Death of a Salesman

Went to the Belvoir production of “Death of a Salesman” the other night. Despite two sold out seasons, the play had triggered a controversy over the removal of the final scene of the play and the changing of an essential plot line. As an actor and a dramaturg, I did not want to jump to the conclusion too quickly before I have a chance to see the production, especially when we are talking about one of the most important plays by Arthur Miller in the modern world.  

In Belvoir’s production of “Death of a Salesman” a car replaced the house on the stage. All the actions took place in a garage like convertible empty space. Yes there is nothing but a car on the stage. This is fair enough as the car was pivotal to the plot because Willy was trying to stop travelling across states for his job. Also empty multi-purpose space provides a lot more flexibility in terms of how the stage can be used without limiting the imagination of the audience.

The play then pretty much followed the plot line of the script. Things were being tweaked here and there to suit the setting of the stage and most of them were tackled smartly. Then came the last scene of the play (spoiler alert if you haven’t read or seen the play) when Willy gassed himself to death in the car. In the production that I saw Belvoir already reinstated the final funeral scene as per instruction from the agency handling the rights of the play. The curtain came down and some of the audiences were applauding, which was a bit awkward, before the rest of the cast showed up in black and delivered the last scene. There was not much staging, just actors standing there delivering the lines and walked off one by one.

Watching this unfolding on the stage I understood why Belvoir decided to cut the final scene. The way they handled the death of Willy made the final scene completely contradictory to the previous scene. In the original text, it was implied that Willy killed himself but there was no proof thus the insurance company paid out the compensation to the family. However, with Belvoir’s way of handling Willy’s death, there is no way that a pay out would be provided because it was an obvious suicide. Under such circumstance, I can understand why Belvoir decided to take out the last scene, because everything would not make sense.

However, this leads to the question of how much liberty do we have when reinterpreting classic materials. Easily said, “Death of the Salesman” is one of the most influential plays of the modern times and each scene was closely linked to each other. In Belvoir’s case, the decision to completely remove the final scene to accommodate the treatment of Willy’s death raised an important question – is this a pure artistic vision or are they tampering with the canon of the material? For me there is a main difference between the two and the most important consideration is whether the “vision” compromises the material.   In Belvoir’s case, as good as the vision was, it compromised the material. If it is not “Death of a Salesman” maybe they can still get away with it. But then when it comes to a prominent play as such, I am not surprised the agency poses threats to Belvoir on their rights to use their materials in the future, because they are responsible for keeping the integrity of the material no matter what. There are still people who haven’t read or seen the play (one of my friends who went with me was one of them), so it is the duty of the agency to make sure that everyone who went to see the production see it as it was originally written and intended, disregarding whatever artistic visions were applied.

This might just be a storm in a teacup but this does serves as a reminder to a lot of people that when being creative, they still need to consider the material in full. Having said that I still enjoyed my night out with “Death of a Salesman”

"No I Don't Act" - NIDA Neither ACT 2

Went to the Currency House launch of the Platform Paper “Changing Times at NIDA” tonight. It was great to see all the familiar faces in one room again. There were lots of greetings and lots of catching up around the room. It was a night of mixed emotions as people remembered the good old days working together and the current state of their once dedicated drama school. However what is more important is that it was a night of Who’s Who in acting training in Australia.

At the opening of the event, Katherine Brisbane mentioned that someone informed her that there was a direction from NIDA’s current management saying whoever attended tonight’s function will never be employed by NIDA again. Well so much for freedom of actions from a school that was supposed to produce independent thinking artists. Also for me that means I can tick NIDA off as one of my potential employers. The event was a risky one as NIDA previously had sent its lawyer to intimidate the publication of the paper. Lucky enough, Currency House could afford its own lawyers to make sure that foul plays cannot play foul in this whole episode.

Jeremy Sims, a notable NIDA graduate made a speech about how NIDA was in the past and his experience and years at NIDA himself. He mentioned about NIDA means “No I Don’t Act” as contrast to what seems to be something very different now in modern NIDA. He mentioned that only 4 of his acting course classmates continued to work as actors but they all contribute to the art industry in various ways and that’s the value they got out of NIDA. He joked about he used to be told that NIDA was much simpler when it was in the old school but then it seemed that now he is in a position to tell others that his NIDA was a lot simpler back then. It was a brilliant speech, but of course now he would probably go on to the black list managed by the current management.

The focus of the night was of course Chris Puplick himself. Being on the Board of NIDA from 1994-1997 and 2007-2010, and himself had an outstanding career in arts including being the inaugural chair of the National Film Sound and Archive, Chris has a passion for the Australian art industry. I still remembered that whenever I went to a NIDA production, there was a high chance that I would see him talking to students and tried to understand them. So it is a pity that now I heard the current NIDA management had banned him completely to attend events at the school. In his speech he raised a few questions, all could be read from his paper, and in between stops there were responses from the audience hailing the points he made. As an audience member, I was impressed by the depths of knowledge he has with the school and could understand where he came from. In fact the fact that NIDA refused to write a responding paper and accused Katherine Brisbane, who spent her lifetime helped sculpting the Australian performing arts landscape, as a person who is bias and had no good intentions, highlighted how insecure the current NIDA management felt about this paper.

There was Q&A after Chris’ speech. At first it was a moment of silence in the room, resembling a brief moment of mourning over the dead. Then the first hand was raised, and the discussion snowballed. Among them were graduates and ex-staff members – all risking their future with the dramatic drama school. Discussions ranged from a comparison between a similar paper with VCA but the difference in reaction; and what is the role of NIDA as a federally funded drama school – is it training future theatrical practitioners that help shaping the Australian culture or it is about producing disposable pretty face bodies for television? The discussion was passionate and sometimes emotional as there were tears in some people's eyes as the night went on. Then some ex-Board members came forward and pointed out the confrontational nature of the paper and the negativism in the room. One other ex-Board member also pointed out that NIDA needed to change to survive. Their statements were replied with “it’s not about the change but how the change was brought forward – and in this case through dumping of current staff and bullying some out of their jobs” (52 out of 76 existing staff members left since the current NIDA management took over). There were some debates going on between the ex-Board member group and the graduate and ex-staff member group.

Finally I felt compelled to bring forward my view. As a person who observed the unfolding of the whole saga from its start but without being involved in it myself, I did think that I might be able to present a fairer view. I expressed that no matter what, I saw that a paper was compiled bringing a number of points to the table and asking for actions to rectify the situation. So I expected the NIDA current management to come out and rebuttal these points one by one if reason is on their side. However, as I observed and read, all I could hear so far were name-calling and personal attacks. I said the points brought forward might feel confrontational but then I believe that if reason is on the NIDA side, they could bring their own arguments forward to deconstruct these points. Further, I told these ex-Board members that there might be a sense of negativism in the house, but then if they were not staff members at the time when all these happened at ground zero, how could they claim they understood the situation? I told them that you have to be at the bush fire to feel the heat. Accusations of ex-staff members being bitter and negative could not stand if they did not know what they actually went through under the current management. There is no question that the room was divided but then for me it was the difference between “perceiving the situation” and “experiencing the situation”. On my way home I did wonder how many of these ex-Board members did actually actively engage in the business of the school if they were so blind about what was going on – especially when at one stage there were formal complaints about staff bullying at the school?

The launch event was bitter sweet – bitter because of how the current NIDA management adopted the white terror tactics to stop people from going to the event, sweet in the sense of being able to see all these great and talented teachers in one room again. All of them have moved on to better things but then the question still lingers on – has NIDA passed its prime? Would the current management eventually turned out to be the brain tumour of the organisation? That remained to be seen and uncovered. But one thing for sure is that there are a lot of people who are willing to see the downfall of NIDA so that they can take over the crown. The Australian art industry is small and getting more and more competitive everyday. Any misstep could cost dearly, but would the current NIDA management care about that? Or it is just another plaything in their box, or even worse just another item on their CV to brag about? Would NIDA go from “No I Don’t Act” to “No I Don’t Care”? That is remained to be seen too.

Totally 'Mental'

Went to the opening screening of “Mental” at Randwick Ritz tonight. The director P J Hogan was there to open the screening. On stage he said it as a very personal story and some of the events in the movie did happen in real life. As a carer himself who has two autistic kids and two siblings who are suffering from mental illness he said he felt compelled to tell the story. The story was based on a real character he knew and he credited that person who changed his life through a very different way. He also said that he wanted to make a comedy because he understands that people who are carers themselves know that it will be hard to get by every single day if they don’t let it out and have a laugh. He emphasised that the movie is politically incorrect because he, as a first person, believes that if we tip toe around what can and cannot be said, we are not facing the issues upfront, and people will not be able to understand what these people were going through.

After rounds of applause from an audience who are mostly carers (Randwick Council reserved quite a number of seats for carers to attend the event), the light dimmed and what is left was the images and sound of a personal story to be told. The movie opened up with an imitation of  ‘Sound of Music’ as the camera flew over mountaintops, valleys, and waters, before it arrives a fancy suburbia where an ordinary housewife burst into her common looking backyard singing to the tunes of “The hills are alive with the sound of music!” It was a hardly recognisable Rebecca Gibney who twirled and sang to her daily chores. Everyone in the neighbourhood reacted with weird but “got-used-to-it” look as her four younger daughters hurried back into the house asking their eldest to execute an intervention. What they were not expecting was that Coral, the eldest of them all were obsessed with whether she has mental illness herself. The tone of the movie was set right there and then without a single bit of sugar coating. This is what we are talking about – a family dealing with mental illness.

At the beginning and from the billing, you would expect that Toni Collette, who played the title character, would turn this into her one-woman show. This is so far from the truth. Don’t take me wrong; Toni Collette was brilliant in it. Her personification of the lead character was marvellous and right on the dot. Toni Collette’s stint in “The United States of Tara” had built her versatility to a point that she was just there being the character itself. Everything looked easy and natural. However, with an out standing performance from Rebecca Gibney and other supporting cast, “Mental” had really became a mental experience that you could not take your eyes off the screen. Rebecca Gibney had delivered a performance that surpassed any single episode she did in “Packed to the Rafters”. She is not about glamour or even ordinary in this movie – she was down right there in the gutter. The five girls who played her daughters were loud but funny at the same time. Each of them exhibited her own way of dealing with a mentally ill mum while at the same time trying to come to terms with her own life. Mental illness became something they lived with and talked about at home but shied away in the public The hardships and dilemmas were captured perfectly. Even all the other characters such as Anthony LaPaglia’s “Kennedy” dad and Caroline Goodall’s doll obsessed sister were very eye catching. And no matter what, do not miss the scene between Toni Collette, Rebecca Gibney and Deborah Mailman in the mental hospital.

“Mental” is not a kind of movie that the American audience would understand. It is very Australian and the broad Australian accent littered all over the place might even make it hard for some to understand. Also it did not shy away from making references to all things Australian, including some of the biggest names in the country. However, as an Australian movie, I think it hit the right mark in many places. It was down to earth, layback and unpretentious, and that’s what I think Australian movies are good at.  I love the way that the movie did not give a damn to how the outside world sees it but just enjoy being as Australian as possible. Maybe it is a good indication that we should stop trying to please an outside world that doesn’t necessary appreciate who we are, and just be ourselves.

If you want a relaxing and fun night out, I highly recommend “Mental”. “Mental” opened today across Sydney.

Gospel According to Respect

We live in a democratic society. We believe in freedom of speech. But how far would it take for us to understand whether there are actually no go zones in this world that provides us this freedom of speech?

Australian broadcasters are not afraid of controversies. Some even embraced them to make a living out of them. To be honest, I sometimes don’t know how certain people can get on air and stayed there for such a long time. Alan Jones is one of them.

For those who don’t really know who Alan Jones is, he is a vintage Australia broadcaster who is famous for his bullish speeches on air. He is opinionated and abusive. He called the Prime Minister a liar and also shut people who have opposite opinion down by yelling at them. This is just part of him and what his program is about. There are certain sectors of people in Australia including his boss who like him and always stand by his side. However, in a recent speech he gave to the Young Liberal Party members, Alan Jones commented that the Prime Minister’s father who recently passed away had “died in shame” because he had a daughter who is a liar. For me that was shocking – the complete lack of respect for both the living and the dead.

Alan Jones for me has always been just an old demented broadcaster whom had gone way over his used by date. He was kept on air as a joke for ratings. However, his repeated assaults on the Prime Minister had gone from distance to distance, and now to a point that even her late father could not escape his acid tongue. What shocked me further is that no one from the Liberal Party, young or old, came out to apologise for the inappropriate comment. They even casually brushed it off as “could not remember” such remarks made at the speech. Now I am never a fan of politics but I do believe that democracy is built upon the basic principle of mutual respect. If there is no more mutual respect in Australian politics, why bother having a democracy? It is because of this mutual respect that everyone has a say and then let everyone to decide.

He had since came out with an “apology”. Something that he used to stab further and to tell the world that he is right and the world is against him because he is right. He even went further to say that the world is double standard when a charge for Tony Abott so long ago could be brought up but he could not say that Julia Gillard’s father died in shame because of her “lies”. For me this proved that Alan Jones really needs to consult a specialist to see whether part of his brain has stopped working. What we are talking about here is someone comparing an assault charge of a prominent politician to a personal grudge that he has with another politician. Maybe he really could not handle the fact that Australia dumped John Howard for Kevin Rudd and that Tony Abott failed to get elected. But get over it because this is democracy and this is what happened when you throw yourself out for elections. People get elected and people got dumped. But no matter what the result is you should still respect it because the society had spoken.

When I grew up I was taught that by respecting other people you earn your own respect from others. I always try to uphold this principle, not necessarily hoping to earn other people’s respect but to make sure I am doing the right thing. I always feel that I am very lucky because I grew up and live in a free society. We have freedom of speech and action, which I think is vital for the society to grow and evolve. However, in recent years, it seems that this freedom has been exploited so much that any sense of decency had become something that fell through the cracks of humanity for some people. The recent Alan Jones debacle is a true reflection of that.

I am sure Alan Jones will still be around. The so call advertiser exodus will only be short lived and then the society forgets about that. Even at the time of writing, his boss already said he stands by Alan Jones no matter what. Well it is sad to see that human conscience does not worth a cent in the eyes of the 2GB boss. But that is his call. Nonetheless to close off this blog, I would like to quote a dialogue from Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire to demonstrate what I feel about this whole Alan Jones fiasco.

Izzy: I didn’t realise there was a cut-off date?

Becca: Well there should be. For acting like a jackass there should be a cut-off date.

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. 

T-Virus and the Tech Zombies

In one week, we got two major tech announcements – the Apple iPhone 5 and Nintendo’s Wii U launch and the announcement of its price points. A week ago we got Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. As we get closer to the holiday season, the tech giants send their new product campaigns into overdrive.

However, this time round it seems that both Apple and Nintendo have lost their mojo. So far the iPhone 5 has not been as exciting as a lot of analysts expected. It was incremental, nothing much new was introduced etc etc. The general idea was that iPhone 5 is a disappointment.  Similarly, Nintendo’s Wii U has not been receiving great reviews up to this point and even the price point was highly criticised.  What interested me though were not just the new products, but the claims that despite both iPhone 5 and Wii U disappointed, they will sell. They are coined as disappointments that will sell millions. This statement saddens me.

Without a doubt I am a tech craving person.  However, I am not to a point that I just buy gadgets because they are new or because everyone has it. For me gadgets have to meet my needs before I make a purchase. Yes I have two tablets, the PlayBook that can hook up with my BlackBerry to browse the Internet and read emails while I am on the road, and the Nook Tablet for reading, taking notes etc. So I justified the purchases (also the Nook Tablet was purchased while the BlackBerry was in repair and had no sign of recovery at that time).

Therefore I find it very interesting when some people can base on ‘just want to have the latest stuff” and make a purchase without thinking whether these items fit their purposes at all. Apple and Nintendo have created brand loyalty that’s for sure, and that’s the same for Sony and to some extend Microsoft. However, this kind of brand loyalty or craving for new gadgets have gradually turn a lot of us into “Tech Zombies” to feed the cash register of these companies.

“Tech Zombie” is a new breed of organism that was infected by the T-virus (Tech Virus) produced by either one or a cohort of tech giants. They lack independent thinking but have a huge craving for new tech products disregarding their functionalities and suitability. They go blindly after the launch of new products and need to be at the front of the pack all the time. They usually try to “infect” other people by raving on how great their new gadgets are and convincing them that “this is the way of life”.

“Tech Zombies” roam around the city day and night, and if you are careless, you may just fall into their ambush. Unlike normal zombies, “Tech Zombies” do not have that distinctive rotten flesh and empty eyes look. (Well, sometime they have blank eyes because of staring at the screens for too long). They can be your friend, your colleagues or even you partner. They “attack” when you are least prepared. The only way to survive an infection is to understand where you stand in this world of technological race. Self-understanding is the key to survival in this world of  “Techn Zombie” outbreak. What you need to do is to know who you are.  

Unfortunately for the already infected, there is no medicinal cure. “Tech Zombie” is a strange species that it has to wait till the effect of the virus wore off and the infected being came back to its senses, then the condition will be cured. This is why tech giants such as Apple has new products updates every year to make sure that their loyal subjects receive a sizeable dose of virus every now and then.  iPhone is a very good example of this tactics. Since the first debut of the iPhone, it has gone through incremental upgrades every year to make sure that their loyal zombies stay in their camps.

“Tech Zombie” is a sad phenomenon in this highly modernised society. But as with a lot of things, when mankind leaps forward, humanity pays the price.

The United World of Colour

Colour – a simple yet complicated concept.

When we were young colour is about the tones of shades materialised before our eyes and conceptualised in our brain. As we grow up, the word become more and more complicated just like our lives.

We live in a colourful world with “colourful people”. Colourful people usually mean people who are interesting and different from each other, and we mean this in a good way. However, if we slightly changed the combination to simply “coloured people” the connotations are not as positive anymore. Depending on how you see it, “coloured people” for me is a less flattering term to distinguish people of Anglo descent (the “White People”) from the rest of the world (the “Coloured People”). “Coloured people” come in all colours – yellow, brown, black etc. etc. But identifying someone simply through their skin colours is a step towards generalisation as you no longer identify them as individuals but as collectives.

I have been working on colour-blind casting for a few years now. During the process, I was reminded by one of my peers that it is better to take out the whole connation about colour-blind – it is about diversity not colour. This came as a huge reminder to me as I had never thought about this from that angle. So I owe a big thank to that individual who reminded me of this.

Some people think that basically colour-blind casting means diversity casting. On the surface it seems so. However, if we look deeper, it is more than so. Colour-blind casting is still basing individuals according to colour while diversity casting is to promote diversity. The previous carries the burden of the past but the latter promotes a positive future. Also the term colour blind can be twisted in certain ways to promote individual’s agenda. One of the good examples is the Airbender movie, when the Asian mythological animation was “White-washed” when being adapted as a life action movie. That’s “colour-blind” for some. 

As for diversity, we promote greater choices when the circumstance is right. We diversify our screen presence according to who is the best actor and not who belongs to which colour. The colour factor never got involved because it is about diversity, opportunity and performance.

The Australian screen and stage has long been condemned of being Anglo-centric.  On main screens and main stages they are predominantly white. Also we can see that sometimes the power holders are just doing lip services for a little while when they were condemned. They “jump” to joy to announce things when they had one non-Anglo character in their productions. They said this is hard because they have to justify the existence of a non-Anglo character. But for me the funny thing is I never need to justify my existence among my peer. But only when it comes to the stage or the screen that I suddenly need to do so.

However, things are changing in the last two or three years. The changes start in the independent scenes – indie productions are embracing diversity and so are the younger generation of practitioners who grew up in more culturally diverse Australian society. These younger generations did not come with the burden of a white-Australian society and they do not need colour blind casting because colour is not a main issue for them.

The change is slow and sometimes painful, as you need to tear down layers and layers of cultural stereotypes before people can see your true self. But when that happens it is rewarding. I had people asking me why bother fighting, I personally did not see that it is fighting at all but something I simply believe in and try to achieve. As with all things, the road to success is never easy but if we don’t make the journey, we will never see the destination. 

PS: If you are interested, join us at Diversity Casting Australia