Sydney Festival 2015 The Long Pigs

The Long Pigs by We3 – Clare Bartholomew, Derek Ives-Plunkett & Nicci Wilks.  Directed by Susie Dee.  Produced by Insite Arts.  Sydney Festival at Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre January 15-18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 16

Whatever you do in your life, make sure you avoid the black-nosed clowns.  It got quite scary when these three realised they were one red nose short and were clearly expecting to find one in the audience and chop it off.

We3 must have had a wonderful time putting together the enormous complexity of their set, as well as the characters of their clowns: the fat bossy one, the short one who regularly stuffs things up, and the tall somewhat lugubrious and rather naïve one who at one stage was nailed to a cross.  When he discovered that the nails didn’t actually go through his hands, he quite naturally exclaimed “Jesus!!”

By this time it was clear that these were anti-clowns.  After the recent ideological murders in Sydney and Paris, it struck me that this parody of Christ might have had serious consequences if they had chosen to parody Mahomet.

As it turns out, the short clown is a ring-in – beneath the surface his black nose is actually red, so it is duly chopped off.  When he is forced to eat his own nose (that’s where the cannibalism implied in the “long pigs” title comes in), red noses rain from the heavens, and the black-nosed clowns have won the day.

The message is that extremist ideology taken to its logical conclusion is a real danger.  Yet we laugh at the clowns, and even applaud, while watching it all happen.  The fact that this show must have been devised long before the Sydney and Paris murders shows the prescience of We3’s work.

And, indeed, it is great fun to watch.  And interesting to note that the clowns are all represented as male, while two of the performers are female.  I think this says something about who controls the extremist view of the world.

It’s not a pretty sight, but the gruesome story is well worth seeing.  You will surely laugh, in a black-nosed kind of way.

I've got a little list.  Isn't that one there in Row F?

Jesus!!

Birth - of a banana.

Can we trust these overblown red-nosed clowns?

Hang the ring-in.

Digest that, you red-nose!

Photos by Prudence Upton
(Captions: Frank McKone)

Sydney Festival 2015 Long Grass

Long Grass  Dance theatre choreographed and directed by Vicki Van Hout.  Cultural consultant, choreographic collaborator and voice/sound: Gary Lang.  Produced by Performance Space and Intimate Spectacle, Darwin.  Sydney Festival, Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre January 14-18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 16

Vicki Van Hout’s choreography and the quality of the dance work by the five performers – Katina Olsen, Taree Sansbury, Caleena Sansbury, Thomas ES Kelly and Darren Edwards – is quite extraordinary.  Their characters are modern Aboriginal people, with all their day-to-day ironic body and vocal language in the seemingly ‘off-stage’ moments, between stunning representational imagery of all the phases of life on the edges of official society.

About 2% of Darwin’s people are homeless.  Most are camped in the “Long Grass” where we see a simple plot played out: a woman takes sick and dies.  Who is she?

Dysfunction, cultural and family breakdown, alcohol, violence and inevitable almost unnoticed death are danced into our consciousness, supported by live dialogue and sound effects, in what seems to me to be an entirely original form.

There is no Martha Graham behind this “modern dance”.  There surely are elements of Larrakia traditional dance in the amazing flexibility, mimetic qualities, physical balance and strength in stillness, but neither is this “traditional dance” for these people struggling to survive in the long grass.

This dance is new.

Seeking comparisons, I looked to Bangarra.  However true to his culture, there is still some Martha Graham in Stephen Page’s work, though recent choreography by Frances Rings in Terrain shows a similar originality to Van Hout’s work (though on a more poetic theme).

I think the new development is terrific to see – Indigenous culture is breaking out all over.  No longer is there an assumed ‘traditional’ form of expression giving the impression to ‘white’ society that Aboriginals are all the same.  As it was in the past when 600 languages were spread across Australia, Long Grass is modern Larrakia culture in dance from Darwin, different from but equal to modern Murri culture from the Brisbane-based Page family, or Frances Rings’ modern Kokatha culture from Adelaide.

Long Grass is both tragic for its story and exciting for its art, and I hope to see more work from the Performance Space and Intimate Spectacle in the future.

Photos by Heidrun Lohr:

 Photos by Jamie Williams:

DANCING FOR THE GODS - CHITRASENA DANCE COMPANY

Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse

15^th January 2015

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

 

 

 

It’s been a long time between visits. The Chitrasena Dance Company from Sri Lanka, last performed in Canberra in 1972, headed then by the charismatic founder of the company, Chitrasena and his wife, Vajira. After a week performing at the Sydney Festival the company returned to Canberra for just one performance, this time with Chitrasena’s grand-daughters, choreographer Heshma Wignaraja, and principal dancer, Thaji Dias, at the helm.

The Chitrasena Dance Company specialise in Kandyan dance, a 2,500 year old  ritual-dance tradition which only evolved into a performance art in the 20^th Century with the emergence of virtuoso dancer Chitrasena who is credited with bringing the traditional dances from the village rituals to the modern stage. Over the years his children and grand-children have continued his tradition, evolving, adapting and refining the ancient art form to suit the modern stage.



Chitrasena Dance Company Drummers

This current program Dancing for the Gods was developed especially for the Sydney Festival to showcase the diversity in the different forms of belief and worship within Sri Lankan traditional dance and to celebrate the Sri Lankan view of dance as a form of worship.

The performance was presented in three sections, Ritual, Rites and Reflections, performed without interval by seven bejewelled and bangled dancers and four colourfully costumed drummers. The drummers also chanted and vocalised at various points, joined in the dances and added to the spectacle in the finale by flicking bright red tassels on their headdresses. To make sure the audience could follow the action; each section was introduced with a clear, precisely spoken, voice-over narration in English.

Sandini Sulochani (centre) with members of the company 

 

The settings were simple and uncluttered, dramatic lighting focussing the attention on the energetic, mostly joyful, dancing. For one section, three rows of flickering candles created a contemplative mood. For another, smoke and flaming torches brandished by the dancers brought excitement and a sense of danger to the proceedings.

The show commenced intriguingly with the ritualised seeking of the blessings of the gods and gurus on the theatre and its audience. A lone, spot-lit dancer chanted over a smoking cauldron while an exotically costumed masked deity, accompanied by drummers, moved through the theatre to the stage.  Group and solo dances followed in quick succession, leading to an exquisite solo performed by principal dancer Thaji Dias costumed in white.

Thaji Dias

Images of the Dancing Shiva immediately came to mind watching this solo. Dancing to sets of intricate drum rhythms, the long constantly evolving sequence was characterised by graceful undulating arm movements and punctuated with carefully upturned hands and angular feet, drops into deep squats with turned out hips, quick jumps and foot beats. Her beautiful face serene and smiling, completely in the moment, and dancing with all the grace, skill, security and showmanship of a classical ballerina, Thaji Dias was truly mesmerising.  

However it is in the group dances, with each intricate step and movement performed in perfect unison by either three male dancers or three female dancers, or indeed the entire company in the finale, that the Kandyan style and technique can best be appreciated. Each dancer is superbly trained, each step so precisely polished and executed, that its possible for even the most uninitiated observer to soon recognise and admire the movement and its execution, and even variations to the original, as dancer and drummer challenge each other in later sections.

Dancing for the Gods represents the distillation of 70 years of endeavour by the Chitrasena Dance Company to evolve, preserve and present Kandyan dance to be enjoyed not only by Sri Lankans but by world audiences. As such it is a fascinating and compelling demonstration of the success of their endeavour, and one would hope that Australia does not have to wait another 40 years for another opportunity to enjoy this fascinating and accomplished company.  



Members of the Chitrasena Dance Company in Sydney


This review also appears on the Australian Arts Review website - www.artsreview.com.au
 

Sydney Festival 2015 Have I No Mouth

Have I No Mouth by Brokentalkers, Ireland, co-directed by Feidlim Cannon and Gary Keegan.  Performed by Ann Cannon, Feidlim Cannon & Erich Keller.  Sydney Festival, York Theatre, Seymour Centre, January 15 to 18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 15

In my day, before being a mere critic, I have had my experience of less than successful attempts at using what I call ‘oblique’ images and theatrical devices as significant symbols.

If in this case the devising group had constrained themselves, perhaps limiting the imagery to the balloons and using just one miked commentator/questioner as the main device, the story of a son’s emotional troubles resulting from the deaths of his baby brother and his father could have become a gripping drama.  But too much theatrical diversity means inconsistency, which means the drama wanders without clear development.

Basically, as the audience demonstrated admirably this evening, they only wake up when they can become excited by the prospect of a new development when a previously established device or image reappears.  Though the balloons, into which you blow all your anger, is a cheap ploy to engage the audience, it was at least a theme (and the only one) which followed through from balloons being handed out at the door, blown up in an audience participation exercise, popped when the son hugged his father’s ghost hard enough, with anger relieved in the fun of swamping the auditorium with bouncing balloons to end the play.

If it sounds as though I’m giving some instruction to a group of drama students, that’s not surprising when we see that Brokentalkers have no writer, just two ‘co-directors’ who claim that “Their work seeks to explore new forms that challenge traditional ideologies of text-based theatre” in a working method “founded on a collaborative process that draws from the skills and experiences of a large and diverse group of contributors from different disciplines and backgrounds.”

Sorry if I see value in the old ideology of a writer, director and if necessary a dramaturg to create consistency in the final result, but after all I have seen the Brokentalkers kind of challenge many times before – from the time of Piscator in the 1920s in Germany, through the Open Theatre of the 1960s in New York, and even in Canberra’s Fools Gallery in the late 1970s, as well as various Sydney groups such as Kinetic Energy.  Non-text based work is not exactly a new idea.  Some has worked; some has not.

Unfortunately, Have I No Mouth uses the real experiences of the people performing: the son is Feidlim Cannon, the mother is his mother Ann, and the psychiatrist is his psychiatrist Erich Keller.  Awful though it is to have to say it, since the issue surrounding Feidlim’s father’s death is obviously very serious, and perhaps reveals a crucial failing on the part of the medicos concerned, the play ends up perhaps being a kind of psychological therapy for the participants but offering little to an audience.

Some questions are raised, which I overheard some people discussing after the show, about the role of the mother as a parent, for example.  I found it difficult to listen because it seemed too much like prying into others’ privacy.

As each new device appeared, in the action or on screen, unexpectedly different in form or style without any apparent reason, about halfway through I found myself no longer engaged with the emotional content.  The play lost its plot.  The only interest was in wondering what new technique would appear next.

The company is described as  “one of Ireland’s most innovative and original theatre companies by making formally ambitious work that defies categorisation”.  I actually don’t know what this means, or how it applies to this presentation.  I’m just concerned that the important issues behind these people’s disturbed lives do need to be addressed, and need better, well-focussed theatre to do it.

I should add, though, it is a valid thing for the Sydney Festival to host such international indie groups, so that theatre practitioners and audiences here can make their own judgements.  This is an especially important value of the About An Hour segment of the Festival.

Photos by Prudence Upton:

 

Sydney Festival 2015 Wot? No Fish!!

 Wot? No Fish!! by Danny Braverman, directed by Nick Philippou.  Presented by Bread and Circuses, UK, at Sydney Festival, Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, January 13-18, 2015.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
January 14

Story-telling par excellence.  The personal story of Danny Braverman’s discovery of his great-uncle’s private miniature sketches, recording his married life from 1926 to his wife’s death in 1982, is a gem in itself.

But Braverman’s collaboration with Nick Philippou has created a one-man play which need not die when Braverman reaches the stage in his life when he is no longer able to perform.  It is a script of a show-and-tell, a family slide show, which, if performed by a different actor playing the role of Danny Braverman, would still work theatrically.

We would still be drawn in by the passing around of gefilte fish (real food seems to becoming de rigeur on stage nowadays), to begin the argument (after we recognise the flavours of beetroot and horse radish in the sauce) about the minority Yids who insist boiling is best against the clear majority in favour of fried, at least in the East End of London.  Danny could not believe, as he has discovered while touring his story, that Americans do not fry, even though his own mother boiled while his father fried.  It seems that Jews love to argue!

And we would find ourselves engrossed in Danny’s showing us his great-uncle Ab’s drawings, becoming bit by bit more sophisticated, done on his weekly pay packets throughout his working life as a shoemaker.  Then in retirement he bought up a supply of pay packets, though no longer containing the ‘real money’ that people were paid in those days, to continue recording with a cartoonist’s sense of sometimes dark humour, his relationship with his wife and her sister, and his sons, one of whom would nowadays be diagnosed as autistic, while the other turned out to be gay when it was still an illegal condition.

Taking up the theme of the flavour of gefilte fish, Danny sees the sweet and sour, the light and the dark, as a natural reality of the Solomons’ marriage.  Love may seem to be threatened at times, but survives through economic troubles, social competition as wealthier Jews move upmarket, World War II when the Nazis could well have succeeded in invading the Jews’ safe haven in England, and having to place their younger son in a mental institution where he died after 16 years’ incarceration.  Ab’s final drawing, by now a tiny painting, was made as Celie’s cancer finally took her life.  Some 3000 small envelopes, mostly in shoe boxes, were preserved by his surviving son when Ab died only four years after the love of his life.

Great nephew Danny, already a successful theatre-in-education and community theatre maker – including directing the disability arts centre, The Orpheus Centre, from 2007 to 2011, and currently a lecturer in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London – has created a work which is both a documentary at a personal level and a valuable illumination of history from the 1920s to the 1980s.  We are taken into his family’s daily life emotionally while simultaneously being allowed to stand outside, observing with enough objectivity to see the context.  This is achieved through the device of Danny’s telling his story of his discovery of his grand-uncle’s story.  He likens this structure to the double helix spiral of DNA.  And like DNA, it creates a living form, on stage before our very eyes.

Wot? No Fish!! is a remarkable achievement, and should not be missed – except that its Sydney Festival season is completely booked out, already.

The young Celie - the always busy housewife

Symbolism - the family reaches 1943.  Will there be a future?

Hitler: "I have no further territorial ambitions"

Grand Uncle Ab's art on exhibition at Seymour Centre

Photos by Jamie Williams

Ab and Celie are still together but caption says
"This road goes uphill both ways"

Ketoprak Tobong, Yogjakarta (and some theatre in Java)

Ketoprak Tobong

In 2000 Risang Yuwono’s father bought a theatre company in Yogjakarta for 36 million rupiah.

They are Ketoprak Tobong, they are a touring folk theatre company and they are still going.  Risang’s father has passed the outfit on to his son as he is not so well these days. And Risang, who is also a fine photographer (see http://projecttobong.com/ for more on his ongoing collaboration with London artist Helen Marshall), is working at making this traditional theatre survive in a world that sometimes forgets about the importance of such traditions.

(The trouble with the Elizabethans is that they didn’t take enough photos…)

I was in Java during September 2014 trying to get to know a little more about Indonesian theatre practices and traditions, having gone in 2013 to a huge puppet festival in Ubud that stirred an interest already awakened by theatre in Thailand.

Kraton, Yogja, set up for puppet show.

I started in Jakarta, which has a very good puppet museum that you could take a day or so to work through properly, and worked my way on to performances in Yogja and Solo before coming home.  I wasn’t awfully systematic about this but was well armed with advice about the Yogja palace (Kraton) and its morning dance, puppet and gamelan performances as well as a few tourist type shows. And you do develop a bit of a nose for ferreting out the performances in foreign parts.

Ramayana at Prabanan, Yogja

The Ketoprak turned up via Via Via, an ecologically savvy tourist company in Yogja, and I signed up for a car and driver to take me to the Hindu temple at Prambanan where I’d already seen something of the outdoor theatre that stages Ramayana with the majestic ruins of Prambanan as its illuminated backdrop. (And when there’s a blackout and a full moon the blackout is paradoxically a thing of great beauty as only the moon illuminates the move to the next scene.) 

Then it was on to a night at the Ketoprak Tobong. We got to the theatre after dark. Not that it looked all that much like a theatre, although there seemed to be some kind of a box office and a large poster and an entrance in the dark and a few people lurking about in woolly hats.

Ketoprak Tobong

But when you go through, the first thing you see is a lit up proscenium arch with a red satin curtain at the end of a dark rough open sided audience space where the floor is almost certainly earth and the chairs are old metal ones. The red satin curtain did it for me. Early training in Sydney means an old fashioned pros arch with a red curtain lit and ready to go unhinges me temporarily. Theatre romantics know this syndrome.

Ketoprak Tobong

Owner Risang was quick to realise he had a theatre romantic on his hands and took me on the pre show tour. On stage as we passed the wings the company was sitting in a circle to workshop and discuss what the show would be that night.

Ketoprak Tobong

Shades of commedia del arte and various forms of semi improvised theatre.  And yes, this rough theatre has wings and battens (all in one piece like a frame) and painted scenery, and backdrops and curtains that roller up and down on ropes. There are only really three locations – a palace, a forest and a peasant hut. But in Shakespearean fashion a bit of tweaking, like less light or adding a green curtain, might provide you with ‘another part of the forest’ or ‘another room in the palace'.

Ketoprak Tobong

Out the back there’s not much light and a half circle of huts. Back in 2000 there were about 60 people in the troupe. It does not seem to be so many today but there are clearly people living in those huts. Or at least getting dressed in them.

Ketoprak Tobong

Behind the stage is the makeup area where the final bits of costume also seem to be added. The actors are unselfconsciously aware of your photography and adjust their poses for photography as they do this. The makeup for the higher class and demonic characters is dramatic. The costumes are rich, magnificent, sparkling.

Ketoprak Tobong

A quick look at the stage manager’s corner (OP as opposed to P in this place) shows that he’s got to be all things, lighting, sound and mechanist. An offer to let me watch from the wings during the second half to see how all of this is going to work in practice is made and accepted.

Ketoprak Tobong

Out the front the gamelan orchestra is arriving bit by bit. There’s an older bloke in a woolly hat and a younger bloke who will seem to use tablet technology to keep himself on track and a scattering of glowing mobile phones. You will never quite glimpse who it is that is hiding behind the giant gongs. A fair amount of smoking goes on. A woman in a hijab will sit at the front, where we might put a conductor, and she will sing, mostly in between the action.

Ketoprak Tobong

Ketoprak Tobong

The stage is nineteenth century proscenium arch perhaps via Indian tent show traditions. There is a Vitruvian perspective effect, with a set of one piece batten and wing frames with the frame getting smaller as the set goes toward the back drop. There are really only three ‘scenes’ – a palace, a forest and a peasant’s hut – but with a little changing around of some of the movable elements you can clearly have ‘another part of the forest/palace’ (but probably not ‘another part of the peasant hut’).

Ketoprak Tobong

It’s Ramayana and Mahabharata and folk story territory and that’s magnificently courtly at the beginning but it soon comes down to the comedians and the locals in the hut and all the local byplay with the audience.  The dignity of the upper class characters is immense but the earthiness of the lower classes is richly shown. There’s a comedian with a cheerful face, full of personality, who keeps the comedy stoked.

Ketoprak Tobong

Ketoprak Tobong

In the second half I come out of the audience where I’ve been kept going with large mugs of sweet milky tea and go to perch on a box in the wings. The moon is full above but the wings are dark and full of actors. The stage floor is made of wooden planks covered in the visible areas with carpet. There are bits of half dowel on the floor in the wings to keep the wings from sliding over. There are ropes that the stage manager will rush at to haul curtains and backdrops up and down. There’s no fly floor – it’s an old fashioned multiple rope system where curtains and scenic drops roll onto a bar. Given that there is only one operator the speed at which they do this is impressive.

Ketoprak Tobong

And because there are no walls the moon is clearly setting behind us.

The stage manager makes the job of an Australian equivalent look like a bit of a holiday. He’s being a mechanist with those ropes but he also operates a basic sound system with a mike over the stage to boost the actors’ voices. He has some kind of a prompt book on the desk. Above it are a series of switches that enable a little control over lighting. Since this mainly consists of a central flood centre stage between each of the battens and a single one front of house this is limited to taking out some upstage if a more mysterious look is required.

SM's desk, Ketoprak Tobong 

He also has on the desk a wooden duck with a belly slit. This is actually like a Chinese wood block in western orchestral percussion and he uses it to signal changes. He never stops working, one eye on the book. I hunker down and concentrate on not falling backwards down the rickety steps into the void behind me while trying to take lots of shots of actors waiting in the wings and of glimpses of the on stage action.

Ketoprak Tobong

(The trouble with Shakespeare’s lot is that they did not take enough photos…later in the trip I will lose the IPod touch somehow at the more upmarket ketoprak theatre in Solo but at least the camera makes it home. And the human memory is a camera of sorts too…)

Ketoprak Tobong

On the second night I am put straight into a chair at the back of the orchestra pit and watch from there.

Ketoprak Tobong

The pit is simply a walled off area in front of the stage. I get a close up view of the orchestra’s way of working. Older members might have a piece of paper with a running list. Younger ones have almost certainly got that in their phone or tablet. All of them have the ethos of the performances in their head. Some wear traditional dress, some are smart casual and there’s always an older bloke with a woolly hat.  You still can’t quite see who it is behind the biggest gongs. They chat quietly, they laugh, they comment.

Ketoprak Tobong

Early arrivals, Ketoprak Tobong 

The closer view takes me away from the audience who continue to be a warm presence in the dark, mostly older but with some young ones. Chatting, throwing in the odd comment. When that leading comedian comes on, the young man with a glowing face and charming smile, the ambience of the whole place is electric.

I don’t know Javanese so I am of course not coping with the dialogue.  Later on other places like the wayang orang in Solo will have somewhat erratic surtitles but in Bahasa to help with the older form of language used and not in English. A rough grasp of Ramayana helps but not when the Ketoprak in Solo wanders heavily into folk tales involving mysterious pearls and sultans. It helps to have experienced Thai likhe (folk theatre) performances, where although I grasp the odd word or phrase, I am almost language blind. You do need to develop a certain patience for a different kind of pace and rhythm. Even the theatricality seems different although visual humour often crosses the boundaries.

Then there’s the burden of the western middle class assumption that an audience has to stay for everything and keep quiet while doing so. I’ll admit to wielding a camera but otherwise I stick to early training and keep my seat.

Ketoprak Tobong

Ketoprak Tobong, with its painted palaces and forests and huts is really the pick of what was seen this trip. I go to puppets and gamelan and the stately classical dance and wayang orang, which is the puppet show done with humans instead of puppets and another ketoprak in Solo where the theatre has walls and the star turn is a lean Chaplinesque comedian with a melancholy deadpan face. I notice the older faces among the performers in many shows, their skills transcending any notion that youth is all there is. 

Older dancer, Ramayana Ballet, Yogja

I am taken round the performing arts school in Solo where senior secondary students learn dance and gamelan and puppetry in tiny rooms and open their morning rehearsals to the public. I watch a puppeteer up in Bogor carve exquisitely detailed puppet heads and buy Rama and Sita for that detail, still unpainted. (‘Three days work. Each one. 300,00 rupiah for two…’)

Unpainted puppet head, Bogor 

But nothing quite affects me as much as the Yogja Ketoprak Tobong where canvas and wood and paint and a few judiciously placed lights create ambience that is added to by the rough open sided space. The courtly characters have a true dignity as they sit and debate in the palace or roar into stylised warfare. The scenes among the ordinary people have honesty and humour and the audience feels free to participate with genuine gusto. And there’s a magical moment late in one story where a character who has clearly been blind suddenly changes his face so beautifully as he receives sight.

Ketoprak Tobong

Ketoprak Tobong

Risang has his hand on the practicalities of running this theatre as well as having lively and insightful views about theatre and travel and the world and Java. I am grateful to him and to the people of Ketoprak for being so willing to let strangers in to see the beauty and strength of a tradition that ought to be continued. And to let me, unlike Shakespeare’s lot, take many photos.

Ketoprak Tobong

by Alanna Maclean