Stage Politics

America had made history again with Obama winning a second term for the Presidential Office. The social media has exploded all over the world with people celebrating this historical success. Of course not everyone is happy. Donald Trump was especially upset about the win. From his tweets it seems that he will be a grumpy old man for another 4 years in his silver tower. He thought he has the eye of Sauron but he was wrong again.

The presidential race in America always attracts international attention. In Australia, news was all about the election in the last few days and sometimes I wonder whether I need to go to vote too. However, what I am interested in is more about how the “election show” was staged.

What I noticed during the whole campaign is that while Obama embraced cultural diversity Mitt Romney went the opposite way. It is no question that Mitt Romney, as a Republican candidate has to live up to the Republican’s expectations. However, at the same time, in my opinion, there are certain opinions that should be reserved to a few drinks in his house after an upper class belly fattening dinner. I found it even funnier when he once use Donald Trump’s “quotes” on birth certificate as a tag / gag line for his speech. When I read that I thought, “Oh come on you could have come up with something more original than using a quote from a guy who wears a toupee and enjoy firing people on TV”. I wonder what were his writers thinking? I am sure Mitt did not write all his speeches and that’s fair enough for he needs to reserve his arm for waving not writing. So the scriptwriters for his stage should have been more careful when there is a whole gang of them doing the job.  Even if Mitt Romney is not a good actor, with great writers, he could still turn a mediocre performance into a memorable act.  However, at times the team failed him and left him cold on stage and wet with press.

On the other hand, Obama was reaching out to embrace modern America. It was said that Obama did not only get the African Americans vote, but he was popular among Latinos and Asians, who are some of the larges racial groups in America. Even in his victory speech, Obama reached out to everyone in America disregard race, politics and sexual orientation. This is a President who attempted to not only represent the Democrats, nor just his ethnic group but also everyone in the house. Of course, not everyone would take the bait but at least he made the gesture, and I think that is very important. Without a doubt, Obama is a great performer and speaker. When he walks on the stage, he commands it. Of course even the best actor would have bad days. The first round debate with Romney was one of them. But then it was a Wednesday night so from a theatre point of view, performances are usually a bit flat.

What I saw in the last week or so of frantic campaigning by the two leading figures is there are still people who represent extreme conservative views in the modern world. Republicans believe in the glory of the country no matter what, even at the expense of others. Politics is a dirty game we all know that but for me a party who only sees the glory of being glorified and stays in the time capsule of the past cannot really lead anyone into the future, no matter what they said. They are like green actors trying to perform classic texts without understanding them so they just took the face value they believed in and made a show of it. In my opinion, a true leader is someone who sees an opportunity that could realise his vision and go for it. These people own the political stage because their performances were tied in with their choices and they believe in their choices. Obama is one of them. There were criticisms about the economy in the States but I always found it interesting that the Republicans forgot who brought the States into the current financial turbulence because of over deregulation among peers. Obama inherited a country in economic tatters and it was a tough gig. So I am glad that he got four more years to fix the country. The pity is that he might spend most of the time fixing instead of building. Nonetheless, I have the confidence that he would materialise his vision as much as possible.

As for Australia, I believe we are still going through a phase that nobody can be the star so we got B grade actors filling in. Our major party leaders still have a lot to learn from the real politicians in the States. The Liberals are not liberal in thinking and that was completely reflected in Tony Abott’s behaviours and speeches. Sometimes I think they should rename their party to Narrows. And as for the Labor, they are simply laborious to watch and listen to. Seriously Julia Gillard needs to fix her sinus problem or get some good voice training. Maybe she should take some corporate performance classes from the NIDA open program. I am sure Lynne Williams would love to give her a discount so she could put Julia’s picture in the foyer as an honourable patron.

The election fever would eventually die down in the next few days. It will be another four years before we watch this whole show again. In the mean time, I just hope that the Australian election would be more tolerable to watch. But then who am I to complain? At least we have freedom and democracy. Otherwise this post would not even exist.

NIDA Neither

The recent saga with the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) had inevitably put the drama school back on to the radar for all the wrong reasons.

The public debacle was triggered by a soon to be published article from a former boarder member, Chris Puplick . In his paper he criticised the current director and board chairman Lynne Williams and Malcom Long without a single dose of hesitation. These include Lynne William’s qualification to lead the prestigious drama school and the new direction for the school. NIDA, lead by Malcom Long then hit back criticising Chris as disaffected. Both sides have no signs of backing down and both sides are ready to pounce. 

As a person who worked there and had partly studied there (as part of my Theatrical Studies course at UNSW), it is sad to see that it had come down to this.  I personally do not know Lynne Williams or Malcom Long. However, judging from what I noticed in recent NIDA productions, I do have some issues with the current direction of the curriculum. First most, the importance of voice work had been diminished in the curriculum. With the departure of some of the best voice teachers in the country at the school, there is a reduction in the importance of voice work in the curriculum. The result? Some pretty bad voices on the stage – there was a performance I went to late last year and I was third road from the stage but I couldn’t hear a clear word from the actors up stage. This how bad some of the voices have become. I don’t know whether it is Lynne William’s CV’s issue or she really does not like people having a voice, that the voice component of the training was so marginalised.

The other thing that I personally dislike is the slicing and dicing of the library space at the Institution. As an educational institution, and being a tertiary education librarian for so many years, the dismissive attitude of the current NIDA management to the library is appalling. More real estate were allocated to building study rooms and because of that the collection was sacrificed. The attitude of modernising the library by providing more computers for online resources and ignore the fact that a lot of materials, especially Australian materials, are not online or even published, NIDA as the leading drama school of the country does have the responsibility to keep a good archive of materials for their students. The attitude of “if any materials has low circulation, it is not worth getting or keeping” is totally against the principle of higher education librarianship that has the duty of “maintain records and archives of materials that helped shaped the society and culture”. And this role is particularly important when it comes to the NIDA library; that can be specialised for this function. Further really, not everything is on Google. Google is a search engine that serves its purpose as an entry to knowledge but Google has no obligation to provide inspiring documents, videos and scripts that help the Australian theatre landscape to further develop.

The current public saga with NIDA certainly did not paint a good image for the drama school. But the core here is whether NIDA still aims to be a drama school that provides great training for actors and prepare them for the rough road ahead; or is NIDA just going to be a soap opera actor factory that produces actors with bad voices and pretty face? If so, apart from a legacy that was created by previous teachers such as Tony Knight, Kevin Jackson, Bill Pepper, Julia Cotton, Jane Harders, Ken Healey etc. etc. and the likes of talented graduates such as Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Colin Friels, Hugo Weaving, and Richard Roxburgh, what is going to distinguish the modern NIDA from just any other “acting school” in the streets? That is something whoever is serious about acting should think about.

I am sure Lynne Williams and Malcom Long will have things “in control” and will be in all out damage control for the school for this is what is needed for both them and the school.  No doubt no outsider can have a say on how the school uses its resources and budget, including that at one stage Lynne Williams used the school’s money to hire private detectives to investigate staff about a “potential life threat” against her in the school, which turned out to be just a prank played on her by someone. However, if dramas continue to unfold, it will no doubt cast shadows on the reputation and credibility of the once respectable drama school. Whether it would become a “War of the Roses” style ending with undesirable collateral damage is yet to be seen, but certainly no body wants to see that the students who went there to study ended up being the collateral damage from the politics above. 

No Just a Carbon Copy

The recent outrage about Cate Blanchett speaking up for carbon tax was another indication of sensation reporting in Australia.

The carbon tax issue has been a long standing argument in the recent months with all the pros and cons tossing their woks and pans in the Hell Kitchen known as the Australian Parliament. Both sides have their “points” but who is here to judge? So since we cannot judge on who’s right or who’s wrong we toss the bomb on whoever is the easiest target. In this round, it is Cate Blanchett.

It has been said that actors should restrict themselves to the stage because they are better speaking other people’s words than their own. That is so out dated. Though not everyone transit well from acting to social or political commenting but speaking up for what one believes should not be a crime. Cate Blanchett has been pushing forward the green cause for many years – she has reinvented the Wharf, where Sydney Theatre Company resides as a green complex and never hides the fact that going green for the next generation is high on her priority list. That’s why I was not surprised to hear about her speaking up on this carbon tax. Whether I agree with it is another issue, but if you believe in it what not?

The accusation mainly came from the fact that she is worth 53 million and what would she knows about paying more taxes as a general urban family? That might be true, but that does not stop her from having her own voice and going around rallying for a cause that she believes in. People have to remember that as an actor, she worked hard to build up that 53 million. Most actors started off with a humble career and she definitely did not just become “Cate Blanchett” if she hadn’t worked hard since she graduated from NIDA. So why is she being punished for her cause because of all the hard work she put in in the past decade or so?

What makes Cate Blanchett different is that she is not just an actor who can only speak other people’s work like a carbon copy of the script. She is a person who can speak and articulate her thoughts well and professionally in real life. Anyone who’s watched her interviews and press conferences would have understood where she came from. Since she became the artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company she hasn’t stopped rallying to change the complex into a sustainability powerhouse to show case how to save energy and conserve the environment. So why does she have to stop now? And why is she being the evil queen simply because she believes in what is good for the environment?

Certainly not everybody has several millions at his / her disposal to make his / her residence green and sustainable, but then no matter you believe, support or dislike the carbon tax proposal that should not be used as a weapon against other people who believe in the cause – especially it is about our environment and our future generations. It is very different from people like Tony Abott who earns a lot more than other people, prefer to buy a house he can’t afford and send his kids to expensive private schools and then come back to the Parliament and said he wants higher pay because the current pay level cannot sustain his life style. If Tony Abott can be saved from this kind of stuff it is just hypocrisy to burn Cate at stake because she is supporting something that is close to her heart and good for the environment.

The whole crusade against Cate for me is like a witch hunt. But what disgusts me more is that this is a witch hunt to sell more papers and get higher ratings. Isn’t it great that we can finally find fault for a seemingly “do no wrong” Cate and burn her alive with ink as our fuel and pens as our logs? I personally think media who are fuelling this kind of sensational reporting should be ashamed of themselves but then these are the media with no conscience built in most of the time. I wish the Australian people do have the wit and intelligence to identify the flaws with this latest witch hunt and ditch those media as karma punishment.

Flight

“Flight” is a play by Russian playwright Mikhail Bulgakov. The play sets in the years of turmoil at the end of the Civil War during which a group of people were tied together by fate while trying to survive the ordeal. It could also be seen as a semi-autobiography of part of the playwright’s own life.

This version is a NIDA second year production interpretation (with a cast of first year acting students as the crowd) of the play using the huge space provided by the Parade Theatre. A lot of value was put into this production. Apart from a huge cast, every detail from costume, make up, props and sets and even changing of stage were thoroughly thought through (and some of them pretty cool). The actions played out on a slanted wooden platform with two levels of radiating contours stretching out from the centre – a simple yet very versatile performance space. However, it is also because of this design that the stage was littered with traps. There were many times that actors miscalculated the height of the steps and tripped over or nearly lost balance during the actions. They masked the mistakes skillfully most of the time but after several stunts you will start to worry who will be the next victim of the stage.

This is a huge production with a huge cast. The deployment of the first year students as crowds and other ensemble characters gave them a chance to get involved and be seen. However, it is also because of the huge number of actors on stage that actually affect the delivery of the play and this is particularly obvious during the first half. Unlike musicals in which the chorus was usually tightly written into the production, for plays, when you deploy a huge cast of actors onto the stage, they have to serve a purpose. This is exactly what was lacking in this production. A lot of time these background actors were on the stage doing what they need to do but then they lack a purpose. For purpose I mean not only as backdrop but also what they are supposed to do as characters on the stage, how they are going to enrich the actions and tell the audience that they are essential in the scene. This is where this production fell short. Even worse was that at times they became distractions to the main actions of the leads and you can hardly concentrate on the main actions because there were so many other actors doing this and that all the time. This gave the audience a fragmented and shattered experience that nobody benefited from. The second half of play was a lot better as it focused on the main characters instead (or finally) and gave the audience a better experience or a chance to escape into the characters’ world. I am not saying that NIDA should not use that many actors, but they have to use them correctly. I remember when I saw “Jarabin” and “All in Good Timing”, they too had lots of actors on stage, but each actor was integrated in the whole production that you didn’t find them distracting or ruining your experience. So if NIDA wants to do a huge production like this one again in the future, that is one of things they have to look into and improve.

The main cast delivered a satisfactory but sometimes offbeat performance. Strangely enough, as a drama school that should be focusing strongly on stage acting, there were some real voice projection issues in this production. It could be because the space is huge, but I personally did not remember there were such issues with other similar performances, especially considering productions such as “The Plough and the Star” (with Ian Roberts), which only had a few actors throughout, didn’t have such issues. Neither did I remember that graduates from last year had such issues on their agent’s day performance. Apart from the crowd sometimes drowning out the main characters, or sometimes loud background music deafening your ears during the lines, there were times that when the actors were upstage, you could hardly hear them (and I was in the seventh row from the stage). And there were also times that you could just hear them mumbling their words with “lazy tones” (e.g. missing out consonants) that you needed to figure out the lines with the context. However, the actor who played Khludov (I think his name is Ross) was brilliant throughout. The journey he brought us through with his character was well executed and you could actually experience the journey with him. Also the actor who played Paramon was great too. The monologue on “the importance of a dollar” was so well done that you just couldn’t help but being blown away by his commitment to the character. The other actors were not bad actors (I’d seen them all in last year’s Chekov and Sonnets) but it seemed to me that the aforementioned voice issues really took out a lot from them. I was surprised as some of them were pretty good with lots of potential when I saw them as first years last year in their rehearsal room performances.

“Flight” was an above average production. It has great potentials but the issues mentioned above taxed out a lot from it. The play certainly got a lot better in the second half but as I saw tonight quite a number of the audience left during the intermission (one of them in my group left too). However, I personally would recommend those who go to see it to stay and soldier on, as the second half is really where you see great actions playing out on the stage. Also, the high production value that was put into this play would make your money worth. At the end of the day it is after all not an average amateur production. However, if NIDA want to put on similar scale productions in the future, issues mentioned above must be rectified to make them more enjoyable.

Women Beware Women

Was a bit unsure before going into the theatre to see “Women Beware Women”. The version this year’s NIDA graduates were going to deliver was a late 17^th century text with a modern adaptation twist. The first half of the play used the Middleton text and the second half the adapted text by Howard Barker. So it is really playing on a dangerous mine field as any missing step can blow up the whole production.

The end result was a surprisingly good production. The premise of the play is quite “Dangerous Liaison”-ish. Wealthy with nothing to do woman playing an aristocratic game that backfired as the power of corruption proved to be too strong and devastating for everyone. Did anyone win? That is not the question as sacrifices were littered all over the place.

Rebecca Johnston as the plotting Livia delivered a marvellous free from any constraint performance. Her transformation between the two acts was right to the point and her eyes were telling all the stories that needed to be told. Annabelle Stephernson as the originally victimised Bianca showed how a will to turn the table could shake everyone to their core. From her original innocence to her later prowling for victim attitude, she demonstrated the transition of her character skilfully. Other memorable characters include Kimberley Hews who played the mother – in fact actually live the Mother character – throughout the whole play. Her gesture and speech had completely embraced the power of her make up and costume, delivering a character way beyond her age. Darren Sabadina’s Ward provided a lot of comic relief as the outrageous husband of Bonnie Sveen’s Isabella. The “marriage” was doomed right from the start and yet so delightful to watch. Martin Harper was a very solid Duke whose intrigue eventually got him tied up. It is a performance by a very solid ensemble cast. The text of both parts, though quite different in style, was delivered masterfully with clear articulations and precise emotional points. This is particularly important when you are performing the late 17^th century text in the first act as it laid all the foundation for part two, so if the story was not clearly told, it will completely destroyed the second act way before it started. The energy level of the whole performance was spectacular. You can actually feel the actors were at ease with the stage and enjoying themselves during the performance, which made it a very exceptional performance.

The stage was filled with rusty mobile structures accompanied by frequent swapping of props. The only constant on stage were the huge candles that were lit in the first act to provide a mystic and intriguing atmosphere for the actions. The candles though remain unlit in the second act, stayed on the stage providing a good sense of continuity for the story. The florescent lights that replaced the candles in the second act provided a good change of atmosphere for the outrageous and raw text in this act. Set designer Teresa Negroponte really managed to use some “simple” tools to help telling a complicated story.

In all NIDA graduates’ “Women Beware Women” was a surprising production that will leave an impression for you even after you left the theatre. Some may found the nudity and language a bit offensive but they surprisingly fit the tone of the play without making you feel awkward. “Women Beware Women” runs till 20 October 2009 at NIDA’s Parade Playhouse.

Rabbit Hole

Saw NIDA’s graduate production “Rabbit Hole” twice already. When you feel you enjoyed something second time round even more than the first, you know you are in for something really special. That’s exactly what this production of “Rabbit Hole” was to me.

The cast is an unknown cast to the outside world but they displayed one of the best ensemble casts I had seen recently. Most of the cast members have to act beyond their age. One of them even put on pads to achieve so. However, what made it special was the precise performance delivered by these soon to be graduates.

The premise of the play was about grief – five characters five different ways of dealing with the same grief. It is a case of helping each other while drowning themselves from time to time. Becca played by Jacinta Acevski was a woman who left her successful job to become a full time mum but things didn’t really go the way she wanted. She’s still controlling, judgmental and at times cynical. Her husband Howie, played by Rick Donald, was broker who sought external help while grieving privately. To ensure that he could “help” his wife, he put on a strong face. Then came along Izzy, played by Gabrielle Scawthorn, the slightly eccentric party girl sister who found out she was pregnant. She was also a girl who wanted to be the centre of attention while tiptoeing around everybody’s grief. Becca and Izzy’s mother Nat, played by Shari Sebbens, was trying to scull through her own experience to help her daughter, only to find out that it complicated things instead. Lastly we have, Jason, played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt, who was seeking closure for the pain he caused.

What’s good about this cast is that they didn’t try hard to make believe. I mean of course it will be hard to compare them with Cynthia Nixon or John Slattery, but they delivered a performance that in my opinion went way beyond some of the professional productions I saw in 2009. The play emphasized on grief, but it did not exaggerate it. So crying was not an essential element for the characters for most of the part and it was exactly because of this that when any of the characters eventually broke down, the impact was much greater – and these actors dealt with those important turning points with perfection. Howie’s outburst as compared to his usual composure completely exposed the pain and brokenness inside him and how he failed to deal with it no matter how hard he tried. Izzy to a lot of people was a comic relief (and that’s probably why in the Ensemble production they had a comedienne to play her, which I thought was wrong) but she is more than that. She was in fact quite a binding factor in the family as a lot of events revolved around her without she actually acknowledging the attention she got at times. Gabrielle’s interpretation of the “shrug” in the original script was one of my favorite moments in the play.

The set of the play was beautifully done and reflects the social status of Becca and Howie. Also there was sufficient space to play out all the actions written in the script. However, the stairs to upstairs did look flimsy from time to time, and it does look dangerous when characters ran up and down it. The play also had a nice and suitable soundtrack and I liked the fact they had actual video footage on the TV screen instead of just putting out a soundtrack. Kudos to them for that. J

“Rabbit Hole” runs till 17 October 2009 at the Parade Studio at NIDA.