Adam Grossetti Exegesis

It made you feel what? Using structure to convey theme

Playscript and Exegesis

Adam Grossetti

Bachelor of Arts (Drama)

Work submitted to The Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Creative Industries Faculty for the Master of Arts degree, 2007.

Keywords:

Playwriting, structure, theme, Caryl Churchill, political theatre

Abstract:

The exegesis and accompanying playscript 3606202 is concerned with how the structural framework of a play might be manipulated to help deliver a writer’s response to global events. The exegesis looks at examples of writers who have responded to global events over the last several decades and examines as a case study the structure of Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away. The writer then applies a similar structural blueprint to the writing of his play 3606202 and reflects on the outcomes such a structure achieved.

As part of this reflection, the exegesis explores how the writer’s desire to respond to global events led him to consider the impacts of structure on the sub-textual articulation of themes within a playscript.

The exegesis concludes by detailing the findings of an experiment conducted at the reading of his play and its professional presentation within the Wharf2Loud season at the Sydney Theatre Company.

ii Table of Contents:

Keywords:...... ii Abstract: ...... ii Table of Contents:...... iii Statement of Original Authorship:...... iv 1. Introduction...... 5 2. “3606202” – a play...... 8 3. Background to the play...... 35 3.1 Capra’s Story...... 37 3.2 The development of the play...... 42 3.3 Methodology ...... 44 4. Literature Review...... 46 4.1 New communication technologies and the evolving political nature of theatre...... 47 4.2 Aesthetic challenges of contemporary political theatre...... 50 4.3 Contemporary playwright’s responses to this challenge ...... 53 4.4 Structure as technique...... 57 5. Case studies ...... 62 5.1 Caryl Churchill - her play - Far Away, and its influence in the writing of 3606202.... 62 5.2 Case Study - 3606202...... 67 6. Conclusion ...... 83 Works Consulted:...... 84

iii Statement of Original Authorship:

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signed:

Dated:

1. Introduction

“Once one denies the common dignity of one’s fellow human beings, it is but a short path down the slippery slope to practices like torture.” (Cole 2003, 15).

Some time ago I overheard a playwright who had been working professionally for a number of decades state something close to the following: ‘that as playwrights and their writing evolve, they eventually come around to writing works of a political nature’. The above suggestion initially struck me as odd. I did not at that stage feel as though my work would eventually head toward the political. Indeed I found most plays that set out to be ‘political’ risked a tone of self-righteousness. Colloquially put, as an audience member it was sometimes like watching a dead horse being flogged.

Over time, however, I have found myself persuaded to the realisation that the above statement might not only be true, but also an imperative necessity. Certainly it is true that the playscript 3606202 appearing in this thesis is a political piece of theatre. It is a response by this writer to particular global events in our recent history. However, beyond 3606202 being simply a piece of political theatre, I sought to challenge myself and the work by disregarding the template of how to write a ‘well made play’ and instead allow the greater themes of the work, to architecturally impose themselves onto the shape of the work.

This led to examining how structure, the often-silent partner in the mechanics of a play, could effectively and ambiently promote the theme a creative work pursues.

I looked specifically at the structure in British playwright Caryl Churchill’s work Far Away, the themes of which I felt were similar to those I sought to explore in 3606202.

I found myself being creatively stretched by experimenting with the effect a plays structure might then have upon an audience. This was in complete opposition to how I might ordinarily go about writing a play. Instead of being inspired by an idea and exploring it through writing,

I was now inspired by structure and explored a response to ideas as a result.

I was forced then to ask myself the following question, “If playwrights respond to global events by writing political theatre, can a play's structure be used to convey theme?”

The two components of my thesis, namely the playscript and the accompanying exegesis, have a relationship to one another, in that they both serve to answer this research question , albeit in two different forms of symbolic language. I believe that my play should be able to exist as a creative work on its own merits, whereas the exegetical cannot exist without the play. For this reason I have structured the thesis by inserting the play after the brief positioning statement you are now reading. I wanted you to read it first before encountering my own reflections on it.

The remainder of this thesis is structured as follows:

Following the playscript I will provide some background notes to the work and further introduce my research question. I will then go on to detail the methodology I used in examining this research question.

I will then provide a brief survey of relevant literature, look at notions of political theatre and

structure. As part of the Literature Survey I will refer to some well-known political plays of

the last few decades.

I will then present a detailed reflective case study of my own journey in writing 3606202,

illustrating the thesis of this work by recording, analysing and posting the results of an

experiment I conducted whereby audience responses to a recent production of the play

3606202 at the Sydney Theatre Company in September of 2006 were recorded.

Finally, this exegesis will conclude by stating my findings. It will be my assertion that the

structure of a work, the actual framework of the play such as the length, number, and

placement of scenes in the work itself, can be harnessed to serve the greater political theme of the work and (just as succinctly as the text of the play or the journey of the characters might) can help deliver this thematic underpinning of the play.

3. Background to the play

To help you better understand the play you have just read and to position my research, I’d like to present you with some background information about what informed and inspired the play before I move on to detail my research question.

3606202 is the second work in a trilogy about migrant Italians living in Far North Queensland during the middle part of last century. The first part of the trilogy, a play titled Mano Nera

(produced by Queensland Theatre Company in 2005, and published by PlayLab Press in

2005) dealt with the tense racial relations between Italians and Australians living in the cane farming township of Ingham, Far North Queensland, during the 1930s.

The relationship was further soured due to the decade long operations of a gang of Italian extortionists named 'Mano Nera' (Black Hand) who used violent methods to extort money from the more wealthy members of their own Italian community.

Mano Nera concludes toward the end of the 1930s in the lead up to the period of Italian internment during World War II.

Thus, the first scene of 3606202 is set in 1942 and begins a few years after the first play

Mano Nera concludes. This scene consists of an interview between an Italian born,

naturalised Australian man, and a representative of the Australian Government. It is heavily informed by research documents acquired from the Australian National Archives and pertains to the lead up, arrest and internment of a character based upon my great Uncle, Celestino

Enrico Natale Capra.

Capra’s story was the fountainhead from which this play sprang. I was already a little familiar with the stories of internment relative to my own ancestry but with the advent of the

National Archives providing digital copies of files to be accessed through the internet I was able to source documentation and files the Australian Government used in their prosecution to intern Capra. The manner in which this information was covertly collected and an argument methodically built leading to the arrest and internment of Capra left me feeling incensed. I questioned how an Australian Government could do this to a man who was not only a naturalised citizen but had contributed significantly to the Australian and Italian communities and had made a considerable reputation as a very successful businessman. This bitter after taste concerning his treatment was heightened by the suggestion found in interview file sheets that Capra, because of his position amongst the Italian community in Cairns and because of his wealth was someone who could organise acts of sabotage against Australia, thereby aiding

Mussolini and Fascism. As far as I was concerned this was preposterous hyperbole fuelled by pig-ignorant, scheming paranoids.

This inspired me to consider the manner in which ethnic minorities have been treated within this country over the course of recent decades. I then began thinking about how there always seem to be one ethnic minority being targeted. That sadly we do not seem to learn from the

lessons in our past. In 2007, it appears as the ethnic minority de jour is anyone of 'Middle

Eastern appearance'.

The knowledge of Capra's internment also began to share for me a symbolic relationship with what I perceive are contemporary global issues. Issues such as the stripping of a citizens rights, heightened powers of policing organisations, the ignorance of the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment and imprisonment of 'enemy combatants' at Gauntanemo Bay, the torture cases enacted through the process of extraordinary rendition, and the incarceration of political refugees at detention centres, were some that possessed for me a symbolic relationship. This inspired me to find a way to respond to global events in the past and the present, speculating then on what might happen in the future, by writing a political piece of theatre.

Given that Capra’s story is so intrinsic to the play’s development, I’ll now go on to detail it briefly.

3.1 Capra’s Story

In 1941 my Great Uncle, Celestino Enrico Natale Capra, was interned as an Enemy Alien under the Enemy Alien Act and held in internment camps in Queensland, South Australia and

New South Wales for an approximate period of two years. Capra was an Italian born national who had migrated to Australia as a seventeen year old in 1914. He became through the

process of naturalisation an Australian citizen at the age of twenty one. Capra, like so many other Italian immigrants built his life in the sugar growing communities of Far North

Queensland and through hard work he quickly prospered.

By 1926 Capra had built a small empire consisting of sugar cane farming properties, hotels, stocks, bonds and other residences such as flats. He was the very image of the successful migrant and was also considered to be one of the more prominent Italians in the Far North

Queensland township of Cairns. In 1926 Capra with his family set sail for Europe, spending six months abroad they visited Italy, France and England. After returning to Australia Capra continued with his business pursuits, cane farms and purchasing hotels. By the mid 1930s

Capra was also a director of one of the larger sugar refinery mills in the Far North and the

President of The Armando Diaz Club, a social club for Italians and Australians living in the

Far North. Armando Diaz was an Italian military General whose name was adopted as a moniker by an Italian Naval Cruiser which had visited the port of Cairns. The Italian -

Australian residents of Cairns having staged a party for the ships officers and crew decided that in their honour they would create a social club, named after the Cruiser, where Italians could meet and socialise. The club lasted only a few years and had a membership representing a diverse political demographic including; anarchists, communists and fascists, but Capra would later argue that it was in fact just a place where Italians could catch up with one another regardless of political belief.

By the mid to late 1930s as Mussolini attempted to assert himself evermore upon the international political stage, Italians in the Far North began suffering the fallout of ethnic vilification due to having been either born in Italy, or even having Italian ancestry. Irrespective

of their political belief, many Italians began to fall victim to an unsympathetic and suspicious public and government fearful that their loyalties would always remain with the country of birth rather than their country of adoption and further that wealthy Italians would send large sums of money or do whatever they could to assist in the promotion of Fascism abroad, thereby strengthening Mussolini's Fascist imperialistic intentions.

By 1941 Capra was being investigated, followed and interviewed and State and Federal authorities were slowly compiling the case that he be interned.

Capra’s internment experience was not unique. “In all, Australia interned 4,721 people of

Italian origin, mostly men, out of the total Italian-born population of approximately 26, 000, amounting to almost 20 percent of the Italian-born residents of the continent. Almost, half

2,216, were interned from Queensland. Queensland also interned the majority of the naturalised British subjects of Italian origin, namely 602 from an Australian total of 947.”

(Elkner et al. 2005, 19-20).

The main argument authorities had against Capra was that due to his position amongst the

Italian community and because of his considerable wealth he was considered to be the perfect candidate for organising acts of sabotage against the British empire and its members.

Alleged evidence of Capra’s anti-British sentiment was that he supposedly gave speeches promoting Italian Fascism, denouncing the British empire, and organised fund raising campaigns such as a ‘Gold for the Motherland’ drive. This campaign encouraged gold

jewellery to be collected from Italians living in Australia and sent to Italy to help bypass embargo restrictions. Copied transcripts of speeches that Capra allegedly made show him quite vehemently dismissing the British empire and displaying a feverish and nationalistic

Italian patriotism, a keen respect for ‘Il Duce’ and the suggestion that Italians living abroad should do everything they could to assist Italian Fascism's internationalist campaign. In the hearings against Capra testimonies were included from already interned Italians that Capra was ‘the head Fascist’ or ‘the big fry’ in the Cairns district. Photographs of Capra standing with officers and members of the cruiser The Armando Diaz, who by their very nature and position in the Italian Navy were considered Fascists, became yet another albatross around

Capra’s neck. The fact that Capra in a photograph wore a badge of the colours of the Italian flag gave testament to the charge that he be a true Fascist. Capra denied he had ever made anti-

British speeches and went on in his defence to list the contributions he had made by way of financial donations to the Australian military, including work raising money with the

Australia Red Cross and his donation of a Sydney property opposite the Australian Military barracks in Oxford Street, Paddington, to be used free of charge by the Australian Army for the duration of the war. This evidence did little to convince his prosecutors that he be considered anything but a Fascist. In fact, they listed such displays of apparent overt love of his adopted country as clever ways in which he attempted to disguise his true innermost feelings of anti-British sentiment.

Another tendered piece of evidence that Capra used in his defence was of an incident that involved him being followed during a business trip via train from Cairns to Sydney. During this trip an undercover agent attempted to persuade and engage Capra in discussion of an anti-

British sentiment. The result being that Capra was less than forthcoming and the undercover agent was adamant in his finding that Capra should not be considered a person of interest regarding internment and further recommended that Capra being of good character not be interned. Yet the case against Capra gained momentum, fuelled after a farmhouse of Capra was raided and a large notebook was found in which the names and addresses were all men and women of Italian origin. This notepad, it was alleged, proved that Capra was building a network of Italian Fascists living within Far North Queensland. Capra defended this charge with the simple assertion that though the notepad did indeed include names and addresses of his fellow countrymen living in their newly adopted country, it was in fact a Christmas card list of business associates and friends. This fact held no sway with the prosecuting officers.

Capra went on to defend his love of his adopted country by citing the fact that his brother, also an Italian immigrant to Australia, had renounced his loyalty to his country of birth and even fought for Australia in World War I. Capra stated that he had been too young to fight for

Australia in WWI and too old to fight for Australia in WWII. Both his ex-soldier brother and he were subsequently interned.

As a writer with Italian ancestry and having a direct link to this man and his experiences I felt triggered by what I considered to be an injustice served upon Capra. His experience compelled me to examine and respond by creating a dramatic work. I’ll examine why this was in the following section.

3.2 The development of the play

Around about January, February 2006, when I began writing 3606202, I had no clear or pre- formed notion of where the play would go in terms of direction and scenes. Although I did conceive that it would be a ‘normal’ sort of play. A standard three act, ninety-minute play, with Capra as one of the lead characters. Using the Internet sourced archival material concerning his internment I began to imagine a plot based upon those years of his life.

Referencing files of interviews between Capra and investigating officers I began to write the play. However, I was not satisfied. I immediately saw it as being just another play about a victimised migrant. It was, as far as I considered, the sort of thing that had been done to death, as theatre it preached to the converted, and as a writer it bored me senseless.

Though I remained intrigued by the allegorical and or symbolic relationship between what I perceived as injustices in the past with the present and I craved to find a way to give this work theatrical substance rather than risk creating just another didactic rant.

I re-thought the more distinguishing emotional responses that I experienced when researching the internment of my great Uncle. I imagined what it must have been like to be suddenly plucked from his home, locked in cage, transported thousands of kilometres from his family to an internment camp, had his letters and correspondence censored, his business dealings and friendships investigated, and his basic civil rights inexorably stripped. Thinking about this,

presented me with the themes which would become central to my play; themes of dislocation and disorientation.

These themes also resonated for me when I considered what I believe are acts of horror associated with contemporary warfare, for example, the prisoner abuse scandals at Abu

Ghraib or the internment of Enemy Combatants at Gauntanemo Bay.

While the response is indeed visceral I then sought to find a technique that might invoke a response by an audience similar to what I felt when responding to the internment of my great

Uncle, and global events in the present.

While trying to investigate a new method or approach to the writing of this play I took part in a workshop at The Sydney Theatre Company with British playwright Simon Stephens.

During the workshop we examined the structure of Caryl Churchill's play Far Away.

The knowledge achieved from this workshop led me to realise that a play's structure might be the very technique through which I could convey themes as a response to global events.

I realised that I didn't have to rely on the framework of a classically well-made play, and that indeed writing a play adhering to such a structure could in fact work against the conveyance of themes intrinsic to the work.

The following research question was prompted as a result:

If playwrights respond to global events by writing political theatre, can a play's structure be

used to convey theme?

3.3 Methodology

In order to answer the research question I drew on two distinct research methodologies, one aimed at approaching a creative work by another author from without (a critical approach) in

order to frame an approach to my own creative work from within (a practice orientated and

developmental approach). These methodologies were namely:

I performed a critical textual analysis of Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away, reading

specifically for use of structure as a means of communicating theme. Despite the structural

locos of concern in my analysis, this is not a strict structuralist approach to the text. Rather, I

consider that my reading of the text shares concerns with reader-response analysis in that I

am looking at structure so far as it produces outcomes in the ‘reader’ of the play. As such, I

would classify my methodology here as being rhizomic, a reader-response structural reading

around an interpretive community of theatregoers (each performance creating a new and

unique interpretive community).

This textual analysis worked as a seed for a reflective process of research around my own

creative work.

This research was practice-led research, in that I was performing my creative practice as research, thereby facilitating the opportunity to reflect upon and unpack my own creative practice. This process is very similar to the Action Research Spiral outlined by Kemmis and

McTaggart (in Denzin and Lincoln, 2005: 565). In their description of the spiral, the authors depict action research as a circular, repetitive action involving planning, acting and observing, and reflection before a revised plan is made. This closely describes the process of writing and reflecting on this play script, and the interplay between the exegetical and the creative in this thesis.

4. Literature Review

Recently Nigel Jamieson, an Australian theatre maker who specialises in cross-cultural projects and large-scale ceremonies created a work with choreographer Garry Stewart. The work was entitled Honour Bound and was inspired, as Jamieson states:

“by the events of September 11, 2001 and our (Australia’s) involvement in the

US led ‘War on Terror’” (Sydney Opera House 2006, Honour Bound Program

notes, 7).

Interviewed further in the 'Sydney Performance Program' before the world premiere of

Honour Bound at the Sydney Opera House, Jamieson was asked: “How do you see the role of theatre in the world we are living in?” Jamieson responded:

“On one level this is personal. I feel very passionate about some of the changes that

are happening to the world and the wonderful country we are living in and I think the

best theatre comes out of such passion. I suppose each of us in our own way tries to

make a contribution. I am a theatre maker, so this is how I try and contribute. I do

believe theatre provides a special space, a coming together of people under one roof or

under one sky to contemplate key issues that confront us” (ibid, 8).

In this literature review, I will unpack some of the ideas implicit in Jamieson’s statement.

Specifically, I will look at notions regarding the impacts of new communication technologies

on the political purpose of theatre, some challenges and dangers in responding to global events through political theatre, how some playwrights have responded to these challenges, dramatic techniques they have employed, and how the structure of a play may be another technique used by playwrights to inflect and inform a response to global events.

4.1 New communication technologies and the evolving political nature of theatre.

To a significant extent, the world has become a more accessible place through the information- age advent of communication technologies that allow transparency and immediacy with the events that shape our history and destiny. As a result, the rate in which the ordinary citizen

(in the affluent West, at least) can be affected by and start to think about cultivating their response to specific global events has dramatically increased.

Writing about the speed of information sharing on The Sietch Web Blog, a blogger identified only as 'The Naib' wrote about the response time Internet users had to the attack on the Twin

Towers, New York city, September 11, 2001.

"Within seconds links to similar 9/11 postings were posted. So now less than two

minutes after the event I have a historical context to places today's events into. Fast

information, fast analysis from many different points of view, even a comparison to

past events. And now I am posting all of this information to my blog, only several

seconds after the original post was read by me, spreading the information farther and

faster still" (http://www.blog.thesietch.org 2006).

The increased accessibility of this new mediasphere provides the playwright with new opportunities, responsibilities and modalities within which they can react to global events.

Theatre has always offered a unique space in which public discourse can take place. This space is potentially a political one - one whose live, performative nature can be used by artists and audiences to explore global events in a different dialogic frame to other media. The phenomenon of playwrights responding to political events through theatre is a widely documented one. As Robert Brustein notes:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as a nation's politics grow more regressive,

its arts tend to become more rambunctious. Watch out for the increasing invocation of

mantras like "loyalty," "patriotism," and "moral values." (Brunstein 2004)

Nora M. Alter in her work ‘Vietnam Protest Theatre: the television war onstage’, explores the phenomenon of writers for theatre responding politically to global events in a way that was both influenced and provoked by the increased accessibility of images of those events.

Specifically, she writes about the connectivity between the bombardment of media images the western world witnessed in the Vietnam war (the so-called “first televised war) and the use or re-issue of such images in a theatrical context. Alter writes:

‘Because of its live nature, theatre could turn representations into a lived experience,

with a renewed feeling of immediacy and the urge to act accordingly. Since it cannot be

fully reproduced, theatre always restores specificity to historical events, the complex

meaning informing the incandescent image: a real human being burning himself in

protest is not just a sensational photograph. When they first appeared, many

atrocious images of death did shock and outrage the public, but through constant

exposure and overuse, this initial response became dulled, except in theatre with its

vivid illusions’ (Alter 1996, 172).

Any number of contemporary western writers still feel the need to respond to global political issues through their arts practice. The Australian playwright Stephen Sewell in a 1983 interview with Jeremy Ridgman defined his attempt to ‘appropriate the world’ dramatically:

“I think a play is one of the most succinct and insightful statements or observations in

our culture and I’m trying to get as much of the world into that form, that dramatic

space, as exists.” (in Fitzpatrick 1991, 9)

Nigel Jamieson’s quote at the beginning of this literature review also reflects an urgency on behalf of some theatre makers to consider and articulate a response to the issues and injustices they are confronted with through a creative work which might then inspire an audience to think about and act upon contemporary political issues. In Jamieson’s case, this was the incarceration at Guantanamo Bay of the Australian David Hicks.

It’s important to note that this impulse and response is taking place within an information rich, highly technologised environment. It follows that the creative works produced are ambiently – and at times explicitly informed by the new opportunities that this environment

brings. One example of the latter, of a playwright explicitly leveraging the new mediasphere is

David Hare. Hare’s 2004 play Stuff Happens is a work of political theatre that uses transcripts gleaned from popular media sources to scaffold the script:

Stuff Happens, charts the staff meetings (at the White House and at No. 10 Downing

Street), closed door conferences, public addresses and back door diplomacy and the

betrayals that led to the American-spearheaded invasion of Iraq. Some of the material

(including its title, famously uttered by Secretary of Defence, Donald H Rumsfeld

about looting in newly liberated Baghdad) is taken directly from transcripts of press

conferences, assemblies and television interviews” (Brantley 2006, 26).

In short, the prolificacy of information opens new avenues to playwrights who wish to create theatre that responds to global events and there are any number of contemporary playwrights who not only have this desire but also are finding ways to achieve it.

4.2 Aesthetic challenges of contemporary political theatre

A playwright is neither an essayist nor a journalist. There are aesthetic demands placed on his or her work that are unique to the medium. A theatrical work that is merely polemic, merely an attempt to make an audience think or act runs the risk of becoming redundant or losing its integrity as a dramatic, performative form. As the critic, Terry Teachout writes:

“All art, political or not, must make everything more beautiful in order to fulfil its

most essential function, that of seizing and holding the viewer's attention. Any

political artist who aspires to be more than a cheerleader for the converted must first

learn this lesson, and learn it well. A boring work of art cannot convince anyone of

anything, not even that we should believe what it tells us about the world in which we

live. And nothing is more boring--or less believable--than a story with only one side.

This necessarily places a heavy burden on the political artist, who must not only be a

good artist but also a competent reporter and researcher. Just as important, though, it

may tempt him to cut his factual coat to fit his persuasive cloth. Turning messy fact

into orderly fiction necessarily entails simplification; turning it into artful fiction

demands as well that this simplification acknowledge the full complexity of human

nature and human experience. These seemingly contradictory requirements can easily

be fumbled by the artist whose principal goal is to persuade an audience of the

rectitude of his cause. We do not expect him to portray the world creatively, but to

tell us the unadorned truth about things as they really are. Yet propagandists are

rarely prepared to tell the whole truth and nothing but. They alter reality not in order

to "make everything more beautiful" but to stack the deck” (Teachout 2005, 16).

In essence, just because a theatre work presents itself as responding to global events, it’s not necessarily good theatre. Aleks Sierz’s journal article: Beyond Time: The State of British New

Writing supports the notion that writers are committed to addressing global events through their creative work, albeit at the risk of telling an audience what they may already know or fear.

“The events of the past two or three years have encouraged critics and commentators to applaud a revival of political drama, usually seen as theatre's response to 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror. For the first time in ages, the Edinburgh Festival fringe has engaged with the wider world beyond flatshare dramas and council estate swear- fests, while all over Britain theatres have been putting on anti-war plays. Often hyped as a rediscovery of radicalism, this trend is, however, still being held back by the dead hand of naturalism and by the popular notion that docu-drama is the best way of staging ideas.

In autumn 2003, for example, the Tricycle Theatre put on Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry. Written by journalist Richard Norton-Taylor and director Nicolas

Kent, the play was an edited version of the public enquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly, widely seen as a casualty of the Blair government's desire to go to war in Iraq despite there being no immediate threat to Britain from Saddam Hussein.

But although it was good to see theatre respond so quickly to events, in this case the docu-drama was self-defeating. It strongly implied that the government had done wrong but the actual conclusion of the Hutton Inquiry, which was delivered after the play was staged, came to the opposite verdict, and exonerated Blair. In terms of aesthetics, the trend towards verbatim theatre, where most or all of what is spoken on stage is based on true statements, also seems to put the imagination on the back burner. Political plays such as David Hare's The Permanent Way (2003) and Stuff

Happens (2004) or Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo's Guantanamo: "Honor Bound

To Defend Freedom" (2004) come across as powerful public forums, but they can't be

said to stretch drama's aesthetic boundaries, or even suggest ways of changing the

world. Like Reality TV, they simply tell us what we already know“ (Sierz 2005, 58).

4.3 Contemporary playwright’s responses to this challenge

Playwrights approach and try to solve this problem in a number of ways. The conscious integration of dramatic techniques, or the invention of novel techniques available to writers operating in the new mediasphere, can both serve to keep the 'beauty' in political theatre. As an example, in David Hare’s play Stuff Happens the technique of using factual dialogue in many of his scenes created an historical drama relevant to our contemporary setting. After its

London premiere at The Royal National Theatre, Michael Billington reviewed it for The

Guardian and wrote:

“David Hare's Stuff Happens has already become a chewed-over public event. But,

after attending its Olivier press night, it also strikes me as a very good, totally

compelling play: one that may not contain a vast amount of new information but that

traces the origins of the Iraq war, puts it in perspective and at the same time astutely

analyses the American body politic.

Political theatre comes in all shapes and sizes: satirical, fictional, documentary and

agitational. But Hare claims, with some justice, to be writing a history: one that traces

a dramatic sequence of events through characters and issues.

Hare, in fact, constantly creates a form of internal dialectic. The play ruthlessly

exposes the dubious premises on which the war was fought. At the same time, it

questions our complacency by reminding us of the pro-war arguments.

Hare's play offers a probing guide to the Iraq war and shows how the whole mess was

based on a disastrous, unproven link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. One

comes out enriched and better informed. However, the pleasure lies in seeing recent

history, in which we all have a stake, enacted on Britain's most prominent public

stage.” (Billington. 2004, 31).

Playwrights and theatre makers respond to the aesthetic challenge that creating political theatre demands in a variety of ways. Urban Theatre Projects, a theatre company in Sydney's outer suburbs, a location far removed from the traditional inner city theatre district, responds to social issues affecting specific communities by developing and creating site specific theatre projects. The artistic vision of Urban Theatre Projects outlines an objective to create works of a site specific nature that are drawn from the everyday lives of the inhabitants of the specific community:

“Urban Theatre Projects will continue to make new performance works that engage in

socially relevant questions and are intimately connected to specific sites and diverse

communities. These stories and images of contemporary urban life are drawn from,

and heavily influenced by, the company's geographic and social location, in the

western suburbs of Sydney. The company has become increasingly renowned for

creating distinctive new theatre that is generated by multi-skilled teams of artists

working in residence. These performances are developed through a process of ongoing

dialogue between artists and communities and, consequently, have a strong connection

to places and issues" (www.urbantheatreprojects.com.au 2006)

As can be seen from the above quote, the vision is clearly political in its aim to engage with socially relevant questions and issues. This is exemplified by the project 'Back Home' which was a response by the theatre makers to respond to issues affecting men in the western suburbs of Sydney.

The Urban Theatre Projects Home Web Page describes ‘Back Home’ as a “timely and ultimately life-affirming project unlike any other” (ibid, 2006). Bristling with explosive physicality, this is a deeply emotional story that takes us through the lives of men coming to terms with their past and facing up to their future. Set in the backyard of a house, the play reunites four friends in a night intended to celebrate old times. It seems the bonds of mateship have stood the test of time even though the past few years have seen them walk different paths. However, as the night unravels, a litany of shattered dreams and broken promises bubble to the surface. ‘Back Home’ enters the volatile world of men's business, as four men from different cultural backgrounds (Samoan, Indigenous, Palestinian, Torres Strait Islander) reckon with issues of friendship, manhood, culture and reconciliation. ‘Back Home’ was

created working in-residence in Sydney's western suburbs. Originally staged outdoors in a suburban backyard, it can also be presented in-theatre.

In this way companies such as Urban Theatre Projects, by using site specific environments, do in fact create political theatre which responds to global events by relying on the universality and commonality of themes, in this case men's issues, thus transcending the boundaries of the western suburb districts of Sydney and achieving a relevance in the global,

(specifically Western male) context.

Stephen Dunne, Theatre critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote of the work:

"This is local narrative that transcends geography, presenting the universality of

human experience and slapping down the lie of unbridgeable cultural separation"

(Dunne 2005, 32).

I suggest that the employment of distinctive theatrical devices such as the use of transcripts as with Hare during the writing of Stuff Happens or the staging of site specific work with a relationship to particular community issues, such as Urban Theatre Projects are committed to producing, enable theatre makers to generate an authenticity to the work in a manner audiences find cogent and timely. To paraphrase Terry Teachout’s aforementioned quote; art should enable us to believe what it tells us about the world in which we live.

Theatre therefore, if purely polemic, is an art form that is rarely neither satisfying nor instructive for an audience. But political theatre, with a careful eye on dramatic techniques can embolden through its devices both performer and the audience alike by informing us about the world we inhabit.

Structure then, like site specificity or the use of verbatim transcripts as dialogue, is surely another device that writers can employ in the creation of political theatre. Structure itself can be technique. As playwright Michael Gurr writes:

"I've fallen a bit in love with theatrical structure and what theatrical structure can do.

The expression 'well-made play' is mostly used as an insult. It's never bothered me.

Shouldn't plays be well made? Not stuck in some false notion of the perfect three acts,

but actually made well. Like buildings, however eccentric in design, should be made

well. You see the half-baked and the shambles pretending to be avant-garde, but most

originality seems to come from people who know exactly what rules they're breaking"

(Gurr 1996, 122-123).

4.4 Structure as technique

It is this writer’s assertion that the use of structure is another technique that can be effectively employed to positively engage theatre audiences with work that responds to global events, making redundant any likelihood of simply telling an audience what they already know. Structure, the internal framework of the play, is a powerful way in which

playwrights can articulate and symbolise their relationship with and response to global events. Allowing the structure of the work, the size and shape and length of scenes for example, to have a symbolic representation, can mean the structure itself acts as a metaphor, a silent yet affecting narrative, beyond the ordinary manner of conveying themes and meanings through words, dialogue or characters. This device allows the playwright to articulate and respond to global events in a way, this writer would argue, is deeply engaging and satisfying.

Structure can be used to influence and impact upon an audience in an almost subliminal manner. The modernist notion that the structure of an artistic work is intrinsically linked with its ability to engage with the world is of particular relevance to this idea:

‘Modernist works set up dualistic situations; the luminosity of the fragments of

which many Modernist works are composed is the result of the formally

unclassifiable structure in which they are embedded. In exchange for, and because of,

this initial alienation or sense of strangeness with the formal features of Modernist

works, we have the feeling of touching reality itself once we have broken through the

shell of initial strangeness. We need the difficulty to sense the ease’ (Flemming 1996,

119).

Structure is important because it allows the playwright to either impose order onto a seemingly chaotic world, or indeed impose chaos onto an ordered world.

"A play is a reflection of life (through one particular playwright's eyes), only

sharpened, edited, and intensified. Therefore a playwright must learn to select,

compress, and organize actions and characters into a compact whole. Plot structure is

a way a dramatist forms reality into a play. Structure is necessary because it creates a

logical sequence from chaos; it turns the random action of life into the structured

action of a play. Japanese Kabuki plays, in which a performer's style is often more

important than story, have structure. Even absurdist plays have a plot-structure. All

good plays have a structure, just as language has syntax. Playwrights may free

themselves from formula, but they must never lose structure." (Downs and Anne

1998, 60-61).

The structure of a play therefore that presents an erratic and chaotic world might then be strengthened by utilising a framework that, instead of relying on a stable, consistent and traditional structure, is supported instead by one that has a symbiotic relationship to the erratic and or chaotic nature inherent in the plays theme. Or, in the case of this writer's work

3606202, a structure composed to support and be linked to, his response to global events with specific reference to the themes of dislocation and disorientation.

Unconventionally used, structure could then be a technique employed by the playwright to convey the greater meaning of the work. "Structure is the business of creating the best vehicle to carry and display the idea" (Aronson 2000, 39).

Structure quite often implies itself subliminally on the reader or audience member. The reader

or audience more often than not approach a work with an unspoken understanding that the work will most likely fit into a recognised and standardised framework of a three act structure: beginning, middle, end or; 'once upon a time' through to 'and they all lived happily ever after.' But what happens when the structure of a work, such as Caryl Churchill's play

Far Away presents a different structure to the norm. In a recent conversation with a theatre practitioner (who has asked to remain anonymous) and who has a number of decades professional experience, I asked what reaction she had immediately following her viewing of the world premiere of Churchill's Far Away. Paraphrased, her response was that it left her baffled and confused. She went on to say that upon leaving the theatre with her husband a discussion ensued along the lines that they were frustrated and confused. Confused as to what to make of the piece and frustrated that though they were intelligent people and they could follow the narrative of the piece they found it hard to make sense of the world in which the play was contained. Similarly upon my first reading of the work I too felt consumed by this vortex of seemingly abstract theatricality. Yet it was only after reconsidering the work as it were from a different angle that I began to accept and promote the notion that this reaction by the reader or audience was entirely the desired reaction the playwright intended. That the world Churchill created, a world turning on itself, a world of confusion where its readers are left baffled, is central to her play Far Away.

"It is a paradox that the only way a playwright can communicate that life is erratic and

pointless is by constructing a stable, consistent, meaningful plot structure" (Downs

and Anne 1998, 61).

Structure is an effective tool to engage with the reader by challenging the normality of their notions about what theatre should be and how it should look. Structure has the ability to cajole the audience unknowingly. It can re-shape their expectations, communicating to them on an unseen level while simultaneously uprooting their sense of structural convention, forcing them to think beyond the learned structural paradigms.

The structure of a play if harnessed effectively can be employed as one theatrical device that, consciously manipulated, results in a work of political theatre that has both integrity and a direct relationship to how the playwright seeks through their work to respond to global events.

“The Modernist belief was widespread that a relation of reference to the world existed

somehow closer than that of conventional language, and that the work could exemplify

this relation. Modernist works touch the world in a way that other works do not”

(Flemming 1996, 113).

5. Case studies

In the following case studies, I hope to demonstrate how an unconventional (an essentially modernist) approach to structure worked within Caryl Churchill's play Far Away and how this was deeply influential in the creation of my own work 3606202. This section is self- reflective and self-reflexive. I rely mainly here on my own observations, production notes, analyses and the outcomes I observed from the staging of my play.

I hope that this internalised approach to these case studies will be useful in terms of opening a window into the process behind the play which accompanies this exegesis, as well as providing a scholarly insight into Caryl Churchill's seminal work.

5.1 Caryl Churchill - her play - Far Away, and its influence in the writing of 3606202

Coinciding with the preparation, research and development of the playscript accompanying this exegesis I was invited to participate in a seminar at the Sydney Theatre Company with the British playwright Simon Stephens. The timing was fortuitous. The seminar was an opportunity to unpack the structure of plays. We looked at a number of plays yet the work whose structure I had an immediate response to was that of the British playwright Caryl

Churchill and her play Far Away.

To be able to show how Churchill’s play1 informed the writing of my work 3606202, it may be useful to provide a brief analysis of her play in the following way:

I would ask the reader to imagine the play as could be represented in a diagram with three distinct sections each representing acts within the play. (I will provide a copy of my own diagrammatic representation in the later following pages) As an experiment it may be useful to put pencil to paper and the reader draw this suggested diagram. Imagine a horizontal line that dissects the page. Beginning on the left side of the line draw a connecting vertical line. Draw another vertical line about a third of the way along the horizontal. Another vertical line two- thirds along the horizontal, and one last vertical line the far right of the horizontal. These divisional lines represent three acts of the play. The first section represents the first act of the play. Far Away begins with a scene that is between a girl and her aunt. During the scene the drama escalates. The young girl questions her aunt about having witnessed her uncle hitting people with a iron bar. Eventually she is hushed up and normalcy restores itself, as the act ends.

The scene opens and closes using theatrical devices that an audience would be familiar with.

Lights rise on the interior of a country house. It is night. We are engaged with the scene by the very nature of its content and our familiarity of the theatrical symbols we have come to recognise. We also desire to know if the girl is telling the truth or making up stories. We are

1 It is beyond the scope of this exegesis to unpack the remainder of Churchill’s oeuvre, although many of her other plays (eg: Mad Forest, Cloud Nine) are also political. For a further discussion of the political nature of her other work please see Patterson (2003), Kritzner (2008).

placated as an audience and accept the relative ambiguity of the situation. We accept therefore the opening of the play, standardised as it is in devices and symbols we are comfortable with, and though we might not feel satisfied that we could guess an ending, the play, and its structure, has not left us confused or disconnected to the work. The first act it should be said is only several pages long.

The second vertical line, which dissects the horizontal line and at a distance from the first vertical line, represents the end of the first act and the start of the second act.

The second act opens several years later and involves the same girl from the first scene and a young man. They are making hats for what we can only assume, according to their dialogue, must be a procession of some sort. Their conversation seems at first trivial yet as the act unfolds there comes an almost sinister or unsettling element to the information we absorb as an audience. The second act, not unlike the first is only some dozen pages long, with most of the scenes short and brief. Therefore for each scene that takes place in the second act I suggest a vertical line be drawn down to the horizontal line, each line represents a scene in the second act. The second act as represented by the drawing is composed then of numerous short scenes of differing length. Quite unconventional, not at all similar to the prototypical ‘well made play’ and indeed creating an effect on the audience that might be confusing or unsettling.

The scenes are often only a few words long, seem rather abstract and bear little apparent significance to the first act.

I will include now in the below a scene which takes place toward the end of Churchill's second

act.

5. Next day. A procession of ragged, beaten, chained prisoners, each wearing a hat, on

their way to execution. The finished hats are even more enormous and preposterous

than in the previous scene (Churchill 2000, 24).

Suddenly the audience learns that the hats being made by the young girl (the niece) and her possible love-interest are for political prisoners destined to be executed. And, the hat makers are indeed in a competition to make the best hat.

I suggest the effect of short scenes throughout the second act is intentionally jarring (as opposed to baffling or confusing) and in keeping with what I believe Churchill’s theme of the work is. Before expounding upon the theme of the work I will return to the diagrammatic

representation of the play.

Another line would be drawn to represent the end of the second act and beginning of the third.

Like the first act, the third act is not composed of short scenes. They could almost be thought

of as those an audience or reader would find in a classically made play.

This physical diagram of the work allows an eventual picture of the complete fabric or inner

structure of the play to be seen as something tangible. The discordant nature of the second

act, with its short, jarring scenes, forces the audience into an unfamiliar, theatrically speaking, and unsettling territory.

At the time of the seminar at the Sydney Theatre Company, I suggested that the diagram

(particularly the second act) representing the structure of the Churchill's play Far Away possessed an almost violent attribute. And it is this attribute, how violent the world's inhabitants are to each other, and to the world in general, that I believe is the major theme within Caryl Churchill's work, Far Away. And it is this theme of violence, that I also believe

Caryl Churchill conveyed through the manner in which she chose to structure her play.

Far Away is a play about war and way ordinary people normalise atrocity. It is a play where through its duration we witness a kind of demise to our world and the world turning in on itself. By the play’s final act seemingly inanimate objects such as hair spray or pins, bleach or foxgloves, and environmental elements such as the wind or the rain or the oceans become somehow part of the unfolding and withering destruction of planet earth. Inanimate objects or natural forces are endowed with personalities and allegiances that in turn bring about further destruction and demise.

Churchill uses structure as effectively as she does words or characters in the promotion of themes that relate to her desire to respond to global events. The inherent violence of a world at war is represented by the discordant and unsettling structure within the play itself.

5.2 Case Study - 3606202

As mentioned previously I began writing my play 3606202 as the second part of a trilogy

about Italians in the Far North of Queensland. I had intended that the play would be a

classically made three act work with an interval somewhere during the second act and with

such standard characters as police sergeant, migrant (in this case an Italian), perhaps his wife and then a few secondary characters. In short the play was to be yet another historical drama.

Following the revelation during the seminar mentioned above, I decided to begin the writing process again, this time starting by creating a structural framework which might come close to conveying what I felt were the themes of my play. Most importantly the notions of disorientation and dislocation struck me as themes worth exploring. However, an urge to respond to more recent global events, such as prisoner abuse scandals, allowed me to re- imagine the play as jumping from the period of internment concerning my great Uncle, through moments in our recent history and finally to an unknown future. By seeking and responding to global events and influenced by the structure of Far Away I was able to start

sketching out what I imagined a blueprint structure of my play might look like. Below is the

original sketch of the proposed structure to 3606202.

The horizontal line signifies the play’s linear narrative from the beginning to the end. The vertical lines signify the beginning and conclusion to scenes, acts and the complete play.

Notice the vertical lines in act two. The number of lines and the short distance between them signify the length of the scenes contained within the second act. You will notice that the second act therefore contains a significant number of scenes more than the first and third act, with the former and latter (First and Third), being mainly complete scenes, with only two moments or 'blimps' within their respective acts where the narrative line is disturbed. By looking at those moments where the narrative is disturbed in the first and third act I proposed that the effect for an audience might mirror their experience of absorbing the physical and verbal action in act two; thereby dislocating and disorientating them from the familiar environment they assumed they were within.

This dislocation from ones environment and the disorientation from a known location resonated as some of the central themes to this work. The structure of my play 3606202 was built around trying to engage with my own sense of being disorientated in response to global events and also to engage with the desire to disorientate the audience from expectation and familiarity and thus to metaphorically align through the use of structure the disorientating effect that war has on all individuals, military and civilian, who are engaged in one way or another, with it.

In the following I will outline how I sought to achieve this task. I will do this in two ways.

The first, I will elaborate on an experiment that I undertook when the play was read to individuals within the creative writing cohort: the Creative Industries Masters students at

Queensland University of Technology. I will then detail my findings to this experiment.

Secondly, I will respond to a short season the play received after being produced by The

Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf2Loud program in September 2006. I will then elaborate further on my findings regarding whether the outcome of the experiment yielded results that I was satisfied with and that supported the greater theme of the creative work.

After establishing a diagrammatic structure to the work that I was satisfied with, I started thinking about what each component of the piece came to represent. I knew that I wanted to keep the starting point of the work as that of the interview set in 1942 between my great

Uncle and a representative of the Australian Government. Suddenly I started to imagine the work set in three distinct periods of time. The first, as mentioned above, set in 1942 - even though the war had been going on for a considerable period of time, began to represent a

period for the character based on my great Uncle, as a time before a war. In that, he was an unwilling participant in the business of war simply as a result of his birthplace. He was, let us not forget, the president of an Italian-Australian social club, a prominent figure amongst the

Italian population of Cairns and in anyone’s language, worth big bucks and therefore, due to an Australian government paranoid that wealthy ‘Enemy Aliens’ might make significant financial donations to their country of birth, a threat.

During the writing process I continually returned to a quote that I listed at the very beginning of this exegesis, and which I have re-printed below.

“Once one denies the common dignity of one’s fellow human beings, it is but a short

path down the slippery slope to practices like torture” (Cole 2003, XV).

I mention this now to alert the reader to other stimuli that generated and supported a way in which this writer could respond to global events.

By picking apart the quote and examining its own inherent structure I quickly realised that the play could begin, as it does in the interview scene set in 1942, by denying the common dignity of one of our fellow human beings. The beginning of the quote could stand as an overriding title to the first act - in this case the Italian born naturalised Australian man whose dignity is denied.

The quote, like Churchill's structure to Far Away seemed to illuminate the path the play was about to take.

Act two then began to take shape in my mind. Recalling the structural qualities that I wanted to achieve by keeping in mind the structural diagram, I began writing a series of short, abstract, possibly cryptic scenes that would have a relationship not only with the notion of dislocation and disorientation but also be supported by the second half of the above quote from Cole, which is pasted below.

it is but a short path down the slippery slope to practices like torture

If in act one I was able to establish the setting, time, place and characters for an audience, I knew that to achieve my goal of disorientating them in act two I must remove any assumptions or expectations as to what they believed they might witness in act two. This consideration led me inevitably to the below final part of the quote.

the slippery slope to practices like torture

This part of the quote resonated powerfully with me because it seemed to have an almost prophetic weight to it, most notably when considering the prisoner abuse scandals at Abu

Ghraib prisoner, which were circulating in the media around that time. Like Churchill's structure the quote inspired and liberated my approach to the writing of this play.

If act one represented for me symbolically a time, before a war. Act two came to represent

for me an act comprised of scenes during any war. The characters of a young man and a young woman might ostensibly seem to represent a man and a woman who could be breaking up. One part of that is true, and it shares an instinctive relationship with what I felt I was witnessing during that particular moment in time. That Man and Woman (Humanity) are breaking apart. That humanity is constantly in the act of destroying itself. As far as this writer is concerned, act two occurs over several decades, as humanity breaks apart, and during gross acts of depravity that human beings inflict upon another.

However, to return to achieving the disorientating effect that I sought, I realised that the scenes must not be too site and or place specific. I set about trying to turn the scenes around, to flip them on their ends, just at the moment an audience might feel they had a handle on what was going on and where they were. I did this because it was the clearest way I imagined that I could attempt to invoke through theatre and its devices, the themes of dislocation and disorientation that surely citizens in any war must experience. Dislocation from the known and safe world and disorientation within the world one is cast into.

Two key examples of this might be the scene during which it appears a woman military officer is describing to her peer the abusive action she took part in during the prisoner abuse episodes; this scene changes as it goes along and soon appears to be about a woman who might be an actress in a pornographic film describing to a lover or a client the ‘goings on’

during the making of her latest pornographic film. However, the scene changes again at its conclusion and suddenly we are aware that it is between a man and a phone sex operator, who because he has run out of money is not able to continue with the fantasy. The second example

I would cite involves the scene of a naked man covered in blood and faeces and bile, chains on his body and a hood on his head. A light rises above him as he drags himself onstage. I suggest that this image resonates for a contemporary audience when they recall the photographic image of an Iraqi prisoner naked, with cables attached to his body and a hood on his head. Yet in the above-mentioned scene constructed to resemble the now iconic photograph a woman suddenly walks on stage eating cereal from a bowl. She says; Bucks night went well? The expectations of an audience I believe are shattered, disorientated and dislocated from where they thought they were. And the scene ends. At this point I would also like to remind the reader of the shortest scene in act two of Churchill’s Far Away, which is printed below. I do this to reiterate again how I kept returning to Churchill’s structure when writing 3606202

The fifth scene of Churchill's Far Away follows:

5. Next day. A procession of ragged, beaten, chained prisoners, each wearing a hat, on

their way to execution. The finished hats are even more enormous and preposterous

than in the previous scene (Churchill 2000, 24).

I now reprint below the shortest scene from act two from 3606202:

A naked man covered in blood and shit and water enters stage. He has a dog collar

around his neck and a hood over his head. His wrists are bound. He struggles as best

he can crossing stage.

A woman enters and crosses stage in the opposite direction, she is eating cereal from a

bowl.

Bucks night went well?

He stops.

And by the way, I’m pregnant you cunt.

The scene achieves for me a number of objectives; it is linked to a section from the David Cole quote, ‘practices like torture’, and it happens roughly around the same moment structurally speaking, as the shortest scene in Far Away.

I will now expand upon act three before giving further detail regarding the experiment that I conducted at the first reading of this play, its subsequent workshop-performance at The

Sydney Theatre Company and the eventual findings of the experiment.

If act one could be labelled ‘before a war’, act two ‘during any war’, then act three would follow the next logical sequential progression as being ‘after the war.’

I sought through the writing of the third act to push the work into the territory that focused on what happens to the world after the war of wars.

Again, Churchill’s Far Away was referenced, specifically its third act.

Like act three in Far Away the final act of my 3606202 is set in the future - in a world far removed from not only where the play began, but in a environment that an audience might be disorientated by.

Moving back briefly to the conclusion of act two of 3606202, I remind the reader that the old

Italian man from act one and the young man from act two are in fact related; Grandfather

(Nonno) and Grandson.

Act three opens with the old man entering stage after having made his grandson a cup of tea.

We soon learn that they are survivors in a post apocalyptic world. In the writing I imagined that Sydney, along with the majority of towns and cities throughout Australia had been decimated. These two men however had survived, and were now at the beginning of a journey to where the old man imagined was the last place on earth where survival might be possible; the rainforests of Far North Queensland.

I wanted through the writing of act three and by its conclusion, to be in a world so far removed from where they as an audience began. I wanted to stretch them beyond the horrors linked to drifting through the memory pockets of all wars over the last one hundred years

(through act two) and invite them to a landscape seemingly unimaginable; where the world is

charred and those remain in it hunt and devour each other.

Where, inspired again by Churchill’s play, the world and its inhabitants have turned, one and all, on each other.

This following excerpt from my play between the old and the young man serves to illustrate the above point:

I thought I could hear it again, starting. This time closer - I thought I felt the earth

heave - we should leave soon.

I didn’t feel or hear anything.

I’m probably imagining it - my hearings not so good.

No, everything is quiet Nonno.—— How could the earth be this quiet. —— I keep

imagining that one day I’ll wake up and on the highways there will be hundreds and

hundreds of cars moving - all the burnt out ones with their rotting families inside will

come back to life - and overhead there will be planes and birds and we’ll just be out

for a walk through some town. We’ll walk into a shop where the front window hasn’t

been smashed in and the counter tipped over and the shelves destroyed and everything

fought over and taken and there won’t be blood and brain on the wall and there will be

some television blinking in the corner and some girl in a bikini on a travel show will

be diving into clear blue water or swimming with giant turtles - are the turtles alive

anymore - Are whales? Did you know how many whales beached themselves during

it?

Yes.

Rats, following humans following rats. And cockroaches and ants - it was like a

procession and then the killing started - people killing each other over who would get

to eat the rat or roach or pile of maggots and /

Quiet now /

That first baby torn from the stomach of that dying woman, its throat slit and the

people feeding on it and hovering over its body and the body of its mother, even as she

kicked they came in droves to have her and then feed on her and with their knives and

teeth and that look, with that look in their eyes they finished her down to the bone. I

thought that - I thought that it could only - that it was only going to be a one off - that

there was some kind of momentary madness - a city riots and then everything would

go back to normal. We were lucky that we got out - we were lucky we got out of the

stadium.

Act three continues with the lure that the two men will survive the aftermath of the war of wars and that they will make it to the rainforests of the far north of Queensland. It was during this ‘imagining’ of where they were heading that I began to recall stories about the world that my Italian forebears had stumbled into when they first reached Australian shores as migrants.

Their stories of determination to seek out a new and better life told of significant bravery and instinctive determination that I wondered might be lost on many younger Australians unfamiliar as they might be to the hardships their migrant ancestors may have faced. For me

there was something that emerged, conveyed by the text between the old and the young man which illuminated a disparity of sorts between the old world and the new world. It was contained during the moments in which the old man spoke of looking after the olive trees or of how the world once was green, of rainforests and lakes that he knew were hitherto unpolluted by the mechanism of our common and industrious civility. I sought to convey through his character a sense that his old age wisdom would guide them both through. I feel that this occurred naturally within the play as a result of using the familial knowledge behind the man who inspired the story and recognising what he had already survived within his own lifetime.

The play does not end with either man surviving. Out of the darkness of the stage rifle shots shatter the illusion and the equilibrium. Again, the aim was to disorientate the audience at the moment they started to feel they were safe in their environment. Both men drop dead and a woman enters the stage carrying a rifle. She kicks at their bodies and then squatting beside them takes a knife which she plunges into one of the bodies, carving off a piece of flesh which she then devours as the lights to black fade.

In retrospect, I consider this final almost tagged-on scene as the ultimate blimp in the heartbeat of the play. It is resolute and definitive and final. And for this writer, it is marked by its relationship with a consistent theme which began the play in an interview room in Far

North Queensland in 1942, between an Italian born naturalised Australian man and a representative of the Australian Government and continued through a series of episodes in our recent history to an end-point which could be none other and which no other conclusion seemed worthy to consider. This final moment thus born from considering the premise of the larger play and linked to the theme inspired by the opening quote of this exegesis.

This theme disorientation is further framed by and inextricably linked to a structure that has at its central core a desire on behalf of the writer to find mechanisms that might disorientate the listener. The final act of the final scene is again another and final example of how this writer believes structure can be used to affect an audience and to convey the themes of the work any writer seeks to address.

I will now elaborate on what I perceived were the reactions after the play was presented firstly to the playwrights’ cohort group and then to audience members at the Sydney Theatre

Company and report my findings on these experiments.

Before the first reading of 3606202 to the playwrights cohort I began by informing the group that I was not interested in any opinions individuals might have about the work and that I was not willing to engage in dialogue about it as a creative work. I did state, however, that individuals could respond to how the work made them feel. I did this for various reasons, which I will outline. Firstly, it was my intention to begin manipulating their environment and taking them out of their comfort zone by reducing their role in the situation and by attempting to both discredit and disempower them. Essentially I wanted to disorientate the audience even before the reading of the play began. This it should be noted was to convey the themes of the work born by the desire to invoke a response by the audience similar to that which this writer experienced concerning some events in our recent global history.

In one sense the true beginning of the play was the moment the information was conveyed to

the audience that their contribution, by way of suggestions and or criticism was not welcome.

In short they were told to sit there and shut up. The purpose being, as I have indicated above, was to play with expectations that usually govern their relationship with an environment they have a comfortable familiarity with.

After the play reading concluded the group broke for refreshments. It was during this time one member of the group approached me and informed me that he was going to leave as a result of me saying that discussion was effectively forbidden. It was at this moment that I believed the experiment for me was a success, driven by the effect that such a seemingly inconsequential and trivial directive had had upon one such audience member.

I believe that broader themes of 3606202 are inextricably linked to the human experience in war. Namely depriving the individual of rights, stripping them bare and rendering their empowerment redundant - effectively playing with the structure of their lives - Therefore the act of attempting to silence the views and ideas of participants in the reading was experimental and metaphoric and symbolically linked to how structure can so effectively rattle, as it were, our everyday lives.

That one individual chose to leave made the experiment for this writer a success because it was a perfect example of how achievable it is to disorientate an audience. It also presented something that I had not anticipated. The action that this individual took made me acutely aware of how important it is to stand up as writers and continue to respond to global events by writing political theatre. If the individual in question had remained with the group and

returned to the room he would have found that a lively and invigorating discussion did ensue.

At the Sydney Theatre Company presentation a similar experiment took place. As the audience entered the theatre a barely audible looped recording of a gentle female voice stating the following;

“As part of our manifesto members of the public are reminded that any discussion of the events which take place is strictly forbidden.”

Seated with the audience I noticed that a small number of people responded with looks and words of confusion. I heard one male member of the audience state: “Are they serious about that?” It was difficult to ascertain whether they believed the voice over and I’d suggest this is because of it occurring within the theatre itself and thereby instantly becoming part of the theatre project or recognised as another theatrical device.

However, the main purpose behind the presentation was more to assess how the structure within the work might play upon the audience. In this I find that the results were satisfying and lead me to assert that structure, the form and framework upon which we drape our play can have an effect upon an audience that promotes and resonates with the theme or themes that a writer is seeking to convey.

In the following I have transcribed journal entries and responses to the play by individuals that I made during the performances, and which serve to highlight the findings of the process.

Seated amongst the audience. Thrilling to watch them relax into their seats during first act of the work. It feels like they know where they are and who the characters are.

Maybe even a little bored. Good. Act two; people shifting in their seats. They look out of their comfort zone. Simple staging and just one or two spot lights really help. It looks as if they’ve forgotten act one already and are really trying to figure things out.

Feels like they are being taken on a trip through time and space through the characters. Act three; the audience look like they’ve been beaten up yet they look relieved to see old man from act one and young man from act two as Grandfather and

Grandson. Characters they are familiar with. Can't wait until the surprise end. Ending of the play seems to rattle them.

Comments overheard from audience members;

“I didn’t know exactly where I was. I could still follow the story, but just didn't know where I was.”

“In the middle bit (act 2) I wasn’t sure what was real. I knew it was war but I couldn’t tell what the truth was.”

“I thought I was somewhere but then realised I was somewhere else. It was disorientating.” (Author’s personal journal notes for 3606202 following production at

Sydney Theatre Company.)

6. Conclusion

To conclude, I believe that the structural qualities of a creative work can be manipulated by a writer to in turn manipulate an audience into feeling or engaging with emotions, themes, allegories and symbols that the writer is seeking to convey in response to global events.

I find that by seeking to respond to global events and by tapping into themes, distinctive and sometimes personal, the writer can then imagine a structural portrait or framework, sometimes represented as matter-of-factly as a diagram, onto which can then be draped the body of a creative work: text, character, setting, light, sound.

I find that there is every opportunity for theatre makers to engage with an audience by attempting to shape the structure of their work in accordance to its themes, rather than possibly inhibit the work by strict adherence to a classically well-made structure, which may in fact exist paradoxically to themes explored within the play.

Finally, I find that structure can be used as a technique by playwrights concerned with writing political theatre, to convey themes inspired by their response to global events.

Works Consulted:

Alter, N. 1996. Vietnam Protest Theatre. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Aronson, L. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.

Billington, M. 2004. Stuff Happens Theatre Review. The Guardian, September 11, 31.

Bottoms, S. J. 1998. The Theatre of Sam Shepard, states of crisis. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Brantley, B. 2006. Stuff Happens Theatre Review. The New York Times, April 14, 26.

Brunstein, R. 2004. The Rebirth of Political Theatre. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041220&s=brustein122004 (accessed December 12,

2006).

De Munari Choat, A., A. Martinuzzi and I. O’Brien. 2003. Italian Pioneers in the Innisfail

District. Brisbane: Minerva E & S.

Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S., Eds. 2005. Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd Edition.

Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications.

Churchill, Caryl. 2000. Far Away. London: Nick Hearn.

Cole, David. 2003. Enemy Aliens. New York: The New Press.

Cresciani, G. 2003. The Italians in Australia. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dalseno, Peter. 1994. Sugar, Tears and Eyeties. Brisbane: Boolarong Publications.

De Bolfo, Tony. 2002. In Search of Kings. Sydney: Harper Collins.

Douglass, William A. 1995. From Italy to Ingham, Italians in North Queensland. Brisbane.

University of Queensland Press.

Downs, M. W., and A. L. Wright. 1998. Playwriting; From Formula to Form. Orlando:

Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Dunne, S. 2005. Back Home Theatre Review. The Sydney Morning Herald, September 9, 32.

Elkner, C., I. M O'brien., G. Rando and A. Cappello. 2002. Enemy Aliens, The Internment of

Italian migrants in Australia during the Second World War. Bacchus Marsh, Victoria: Connor

Court Publishing.

Fitch, G. 2002. Adrenalin Heart. London: Oberon Modern Plays.

Fitzpatrick, P. 1991. Stephen Sewell The Playwright as Revolutionary. Sydney: Currency

Press.

Flemming, E.B. 1996. Structure and Chaos in Modernist works. New York: Peter Lang.

Grossetti, A. 2005. Mano Nera. Brisbane: Playlab Press.

Gurr, M. 1996. Jerusalem - Australian Drama Project Series. Sydney: Currency Press.

Hage, Ghassan. 2003. Against Paranoid Nationalism; Searching for hope in a shrinking

society. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Holman, R. 1999. Making Noise Quietly; three short plays. London: Methuen.

Hutton, J. ed. 1982. Aristotle’s Poetics. London: Norton Publishing.

Jannon, G. 1998. Piedmont Down Under: Story of Piedmontese migration to Australia.

Holmesglen: Associazione Piemontesi.

Kritzner, A. 2008. Political theatre in post-Thatcher Britain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

La Guida Annuale Per Gli Italiani del Queensland (An Annual guide for the Italians of

Queensland). 1933. Brisbane: Publisher unknown.

Marber, P. 1995. Dealer’s Choice. London: Methuen.

Mckee, R. 1999. Story. London: Methuen.

Menghetti, D. 1981. The Red North, Studies in North Queensland History. Townsville: James

Cook University.

Patterson, M. 2003. Strategies of political theatre. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Series: MP508/1, item; 255/739/507, title; 108. Australian Government National Archives of

Australia: Canberra.

Series: BP242/1, item; Q24027. Australian Government National Archives of Australia:

Canberra.

Sierz, A. 2005. Beyond Timidity? The State of New British Writing. PAJ: A journal of performance and art, 27 (3): 55-61.

Stephens, S. 2005. Motortown. London: Metheun.

Stephens, S. 2005. Pornography (unpublished playscript).

Teachout, T. 2005. When Drama becomes propaganda. Opinion Journal, The Wall Street

Journal, June 6, 16.

Templeton, J. 2003. From the Mountains to the Bush: Italian migrants write home from

Australia, 1860 - 1962. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press.