171045531649″]

If you’re on Twitter and you don’t know about 2amt (‘2 am theatre’) you can follow them @2amt on Twitter and read some of the more thoughtful, extended conversations on the 2amt: thinking outside the black box blog.

19 February, 201123 February, 2011

Review: Julius Caesar – La Boite Theatre

Julius Caesar, currently playing at Brisbane’s Roundhouse Theatre is the second offering of La Boite’s 2011 season. It’s a welcome back surprise to the in-the-round format for this production too; how I’ve missed it. Speaking of good surprises in the theatre, I love going to La Boite; you never quite know what to expect. From the configuration of audience to performance space, to the exploration of the ‘full grammar of performance – movement, music, and the visual arts as much as the spoken word’ (La Boite program note Julius Caesar) you’re never going to experience a dull night in the theatre. Artistic Director David Berthold is taking his company into some pretty exciting places. But to this production …

I must say I have felt really sorry for the backstage crew of a lot of new Australian productions I’ve seen in the past couple of years. I’m trying to find a phrase that sums up the kind of messy mayhem attacking our stages in plays like Anatomy Titus (QTC 2009); STC’s recent Oresteia; Belvoir’s Measure for Measure, and now Julius Caesar which is directed by David Berthold and designed by Greg Clarke. I think ‘splatter play’ is going to have to do because that’s what happens an awful lot of the time in these shows. Actors and audiences are subjected to lots and lots and lots of fake blood, gore and other goo – baby powder, chocolate pudding (acting for you-know-what) as well as canned fruit salad – the old stand-by for vomit. These are liberally sprinkled, spattered and squirted – everywhere. Add booze and food (as food) to the mix and you have a Stage Manger’s nightmare. By the way, they are all classics or draw upon classical texts for their inspiration. Continue reading “Review: Julius Caesar – La Boite Theatre”

5 January, 20115 January, 2011

When do the writers come from?

: Image via Wikipedia

The last post looked at the origin of plays by writer in Season 2011 for Queensland Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre. When all details are available, there will be a future post addressing the gender break-down of the authorial teams. Meanwhile, this post follows up by assigning the plays under consideration to a matrix which lays out the historical era which first produced the work in question.

A quick word at the outset. The division is one I used in a couple of earlier posts elsewhere which investigated the repertoire of Queensland Theatre Company during the first 10 years of its existence and in the 10 years preceding its 40th anniversary year in 2009-10. The breakdown is fair enough – although I grant a little arbitrary in that, for example, Chekhov’s plays go into the Early Modern era when they actually span the late 19th and early 20th century. I know, too, that historians would probably quibble with the era that I call ‘Early Modern‘ but, overall, this matrix works for me. In any case, you have to start somewhere, i.e., with a marker for comparative purposes. Here are the eras I use:

Classical: pre-Shakespeare;
Early Modern: post-Shakespeare to end of 19th century;
20th & 21st century: 1901-2005;
Contemporary: a play produced within 5 years of its publication and/or completion. Right now, this means a work in this year’s season which was published or completed between 2006 and 2011.

Queensland Theatre Company

Typical of previous QTC seasons in that it features plays from nearly all historical eras – there are no classical works on offer – Season 2011 is also typical of this Company’s programming in years 2000-2009 with a pronounced emphasis on contemporary works, other 21st century and 20th century plays.

La Boite Theatre Company

La Boite’s commitment to contemporary work couldn’t be clearer. That 10% early-modern slice of the pie in the chart above represents one production, Julius Caesar which, judging by the promotional poster image, is going to get a very contemporary spin. There are no classical works and no 20th century plays in Season 2011 for this company.

2011 Season. Origin of Play by Historical Era – Comparison Queensland Theatre Company: La Boite Theatre Company

From this comparative chart, it looks as if Brisbane theatre goers are in for a year of the very new on the stages of both subsidised companies. Is this breakthrough i.e., trendsetting programming across the board? Assign your own qualifier. I think exciting and maybe even dangerous – it’s audacious stuff to be sure. Many will say ‘About time.’

It looks as if the really old and some of the not-all-that-old dead white guys are on the way out, perhaps to be replaced with living white guys? Which brings us to the subject matter of that future post mentioned above i.e., the gender breakdown of all authors in Season 2011 for both Queensland Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre Company. Probably no surprises for anyone, but we shall see what the numbers reveal.

Thanks for reading this far. Hope you are finding it useful.

Meanwhile, here’s something out of the archives. I stumbled over it doing some free-form searching online. You might be interested in this post from Sean Mee in 2007 The Future of La Boite Theatre Company. As you probably know, Sean was the former Artistic Director of La Boite.