Australian theatre fights post-bicentennial blues

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 26

Australian theatre fights post-bicentennial blues

By

BARRY SOUTHAM,

a play-

wright and journalist who returned recently from Sydney.

Australian theatregoers are finding it increasingly difficult to see locally written plays and the recent shock closing of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre has compounded the problem. The Griffin (formerly the Nimrod Theatre) specialised in Australian works and has in the past also put on a season of New Zealand plays. But financial problems have shut the doors and frantic efforts are being made to mount a rescue mission.

“Writers here have all got post bi-centennial blues,” one producer remarked at a recent Sydney theatre opening night. “The grant money is not around like it was last year for Australian works.”

Arts administrators dispute this of course and trot out statistics, with their usual reliability. But a glance at Sydney theatre offerings tells its own story.

Only one Australian play is in production at a major theatre, and there is not a single David Williamson, play to be seen. Last time I was in Sydney, three of his were being separately staged around the city. British plays dominated, with Willy Russell enjoying two productions. At the Phillip Street Theatre “Educating Rita” continued to get the laughs and at -the Ensemble Theatre “One For the Road” explored middle class angst. Elsewhere musicals continued to be good earners, with “Les Miserables” and “Zorba The Greek” dominating.

Out in the suburbs there was a local offering from the Q Theatre with “Kid Stakes,” by Ray Lawler, while in the city only the Belvoir Street Theatre

was doing its bit for Australian playwrights.

It hosted the Elizabethan Theatre Trust’s Sydney premiere of young playwrights Helen O’Connor and Simon Hopkinson’s “Lipstick Dreams.”

The trust has a mandate to present risky productions but this was very much a straight play, some distance from the usual fare of work incorporating mime, dance, puppets and the like. The Trust’s Australian content division director, Wendy Blacklock, hopes to see a New Zealand production if thd show goes well. She describes it as a “sleeper” and says that although it is more conventional in format, it came from a non-urban area, and fits the trust’s regional brief. The play has an allwomen cast of four, and explores the various reasons each character has for wanting to win a local talent quest for a quartet of pop singers. In the process some telling observations are made about men, and in offstage action two men get what’s coming to them, much to the audience’s delight. It has an interesting across-the-board appeal, with everyone from teenagers to grannies reacting positively. It would transfer effortlessly to New Zealand. In the smaller Belvoir Street theatre “Write It Down and Don’t Forget It,” was enjoying good box office.

Improvisational techniques are used in the

first half, and in the second there is a rightangle turn as the same two characters develop the relationship between a teaching nun and her favourite pupil. Sister Mary Leonard was developed as a persona by Lyn Pierse when she fronted the highly successful Theatre Sports in its early stages in Australia. She also visited Auckland to help the New Zealand version get started.

Lyn Pierse and Jenny Lovell put three years work into developing their duet of Sister Mary Leonard and class monitor Jennifer.

The resulting production has some great laughs in the first half as the hapless members of the audience are ordered around, and some moving moments later as the travel fantasies of both are exposed, along with the rituals of adolescence. But that is it. There is nothing else indigenous on show, other than a dance group called “The One Extra Dance Company” who cleverly take the mickey out of old routines and sock it to Australian racism for good measure in their finale. Some blame a fall-off in patronage, making producers and directors more cautious about untried local work.

A New Zealand publisher now resident in Sydney no longer goes to the theatre. “Last time we went we took our twelve year-old and were not able to get a half ticket, so we finished up with no

change out of $lOO for the evening. That’s just too much, so we've stopped going.” The tickets were $25 each, along with some extras such as paying a babysitter. That does limit patronage a little.

Here in New Zealand theatre-going is not exactly a cheap exercise either, but some New Zealand work continues to be aired, though not so much in Auckland in spite of its large population base.

Opinions differ as to how well served we are with works by local writers. Wellington currently has more than one such show. But in the latest issue of "Playmarket News” there is an open letter to New Zealand playwrights from a writer, Brian McNeill, who believes they are “being killed off.” He blames lack of interest from professional directors and a drain on commercial sponsorship from the four main professional theatres so that “the outsider is no longer able to compete.”

In the same issue there was a two-page spread of synopses of recent New Zealand plays, so not all writers have hung up their typewriters like Mr McNeill. Of the 15 fulllength plays described, six have had productions, while nine wait in the wings.

Perhaps the 1990 festivities will be a boost for our playwrights, as the bicentennial was in Australia for Australian authors.

In Timaru they are offering a $lOOO prize for a full-length play for their Aoraki Festival in February 1990. If it is “suitable” it will be performed. But only on the first night of the festival.