This concise little beauty from Alison Croggon at Theatre Notes http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/
...
I think personally that theatre and poetry have a lot to say to one another (people forget for example that Ibsen's first plays, Brand and Peer Gynt, were in verse, and that feeds into his later plays foundationally - his naturalism has a strong poetic). And just as there are many kinds of theatre, there are many kinds of poetry, which express different relationships to and consciousnesses of language. There's a point where I resile against categorisation, it's in the end fairly meaningless, but nevertheless it can be useful to make distinctions between different kinds of practice... For example, JH Prynne, one of the giants of innovative English poetry, has a particular critique of language that he brings to his work that refuses easy meaning, part ofa thought critique of capitalism, while Kamau Brathwaite, a Caribbean poet, has an entirely different idea about language to do with colonialism. Australian poets like MTC Cronin and John Kinsella have their own takes on language which express their own constellation of concerns. These approaches operate at the level of syntax and diction and vocabulary, ie, at the nuts and bolts of language, and they forcibly inject other kinds of vocabulary and structure into literary written English, question the ways in which we assume knowledge, release new and surprising expressivities into written (and spoken) language, and so on and so on. Poets are always trying to find ways of saying things that language otherwise refuses to express. That's why the "cutting edge" (to coin a phrase) of creative language use is usually with the poets.
Theatrical language is different, as I keep saying, from poetry, and on the whole inherently more conservative. But a lot of interesting theatrical writing does press against the borders of poetry. Someone like LaBute interests me minimally because this consciousness doesn't enter his practice; someone like Pinter is totally alive to the poetry - in a very precise sense - of dramatic language. Sarah Kane and Howard Barker also. (Barker is himself quite a fine poet).
Speaking completely generally, this shift towards consciously poetic idioms in the theatre is an aspect of something that has been called the "post-dramatic stage" (I'm not sure I agree with the term, really, since I think it's more a redefinition of drama) - here's the Oz's John McCallum briefly talking about it in relation to Australian theatre:
"Artistically what has been exciting is the renewed emphasis on physical theatre, contemporary performance and non-realistic, often extravagantly theatrical, work -- and this has at last begun to creep into the mainstream. This new, post-dramatic theatre (American writer Richard Schechner coined the term in the 1970s and it has recently been theorised by the German critic Hans-Thies Lehmann) thrives on real actions and events in the performance space and direct dialogue with its audiences, not oblique representations, based in hackneyed conventions, of a fictional world outside it, usually far off and in another country.
"Shakespeare parodied such conventions in the play the rustics perform in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "All that I have to say is that this lanthorn is the moon; I the man in the moon; this thorn-bush my thorn-bush; and this dog my dog," says the actor, frustrated by the nitpicking mockery of the smooth-talking noble lovers lolling comfortably in each other's arms; those who wouldn't know a good story if it got up and bit them. By being frank, the rustics finally win them over, and that is what the theatre is trying to do now.
"The old model of worthy productions of classic plays and "sensitively" directed realistic productions of new ones will continue, but the best work now is that which transforms the classics and the conventions, or which uses new media and new forms to deal with urgent problems."
In the UK, you can look at what's happening at London's National Theatre (Katie Mitchell's controversial productions of The Waves and Attempts on Her Life) which is causing all sorts of fuss over there. Or the work of Chris Goode, who is making what many people say is among the most interesting theatre in the UK, and whom I met first as a poet.
I think the interesting explorations happening in Melbourne at present constitute a small and potent sub-set of this wider shift. To be honest, what's happening here is exciting by any standards. Some projects will work, some won't, that's the deal with new work, but we're watching theatrical language evolving.
8:35 AM, August 30, 2007
and my response..
Wow...this is a seriously brilliant and concise little blogpost Alison and covers about three continents in as many paragraphs! It puts its finger on one of the common misunderstandings; the difference between 'theatrical language' (i.e. the spoken word on the stage) and, for want of a more elegant term, theatre's language (i.e. the mise en scene, the dramaturgy, the actor's body, the architecture, lighting, sound....). As long as we treat theatre as an adjunct to the literary disciplines we'll keep finding it a pale and reactionary art form, obsessed with logocentrism. Many pieces in Australia become 'recitations'; live bodies memorising and regurgitating 'literature'. Not in itself dull or vapid but not really utilising the various grammars of theatre's language.
This comparison/analogy with poetic practice is very useful, partly because it's so counter-intuitive. The writing of poetry is the act of isolated creation par example (well nearly always); the single creative mind constructing meaning, observing and fashioning language on their own, and (perf poetry aside) read by another mind in isolation. The transaction between artist and consumer is relatively classical, unsullied. But the business of creating/ fashioning theatre's language is constantly subject to intervention; collaboration, discussion, 'takes', 'readings', anxious tension between design and word etc etc. Theatre's language isn't a voice, it's voices, sometimes in sync, sometimes out of sync, on the one stage. But we still persist in demanding/treating theatre as if it's 'writing', a la poetry.
Hmm...and who are our JH Prynnes, in the Australian theatre?
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
f.r.g.s.
Noelle Janaczewska recited from behind a laptop, which is the modern pulpit. But she wasn't reading the text, it was ingested and recited, a formidable task and one she did evenly, with a schoolmistress demeanour. Quizzical, wry, faux-naive. Occasionally she would touch a key and images would change, grainy shots of the Royal Geographical Society, idealised Victoriana.
It was a beautiful piece about the doors that are closed to us. It was like a W G Sebald poetic essay....she meditated on escapism, on the way isntitutions colonise travel, on the way imperialism had its own psychology, with its own neuroses...without ever really talking about these things directly. The Royal Geographical Society became, in her narrative, a sort of council of righteous elders, determiners of what constitutes the margins of our experience. Its doors would always be closed, its library always full of books that could never be opened, its maps destined to fade on sight, like some (perhaps dreamt) Borges story.
And then, just as I was comprehending the rhythms of the piece, she was gone, with a quick, Japanese bow. But I had been taken to Conradian blackness, Mawsonian tabula rasa, Sturt's Inland Ocean, deep up the Sepik, and into those weird institutions of colonialism, and was cruelly wrenched out of them! It reminded me of when I went to the Anotomical Institute in Bologna...rows of skulls from all parts of the globe, staring dumbly from racks. The dead rest of the world, bemused by European neurosis of naming. Catalogues, lists, narratives.
It was a beautiful piece about the doors that are closed to us. It was like a W G Sebald poetic essay....she meditated on escapism, on the way isntitutions colonise travel, on the way imperialism had its own psychology, with its own neuroses...without ever really talking about these things directly. The Royal Geographical Society became, in her narrative, a sort of council of righteous elders, determiners of what constitutes the margins of our experience. Its doors would always be closed, its library always full of books that could never be opened, its maps destined to fade on sight, like some (perhaps dreamt) Borges story.
And then, just as I was comprehending the rhythms of the piece, she was gone, with a quick, Japanese bow. But I had been taken to Conradian blackness, Mawsonian tabula rasa, Sturt's Inland Ocean, deep up the Sepik, and into those weird institutions of colonialism, and was cruelly wrenched out of them! It reminded me of when I went to the Anotomical Institute in Bologna...rows of skulls from all parts of the globe, staring dumbly from racks. The dead rest of the world, bemused by European neurosis of naming. Catalogues, lists, narratives.
The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table
Griffin, At the Stables Theatre.
The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table, By Wesley Enoch.
This play won the Patrick White prize. In a year I wasn't involved, I should say.
I'd read it a few times but that was a while ago; and as we know the experience of seeing a play is watching an altogether different text.
What I noticed in the theatre is that there was a tension at work in what Wesley was writing; ostensibly the play is a sequence of 'stories' associated with the table in question. It was cross-generational and fluid in relation to time; early-on the actors had to play a number of roles representing the various matriarchs of the family. But in the end the play wasn't interested in the stories of the table, the play wanted to be a mother and son reconciliation drama. I had missed this when reading it. The stories aren't the play; they're like a long preamble or back-fill to the core drama. And that got me thinking that the core drama isn't actually the reconciliation of mother and son, it's the horror vacui of there being no future generations to carry on 'storytelling'. It's as if that's what Wesley's proposing; that families are in the end only the stories they tell. So when the character of Nathan, possibly never to leave offspring, imagines burying said table it's actually a provocative proposition. It's the end. It's putting a full stop to cyclical behaviour, to the sins of the fathers being visited on the children...but it's also the end of the stories. The whole play has a melancholic sadness to it.
He's a interesting theatre artist, Wesley Enoch. The two great pillars of his work are really emerging now; indigenous experience and the great Protestant cosmology. Both of course deeply rooted in family. I thought his production of 'Paul' at Belvoir street this year was very, very intriguing. The play itself was risible and had a disappointing materialist second act. But the sincerity with which Wesley appraoched the character of Paul himself (via Rob Menzies, specialist in tortured souls, 'his eyes hollows of madness...'), it was as if he was resolutely turning his focus to that New Testament realm of faith and despair. His own name has it all; the great founder of Methodism, Arminian patriarch of a rational, reductionist, suppressive faith that also encompasses exhilarating song. And Encoh, a blurred, distant Patriarch from the far reaches of Genesis, ancestor of Noah, metamorphosed into an angel. He carries that great, but now anaemic, Protestant tradition with him; hard work, fire and brimstone, the smear of sin, anxiety, anxiety...all his works have an anxiety to them, about the absence of God, the absence of family, the absence of a future, the absence of love. Yet he still posits a warmth in his families. Even sentimentalises them. Outsiderdom matters to him; blackness, gayness, being a cheeky provocateur, estranged from his saviour, being outside the big narrative yet one of its tellers...but what is the last storyteller called? If he's the last, the table-burier so to speak, then he's not just a teller of stories. He's a composer of eulogies, for people and ideas that are fading...
I usually try to think of my experience in the theatre as a conversation with the 'author'. For me that author is usually the director because it's her or his voice I hear loudest. But in this case it was Wesley's presence in the room. This is not to dismiss the work of all others involved in the show. Marion Potts directed it finding rhythm where there was none (!) and keeping it paced. But in the end the range of options open to a director or designer on this stage is so limited, most productions end up resembling each other. That's why the quality of writing matters so much, and why the Stables is an appropriate space for a new writing theatre.
Gee I've had some good times there over the years. The way the lights flare before they dip. The weird relationship you form with the audience members in the bank opposite you; for a while there you know them well. The slightly precious sense of its own history redolent in the foyer. And last night was typically Griffin; a play about the eclipsing of grand narratives, while outside at interval audience members watched earth's shadow slide across the bright moon over King's Cross...
The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table, By Wesley Enoch.
This play won the Patrick White prize. In a year I wasn't involved, I should say.
I'd read it a few times but that was a while ago; and as we know the experience of seeing a play is watching an altogether different text.
What I noticed in the theatre is that there was a tension at work in what Wesley was writing; ostensibly the play is a sequence of 'stories' associated with the table in question. It was cross-generational and fluid in relation to time; early-on the actors had to play a number of roles representing the various matriarchs of the family. But in the end the play wasn't interested in the stories of the table, the play wanted to be a mother and son reconciliation drama. I had missed this when reading it. The stories aren't the play; they're like a long preamble or back-fill to the core drama. And that got me thinking that the core drama isn't actually the reconciliation of mother and son, it's the horror vacui of there being no future generations to carry on 'storytelling'. It's as if that's what Wesley's proposing; that families are in the end only the stories they tell. So when the character of Nathan, possibly never to leave offspring, imagines burying said table it's actually a provocative proposition. It's the end. It's putting a full stop to cyclical behaviour, to the sins of the fathers being visited on the children...but it's also the end of the stories. The whole play has a melancholic sadness to it.
He's a interesting theatre artist, Wesley Enoch. The two great pillars of his work are really emerging now; indigenous experience and the great Protestant cosmology. Both of course deeply rooted in family. I thought his production of 'Paul' at Belvoir street this year was very, very intriguing. The play itself was risible and had a disappointing materialist second act. But the sincerity with which Wesley appraoched the character of Paul himself (via Rob Menzies, specialist in tortured souls, 'his eyes hollows of madness...'), it was as if he was resolutely turning his focus to that New Testament realm of faith and despair. His own name has it all; the great founder of Methodism, Arminian patriarch of a rational, reductionist, suppressive faith that also encompasses exhilarating song. And Encoh, a blurred, distant Patriarch from the far reaches of Genesis, ancestor of Noah, metamorphosed into an angel. He carries that great, but now anaemic, Protestant tradition with him; hard work, fire and brimstone, the smear of sin, anxiety, anxiety...all his works have an anxiety to them, about the absence of God, the absence of family, the absence of a future, the absence of love. Yet he still posits a warmth in his families. Even sentimentalises them. Outsiderdom matters to him; blackness, gayness, being a cheeky provocateur, estranged from his saviour, being outside the big narrative yet one of its tellers...but what is the last storyteller called? If he's the last, the table-burier so to speak, then he's not just a teller of stories. He's a composer of eulogies, for people and ideas that are fading...
I usually try to think of my experience in the theatre as a conversation with the 'author'. For me that author is usually the director because it's her or his voice I hear loudest. But in this case it was Wesley's presence in the room. This is not to dismiss the work of all others involved in the show. Marion Potts directed it finding rhythm where there was none (!) and keeping it paced. But in the end the range of options open to a director or designer on this stage is so limited, most productions end up resembling each other. That's why the quality of writing matters so much, and why the Stables is an appropriate space for a new writing theatre.
Gee I've had some good times there over the years. The way the lights flare before they dip. The weird relationship you form with the audience members in the bank opposite you; for a while there you know them well. The slightly precious sense of its own history redolent in the foyer. And last night was typically Griffin; a play about the eclipsing of grand narratives, while outside at interval audience members watched earth's shadow slide across the bright moon over King's Cross...
Thursday, August 23, 2007
A Midsummer Night's Dream at Sydney Theatre
Five moments from the Dream:
1. When the mechanicals crank up their light-tower so they can rehearse. The lamps throb and Snout puts out witches' hats. We get the image of industrial machinery in the midst of derelict aristocracy. The light quality is warm but pathetic in a way. The artisans are like children, playing in the decayed shell of what was once their parents' glory.
2. The word 'persever'. Without the modern leering end it contains 'sever' and sounds like an act of violence.
3. The way Buswell's light evoke a universe beyond the stage. Moonlight, a distant sunset, a city, headlights...
4. Dirt. When wet it makes the lovers look like they've been crawling through a sewer. For some reason the coprophagia in Salo came to mind...
5. The music that is played as the Athenian aristocats await Hippolyta's entrance at the top of the play. A throbbing, mournful backing-track to their ennui. It lulls the watcher into a dream state, into a hallucination, as if the whole circus of folly and absurdity that is about to follow is some weird trip a few louche decadents entertain before they're gunned down by someone with a bit more backbone...
1. When the mechanicals crank up their light-tower so they can rehearse. The lamps throb and Snout puts out witches' hats. We get the image of industrial machinery in the midst of derelict aristocracy. The light quality is warm but pathetic in a way. The artisans are like children, playing in the decayed shell of what was once their parents' glory.
2. The word 'persever'. Without the modern leering end it contains 'sever' and sounds like an act of violence.
3. The way Buswell's light evoke a universe beyond the stage. Moonlight, a distant sunset, a city, headlights...
4. Dirt. When wet it makes the lovers look like they've been crawling through a sewer. For some reason the coprophagia in Salo came to mind...
5. The music that is played as the Athenian aristocats await Hippolyta's entrance at the top of the play. A throbbing, mournful backing-track to their ennui. It lulls the watcher into a dream state, into a hallucination, as if the whole circus of folly and absurdity that is about to follow is some weird trip a few louche decadents entertain before they're gunned down by someone with a bit more backbone...
Lion's Mane Jellyfish
I was scooting to work this morning and was in some sort of slough of despond. But in Cockle Bay there was a jellyfish, the size of a bucket, floating like it was trapped in its own time. Beautiful rosy hue, delicate fronds and lace trails about it.
Nothing else to be seen within cooee.
A few tourists, up far too early, wandering around bewildered at the unremitting hideousness of Darling Harbour.
What on earth was it doing there? Everything happens for a reason. It's like ravens, they've some nefarious purpose.
Nothing else to be seen within cooee.
A few tourists, up far too early, wandering around bewildered at the unremitting hideousness of Darling Harbour.
What on earth was it doing there? Everything happens for a reason. It's like ravens, they've some nefarious purpose.
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