Chapter Six Directing

CHAPTER SIX DIRECTING. INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on the directing work of Lecoq alumni in Australia. It will examine how alumni's approaches to directing have been influenced by their Lecoq training and the influence their work has had on Australian theatre. The chapter is divided into four sections focusing on a discussion of alumni's work within the framework of the four key elements of the Lecoq pedagogy: creation of original material; use of improvisation; a repertoire of performance styles and movement-based approach to performance. Overview of the Research Findings: The work of alumni in the directing category has contributed significantly to the challenge mounted by many Australian theatre practitioners over the last forty years, offering alternative approaches, processes and forms of theatre that have opened up Australian theatre to new possibilities and undermined the privileged position of text- based realism. As directors, some alumni have chosen to create original material rather than working with pre-scripted material, using improvisational and participatory approaches for devising and rehearsal processes. As well as introducing new performance styles to this country, they have created innovative forms of theatre and their approaches are strongly movement and visually-based. Of the alumni I have interviewed, fourteen have worked as directors. Most of these have not made directing their major area of work but have worked variously as directors, actors, teachers and writers. The following list serves to introduce these alumni and give some indication of their areas of directorial work. Celia Moon has worked primarily as an educator and theatre consultant on a variety of projects involving cultural exchange, community projects, theatre-in-education and collaborative projects with women's professional organisations. She has co-directed Amar Desh: My Country at Belvoir Street, Fish Without Bicycles at the Performance Space in Sydney and Jules Feiffer's Hold Me at the Bondi Pavilion as part of the 1990 Sydney Festival program. Christine Grace has worked as a teacher, performer and director. While her main focus has been community theatre projects, she has directed Mabinogion which toured in Australia and New Zealand, and four pieces for the 1994 Melbourne Fringe Festival. 133 Therese Collie has worked as an actor, performance trainer, director and community theatre worker, primarily with Brisbanes Street Arts community theatre company. Her most recent directing credit was Anna Yens one-woman circus/theatre show Chinese Take-Away performed in Cantonese and English for Brisbanes Stage X Festival. Collie was also writer/director of the episode Long Way Round for SBS/Film Australias award winning series Under the Skin and won a 1996 Australian Writers Guild nomination for Murri Time, which was performed at the Come Out Festival in Adelaide and toured to Sydney and throughout northern Queensland and the Northern Territory. Judith Pippen has worked as a university lecturer, movement trainer, Feldenkrais practitioner and has published a number of papers on movement-based theatre training. She has a PhD from the Centre for Innovation in the Arts at the QUT Academy. Pippen has directed The Rivers of China at the Woodward Theatre (1996 ) and The Three Cuckolds at La BoIte (1987). Pippen has also worked as Movement Director on productions of Measure for Measure at the Woodward Theatre (1994), Servant of Two Masters at the Cremorne Theatre (1994) and The Imaginary Invalid for TN! at the Princess Theatre in 1991. Richard Moore has worked as an actor, university lecturer and performance teacher but currently works as a director, producer and writer of documentary films. His most recent film, called Art from the Heart, screened on ABC television in 1999 and focused on issues surrounding the sale of Aboriginal artworks. Russell Cheek has worked as an actor, director and teacher of theatre. His directing work has been focused mainly in tertiary education and theatre-in-education situations, Cheek recently wrote and directed the live entertainment program for Sega World at Darling Harbour (1996/1997). Dominique Sweeney has worked primarily as an actor in film, theatre and television productions. He directed the devised contemporary commedia piece Accidente for the 1994 Adelaide Fringe Festival. John Bolton has worked as an actor and director, but primarily as a teacher. His directing credits include The Beautiful Necklace, Dust at Theatre Works, Odyssey for the 2000 Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals, and The Business as Usual, which won Best Comedy in the 1999 Melbourne Fringe Festival. 134 Ron Luda Popenhagen have been resident in Australia only since 1998, working primarily as teachers and theatre consultants. They directed Etiquette Zero for the 1999 Sydney Fringe Festival. Richard Hayes-Marshall has worked primarily as a theatre teacher. In 1992 he directed a group-devised piece called IV Virtue, which was performed at the Seymour Centre. Alex Pinder has worked as an actor, director/consultant, teacher and community theatre artist. He is probably best-known for his role in the long-running childrens television series Ocean Girl. In 1988 he directed Franca Rames I Dont Move, I Dont Scream, My Voice is Gone at La Mamma for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. George Ogilvie is the most successful and well-known alumnus in the directing category. Ogilvies work as a director has been concentrated in mainstream sections of Australian theatre. Since returning to Australia in 1965, Ogilvie has worked as artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company (1965 - 1972), artistic director of the South Australian Theatre Company (1972 - 1976) and as a freelance director of theatre, film and television. This includes work with the Australian Opera Company for six years, with the Australian Ballet Company, the Sydney Theatre Company and Playbox in Melbourne. Ogilvie is greatly responsible for the initial introduction and dissemination of Lecoqs work and pedagogical principles throughout mainstream sectors of Australian theatre. As Kevon Kemp observed in 1977: The teaching side is a strong element in [Ogilvies] perspective; one way or another, his directing has always had a light touch of the tutor (1977:21). Ogilvie has always conducted Lecoq-based workshops alongside production in theatre as well as in film and television work. For three and a half decades, Ogilvie has been teaching and applying Lecoqs work to mainstream text-based productions. He has brought a strongly visual, physical and stylistic focus to his work, using improvisatory processes and approaches in rehearsals. His impact on and contribution to Australian theatre is indicated in the following comments by Rally Davison: George Ogilvies career has embraced most of the performing arts and his ability to elicit sub-textual references from varied and difficult works has established him as one of Australias foremost directors. He introduced new interpretations of classics and his training as a mime artist and a teacher contributed immensely to the development of the Union Theatre Repertory Company (later the Melbourne Theatre Company) and the South Australian Theatre Company (later State 135 Theatre). His directing of 23 plays in six years for the former company and his work with every other major Australian company have impacted greatly upon two generations of playwrights, directors and actors. Ogilvie is rare among Australian directors in having been able to work with a permanent company on a series of plays. The results of his training with the Melbourne Theatre Company were quickly evident in his landmark productions of Arthur Wing Pinero s The Magistrate and Anton Chekhovs Three Sisters - the companys first Chekhov - in 1969 [...J. Ogilvie has been described as an actors director and this is illustrated by his fast-moving, flowing style (1995:413). Ogilvie s influence on Australian theatre should not be underestimated. His early work with the MTC, the SATC and workshops with the APG occurred at a critical time in Australias theatrical history. His post-Lecoq career has spanned thirty-five years, during which time he has worked consistently in state theatre companies. His work has thus touched many audience members, critics, actors, directors, designers, writers, teachers and producers of theatre. Nigel Jamieson has been directing in Australia from the late 1980s. He has quickly risen to prominence as a director of large scale, site specific outdoor events and productions by physical theatre company Legs on the Wall and Brisbanes Rock n Roll Circus. In 1991 he established the Australian International Workshop Festival, where he brought Jacques Lecoq to Australia for the first and only time as one of the contributing theatre practitioners. His directorial works include Red Square for the 1996 Adelaide Festival; Kellys Republic, the central commission for the 1997 Sydney Festival; Flamma Flamma: Fire Requiem, the opening event of the 1998 Adelaide Festival; artistic directorship of Adelaides biennial Come Out Festival for young people (which he renamed Take Over); The Labours of Hercules for Brisbanes Rock n Roll circus; The Cutting Room with Dancer Ros Crisp; Monsoon with Robyn Archer and Paul Grabowski; Galax Arena for the Adelaide Festival Trust; and the childrens piece Wake Baby, which has toured internationally. Jamiesons most recent theatrical undertakings include the millennial and Sydney 2000 Olympic celebrations. In the relatively short time Jamieson has been in

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