Queensland Theatre Company – Page 10

25 September, 200831 August, 2010

Young artists at work and play

And so to Brisbane again the other night for a playreading of the three writers in this year’s YPP (Young Playwrights’ Program) run by Queensland Theatre Company. The Bille Brown studio on the edges of Brisbane’s South Bank Cultural Precinct was heaving with young’uns plus a few oldies who’d come to cheer on the writers and the actors who’d rehearsed for a day or so. The place was also full of teens currently attending the annual TRW (Theatre Residency Week) … all these acronyms are apparently very cool. This year’s lot had devised and performed the entire novel of Candide the night before! Now there’s cheek (and stamina) for you. It was a night of energy, high spirits, and no small amount of talent on display.

Queensland Theatre Company’s quiet claim to fame is its youth and education programs that run year-long and which cater for young artists, creatives and theatre-lovers. From their artist in schools programs and workshops to state and national tours, work experience opportunities, a season of plays specially devised to appeal to the almighty schools’ curriculum, plus the aforesaid TRW and YPP, there is now and always has been a determination by the state theatre company to work for and with Queensland’s young artists and creatives and their teachers. Well done, say I.

21 September, 200820 August, 2009

Words, words, words …

Spent an afternoon on Brisbane’s delightful South Bank cultural precinct yesterday. It’s site until today of the annual Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The joint was jumping. Author talks, panels, coffee drinking, book browsing (and buying) and readings have been the stuff of the past 4 days. And if you think that’s boring, think again. And it was all very Brisbane … shorts and t-shirts, sandals and the kind of laid back atmosphere that is Queensland.

I was there principally to see Queensland Theatre Company second reading of Richard Jordan’s 25 Down due for production next June as winner of the 2008-09 Premier’s Drama Award. It was designed to give the writer an opportunity to hear and see a different cast of actors read his work, now in a 9 month development stage. A 15 minute Q&A afterwards gave the writer, and the Director Jon Halpin and his actors a chance to talk about the process of taking a work from page to stage.

How exciting to have so many people who still care about words.

9 April, 20085 May, 2014

On musicals as social barometers and a publicity call

Bertolt Brecht „The victory of the reason can only win the sensibles

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I did a radio interview this morning, part of the groundswell of publicity for Cabaret as we count down to the season’s opening next week. It was quite a relaxed 10 minutes or so in the late morning and on the national broadcaster ABC, but pitched to a more local, regional audience. These would be people with the time or inclination to listen to radio. Probably those not at work, but I wouldn’t begin to imagine the demographic! Hopefully they were also interested in theatre.

Anyhow, it was about musicals … how thrilling the experience is, how many I’d been in, and my favourite (Godspell for Queensland Theatre Company many moons ago). I was asked what would be different, and without really meaning to, I launched into my take on the power of musicals not only to entertain and to get the emotional juices flowing, but also to stir up the mud over various social issues. I hope I wasn’t lecturing!

Because of course, Showboat, generally considered the first modern musical stopped Broadway in its tracks in 1927 when it dealt with miscegenation. Many more in the same vein have followed, like South Pacific (racism) and Chicago (crime and the corruption of the legal system). Perhaps not as politically and socially conscious as others, there have been been musicals about the dark as well as the light side of the human condition: A Chorus Line and the agony for an artist of an anonymous line backing the star … Rent and AIDS … and yes, you can deal with these matters head-on vigorously and joyously … that’s the licence and the power of music theatre. Bertolt Brecht, the genius 20th century man of the theatre knew how to do it; spass (fun) first and then go for the jugular.

Cabaret has always (but especially in this production) focussed on responsibility … personal and societal. It’s set in Berlin over several months in 1930; the tide is turning and the Nazis are on the flood. The big question for the audience in this production is ‘What would you do?’ It’s a big question with no easy answer; I’ve had to step into the shoes of a character who is faced with a moral dilemma. Go with the flow, be swept along with the inevitable and survive, or risk being destroyed. It’s an old and a hard reminder: The only thing that allows evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. And oh, the cost whichever you choose! Life really … it’s a Cabaret.

4 April, 20086 July, 2014

Three Sisters

I got to thinking during the drive home last night that there’s an awful lot of drama about three women, often sisters … not sure why three rather than two or four. Now these couplings are inevitably memorable. A few that spring to mind include the (in)famous sisters Lear (Regan, Goneril and the goody-goody Cordelia), and Chekhov’s Masha, Olga, and Irina. Australian drama has produced Hannie Rayson’s Falling From Grace, Stephen Sewell‘s The Garden of Granddaughters, and Hotel Sorrento by Hannie Rayson. The American theatre has given usThe Sisters Rosensweig from Wendy Wasserstein (one of my favourite writers), Three Tall Women by Edward Albee and another from the modern American theatre, Neil Simon’s wonderful triple treat from The Prisoner of Second Avenue: Pearl, Jessie, and Pauline.

Continue reading “Three Sisters”

19 March, 20085 May, 2014

Another Night in the Theatre … but O, what a night!

Those of us who spend our lives working in theatre are used to the disappointments that come all too often it can seem. One production somewhere is OK, or doesn’t work … quite, despite the best efforts of all concerned; we forgive and perhaps forget. Another somewhere else can be plain awful … and at times like that you sit in the darkened theatre thinking murderous thoughts about ticket prices and wasted time, and whether leaving at interval is the right move. Every so often though a pearl of a production comes along … a joy of an experience that makes the ho-hum, the ordinary, the disappointments fade away. Hell, they can’t all be fabulous after all, you say … and yes, this is why one works in and for the theatre. Continue reading “Another Night in the Theatre … but O, what a night!”