Fringe Review: The Disappearances Project

Half-light. Two people sit in two wooden chairs. On the black screen, lights move in and out of view, in and out of focus. They are but reflections, lights’ movement captured in passing. Through the electronica score, we hear the murmur of water.  A voice cuts through.

These are the stories of the people who knew, or who once knew, the people now lost. Missing. Disappeared. Weeks, years, decades. Those left behind wait in limbo. Neither coming nor going.  For those left, a person erased with no method of leaving, a gap in knowledge, an incomplete history begetting an incomplete present, an unimaginable future.

Performers Irving Gregory and Yana Taylor drive us through this verbatim theatre work, through the words of the parents and the children, the friends, the acquaintances who passed for just a moment to share a lipstick. In The Disappearances Project we share a different view of the missing, concentric circles of the people they once knew. Stories that overlap and are undifferentiated. And at their centre: nothing. Disappeared.

Fringe Review: seven kilometres north-east

The concept of falling in love with a place is an interesting one. A connection to a land or a people, or just that city down the road, which comes as a beautiful and unexpected thing. Love of a person, I think, is easier to intellectualise, easier to convey. It’s always expected that people we fall in love with will be met, are still to be met, while place is a less emphatic thing: it’s expected we’ll posses a connection to a place you grew up, or a place where your family comes from. What is it about a place that can be so taking?

Kym Vercoe, the devisor and performer of seven kilometres north-east found herself taken by Bosnia, and here we are invited in on her bright and happy exploration.

Vercoe is generous of heart, spirit, and performance.  We quickly make friends with this character as she shares with her audience jokes and knowing glances. We follow her through her heartfelt love for Bosnia, before following her through her heartbreak as, half-a-generation after their occurrence, Vercoe is second-hand witnesses to an unimaginable, insurmountable tragedy of the Bosnian War befallen on the people of a land she has loved.

How do we face a reality so awful? How connected are we to people of a place we love, or loved? When these people are no longer living, have not lived for many years, their people not a part of the landscape ever since? How much are we as women, connected to all women?

Isn’t it just a lot more exciting to do something new?

It’s a trade-off. As a theater community, we put a lot of our resources and talent into the Fringe and a lot of our annual audience goes there to see what’s new, but that means that many of those artists depend on the Fringe instead of starting their own companies. They aren’t creating full seasons, or doing shows longer than an hour, and they aren’t concerned with theatrical design, and so the work isn’t rigorous. To be fair, there are Fringe shows every year that are simply, beautifully and elegantly crafted, and work perfectly within the Fringe’s constraints. But not every show, every play, and every idea is right for the Fringe Festival. So then where do these plays, shows, and ideas get done?

They should be getting done at the small theater companies started by bands of young artists who have bonded together to produce their own vision of what theater should be. And that vision needs to include new plays. Why? Because what is new brings the whole field of theater forward, and if the Twin Cities is creating what is new, we are a part of that national conversation, but if we cling to what is old and tested, we are part of the status quo. And isn’t it just a lot more exciting to do something new? Creating and producing new work is infectious and it infuses a theater scene with an excitement that is often lacking here.

Artists in the Twin Cities need to take more risks and put up new plays. Artists here should take initiative, start their own companies, make new work, self-produce their own plays, cultivate freelance directors and relationships between directors, playwrights, and designers. We desperately need more theater companies who are willing to be the actual fringe to the Fringe Festival and the Guthrie.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have a population of  3.3 million, in a state with a population of 5.3 million – Adelaide, by comparison has a population of 1.2 million in a state of 1.6 million. This article from Howl Round, however, throws up some striking similarities in theatrical issues and communities in our cities – in many more ways than large Fringe festivals – some interesting differences, and some really fantastic ideas about theatre creation and support. Well worth a read; and a contemplate about the other cities facing similar issues we often find ourselves facing.

What’s new Tuxedo Cat?

This article was original published in the January 2012 Issue of the Adelaide Review.

Adelaide’s “cultural boulevard”, North Terrace is home to heritage institutions the State Library of South Australia, the South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia but the 2012 Fringe will add pop up venues to North Terrace’s list of must see destinations.

Greg Clarke and Jennifer Layther at the first walkthrough of the new Tuxedo Cat. Photo Gary Cockburn.

This festival season a new cultural venue will open on the southern side of North Terrace, the latest incarnation of the Tuxedo Cat. Since 2008, the Tuxedo Cat has established a reputation as one of the most loved Fringe hubs for independent performing
arts work.

Established and run by Bryan Lynagh and Cassandra Tombs, the Cat, as they affectionately call it, started as a rooftop venue in Synagogue Place off Rundle Street, running for three Fringes before the building underwent development. For the 2011 Fringe they opened in Electra House opposite Town Hall, also sitting empty in preparation of development. In 2012, they will be operating in Club 199 and the iconic 200 North Terrace.

“We feel like it’s our best address yet,” says Lynagh over a drink. “I think it’s a good mix having the Art Gallery and Library and Museum just across the road from a grassroots arts venue.”

Adam Cook to leave State Theatre Company

Minister for the arts John Hill has broken the news via twitter that Adam Cook, artistic director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, has resigned after eight years in the top job. With the company shortly about to announce a new CEO after Pamela Foulkes announced her resignation towards the end of last year, this could lead to a huge shake up of the highest funded theatre company in the state.

This also calls into question the interesting timing of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton announcing they won’t be extending their term at the Sydney Theatre Company. Is there a move to Adelaide in their future?

Brief: Can You Be A Playwright In Adelaide?

In early December I started to write a post about being a playwright in South Australia. Caleb Lewis, Kit Brookman, Tahli Corin, Duncan Graham, Finegan Kruckemeyer, and now Phillip Kavanagh are people who immediately spring to mind as having left this state in recent years (or weeks, as it may be).  I stopped writing mainly because I thought the answer to my question was just “no”, and left it there.

But today on the National Play Festival website, in an interview with Sydney raised, SA based playwright Nicki Bloom, a similar question came up:

Adelaide is a great cultural producer, what is it like working in a city that is outside of the traditional cultural hubs of Sydney and Melbourne?

These days (back to that postmodern, globalised society you spoke of) where you live has less of an impact on where you work. Sure, there’s still plenty of state-based parochialism, but I’ve worked as much in Sydney as I have in Adelaide, and have as broad networks in cities around the world as I do in Adelaide. I think that’s the same for most playwrights these days.

So, should the question be: can you be a playwright in Adelaide as long as you’re working elsewhere?  I believe Bloom’s Land & Sea is the only text-based theatre work by a South Australian playwright presented by a fully funded company in SA in 2012.  I don’t think this statistic would prove to be unusual.

2012: Let’s Pay It Forward

As Adelaide sits in its January arts slump – as I sit here desperately calling, desperately craving, desperately waiting for some theatre – we are all waiting for the impending Fringe and Festival.  We are waiting for the city’s parks and open spaces to come alive with lights and fantasy, for foyers to be abuzz, for street performers to yell, for flyers to be shoved into our hands, for art to creep and seep its way into every crack it can find.  We are waiting for balmy summer nights, for ciders and gin and tonics, and for fanning ourselves with programs and hats, and wondering how the grass got to be just so brown.  We are waiting to be excited, be inspired, be scared – by ourselves, by our interstate neighbours, and by our overseas guests.

We are waiting for the articles, for the photographs, for the coverage of this event which we see as unlike any other. We are waiting for our press to celebrate this great thing that we make: that the staff make, that the artists make, that the audiences make, that the city makes.  We are waiting for the street press, for the walls of posters, for pens to circle the new guide after the last one fell apart from being read too many times.

We are waiting, unfortunately, for exhaustion, for bad shows, to pay too much for a bottle of beer.  We are waiting to not hear about the best show until it is too late, to find a show runs two hours instead of the advertised one, to realise your skirt doesn’t cover all of the faux-leather seat in the un-air-conditioned venue.  We are all desperately hoping we are not waiting for another locust plague.  We are waiting for those inevitable articles: there is too much art; there is too much competition; how can anyone survive in such a glut?

But, you know and I know, art is not a zero-sum game. If I go to one play, that in itself isn’t going to stop me going to another.

Perhaps, we could consider, the primary property of good art is to drive the want for more good art.

Art begets more art.

Audiences beget larger audiences.

We don’t suffer from too much art – we suffer from too little of it.

The Fringe has increased ticket sales every year since it went annual. It is easy to bemoan but it’s just a pseudo-comedy festival now! It’s not art! But who are you, imaginary blog reader, to say that comedy is not real art?  Art is a big, wonderful salad, with fruits and vegetables and grains and meats and dressing in every form you can imagine – and oh, the combinations you can find if you try just once to step away from the Garden Salad.

This year, whether you are in Adelaide in March or in July, or off in your theatre-going corner of the world somewhere: pay it forward.

Every time you find yourself bemoaning there is not a large enough audience, buy yourself a ticket to another show.

Find out what people in your local area are creating – and buy a ticket to an independent co-op.

Find out what people in your country are creating – and buy a ticket to the next touring show, or throw cation to the wind and buy a plane ticket to another city.

Find out what people in another country are creating – and buy a ticket to the next festival which blows them into town.

Find out what makes you tick: because it might be what makes your audience tick.

Every time you find yourself bemoaning there is not enough funding, don’t have that next coffee and donate $5 to the general funds of your favourite company, or to a new group crowd-sourcing the $500 they need to create a whole production.

Read all that you can – blogs, newspapers, books, twitter – and find out what people are creating or thinking about or are worried about; find out what the people in your shoes did forty-years ago, or are doing on the other-side of the world.  Share all that you read that excites you, that inspires you, or scares you.  Find out what your friends and colleagues think: agree with them, argue with them; question them and yourself and your art.

And if someone is only going to buy one ticket all year? Then you need to be the best, and make them buy yours.

But don’t be that person that is only going to buy one ticket all year.

Find your way around the theatres of your city, and around the theatres of whatever other cities you visit. Watch the plays, and then watch the audience in the foyer. Be a fixture of a foyer or of a theatre bar, so you no longer need to be told how much a drink costs and you’re already holding the exact change. Go to forums and panels, and absorb what you hear – and if you disagree, challenge it.

When you see a work you love, shout it from the rooftops. And when you see a work you don’t like? Then be honest about that, too.

Buy tickets to the opening nights of new works – just so you can say I saw it first.  Wish for it to be brilliant, but take the terrible over the mediocre: shun the mediocracy.

Stretch yourself. Find where you are comfortable, and then force yourself into a completely new position.

If you’re an audience member, never stop believing the next show will be better.  If you’re a creator, never stop believing the next show will be better.

If you’re a marketer, never stop believing that when you’ve got someone you can get them for life.  If you’re an administrator, never stop believing a half-price under-30 ticket now will lead to many full-priced tickets in the future.

Don’t let yourself get pulled down by the fear and negativity: move past them. Don’t let yourself get pulled down by the challenges and the competition: embrace them and find a new ally.  Don’t let yourself be disheartened by work which makes your heart ache for something better: fight for that something better.

In 2012, let’s all pay it forward.

My love of art begets your love of art.

Your love of art begets your friends love of art.

Their love of art begets their friends love of art.

The world really isn’t that big a place.

You can never guess who gets in

It is very difficult to talk about children as a certain group of people.  They are very very different.  Even children six years old is not a group, they are very very different.  And that’s the same when you talk about adults, you would never say that ‘this is the same group of adults that understands an experience in the same way’.  And I think that when you talk about children it is like they are one group of certain people, and I think they are not.

So I think the way of talking to and with your audience is to start by realising you never know who they are, you can never guess who gets in, so you have to find a way of talking to the people who enter.  So for me it’s very important that when I tell stories and I do performances that you have the space where you can really watch and see and understand ‘where are we now, who is there, who am I, who are you?’ And I hate when I leave the theatre, and the audience leave, and I understand I don’t know what happened.  We never meet.

They watch me and I watch them: it’s very important.

- Bodil Alling, ‘the queen of Dutch children’s theatre’
speaking to ArtWorks

Addendum: A Chorus Line, the commercial musical, and the review

My piece on A Chorus Line and the thoughts I had surrounding reviewing such an existing entity had spawned a very interesting discussion on the role of the review and the reviewer (please join in if you have more to add).

But, what I’m asking from you now is what do you want from a review of an existing, commercial musical?  If that’s a thirty-seven year old production of A Chorus Line or if that’s, say, a replica of a current mega-musical such as Wicked - what do you want a review to tell you about the locally playing production, when you can just as easily google dozens from NYC or around the world?

I want specific answers. In the comments on the first post Keith said:

pointing out sound problems is a big deal and mentioning current actors in the cast is important, too. (The cast will use ACL reviews like an indepedent theatre company would, for pull-quotes and to build their reputations.) But you’re just a different part of the conversation with a show like this; you’re speaking to people who will see this cast on that stage – and probably not to any future readers with interests in ACL.

So is it these things: execution of production qualities, more detail of individual performances?  Is it more background and context, or is it less?  Does it matter that it’s been running for forty-odd years?

What do you dear reader of this blog – you audience member, you artist, you marketer – read a review of such a show for?  What didn’t I talk about in my first review which I should have?  What did I talk about which you wish I’d left out?  What do you want to know, or want to discuss with me, or discuss with anyone when you leave a show like this?

You help me, and I might learn to be a better writer.  I might even try and write you another review.

Reviews, who are they good for? (Including Review: A Chorus Line)

On Friday December 31st, A Chorus Line had its first preview at the Adelaide Festival Centre.  Before the curtain even fell, Adelaide Now (the online branch of The Advertiser) had published an article about the first performance entitled A Chorus Line Dazzles At Premiere.  It’s your typical arts fluff-piece – “stars were made”, producer tells you you should go, Adelaide’s the place to be, etc.  Critics weren’t invited until the official opening night of Jan 3, yet journalist Emily Watkins – the Sunday Mail’s Crime and Justice Reporter - still tells us the production “dazzled the opening night crowd.”  Can’t you just see that on the posters?

On Jan 1st, the Adelaide Festival Centre’s twitter asked tweeters what they thought of “opening night”:

Well done to all for opening night of #achorusline in #Adelaide did you attend? Give us a #showreview and Happy New Year.—
  (@AdelaideFesCent) December 31, 2011

before getting well and truly in the act, tweeting Watkins article as their “first review”, to which I replied:

@AdelaideFesCent this isn't a review though, is it? It's a feature reporting opening: a very different beast. @adelaidenow—
Jane (@noplain) December 31, 2011

To which I got no response.

So not only do we have the local newspaper conflating a first performance with an opening night, we have the Adelaide Festival Centre also ignoring this distinction, and then calling an article a review.

I mainly thought no more of it, until down to the Festival Theatre I went on January 3rd to pick up my tickets and watch the show to write my review.  And it wasn’t until I sat down in my seat that I fully comprehended that critics had been invited to see and respond to a production which is a replica of a production which first played Broadway in 1975, where it continued for fifteen years. Which first played the West End in 1976; Sydney in 1977.  Which won nine Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, became the longest running show on Broadway, and played to 6.5 million people on that stage alone. These are all facts which could leave someone in awe, but I was left with just one thought:

What am I doing here?  What are any of us critics doing here?

What will any of us have to say about a production which has been kicking around the globe for 37 years?  What is that going to offer to theatrical discussion?