Glimpses Of Excellence At Arts Festival

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32076, 26 August 1969, Page 10

Glimpses Of Excellence At Arts Festival

(By

DENIS McCAULEY)

y The universities arts n festival in Dunedin last * week was not a good ady vertisement for the 11 a 1 e n t s of today’s ® students, but there was £ the occasional glimpse of i excellence and hint of e future promise that was j encouraging. Drama was the only section to emerge with real credit, mainly through the Canterbury production of “Marat/ Sade." The play, already s staged for two seasons in Christchurch, was a far - superior production to any- > thing else seen at the festival. The producer, Mervyn ! Thompson, and the cast have - done a lot of work on this I play throughout the year and : it was not all that surprising that the presentation was admirably professional But the Otago presentation, ; “Tom Paine.” had also been presented before this year—for the Otago University centennial celebrations—and the acting and producing left a lot to be desired. Both plays are highly original in their approach to the stage, but in 'Tom . Pune" the cast was not com- , petent enough to handle this ' originality with the sureness , it needed to succeed. The excellent acting of Warren ! Dibble in the lead role only , emphasised the uncertainty of , his fellows. Canterbury and Victoria ■ both presented “After The , Rain," an unfortunate doub- : ling up and a good indication : . of the lack of organisation i noticeable throughout the i festival, but the best enter-1 : tainment apart from “Marat/ j i Sade” was a revue by three ■

Otago students, “The Otago University Centennial Smoke Concert and Magic Lantern Show By Kind Permission Of Brigadier Gilbert And His Sons Of The Bicycle Saddle." Michael Noonan, Philip Tbwaites and Moon McGowan presented some of the best sketches I have seen. Although one or two sections were well below the standard of the rest, the show was excellent of its type. The visual arts section consisting of a painting exhibition, a photographic salon and films was disappointing. Some of the student paintings were interesting but only three really impressed. One was “Birds, Tree, Water, Sun” by Stephen Guest (Otago), but the other two were hung without programme numbers and

must remain anonymous. The photographic salon was dominated by three Canterbury students, Michael Hawkins, Dave Armstrong and Mike Crawshaw. Especially impressive was Armstrong’s “Looking Towards Naxos.” Apart from the work of these three, the photographs suffered from the same limitations of vision as the paintings. Many exhibits were badly presented, too, with scratches, dust marks, etc, marring prints. At least this carelessness was not in evidence among the painters. The film programme featuring mainly little-known Continental films showed that obscurity is no indication of quality. The cartoon, “Animal Farm,” though, was a much better choice and some highly original short films by New Zealand students were well worth seeing, flawed though they were by lack of experience. The music section of the festival came out of it worst of all. The concert music programmes were incredibly dull, and the Canterbury performance of music by the Beatles—hardly exciting fare —was the only one worth listening to. The jazz musicians had much more success and some original and provocative work was done in the jazz workshops, held daily. Unfortunately this did not come out to anywhere near the same extent in the jazz concert. The atmosphere of the work-

> shop is far more conducive to i originality than the concert i platform, but all the same the ' concert performance was i below expectations. ’ The only new student music i at the festival was heard in , the modern dance concerts, : which used tapes of electronic , pieces freely. It is doubtful ; if any of it would have a great deal of interest divorced from the dance, but in the setting in which It was heard it succeeded. The student choreographers, especially those from Auckland, produced some interesting and often beautiful dances. The growing support for modern dance, both by performers and audience, might lead to some very good work in this medium in the near future.