THE PRIMATIVE IN THE MODERN

Some of Australianstage’s more devoted readers might have noticed that I have been contributing the occasional review to this excellent and burgeoning website. Most notably, I have been keeping an eye on the Actors Company at the Sydney Theatre Company which, despite various controversies (especially of late), turned out a number of truly outstanding productions in the past year including The Art of War and, best of all, Benedict Andrews’ stunning rendition of Patrick White's The Season at Sarsaparilla.

More about that company and myriad other subjects and themes as the days and months ahead unfold. The news is that, after intense negotiations over a lunch with a smart view of the Yarra, I have been invited to begin a blog.

Blog is possibly the ugliest word ever conceived and sad that is for such a significant new option in the mechanics of literary pursuit, the exchange of ideas, and the blog's potential for adding further stickiness to the glue that holds communities together. In this case, those for whom a brimming and dynamic Australian theatre is a dream – if never quite a reality.

We are starting quietly and my inspiring leader Mr Simon Piening will conjure a suitable on-screen format as we go along. So this is just to say Hi! And give you a few cursory insights into ‘moi’s’ past. I do hope you will join me in this adventure which begins, not insignificantly, at the dawn of a new political era for this country. And respond when you like. Let me know when you agree and, more importantly, when you disagree. If there is more you can add to a story – the opportunity will be there. Unconfirmed rumours and Chinese whispers are welcome. The identity of whistleblowers will be protected (full houses ideally rather than safe).

My dubious history: cultural crimes, run-ins with the thought police, glasses of wine thrown in my face at after-parties, and so on.

Well, I was born wearing a grass skirt on the southern tip of Bougainville overlooking the Solomon Islands in 1955, an Australian colonial outpost with a handful of European families and a bunch of American nuns. My father taught the nuns how to ride Harley Davidsons so they could take advantage of the tracks through the jungle from village to village. Since most of the nuns were called Sister Kevin and Sister John, 900ccs was nothing to them.

At that point Julie Andrews had not yet been called. Though a couple of the Von Trapps did flee to New Guinea and I think one might have been a nun. Moira Shearer was a neighbour somewhere along the line – her Red Shoes (famous from the film of the same name) hanging on a bamboo-woven wall catching my notice at an early age.

We lived in various towns across PNG, but it was only in later life that the significance of my childhood experiences – of such a different and significantly integrated culture – began to dawn on me. Art (dance, music, sculpture) merged into one with belief (lore). The schisms that ripped these aspects of western culture apart some centuries prior became a subject of fascination for me in my student years. It is a phenomenon I believe most who write about culture – to this day – take scant consideration. Okay, we live in an alienated society. What does that mean? And if it's not a good thing - what are we going to do about that?

When will we be brave enough to embrace the full significance of late-stage capitalism and accept that for large swathes of Western society, Money is our God, the Casino our Cathedral, Las Vegas our Jerusalem. In that sense we are all of a piece. From this we can only deduce, for the purpose of social cohesion, advertising is our premiere mode of artistic expression. Even age-old rituals like weddings and funerals have been transformed to advanced forms of shopping. Where does that leave everything we like to call art? Underfunded or otherwise.

I came to Australia when I was twelve to go to boarding school. But it was not until I read my first Patrick White novels through 1971 and 1972 that, at last, I was offered some insights into this strangely repressed, dislocated world in which I found myself an inhabitant. The school was not a long distance from White’s (Castle Hill) Sarsaparilla, in its manners of being anyway. I love this great writer to this day for helping me make sense of the hitherto Martian environment. That White and I became friends later is, without doubt, among the great luxuries of my life. To experience the extraordinary kindness, wisdom and generosity of this man; when so often cast as a mean and hot-tempered crank.

My first encounter with a serious work of theatre came in 1972. One of our surprisingly liberated team of English teachers took some of us to see a production of The Tempest. Not just any Tempest; but the Jerzy Grotowski-inspired Tempest by the Performance Syndicate whose members included director Rex Cramphon and actors Nico Lathouris, Gillian Jones and David Cameron. I can still see that production in my mind - it has survived its early status as a ‘forming' experience.

There were a few minor roles in student productions at university, but of little note. As the butler, I swept up some dust off the floor of an Oscar Wilde. And I opened a door in Strindberg’s A Dreamplay. A professional ‘critic’ attended and clearly did not like what he saw: ‘Just a Bad Dream’, the banner moaned. And a critic is never wrong.

The law school suggested I try a different career path (despite my passing my first year exams) and so I accepted a place in the Honours stream in the then Drama Department at the University of NSW.

I wrote my thesis on “Structure and Belief in the Plays of Wole Soyinka”, and ordinary though the final result might have been, I did learn a little in the process. Within that effort there was an attempt to pursue some of the questions arising from my contradictory childhood encounters of art and society. However dodgy the academic result, I did settle upon some understandngs which have sustained me to this day. In those ‘pre-postmodernism’ days, Susan Sontag was probably the writer to have the most influence on my thinking, with her essay 'Against Interpretation' remaining a favourite.

During my second year at university I saw the Polish-based Grotowski troupe itself, on tour to Australia, perform their celebrated work Apocalypsis Cum Figuris; and soon after spent ten days with the guru himself, his team, and one other young Australian. We worked naked and in silence through the night, on a farm outside Armidale, in one of Grotowski’s notorious ‘para-theatre’ experiments. Our dreams were analysed each day; and then we would proceed to another dusk-to-dawn session more bizarre than the previous. The conditions were austere, the weather freezing, and the experience fabulous.

Grotowski’s ideas - focused on the mantra 'poor theatre' - influenced a great swathe of leading theatre professionals, through the 1970s, worldwide. Peter Brook later said no-one knew as much about acting as Grotowski and his best actor Ryszard Cieslak. Cieslak later joined Brook’s Paris-based troupe and brilliantly played the ‘blind man’ (eyes wide open) in the epic Mahabharata. The actor died in Houston in 1990. Grotowski last years were spent, still pursuing his studies into theatre's primal origins, in Pontedera, Italy, where he died in 1999.

After graduating from university at the end of 1976, ensuing highlights included some world travel; working as an assistant to Rex Cramphorn on a Shakespeare research project; and writerly contributions to various ABC radio arts-related programs, then under vibrant leadership.

A lot happened between 1976 and late 1982, but there is time for more of that whenever encounters from the past might play a part in future discussions. We are leading to a fateful day in late 1982 when I threw down a copy of a leading national publication of the day – The National Times – in disgust at the quality of its then reviewer's work. One is never ready or qualified to take on such a challenge. But my timing was fortuitous. A new arts editor was just in place and so, with no previous experience and barely tested, I became the Sydney reviewer for this headline-breaking weekly national newspaper. Reflecting the paper's spirit, my own work was brash, passionate and over-confident. Judgements ranged in swagger from rapturous to murder-by-death.

I have since discovered my National Times columns are well remembered, as I am often introduced as ‘James used to be…” A sigh of nostalgia to follow. With the launch of this humble site, I hope this may change. Perhaps even the occasional 'Guess what! James is writing...with reference to www.australianstage.com


FURTHER READING

Grotowski, Jerzy: Towards a Poor Theatre, Simon & Schuster (1968)

Source Material on Jerzy Grotowski: http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotdir.html

Rex Cramphorn: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/perform/rex/index.shtml
(This essay by Dr Ian Maxwell, chair of the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Sydney, was first published in Fifty Key Theatre Directors (edited by Shomit Mitter and Maria Shevstova), Routledge, London


Photo Credits:

Top Left - Peter Carroll, John Gaden, Dan Spielman, and Hayley McElhinney in The Season at Sarsaparilla. Photo - Tania Kelley
Centre Left - Grotowski with Brook
Centre Right - Ryszard Cieslak as The Constant Prince