Angela Betzien Exegesis

HOODS CREATING POLITICAL THEATRE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES

A play and accompanying exegesis.

By Angela Betzien. B.A. (Queensland University of Technology)

Creative Industries Faculty

Submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) at the Queensland University of Technology.

2007

Key Words: theatre for young people, political theatre, Brecht, Boal, Epic Theatre, Forum Theatre, play structure, transformation, pretext, metatext, alienation effect, Living Newspaper

ii Abstract:

My first exposure to Brecht and his theories was as a high school drama student. One of our year twelve assessment tasks was to write and perform our own Brechtian drama using three or more alienation techniques. I wrote a piece about Religion and Fundamentalism, an issue that I felt strongly about at the time. By carefully following my teacher’s instructions and adhering to the assessment criteria I received a VHA. I concluded from this experience that political theatre could be made by following a simple recipe and combining key ingredients. As my knowledge of theatre and my own creative practice developed I came to understand the great complexity of Brechtian theory and the extreme difficulty of creating effective political theatre, that is, theatre that changes the world.

Brecht’s theories have been so thoroughly absorbed into contemporary theatre practice that we no longer identify the techniques of Epic Theatre as necessarily political, nor do we acknowledge its radical origins. I have not yet seen a professional production of a Brechtian play but I’ve absorbed on countless occasions the brilliant reinterpretations of Brecht’s theories within the work of contemporary dramatists. My approach to creating political drama is eclectic and irreverent and I’m prepared to beg borrow and steal from the cannon of political theatre and popular media to create a drama that works, a drama that is both entertaining and provocative.

Hoods is an adaptation for young audiences of my original play Kingswood Kids (2001). The process of re-purposing Kingwood Kids to Hoods has been a long and complex one. The process has triggered an analysis of my own creative practice and theory, and demanded an in-depth engagement with the theories and practice of key political theatre makers, most notably Brecht and Boal and more contemporary theatre makers such as Churchill, Kane, and Zeal Theatre.

The focus of my exegesis is an inquiry into how the dramatist can create a theatre of currency that challenges the dominant culture and provokes critical thinking and political engagement in young audiences. It will particularly examine Brecht’s theory of alienation and argue its continued relevance, exploring how Brechtian

iii techniques can be applied and re-interpreted through an in-depth analysis of my two works for young people, Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt. For the purposes of this short exegesis I have narrowed the inquiry by focusing on four key areas:

Transformation Structure Pretext Metatext

iv Table of Contents

Key words ii

Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Statement of original authorship vi

Acknowledgements vii

Hoods, a play text 1- 40

Exegesis 41

Introduction 42

Truth – A Literature Review 51

Transformation 58

Structure 67

Pretext 72

Metatext 74

Conclusion 80

Bibliography 82

(The pages of the play text – page 1-40 – are exempted from inclusion in the Australian Digital Thesis collection)

v Statement of original authorship:

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other institution. The thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed

Dated 14th March 2008

vi Acknowledgements

Howard Cassidy, University of Central Queensland 2005 second-year Drama students, Joan Cassidy, Yepoon State High School, Paul Betzien, Jodie Le Vesconte, Christopher Sommers, Samantha Betzien, Jody Betzien, Helen Weder, Lisa Berlin, North Side Alliance Against Domestic Violence, Erin Milne, Louise Brehmer, Scott Witt, Queensland Theatre Company, Visible Ink, Adrianne Jones, Corin Edwards, Janette Bruvel, Helen Strube, Rebecca Shearman, Sydney Opera House, Regional Arts Victoria, Jess Wilson, the Department of Communities and Families, Noel Jordan, Mia Bucholtz, Dr Errol Bray, Dr Nike Bourke, Kylie Mitchell, Leticia Caceres, Jonathon Oxlade, Glenn Hughes, Pete Goodwin, Robin Penty, Hellene Workman, Jim Lawson, Drama Victoria, Arena Theatre, Michael Wheelan, Queensland Arts Council, Amy Trotman, Stuart Glover, 2005 QUT Masters Cohort, Laurel Collins, Marc Richards, Marcel Dorney, Judy Couttie, Sean Mee.

vii

EXEGESIS CREATING POLITICAL THEATRE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES

41 Introduction

Real TV was a Brisbane based company that formed in late 2001. The artistic team included director Leticia Caceres, composer Pete Goodwin and myself as writer. Early in the formation of our collaboration we sketched out a political vision for the company:

Real TV’s mission is to tell the true stories of the underclass, stories which appear in few second slots on the six o’clock news (Betzien and Caceres 2007, 1).

We believed that currency, immediacy and relevance are vital ingredients in creating powerful political theatre. We wanted to delve into the effect of real events, to tell the stories of the oppressed, the voiceless and powerless in society. We did not believe in a theatre that merely replicated the status quo, reflecting the individual, void of social and political context, plays that Anne Bogart dismisses as being about “you, me, our apartment and our problems” (Bogart 2001, 26). Real TV wanted to provide a view of current events that was an alternative to the conservative and often reactionary vision represented in the mainstream media.

I had always foraged the news and current affairs for ideas for my plays. As I became increasingly conscious of this method I discovered that Living Newspaper had been practiced in Russia in the late 1800s. Simple performances were designed to communicate current events to a population that was largely illiterate. Later, during the great depression of the 1930s, The Federal Theatre Project in the US practiced Living Newspaper on a large scale, operating and producing theatre very much like a newspaper production house. August Boal also adopted Newspaper Theatre as a significant component of his Theatre of the Oppressed, using the news as a basis for theatrical performance and exposing the treatment of these events, critiquing the media itself (Babbage 2004, 143). Arthur Arendt describes Living Newspaper as:

The dramatisation of a problem – composed in greater or lesser extent of many news events, all bearing one subject and intertwined with typical but non-factual representations of the

42 effect of these news events on the people to whom the problem is of great importance (in Bradby & McCormick 1978, 22).

English playwright Edward Bond further articulates the powerful resonance of Living News or Newspaper Theatre:

I would like people to have seen something that they might have read about in a newspaper or even have been involved in but not really understood – because they see it from a partial point of view or whatever – suddenly to be able to see it whole and to be able to say, well, now I can understand all the pressures that went into the making of that tragedy; when I come to judge that situation, my judgement will be more accurate, and therefore the action I take more appropriate (in Reinelt 1996, 58).

Kingswood Kids was a short play (forty-five minutes in length) inspired by a series of news stories about children who had been abandoned in cars by their parents for hours at a time. The media’s condemnation was directed primarily at the mothers and secondarily at the proliferation of gambling facilities and the social (not political) problem of addiction. One report, in particular, was deeply influential: that of the death of a nine-month-old baby from heat exhaustion. The baby had been left alone in a car for several hours at the height of summer.

Kingswood Kids is the fictional story of three children Kyle, Jessie and baby Troy who are told by their mother to wait in the family car in a shopping centre car park. Night approaches, the shopping centre shuts down and their Mum hasn’t returned.

Kingswood Kids was Real TV’s second major collaboration, originally produced as part of De Base Productions Sheila’s Shorts Festival. The mission of this festival was to provide young female writers and directors with a venue, a festival event, marketing and technical support to present a new short work. This mode of production was formed out of a genuine desire for solidarity, to support young people, women and local artists. Sheila’s Shorts was a grass roots event that has had a rich and lasting impact on the direction of independent theatre in Brisbane.

43 As a new creative team we were deeply interested in both the intellectual and experiential impact of the work and so, during this season of Kingswood Kids, we conducted post show audience response surveys.

Our primary interest was in ascertaining the audience’s responses to the question: Who is responsible for these children? The collated results indicate that we had in fact perpetuated a common social response to this type of scenario. Through telling this story from the perspective of the children, using a predominantly realist style we had incited empathy for these tragic child heroes and created an antagonist of their absent mother. Her absence in the play created a void, which the audience filled with their condemnation. We had wanted the audience to consider the motivations of her actions, to consider the social/economic causes of this tragedy and to shift the responsibility for these events from the mother to society. Like the media, we had offered only a limited perspective on the event. We had failed to present the entire event in a balanced way. How could our audience possibly judge the situation accurately or take action appropriately?

Following the success of the independent production of Kingswood Kids the play was programmed, with a companion piece, as part of the La Boite 2003 season and the Energex Brisbane Festival. During the season at La Boite Theatre several members of the audience walked out, crossing the stage area to do so. We later ascertained that these audience members felt the play was too dark, too emotionally draining to endure.

These two productions (the first independent Metro Arts season (2002) and the second season at La Boite Theatre (2003) had distinct stylistic differences, which I believe impacted considerably on the audiences experience of and reactions to the work. Apart from the designer, the creative team was identical in both productions. In the independent Metro Arts season, design was limited, constructed on a seventy- dollar budget using a simple front car seat scavenged from a car-wrecking yard. The design was poor and minimalist. The character of Troy was created using a second- hand doll; no attempt was made by the designer to give it a realistic quality. In the La Boite production, acclaimed designer Alison Ross was given the design brief and a much larger budget. Her response was to insert a real, though broken

44 down and partially deconstructed 1970s Kingswood vehicle into the space. The impact on the audience of the car’s presence in the small theatre-in-the-round was significant, as was its descent from the ceiling from where it was suspended throughout the previous play, My Love has a Black Speed Stripe. In addition, the doll that represented the baby was treated as realistically as possible, painted with a real face and skin tones. These design decisions were made in close consultation with the director and myself. I believe these key design elements had a major impact on the audiences’ experience of the work. While audiences of the original production described the experience as ‘harrowing’, those who attended the second production found the piece ‘unbearable’. So unbearable in fact that at least one person left the theatre during each performance, throughout the four-week season.

We had created a play that was experiential, one that provoked and disturbed audiences on a deep emotional level. English Playwright, Sarah Kane aspired to writing plays that had this effect on the audience. Campbell describes Kane ’s work as deliberately overwhelming and visceral (2005, 80). She argues that Kane attempted to connect with the spectator at a physical level, and by doing so change the perceptions of the spectator:

If we can experience something through art, then we might be able to change our future, because experience engraves lessons on our heart through suffering, whereas speculation leaves us untouched (in Campbell 2005, 81).

While I greatly admire Kane’s writing I believe her theories of the theatre are flawed. Her theatre entraps its audience, capturing them physically and emotionally, and thwarting any possibility of distance, reflection or participation. Campbell believes Kane’s work elicits an intellectual response, arguing that this response comes after the experience in the theatre, and cites as evidence Ken Urban’s reaction to seeing Kane’s play Blasted:

Seeing such images as the solider devouring Ian’s eyes overwhelms you… first comes the emotion, the thinking afterwards” (in Campbell 2005, 85).

45 Obviously, it is incredibly difficult to prove or disprove the impact of a play after the audience has gone home, to chart reflective intellectual responses to a dark and visceral encounter, to register the transformation that has taken place in each individual. While I share Kane’s desire to change the future, and engrave lessons on the heart, I doubt that this was achieved in the production of Kingswood Kids at La Boite Theatre in 2002. Again, I felt sure we had perpetuated a reactionary view of the scenario, directing blame at the mother and eliciting empathy only for the children, not the social/political context that created the situation.

A group of year 10-12 Queensland Theatre Company Theatre Residency students who also attended a performance of the play were similarly affected by the work. However, they loved the theatricality, intensity and familiarity of the play’s content. The responses of the students awoke the possibility that the play could be adapted for touring to high schools. Real TV felt very strongly that issues of poverty, consumerism and violence were particularly relevant to young people and needed to be addressed in a new work for schools. The challenge would be to communicate these issues in a way that distanced both the actor and the audience from the emotionally dark and intense aspects of the story. The idea for the adaptation of the play lay dormant for several years in deference to several new projects, including the creation of our signature plays Children of the Black Skirt (Queensland Arts Council, 2002) and The Orphanage Project (Queensland Theatre Company, 2003).

In light of the success of Children of the Black Skirt in Queensland and Victorian schools Real TV resumed discussions about re-purposing Kingswood Kids for school touring. Children of the Black Skirt had been awarded a Drama Victoria award for best production, was published by Currency Press, and was listed on the VCE play list in 2005. The National Alliance Against Domestic Violence (NAADV) committee, whose organisers had heard about Kingswood Kids, also approached Real TV, keen to present a reading of the work as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Week in May 2005.

In early 2004, Howard Cassidy, Drama Lecturer at Central Queensland University, approached Real TV with a proposal for an Artist’s Residency at the University. In March 2005 Leticia and I travelled to Rockhampton to begin work on the first stage

46 of creative development on Kingswood Kids with Howard Cassidy and his second year Bachelor of Performing Arts students. The focus of this two-week residency was to explore the broader world of the three child characters and to flesh out the social spheres the children might inhabit. We wanted to explore techniques and conventions for distancing audience and actors from the more disturbing aspects of the story. We wanted to make the work appropriate for high school audiences without diminishing the political impact of the existing text.

Real TV had faced a similar challenge with our work Children of the Black Skirt, a play that explores the institutionalisation of children throughout Australia’s history. Our key to communicating this material was to heighten the poetic qualities of the work, using a fairytale language and style to explore a range of issues, including child abuse, violence and rape. The ultimate challenge for adaptation of Kingswood Kids was to explore the potential for hope in the lives of these seemingly doomed and destitute children and to shift the audience blame from the mother figure to a broader awareness of the social responsibility for the welfare of these children.

My research began with a re-reading of Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal’s comparative play model was particularly useful in identifying the spectrum of differences between Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Aristotle’s coercive system of tragedy.

Kingswood Kids is predominantly a conventional narrative: the play is climactic/cathartic with a single protagonist/antagonist relationship. Though Kyle, the protagonist, occasionally penetrates the fourth wall to directly address the audience delivering tortured excerpts from his daily journal entries, the text is primarily heightened realism.

Kingswood Kids sits comfortably within Aristotle’s Coercive system, described by Arnold Hauser as the ‘aristocratisation’ of the theatre (in Boal 2000, 33):

The spectators identify with the play’s tragic hero. They recognise their own failings in the character flaw, or hamartia, which he exhibits and which brings him into conflict with the social ethos. Ultimately, through his eventual fall and recognition of his error,

47 the spectators are brought to reject anti-social elements within themselves, ‘purged’ of them in the process of catharsis” (Babbage 2004, 47).

In the adaptation of Kingswood Kids I was keen to explore a contemporary alternative to the traditional climactic/cathartic narrative structure.

The initial two-week residency culminated with an in-Faculty performance of a collage of scenes, presented as a work-in-progress. After just two and a half weeks away in Brisbane, Leticia and I returned to CQU with a draft of a new, radically- revised play, which I had retitled Hoods. Leticia spent seven days casting and directing the play with the fourteen student actors playing multiple roles. Howard distributed the script to school principals and teachers, whose feedback prompted further revisions. Leticia staged this draft of the play with all actors on stage, seated on chairs in a semi circle. The car and other set items were represented by a small number of blocks. The cast sang a variety of Christmas songs and carols as ironic counterpoint to the reality of the children’s lives. Sound effects, such as Kyle’s fantasy game weaponry, motor vehicles and gunshots were provided live by the cast. George, the dedicated security guard/narrator, controlled the “game” by manipulating flashbacks, replays, pauses and saves; and by setting up and scoring game-style fights between Kyle and other characters.

We toured the play reading to two high schools, where it was very positively received by three audiences of grades 6 to 12. Animated follow-up discussions between audience members, actors, playwright, director and teachers, plus written responses to a questionnaire, provided invaluable guidance for further drafts of Hoods.

On my return to Brisbane I developed two new drafts of the work for a reading of Hoods as part of North Side Alliance Against Domestic Violence Prevention Week. This reading was rehearsed with director Leticia Caceres and actors Scott Witt and Louise Brehmer. The new draft was yet another radical revision of the former text that had been written for the fourteen student actors of CQU. This new text was reshaped for touring with just two actors.

48 The reading was staged at the Zillmere Police Youth Club. The performance served as a pretext for a post-show panel and audience discussion on the impact of domestic violence on communities and particularly on young people.

Following this reading and discussion Leticia and I visited Indooroopilly State High school to conduct a follow-up discussion of the work, with Adrianne Jones’s Year 11 students, who had attended the performance of Hoods at Zillmere. The focus of this discussion was on issues of form and the impact of those decisions on the audience experience of the narrative. Generally the use of hip hop/rap style narration by the Hoods characters was critiqued rigorously. Students were cynical about this approach, sceptical that this style could be incorporated successfully into a play, doubtful that it worked as a method of distancing the emotional intensity of the play.

The production draft of Hoods (Draft 11) required a new synopsis:

Each night two hoods ride a train to a wrecking yard on the outskirts of the city. Here, in this cemetery of stories, they are storytellers with the power to fast forward, pause and rewind. Tonight, they tell the story of three kids left in a car. Rewind. It’s Friday, KFC night and the last day of school before Christmas. Kyle, Jessie and baby brother Troy are waiting in the car for their mum. As night approaches the car park takes on a dark and sinister aspect filled with strange and familiar characters. The shopping centre closes, Mum still hasn’t returned and the baby won’t stop crying (Betzien 2007, cover).

The departure from the original text was considerable and while the key characters remained the same, at least 75% percent of the material was new.

On the 8th May 2006 Hoods directed by Leticia Caceres premiered at the Sydney Opera House Studio with Jodie Le Vesconte as Jessie and Christopher Sommers as Kyle. Set design was by Jonathon Oxlade, music composition by Pete Goodwin and lighting by Glenn Hughes. The play enjoyed a successful tour of metropolitan and regional Victoria and Queensland through Regional Arts Victoria (RAV) and Queensland Arts Council (QAC). In 2007 Hoods was listed on the VCE play list and published by Currency Press. It also featured as part of the in-school touring

49 program of Come Out, the International Festival for Young People held in South Australia. In August 2007 Hoods was awarded an AWGIE for the Theatre for Young Audiences Category as well as the inaugural Richard Wherrett Prize for Excellence in Playwriting. In 2008 Hoods will be presented at ASSITEJ World Congress and Performing Arts Festival for Young People.

The long and complex process of re-purposing Kingswood Kids for young audiences has prompted a deep analysis of my own creative practice and theory, and demanded an in-depth engagement with key political theatre makers and theorists. The purpose of this exegesis is to inquire how the dramatist can create a theatre of currency that challenges the dominant culture and provokes critical thinking and political engagement in young audiences. In the body of this exegesis I will further investigate this question through an in-depth analysis of my two performance texts for young people, Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt.

I have narrowed the inquiry of this exegesis to reflect on four key areas of the text: Transformation Structure Pretext Metatext

50 Truth – A Literature Review

Politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed (Pinter 2005, 3).

In 2005, when Harold Pinter delivered his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, he lashed out at the present day political climate, using the global forum to present a scathing critique of US international policy. Pinter argued that the US are operating a machine of lies as part of their stratagem for global dominance, an ingenious operation that has suffocated the people’s intelligence, crushed their critical abilities and cleverly disguised the truth. How, in such an environment, can the truth be revealed?

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us (Pinter 2005,12).

Pinter’s call to arms is essentially an argument for the use of Brechtian alienation.

In her book A Director Prepares (2001) Anne Bogart discusses Victor Schklovsky’s theories on art. The Russian Formalist believed that the role of art was to wake up what is asleep. To achieve this he argues that the artist must ‘turn it slightly until it awakens’ (in Bogart 2001, 53).

Brecht’s theory of alienation or Verfremdungseffekt, influenced by Schklovsky’s Four Essays on Formalism, written in the 1920’s, was the foundation of his stratagem for building an Epic Theatre. This was a theatre that was pedagogical, anti-illusionist and anti-bourgeois. It was a theatre for change aimed at exposing truth. Brecht believed:

When something seems the most obvious thing in the world, it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.

51 What is natural must have the force of what is startling (in Gallagher, 2002:71).

The key objective of Brecht’s theatre, through the application of alienation techniques, was to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange so that audiences would see the world in a new way (Bogart 2001, 53).

Alienation can be applied to a word, a sentence, an idea, a gesture or an image. It can be used within the metatext and applied to design, music, media and casting. In Brecht’s Epic Theatre the actor “alienates” rather than impersonates her character. Performance is an act of quotation as opposed to identification (in Diamond 1988, 84).

There is fierce academic debate regarding interpretations of Brecht’s theories, as well as deep misunderstandings that have been perpetuated in both educational and professional contexts. Joseph Chaikrin asserts that there is a museum aura surrounding Brecht and that it is necessary to break free of these old ideas (in Munk 1968, 148). The Berliner Ensemble, dedicated to the performance of Brecht’s plays has become “A marvelous museum” according to Erica Munk “preserving Brecht like Lenin in his tomb” (Munk 1967, 21). Munk bemoans the fact that this approach “cannot change or challenge the consciousness of more than a few” (Munk 1967, 21).

What theatrical methodology is capable of combating the warfare of lies Pinter challenges all artists to battle? Many practitioners and theorists dedicated to a theatre for social change argue that we must reject attempts to achieve an authentic Brechtian Theatre, we must “go beyond a literal interpretation of his ideology and style” and “produce him in a way that will make vivid again for a new generation the profound questions he raised for a past one” (Munk 1967, 21).

What is needed is a post-Brechtian theatre that is responsive to a New World, a world heavily influenced by information technology and mass media. A world in which, Giroux claims, “the boundaries are constantly shifting and meaning is contingent” (in McClean and Richer 2003, 5).

52 What is required is a new generation of theatre makers who acknowledge their debt to Brecht while adapting, transforming and hybridising his theories and techniques to create radical new work for a new generation. For, as Chaikrin asserts, “our circumstances are very different from that of Brecht’s time but the bullshit is largely the same” (in Munk 1968, 151).

Jack Zipes, in his essay Political Children’s Theater in the Age of Globalization, discusses the importance of a children’s theatre that challenges globalisation, which he believes turns everything into spectacle (Zipes 2003, 9). He cites as an example of the depoliticising effect of the spectacle, a production of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol by the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. This production blinded audiences from engaging with the play’s central thematic issues of capitalism, exploitation and poverty, with special lighting and stage effects. Instead, he asserts, the production served only to reaffirm the consciences of the ruling class (Zipes 2003, 12).

Zipes argues, “The spectacle, instead of revealing society, produces and reproduces power relations that maintain and reinforce the status quo. It is a social construct that reduces us to mere spectators” (Zipes 2003, 10). The spectacle encourages passive absorption and anesthetises our capacity to apply critical judgment.

Zipes is fiercely critical of globalisation, he believes it has a polarising effect, homogenising identity and absorbing and fracturing the most vulnerable of communities. Globalisation, he argues, replaces the concept of community with a consumer ideology, threatening class-consciousness.

Peter McLaren, in Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture, expresses similar concern over what he describes as the “unholy symbiosis of capitalism and technology (tecnocapitalism), a crisis that has profound global implications” (1995, 9).

McLaren’s primary concern is the impact of this technocapitalism on young people. He calls for a critical pedagogy that challenges these trends and equips young people with the tools to cope in this new, heavily mediatised environment.

53 What isn’t being talked about in today’s education debate is the desperate needs within our schools for creating a media-literate citizenry that can disrupt, contest, and transform media apparatuses so that they no longer have the power to infantilise the population and continue to create passive, fearful, paranoid and apolitical social subjects (McLaren 1995, 9).

Yet many youth arts theorists would contest this position. Instead of lamenting the wave of globalisation and the march of fast capitalism and technology they have embraced postmodern reinterpretations of the world and are key proponents for the application of a postmodern paradigm within youth arts practice.

Gattenoff, in her Phd, Young People and Performance: The Impact of Deterritorialisation on Contemporary Theatre for Young People (2004), asserts that this tendency is a recognition of the fact that “in the post-modern age, media and technologies play a significant part in the lives and cultural capital of young people” (2004, 45). She states,

Technology and globalisation are key drivers of change in the development of performance works. Young people who are embracing these drivers, are fast becoming a part of the new masters of the avant-garde (2004, 46).

McLean and Richer further argue, “theatre can assist young people to navigate the contemporary postmodern world” (2003, 5).

It can be asserted that through mastery over and understanding of these changing forms and technologies young people can ensure their capacity to assert themselves, finding new opportunities for self-expression and reconceptualising old concepts of community and identity.

Gattenhoff raises the issue that many artists have expressed concern over these new trends, arguing that the absorption of technology in the performing arts is having a negative impact. While I don’t believe this is necessarily true, I do believe caution must be exercised in relation to post-modern arts practice.

The Review of Theatre for Young People (2003) commissioned by the Australia Council identified an emerging trend within youth arts practice, toward an “escalated use of multimedia forms, cross arts form presentation, higher

54 technologies, different materials and effects for spectacular theatre” (in Gattenhoff 2004, 46).

It is precisely this tendency towards a “spectacular theatre,” a theatre of spectacle, that raises alarm and has the potential to conceal, rather than reveal, an understanding of the dominant forces that ultimately control these new technologies. Thus, post-modern theatre for young people runs the risk of being absorbed into the machinery of technocapitalism, reducing the audience to the role of passive consumer and, through spectacle, anesthetising their capacity to imagine and fight for change.

Gattenhoff suggests that although live performance and mass media have traditionally been viewed as opposing and separate entities, this is now a changing relationship. She cites Auslander, who posits that live forms have been forced “to acknowledge their status as media within a mediatic system that includes the mass media and information technologies” (in Gattenhoff, 2004, 71).

However this position would seem to be at odds with the aims of many political theatre makers whose intent is to offer an alternative view of the world from outside the mass media and information technology industries, free from the constraints dictated by advertisers and corporate sponsorship.

I would further argue that it is essential that youth arts practice maintains independence from educational institutions, which in the face of globalization are becoming increasingly corporatised and outcome driven (Smyth 2001, 37).

In Australia, there is a long history of theatre in education, where the performing arts have been used as an adjunct to the school curriculum, employed to complement curriculum objectives. However, in recent years youth arts practice has been repositioned in terms of its value in promoting “lifelong learning” (McLean and Richer 2003, 5). Geoffrey Rush, director of Magpie Theatre from 1984-1986 advocated:

Theatre as a function, as an event, is nothing like school nor should it be. It’s got to be something that comes in, cuts a swathe through

55 the minds of children, pecks at their heads (in Nursey-Bray 2005,36).

McLean and Richer cite Arena and Zeal Theatre as leading youth arts companies that are “willing to take risks and step outside of school curriculum objectives” (2003, 4).

In terms of modes of production these two companies, which have both received considerable international attention, could not be more different. Zeal Theatre has been touring minimalist Brechtian-style productions to schools for over eighteen years. The company has elected to operate independent of funding bodies, creating new work quickly in collaboration with school and community groups and ensuring production values are kept to a minimum.

Arena Theatre is a triennially-funded company that is recognised for its creation of theatre that incorporates multi-media technologies. Arena’s reputation for creating quality work for young people aged 5-26 has also attracted significant corporate sponsorship.

Both companies produce high quality work, which position young people as active and critical participants. While employing a very different set of aesthetics and theatrical techniques these companies employ a new, hybridised version of Brechtian techniques to create work that engages young people and encourages critical judgment of dominant social paradigms.

While postmodern arts practice can be effectively used to create quality political work for young people, theatre practitioners must avoid becoming passively absorbed into a mainstream culture industry employing multi media and media techniques in a non-critical way. For Peter Brosius of the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis:

Young people, because they are used to television, are very sophisticated visually and are able to think non-narratively, in jump cuts, in montage. They are used to formal collisions. So part of the joy is both playing with that and playing against it (in Munk 2003, 56).

56 Brosius’s company aims to create work that, while acknowledging popular culture and forms, is “unabashedly theatrical” (2003, 56). Theatricality is achieved through the full acknowledgement of the limitations and advantages of the form, and the manipulation of these constraints and possibilities to full imaginative benefit. Brosius’s companies commitment is to constantly critique new forms from a social justice perspective in an entirely theatrical way.

What we must never lose site of is the fact that all theatre has the capacity to contribute to social change; and a revelation of what lies behind the mirror. It is the responsibility of theatre makers to create work in such a way as to illuminate these truths for the audience, to provide a vision of the world that is changeable. We do this in the hope of awakening those who are asleep, in revealing the wolf disguised as a sheep lurking in our own backyard. Ultimately, as Kushner passionately articulates:

What really changes the world is the consequence of thinking about the world, the consequence of thinking about art about the world, the consequence of human gesture received, absorbed, returned to the world – the gesture that changes the world most is that which is expressed not in the theater but in the arena of political engagement: activism in other words, organizing, resisting, doing what one can to advance liberationist, progressive, multiculturalist, egalitarian agendas. Art matters but it isn’t enough (in Munk, 2003: 63).

57 Transformation

Bad playwrights in every epoch fail to understand the enormous efficacy of the transformations that take place before the spectator’s eyes. Theatre is change and not simple presentation of what exists: it is becoming and not being (Boal 2006, 28).

The use of transformation has been a key recurring device in my dramatic work. The concept of transformation is fundamental to my understanding of political theatre and my relationship with and treatment of the actor/character.

Brecht’s notion of the “double role of the actor” (Lauglin 1997, 216) has been absorbed within contemporary theatre both as a state employed by the actor in performance and as a rehearsal methodology to distance the actor from the internalisation of character. Brecht’s theory of performance is in direct opposition to Stanislavsky’s System through which the actor is “looking to achieve ‘truth’ in performance” (Babbage 2004, 144). Stanislavsky’s method of training, associated predominantly with realism, demands that the actor use personal experience and memory to transform completely into character. The Brechtian actor works from the outside in, first determining the social and economic conditions that impact upon the character. In Epic Theatre, the narrative action is determined by social forces, as opposed to the free will of individual characters (Babbage 2004, 58).

In After Brecht: British Epic Theatre, Reinelt assesses the various influences, transformations and departures from Epic Theatre theories and techniques used by key British dramatists since the 1970s. Reinhelt states that “While emphasising the importance and positive contribution of Brecht, I also wish to foreground the hybridity of theatrical styles” (Reinelt 1996, 1). Like Reinelt, my interest lies in how Brecht’s theories have been reinterpreted and adapted within contemporary political theatre practice, including my own.

Feminist playwrights have absorbed and adapted Brecht’s theory of the double role of the Brechtian actor, incorporating the actor’s judgement of their character’s actions within their writing and employing techniques of role reversal and cross gender casting in order to expose the social construction of gender, race and class

58 (Laughlin 1997, 216). Furthermore, feminist cultural theorists have been at the forefront of defining the concept of Performativity, arguing that identity is performative, constructed through a “process of reiteration (repetition/rehearsal) and citation (reference/quotation)” (Parker and Sedgewick in Gattenhoff 2004, 60). For these theorists, gender is essentially a construction of historical, social and cultural practices.

Caryl Churchill’s influences stem strongly from both a feminist aesthetic and Epic Theatre. In Cloud Nine her cross-gender casting has a powerful alienating effect, exposing the social construction of gender, sexuality, race and class in the Victorian Era. Her double casting of adult roles with child roles in Top Girls similarly alienates: defamiliarising the audience and further exposing the role of women both in an historical and contemporary context. As Reinhelt identifies, this approach denies any pretence of naturalism:

The cross casting identifies strain between an expressive experimental self on the one hand, and the conditioning of social role and dominant ideology on the other. Simple actions can become powerful social gests in Brecht’s sense of the term. The lifting of a Victorian skirt can look “natural” when a woman does it, but it is strongly alienated when a man performs it as learned behaviour (Reinhelt, 1996: 89).

My first conscious exploration of this transformative technique and the potential of alienating devices was through a one-woman performance piece I wrote exploring issues of suburbia, consumerism and the body. Princess of Suburbia was first presented in an independent season at the Cement Box Theatre in 2001. Using the imaginary premise of a talk show as an entry point for storytelling, the central character, Barbara, an alienated housewife living in new suburbia, tells the audience about the day she entered her overweight daughter in a shopping centre child beauty pageant. Throughout the storytelling Barbara transforms into thirteen separate characters, all grotesque manifestations or “quotations” made by the central character (Barbara) and the actor (Jodie Le Vesconte).

In order to describe the act or technique of transformation I have come to employ the word morph, a term borrowed from science fiction films such as Matrix in which

59 metamorphosis of character is conjured via expensive special effects. Morphing within theatre is an entirely different transformation, a process that achieves what Mitter describes as “the disassociation of actor from role” where the actor stands between the spectator and the text (1992, 47). In this moment of disassociation, of transformation, the actor herself, her body, her technique becomes fleetingly present to the audience. Jodie Le Vesconte describes this act of transformation, this fleeting moment, as one akin to “winking at the audience” (Le Vesconte 2007, 1).

In a performance text such as Princess of Suburbia that demands the actor play multiple roles and transform spontaneously and repeatedly without illusion, there is clearly no opportunity for the actor to internalise character in a Stanislavskian style. Instead the actor must present a quotation of character. The result is a revelation of the mechanics of the performance and the theatre itself. It prevents the audience from becoming swept away by the emotional “truth” of a character and instead allows them to consider the circumstances in which a character exists which motivates his or her actions.

This new understanding of characterization and the power of transformation to achieve an alienating effect, laid the foundation of what was to become a signature technique of our work as Real TV.

Children of the Black Skirt, my next play for young audiences, further consolidated my understanding of how transformation can be used for political affect. In Children of the Black Skirt:

Three lost children stumble across an abandoned orphanage in the bush. They become trapped in a timeless world, haunted by spirits from the past. They are tormented, too, by the Black Skirt, a cruel governess who floats up and down the orphanage corridors wielding enormous scissors. But as the stories of these forgotten children are told – from pick pocketing incidents in the eighteenth century to the tragedies of the Stolen Generation in the twentieth – their spirits are released, one by one (Betzien 2005, cover).

Three actors play the roles of the lost children and, through the portal of clothing, which they discover in the abandoned building, they are transported into the timeless orphanage world, transformed into the lost characters who haunt the restless place.

60 One lost child, traditionally cast with a female actor by Real TV (though this role could be played by a male), is transformed through a nineteenth-century black skirt into the formidable grieving and silent governess (Betzien 2005,1). The transformation from lost child to Governess is achieved via a simple zipping-up of the dress, at which point the actor physically evokes the still austerity of the Governess.

In another scene (Betzien 2005, 21) The Black Skirt is transformed into the grotesque Government Inspector of Orphanages via a grooming ritual enacted by the two orphan characters in which they undress and dress the actor before the spectator’s eyes. This ritual is underscored by a monotonous recitation of letters written to home. These letters reveal the silenced voices of these institutionalised children. Once Harrold Horrocks has “appeared”, he reads a series of hyperbolic, sanitised and censored letters by the children, reaffirming the value of these institutions and his role as Government Inspector, asserting the ‘rightness’ of an establishment that is blind to injustice and oppression.

The Black Skirt, wearing a skirt of Rosary beads attached to an enormous pair of scissors, is symbolic of Christian religious institutions, in particular Catholicism. The scissors replace the image of the crucifix and are symbolic of the severing of racial, class and familial identity, which was conducted with clinical brutality in state and religious institutions since colonisation. (Bean and Melville, 1990). Harrold Horrocks, our grotesque State Inspector, symbolises the corruption and ignorance of government. These characters are alienations of familiar institutions, familiar identities made strange through their heightened and grotesque physicality. The act of transformation, the metamorphosis of the actor from Black Skirt (church) to Harrold Horrocks (state) is a political one, suggesting the symbiosis of state and church, their complicity in the process of institutionalising and assimilating the black, poor and female in this country. This transformation while necessary logistically to conjure the presence of this character, has further value in exposing and critiquing the dominant ideology of Australian history and particularly institutional care.

61 In our post-show discussions of the work (which toured high schools throughout Australia from 2003-2005) it became evident that young people were highly capable of reading these images, and critically analysing the power relationships at play.

The study notes designed by Adrianne Jones and Michael Boyle (Betzien 2005, 38) further consolidate this awareness. The activities focus on the concept of power and human rights and extend the context for understanding of these issues beyond the performance text.

Real TV seeks to expose, not hide, the political, economic and social forces that shape character and narrative, allowing audiences to engage with these concepts on a critical level.

As with Children of the Black Skirt, Hoods is saturated with acts of transformation used in a range of ways to achieve an alienating effect. In Hoods, the acts of transformation are frequent and multi-layered. In this production adult actors play streets kids (The Hoods) playing other kids (Jessie and Kyle) as well as adults. The question of who these street kids really are is one that is frequently asked during post show discussions of the work. Common interpretations of the Hoods is that they are the future Kyle and Jessie. Like ghosts condemned to repetition, they ride the trains to the wrecking yard each night to compulsively act out the narrative of their past in the hope of finding some new outcome/direction that will release them from their emotional limbo. Within the premise of the “game” each play session holds new and varied possibilities.

As with Children of the Black Skirt the enrolment of the powerless as the oppressor has an arresting and alienating effect. It demands that the actor and director heighten the physicality and consider carefully the Gestus of the characterisations. Kiebuzinska defines the Gestus as, “a kind of pre-language, giving a direct presentation of social relationships; at the same time it serves as an alienating mask rather than as a medium of true expression” (in Mews 1997, 56). Brecht’s social Gestus is one that exposes the social conditioning of the character and the situation through the body of the actor.

62 In Hoods, the Hoods characters are fringe dwellers, they are outsiders. The Hoods occupy the shadowlands of society and are not governed by law. They ride the trains without paying and trespass private property. Throughout the long afternoon and night Kyle and Jessie encounter many characters while waiting in the car. The characters who pass through the car park, are both familiar and strange, and all of them are seen through the eyes of Kyle and Jessie, as well as the Hoods. Essentially, they are the grotesque manifestations of the children. The process of transformation from child to adult throughout the play has an empowering effect, reversing common modes of representation, where adults control the medium and tools through which young people are represented.

In Ganglands (1999) Mark Davis discusses the negative representation of young people in the media. These representations resonate and become part of our cultural landscape, promoting a conditioned reaction to groups of young people. The representation in the media of the Hoodie as a “symbol of fear and revulsion” (English 2005, 22) is particularly common and the ambiguous title of this play was deliberately selected to evoke these stereotypes. In a narrative context, Hoods provides a child’s perspective on adult types and behaviours. The Hoods represent a grotesque parade of characters that range from the predatory to the sympathetic to the indifferent. There is an identifiable element of parody in these characterisations.

The Hoods’ representation of Kyle’s teacher, Mrs Muir, one of the oppressors within the narrative, is less than flattering. In one scene the Hoods reveal to the audience a past incident when Mrs Muir humiliated Kyle in front of the class:

Mrs Muir: Kyle Johnson have you had a bath this year? Look at you, you’re filthy. Oh go away, in the corner (Betzien 2007, 19).

This is a critical representation, exposing the teacher’s cruelty and misuse of power as well as her failure to comprehend the social circumstances, which have led to Kyle’s physical state and behavioural tendencies. The characterisation of Mrs Muir is part of a strategy to incite solidarity between Kyle and members of the audience.

63 As a counterpoint, Mr Matheson, Jessie’s teacher, is represented by the Hoods as a kind and supportive presence in Jessie’s life, but one who is constrained by education protocols and codes of practice and therefore limited in his ability to take action.

As narrators, the Hoods are not clinical observers of events, rather they are actively engaged in the manipulation of narrative and characters in order to alienate them for the audience, an act Victor Schklovsky describes as the turning of something until it awakens (Bogart 2001, 53). In turning, in making the familiar strange, they expose the social and economic determinants of the unfolding tragedy. Character types such as Mrs Muir, Mr Matheson, Jessie and Kyle occupy the everyday lives of many teachers and young people in our audiences, however, the play seeks to defamiliarise these character types so that the audience may see them afresh.

The effectiveness of this technique is corroborated in a responding task written by a Year 12 student of Yeppoon State High:

It (Hoods) reinforced the importance of having compassion and understanding for people that I come across at school and in everyday circumstances that may be a bit different, it reminded me that we should not judge people before we know their background and how their family life is (Belot 2005, 3).

A significant thematic concern in Hoods is the cyclical nature of violence, a concept drawn from extensive research into domestic violence and it’s impact on the behaviour and development of children.

Through our consultation with youth and domestic violence counsellors we learned that it is statistically common for young male victims of domestic violence to become perpetrators, and for young female victims to become involved in violent relationships later on in life.

Through the act of transforming Kyle and Jessie into their parents, I emphasise this tendency for young people to mirror the behaviours of their parents. In the play, the car becomes a microcosm of domestic life where children play out adult gender

64 roles. Jessie’s primary responsibility is for the baby and when Mum leaves the kids she tells Jessie to “Look after the baby” and Kyle to “Stay in the car” (Betzien 2007, 7) perpetuating traditional gender roles. Kyle’s responsibility is to control and protect, Jessie’s to nurture.

The tension and conflict in the play builds when the kids adhere to these responsibilities no matter what the external circumstances. Kyle demonstrates, in a series of scenes, his willingness to employ physical violence and emotional manipulation in order to control and protect the family.

Kyle: Jessie, you get back in the car. Jessie: I’m goin’, Kyle. Come on. Kyle takes a plastic bag out of his shorts pocket. Kyle: Jessie, you leave. Jessie, you leave… He pulls the plastic bag over his head (Betzien 2007, 6).

Through a repetition of imagery and language it is made clear that Kyle and Jessie’s relationship is a mirror image of their parents’. In a scene involving Kyle and Jessie’s parents, their father keeps the mother from leaving by forcing her to tell the kids that everything is all right:

Dad: Yer all right, aren’t yer, Mum? Go on, tell ‘em. Go on, tell ‘em yer all right. Mum: Yeah, I’m all right, kids. I’m all right. Dad: Yer not goin’ anywhere, Mum, are yer? Go on, tell ‘em yer not goin’ anywhere… Mum: I’m not goin' anywhere, kids. I’m not goin’ anywhere. (Betzien 2007,36).

In several scenes Kyle echoes his father’s language:

Kyle: We’re all right, Jessie, we’re all right, we’re just waiting in the car for mum (Betzien 2007, 21).

Kyle’s consistent unwillingness to ask for help and his deep fear of authority, has clearly been learnt from his father.

65 Throughout the play, Jessie maintains a timid resistance to Kyle’s dogged insistence they stay in the car and not ask for help. Her responsibility for the baby is never relinquished. The baby is always her primary concern and she demonstrates her willingness to defend him no matter what sacrifice to herself.

Kyle: Let’s put him in the boot. Jessie: No, Kyle. Kyle: Yeah, let’s put him in the boot. Pause Kyle: Put him in the boot put him in the boot put him in the boot. Kyle snatches at Troy. Jessie: No, Kyle. Jessie throws a punch at Kyle. Kyle and Jessie fight in video game style. Jessie breaks free and runs into the dark (Betzien 2007, 21).

Jessie’s responsibility for the welfare of the baby, one more vulnerable than herself, finally enables her to break free of the violent domestic cycle of the car. When Jessie makes the decision to leave, despite Kyle’s threats, she does so for the sake of Troy, who has become alarmingly ill. In taking this action, Jessie frees herself and the baby from a devastating cycle of manipulation and abuse. Jessie’s maternal instinct, her unwavering responsibility for the welfare of her baby brother, is the catalyst for taking action and changing the potentially devastating outcome of their situation. Jessie achieves what her mother has so far been incapable of: leaving an abusive relationship to save herself and her family.

The technique of transformation is used to encourage audiences to draw connections between the characters of Kyle and Jessie and their parents, and to expose the cycles of domestic violence that must be broken through positive resistance and action. Instead of blaming the mother and father for the situation, as was evident in audience reactions to Kingswood Kids in the original Metro Arts and La Boite season of the work, the transformative role play defamiliarises these characters, enabling audiences to see the social and economic determinants that have led to the situation.

66 Structure

As we cannot invite the audience to fling itself into the story as if it were a river and let itself be carried vaguely, hither and thither, the individual episodes have to be knotted together in such a way that the knots are easily noticed. The episodes must not succeed one another indistinguishably but must give us a chance to interpose our judgement (Brecht in Reinhelt 1996, 9).

The form and the content attempt to be one, the form is the meaning (Kane in Campbell 2005, 84).

The starting point for an adaptation of Kingswood Kids for young audiences was an analysis of Brecht’s comparative play model, in which Brecht compares the Epic Theatre with Aristotle’s Coercive System of Tragedy (in Boal 2006, 95).

I have already mentioned that Kingswood Kids sits within the realm of the Coercive system, employing a climactic structure that maintains, on the whole, a unity of time and place. Kingswood Kids also has a clearly-defined protagonist/antagonist relationship that follows classic lines. Hoods, however, has been described as a play in which:

Time and space are manipulated and unravelled to reveal potential sources of hope (Jordan and Penty in Betzien 2007, vii).

In Hoods, as with Children of the Black Skirt, the form is as important as the content to the creation of meaning. Both plays are constructed in such a way as to engage audiences in an ongoing discourse about the themes and issues in the play and to encourage further action beyond the performance.

Brecht’s Epic Theatre challenged climactic structure, arguing that the necessary return to equilibrium required of this dramatic tradition must be replaced with disequilibrium, with a state of imbalance (Babbage, 2004, 59). Both Boal and Brecht argue that the cathartic, purging effect of traditional narrative structure has been used throughout the history of theatre to pacify audiences and quell dissent, thus maintaining the status quo, the interests of the ruling class.

67 Reading Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed led me to draw parallels between Forum Theatre and video game narrative. I had been researching video games with an idea of inserting a game style imaginative landscape within the new text: a landscape I thought might emerge from Kyle’s obsessive fascination with X Box 360. I began to draw parallels between the functions of the two forms. The stop/start/replay capacity of the video game and Forum Theatre seemed to have exciting potential for this new text. Could these functions be used within the play to distance audiences from the emotionally intense, climactic moments in the play, and also the need for a definitive resolution?

A reading of Zeal Theatre’s Side Effects further inspired me. This play tells the story of Oli, a teenager with ADHD. The play’s narrative is structured as a series of videogame-style levels or rounds. In adopting a multiple choice approach to narrative structure I felt the work might challenge a “finished vision of the world” and allow the spectator the opportunity “to participate in an ongoing discourse whereby meanings and choices are open to negotiation” (Babbage 2004, 41).

In Hoods there are three repeated scenes or outcomes:

1) Jessie goes to leave the car in search of help, but is manipulated by Kyle into staying (Betzien 2007, 6).

2) Jessie leaves the car with the baby, refusing to be manipulated by Kyle’s threats to kill himself. Kyle stays in the car (Betzien 2007, 37).

3) Jessie goes to leave the car. Kyle attempts to manipulate Jessie, however Jessie returns to the car and gives Kyle the baby to hold. She leaves and Kyle follows, carrying his brother (Betzien 2007, 38).

The first “ending” occurs at the beginning of the play. The Hoods then rewind the narrative to 3.40pm the previous day. The placement of the ending (in this case, only one of them) at the beginning of the play is in keeping with Brecht’s habit of revealing the conclusion of a story in advance. This was to avoid the possibility of the audience becoming swept away with the story, caught up in the irrelevant question “How will this end?” and unable to “interpose their judgement” (Mitter 1992, 44).

68

During post-show discussions the cast question the audience regarding the three outcomes. Generally, older audiences demonstrate a sharp ability to define and analyse these three potential narrative directions. When asked which is the “real” ending we tell them there is no real ending, each outcome is a real possibility and so we ask them to consider what character actions have led to each outcome. It is generally recognised that the third outcome has the most potential for restoring hope in the lives of these children. Young people demonstrate the ability to recognise the image of Jessie handing the baby to Kyle, as one that represents the passing over of responsibility. The act awakens in Kyle the realisation that they must take action in order to survive. Only when the two children show solidarity and ask for help, do they open up the possibility of escape from their immediate situation and the cycle of abuse.

The Hoods in their roles as narrators, in some sense serve a function similar to The Joker of Boal’s Forum Theatre, operating as a “compere figure whose function is to mediate between actors and spectators” (Babbage 2007, 142). Although audiences are not invited physically to participate in the making and remaking of the narrative of Hoods, as is the case in Forum Theatre, the multiple choice structure of the text allows them to actively participate in negotiating and deciding their preferred outcome. In doing so, young people are encouraged to consider the processes/actions which have led to each outcome.

Volker Ludwig, of internationally renowned children’s theatre company Grip, believes plays should “encourage children to ask questions, to understand that criticism is their undeniable right, to enjoy creative thinking, and to gain pleasure from seeing alternatives” (in Zipes 2003, 3). In adopting a multi-directional narrative with multiple resolutions, Hoods presents a world that is capable of change.

In my play Children of the Black Skirt the structure of the narrative works differently but has a similar effect to that of Hoods. The two plays manipulate form and content to achieve an alienating effect and to communicate the same essential thesis: that of the need for a solidarity of the oppressed.

69

In the haunted orphanage, time and space have converged. The multiple protagonists of the narrative hail from various eras of Australia’s colonial past. The Black Skirt, the governess of the orphanage, is an aristocratic Victorian figure from the late nineteenth century. Harrold Horrocks, Inspector of Orphanages, is a pre World War Two caricature. Our heroines, New One and Old One, are also separated by decades. Old One is an Indigenous girl taken from the islands off the coast of Tasmania in the early 1800s and New One has endured the Great Depression in the slums of Sydney. The various spirit stories, told in episodes that intertwine with the overarching narrative, are but a glimpse of the countless injustices endured by the black, poor and female in this country. The intention behind this convergence of time and space is to expose the repetition of injustice. In each episode (containing its own protagonist/antagonist and internal climactic structure) it becomes painfully evident to the spectator that cycles of institutional abuse have been repeated decade after decade.

In the conclusion to the overarching narrative of Children of the Black Skirt, New One and Old One overcome the Black Skirt by discovering her source of pain, her own history of oppression, and by telling it; they release her from her purgatory. In this action, the narrative affirms the power of solidarity against tyranny, the power of storytelling as a weapon against oppression and the denial of history.

There still remains, however, a striking disequilibrium. Although the lost girls, once released from the entrapment of their clothing, burn these items in the incinerator and wander off into the dark bush in search of home, there remains a disquieting sense that there are still countless more stories to tell, that the project of telling is never ending.

Similarly, with Hoods, the premise of the car-wrecking yard sets up a pretext for multiple storytelling that is boundless. There is a sense any one of the wrecked cars has a story living in it and that the Hoods are somehow condemned to return each night to tell a different one. Or, as some young audience members have suggested the Hoods are condemned to tell this particular story, the story of Kyle, Jessie and baby Troy because it is their story. These endless narrative possibilities and the lack

70 of a definitive resolution in Hoods can provoke critical and creative thinking in young people. This active engagement then leads to the powerful act of self narration, where audiences are prompted to resolve the drama for themselves and in doing so make sense of their own worlds.

71 Pretext

As much as I am an advocate of the use of alienating techniques in contemporary performance, my experience in creating theatre for young people has convinced me that it is not enough to create gripping political theatre to provoke critical thinking and political action in young audiences; there must be a broad approach.

One approach I would like to discuss in some depth is the importance of creating platforms for self-narration. Giroux believes:

Pedagogically and politically, young people need to be given the opportunity to narrate themselves, to speak from the actual places where their experiences are shaped and mediated (in McClean and Richer 2003, 5).

In his essays on children’s culture, German philosopher Walter Benjamin argued that plays not be performed for children, rather children should develop their own plays with the guidance of adults.

In recent years I’ve become particularly interested in young people’s creative engagement and interaction with my texts beyond the viewing and/or reading experience and I’ve spent the last two years attempting to compose workshops and project experiences that harness that engagement and develop their narrative skills.

There have been several school-based productions of Children of the Black Skirt across Australia, including schools from Canberra and Launceston. There has also been a production in Japan. The play is highly conducive to school productions given the large number of characters in the work. It is very much an ensemble piece with roles that can be played by both genders. The narrative structures of Children of the Black Skirt and Hoods establish strong pretexts for extended storytelling.

In Children of the Black Skirt the text consists of six stories of lost or abandoned children (from a range of historical periods), which are told by our characters New One and Old One in the middle of the night in order to soothe the restless spirits.

72 The spirit stories in the text end at about 1960 with the story of a young aboriginal girl, Ruby who is taken from her mother’s housing commission flat. Some school groups have taken up the invitation that I’ve outlined in the production notes of the publication to write contemporary stories of Australian children who are lost or abandoned in some way.

One school in Canberra collectively created and performed two new narratives as part of their production of Children of the Black Skirt. One of the stories they created was of two Iranian refugee children separated from their parents on a boat incident off the coast of Australia. The other story was located in the goldfields of the 1800s. Using Children of the Black Skirt as a stimulus text, the young people were able to engage with both contemporary and historical events from a social justice perspective, identifying the forces of oppression in each narrative.

Hoods also employs a pretext for storytelling, which offers a structure for extended narrative building. It would be possible for groups of students to create their own narratives set in other cars in the wrecking yard.

In inviting this kind of narrative interactivity, I lay the foundations for young people to self-narrate and voice their own concerns. Giroux believes that this “allows them to reconceptualize themselves as citizens and develop a sense of what it means to fight for important social and political issues that affect their lives, bodies and society” (in McLean and Richer 1998, 5). Like Boal’s Forum Theatre it allows the spectator to participate in the making and remaking of the narrative.

73 Metatext

In the notes to his Threepenny Opera Brecht ridicules the accepted notion that a playwright must “embody” everything in the characters and action. Why should not comment from the outside also be possible? (Bentley 1981, 68).

Theatre is a highly collaborative medium and the work of Real TV has been founded on a deep awareness of and profound respect for this fact. As a creative team we have steadily worked toward the establishment of a shared aesthetic language, one that fuses the directorial, musical and textual visions of the company’s artists. At times this has been a difficult balance to establish and has caused creative friction, however a shared political vision for our work has shored us against creative collapse and ensured that all elements in our productions collaborate in pursuit of this vision.

The elements of music, design, multimedia and choreography are all essential components in the creation of meaning and form the metatext of a production. According to Brecht, a contradiction between these elements could achieve an alienating effect, illuminating a moment in a strange and surprising way thus enabling the audience to see the moment afresh. Theatre is essentially, “an aggregate of independent arts in provocative tension” (in Weber and Heinmen 1984, 33).

Weber & Heinmen cite a scene from Brecht’s film Kuhle Wampe as an example of Brecht’s provocative tension of the metatext:

Romantic organ music is played as a young unemployed youth returns home after another futile search for work, evoking a poignant contrast between music and image (Weber and Heinmen 1984, 33).

Music and sound, composed by Pete Goodwin, is a signature element in all Real TV productions, and this element has been manipulated in various ways in our productions of both Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt to achieve an alienation effect.

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In the composer’s foreword to the publication of Children of the Black Skirt, Pete Goodwin explains his influences in composing the music for the production:

For the original touring production I drew inspiration for the musical score from the records my family owned when I was a child. These included old recordings of Australian colonial folk songs that my Dad bought in his 20s prior to being married, as well as classic children’s records including Patsy Biscoe, songs from Sesame Street, and the Walt Disney Little Golden Book series. The scratchiness and crackle reminiscent of these records was deliberately kept in the soundtrack to evoke a sense of nostalgia (in Betzien 2005, xiii).

Goodwin’s electronically-manipulated soundtrack was used both to create mood and suspense, but much more importantly as a method of creating ‘contradiction between the elements’ and as a ‘provocation of tension’ (Weber and Heinmen 1984, 33). The ‘nostalgia’ Goodwin evoked in his soundtrack - for childhood naiveté and colonial romanticism - served as a striking ironic counterpoint to the narrative.

The arrival of Harrold Horrocks, Inspector of Orphanages, is scored with a golden book-style track that sharply contrasts the action of New One and Old One, slaving to clean the orphanage in preparation for Horrock’s arrival. This is perhaps the most “entertaining” sequence of the entire play: audiences greatly enjoy the grotesque buffoonery of Harrold as he consumes an entire morning tea and burps loudly at the conclusion of it. The music signals to the audience that they can take pleasure in laughing at Horrock’s bumbling stupidity. In doing so, they share solidarity with the orphans, who are likewise amused.

However, when the sequence ends in a humiliating inspection of the orphans, the mood changes dramatically.

Horrocks: S78. Step forward. Old One takes one step forward Horrocks: This child is dirty. Why are you so dirty? Old One: I’m not dirty. Horrocks: What? Old One: That’s my colour, Sir Horrocks: What? What?

75 Old One: That’s my colour, Sir. I’m Aboriginal, Sir. Horrocks: Nonsense. You do not wash yourself properly. Nonsense. She is to scrub herself hard with a scrubbing brush all over, Miss Greenant. We’ll just see if we can’t get that colour off you. (Betzien 2005, 27).

There is no mistaking the humiliation of this moment, both for the Indigenous actor playing the role and for the audience. The audience has participated in the pleasure of the earlier moment, mistaking Horrocks for a harmless clown, when in fact his ignorance is more sinister; it represents a systemic, State-endorsed assimilation of culture. The audience at this moment realise that the elements of the production and, in particular, the music, conspired to lead them in a certain direction and then shattered that with a shocking and surprising new awareness. Many times during this sequence, young people have been prompted to voice the words “He’s a racist”: an impulsive need to articulate the particular oppression that is being represented in this moment.

Similarly, the use of samples from old colonial folk songs, which are often distorted and played in reverse, are used to challenge cultural nostalgia for the colonial past, a nostalgia akin to cultural amnesia, which has erased many of the realities of the frontier. Children of the Black Skirt’s multiple stories tell a different history, one of poverty, genocide, slavery and abuse.

The music in Hoods is used in a similar fashion, as ironic counterpoint to the events taking place in the narrative. Again, music is used to juxtapose the mood and tone of a particular scene to illuminate the content and themes and provoke a tension between elements.

An example of this occurs during one of Kyle’s journal entries, a device through which Kyle reveals to the audience (endowed as members of his class) painful moments from his past. This moment, introduced by the Hoods as a “Special Feature” of the game, is underscored by a distorted track of a cat meowing the tune to the Christmas carol, Silent Night. Again, this track has a comedic quality, which sharply contrasts the story of Kyle’s cat. The soundtrack is sampled from commercially available album of cats and dogs barking and meowing Christmas carols. The use of this sample within the scene evokes the gaudy commercialism of

76 Christmas, of a consumer culture out of control. The tension climaxes when Kyle’s violent father discovers the cat and brutally exterminates it with a shovel on the grass.

Electronically manipulated Christmas carols are used again in the scene in Kmart. Deck the Halls has an elevator quality evoking the vacuous atmosphere of late night shopping in a suburban shopping centre at Christmas time. Again, the scene reveals a backdrop of consumer frenzy, the reality of families living below the poverty line: some families can’t afford to buy basic necessities, let alone gifts for Christmas.

Too little attention is paid these days to the life of reality. The things we put on stage are dead, never mind how real they are, if they have no function, if they are not used by actors or used on their behalf (Brecht in Thomson and Sacks 2006, 268).

Design is an integral component of the metatext and, like music, can be used to illuminate and estrange the image and the text. Real TV’s work, particularly for school touring, can be described as poor theatre. It is a theatre of minimalism. While we value design as a vital element in production it must be treated in such a way that it serves the function of the storytelling, the physicality of the actors, and the political vision of the work.

Brecht, in collaboration with his principal scenographer, Neher, revolutionalised stage design. Together they “enfranchised scenography, empowering it with potential for comment, criticism, humour and disruption” (Baugh in Thomson and Sacks 2006, 266). Formally, the sole function of design was the establishment of setting. Brecht’s Epic Theatre contrasted stark, impressionistic and functional backdrops with highly realistic properties. Brecht believed the use of old objects could “recount by their appearance the conditions of their use and imply a ‘sociology’ of prop making” (Baugh in Thomson and Sacks 2006, 268).

This approach to design creates an alienation effect. A tension develops between prop and backdrop that makes the real appear unfamiliar and strange. The design for Children of the Black Skirt conceptualised by Tanja Bear, deliberately manipulated this stylistic contradiction.

77

Key prop elements such as keys, a scrubbing brush, a fairytale book and a suitcase were all realistic prop elements, in fact, several of these items were sourced by the creative team during a field trip to an abandoned orphanage in Central Queensland. These properties were all weighted with a ‘sociology’ that became a powerful element in the production. These realistic items were then juxtaposed with an abstract landscape created out of sheets, a calico backdrop with a small window, and two wooden boxes. The orphanage beds were also dwarfed and abstract in design.

The Governess, in her formidable nineteenth-century dress was an alienation of a Catholic nun. The very large scissors she wears, attached to a skirt of rosary beads, enabled audiences to view this austere religious icon in a new and surprising way. Audiences suddenly read the oversized scissors, an alienation of the crucifix, as a threatening symbol of authority and control. When my grandmother saw the play in Rockhampton her first comment was that the Black Skirt reminded her of a particular nun who had terrified her when she was a girl. A strict Catholic, she went on to reflect on the cruelty of the nun and the schooling system. Ironically, this particular nun spent considerable time at Neerkol Orphanage in Central Queensland, one of the most notoriously abusive institutions in this country’s history. This was my grandmother’s first experience of theatre. Her reading of this alienated image could be interpreted as evidence of the effectiveness of this technique in enabling the spectator to view the world in a new way.

In Hoods the key function of the design (by Jonathon Oxlade) is transformation. The set must conjure the environment of the car-wrecking yard, the family car in a car park as well as multiple other spaces including: Kmart, A Night Owl, A highway, Australia Zoo, A classroom and the family’s flat. The set consists of a grey wooden trunk or seat, two saw horses and two flats of corrugated iron, wire and wood. Rather than using this backdrop as an opportunity for actors to conceal the changing of character, as is often the case in touring shows, they are used to focus the space and embed the storytelling in a shadowy and dangerous junk-filled fringe landscape.

78 In Hoods we make no attempt at creating an illusion or spectacle. The deliberate 'poverty' of the set actually prompted some young people to comment (prior to seeing the show), 'Look at the crappy set' or 'povo set'.

Walter Benjamin discusses the value of junk in children’s play; in using junk they “form their world of things by themselves, a small world in a large one. One has to have an eye for the norms of this small world of things if one wants to create deliberately for children” (in Zipes 2003, 9). The use of ‘junk’ in Hoods reminds the young audience of the transformative potential of junk, a childhood notion they have perhaps forgotten. The spectacle of our theatre is that of seeing the actor and the junk-inspired design transform endlessly and imaginatively to create new places and spaces.

I’ve already mentioned the lessons learnt from adopting a realistic design in the original production of Kingswood Kids. Realism in design, particularly in regard to this work, did not, could not, belong. The logic of the props in Hoods is that they are found objects, junk discovered and transformed in the wrecking yard. The chip packets, cigarettes, coke cans, shoes, cap and plastic bag are all items found in the body of the car. In the current production of Hoods one element contradicts this design logic. The blank-faced doll that represents the nine-month-old baby brother. The decision to blank the face contradicts the logic of the found objects, this is not a grubby child’s toy, a cabbage patch or a cheap plastic doll left in the trunk of an abandoned car, it is a treated object. While the blank-faced puppet and doll can be used for powerful effect (we used a blank faced rag puppet in Princess of Suburbia to represent the protagonist’s silent and overweight daughter) it does not belong in the logic of the Hoods design. It is not our intention to invite audiences to impose a face, emotions, on the blank-faced doll and thus evoke empathy for it as a real baby. As the storytellers, it is the Hoods’ treatment of these objects that signal to the audience their reality/non reality as the narrative progresses. The design must be manipulated in such a way that it continually reminds audiences that what they see unfolding before them is not real, but a game.

79 Conclusion

Effective political theatre engages audiences’ critical faculties and encourages social agency and activism. Live performance for young audiences provides an essential pedagogical role independent of the mainstream school curriculum. It offers an alternative vision of the world to that perpetuated by an increasingly pervasive mainstream media.

Pinter, among others, argues that we presently inhabit tumultuous and urgent times. We live in an era in which truth has been crucified, language has been held hostage, manipulated and ‘spun’ in order to disorientate, terrify and/or pacify the masses. McLaren argues:

We live in a moment of particular urgency and importance for the future of democracy as we bear witness to two conflicting potentialities which manifest themselves in the struggle on an increasingly worldwide basis between democratic forms of social life and those which can be labelled totalitarian and autocratic. A significant dimension of this crisis involves the politics of meaning and representation (McLaren 1995, 13).

Alienation is a technique through which an alternative view of the world can be glimpsed. Through the estrangement of an image, young audiences are invited to see the image afresh, to actively critique and negotiate its meanings. Epic Theatre, in direct opposition to dramatic theatre, presents the world as it is becoming. It shows humankind as changeable and capable of making change. It is a theatre of possibility and hope, of activism and revolution.

Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt are both examples of texts for young audiences that incorporate a range of alienation techniques. These techniques extend beyond the written text to the metatext, to the elements of performance, design and music. Both these texts challenge young audiences to critically engage with concepts of history, power, race, gender and class. Both plays also operate as pretexts for self-narration and invite young people to actively engage with their concepts and themes beyond the performance experience.

80 There is little doubt that Brecht’s theories have revolutionised the theatre. These theories are as relevant today, in a post September 11 world, as they were in Brecht’s era. What is clearly emerging in contemporary practice is the hybridising of these techniques in response to a highly mediatised and technologically- orientated environment. Many new plays for young audiences, while adopting postmodern forms, simultaneously critique these forms and create new spaces for active audience participation and negotiation. Contemporary political theatre practitioners, notably those dedicated to creating innovative performance for young people, have forged a new direction in political theatre, reaching beyond stringent adherence to Brecht’s ideology whilst acknowledging their great debt to his theatrical revolution.

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