Trust News" Is Hopeful That a Party Sartre (The National Theatre Company, Indicated Interest in the Proposal for It of at Least 30 Members Can Be Formed, Perth)
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Issued by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust to Members of the Trust. MARCH, 1966. Price 10c FOUR DRAMA COMPANIES TO TOUR to audiences in the cities to be visited. George Ogilvie with the V.T.R.C's The four productions to figure in the "Killing of Sister George", Sydney's FEDERALLY interchange season will introduce to in Robin Lovejoy with the Old Tote's OUR leading Australian drama terstate audiences the work of outstanding "Moon for the Misbegotten", Perth's producers, each of whose names is a by Edgar Metcalfe with the Perth Com Fcompanies with which the Trust word in the city in which his year-round pany's "Altona", and Adelaide's John is associated will tour extensively activity is usually centred-Melbourne's Tasker with the S.A.T.C. presentation. throughout the Commonwealth dur ing the second half of 1966. "Figaro" with a razor The companies are Sydney's Old Tote, Melbourne's V.T.R.e., Adelaide's T'S one thing to be "The Barber could be so practical with a cut _ T.C and Perth's National Theatre. I of Seville" on stage, but quite throat!" will appear in a sequence of pro another to be an active barber off More than 150 performances in tions in each other's capital cities, stage as well, but that is just how centres as far apart as Cairns, Mount and in Canberra. Brisbane and Hobart matters are panning out for Trust Gambier, Woomera, Cooma and will also be visited. Opera baritone, Ronald Maconaghie, Broken Hill are scheduled for the • The UT.R.C., the National and the on the Trust company's current tour company's five month's tour of 12,000 S.A.T.C. will have Sydney seasons of a of New South Wales, S.A. and miles. The total distances to be travel fortnight each at the Old Tote Theatre Queensland towns for the Arts Coun led could reach from Canberra to between late July and early September. cil. London. End to end, the total hair Maconaghie's offstage barbering, to trimmed off Norman Yemm's scalp • Over the same period, the Old Tote prove that his onstage razorcraft as in the same time could reach from Company, the S.AT.C. and the National Figaro is po M aconaghie Canberra to Sydney, according to will have Melbourne seasons of a fort mere pretence, m some estimates. night each in the v.T.R.es Russell cludes daily as The "Barber" Street Theatre. sistance to the production, with • The Old Tote Company, the UT.R.C. bass, Norman Ronald Sinclair and the National will each appear f.or Yemm. As the designs, is by a fortnight at the Teacher's College snide old humbug Stephan Beinl. Theatre in Adelaide between early Dr. Bartolo in The musical August and mid-September. the touring com director is John • Over this same period, Perth will see pany's presenta Champ, whose seasons of a fortnight from the U.T.R.C., tions, Yemm is singers also in the Old Tote and the S.A.T.C. at the getting age and clude:- Kevin Playhouse. oddity into the Mills, Michael character by hav Bell, Doreen • The V .T .R.C. and the National will both appear in the T.AA. Theatre, ing all the hair Morrow, Robert Brisbane, from mid-July to early shaved off his head in the Krushchev Yemm Gar d , J 0 h n August. Brynner style. "Bartolo" Heffernan, Joan Shaving the scalp is no simple Shute, Elizabeth Allen, John Durham, At the same time, the Old Tote operation for newcomers to this kind Donald Shanks and Eric Jones. mpany and the S.AT.C. will be ap of hair-do, and it is here that It is likely that "The Barber of • aring in Hobart at the Theatre Royal "Figaro" Maconaghie is helping Seville" will be one of the operas to and in Launceston at the National Yemm. be included in the four-opera reper Thea e. "We've known about Ron's razor toire now being planned for the Trust • All four companies will appear in wit for a long time," says Yemm, Opera Company's main season to Canberra over the June-July period. " but we didn't know till now that he wards the end of 1966. • Several other cities may be added to the schedules of some of the companies. The plays to be presented during this Group Travel Proposals interstate interchange tour by regional theatres will include: "A Moon for the MEMBERS' interest in proposals to m.ember may make the Sydney-London M isbegotten" by Eugene O'Neill (the form a Trust party to tour over Sydney journey at a fare some £180 less Old Tote Company) , "The Killing of seas theatrical centres in 1967 has in than is ordinarily charged to economy Sister George" by Frank Marcus (the tensified in recent weeks. class travellers. U.T.R.C.) and "Altona" by Jean-Paul A sufficient number of Members have "Trust News" is hopeful that a party Sartre (the National Theatre Company, indicated interest in the proposal for it of at least 30 Members can be formed, Perth) . The play to be presented by the to be developed on a firmer footing than ~md. Members. WI:lO have not previously S.A.T.e. is still the subject of negotia hitherto, and for "Trust News" to an mdlcated thelr lllterest to the Editor tion. nounce that the numbers now enhance should do so without delay. The interstate interchange of regional the likelihood that the tour will be The proposed period for touring is drama companies, the first of its kind, is undertaken. from April-August, 1967. It is expected expected to give a great stimulus to out The proposed tour of V .K. and Euro that full and final details and schedules standing creative talents in drama in pean theatrical centres is envisaged for the tour will be completed for Australia as well as giving rich variety, within the group-travel rules of the in Members' approval and for publication powerful appeal and many "new faces" ternational airlines whereby each group in our June, 1966, issue. Wrust NrlU!i Australian Arts: Signposts, 1966 by H. C. Coombs Editor: LINDSEY BROWNE "Australia, New Dimensions" was the general theme of the MARCH,1966 speakers at the Australian Citizenship Convention held in Canberra early this year. Dr. H. C. Coombs, Chairman of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, discussed the direction DRAMA INTERCHANGE of Australian artistic evolution, of which theatre is part, in A play is a live performance only with terms which gave new definition to the obligations of ind~ live performers in front of a live audi viduals, businesses, governments and universities in thi3 cO'"," ence, either of these components being meaningless without the other. The re tinuing artistic development, Dr. Coombs' address is reprinted lationship between stage and audience is here. all-important, and the development of this relationship, both by aiming at high MORE t h an 300 years ago, de QUlros,. and unrelenting light, the naked quality st and ard s 0 f perf ormance on s t age an d the Portuguese navigator, set sail of the landscape, the way in which the by catering to audience needs, is at the for the southern seas to discover the red earth thrust, itself through the vege basis of the regional drama policy intro- great South Land, "Terra Austrialia del tation, the way in which its mountains duced by the Trust over two years ago. Espiritu Santo", which he was convinced and rocky outcrops, eroded to barest The potentials of this policy are great existed there. He hoped to establish essentials, appear to expose the very and far-reaching, but full realisation of there a new society which would be lit skeleton of the earth, all appeared these potential> is necessarily slow. It with the flame of the Holy Spirit and strange and secretly inimical to the"t takes time-which, in the widespread where men would build the New Jeru new Australians. '. speeding of contemporary life, may be salem. He did not find it - and only the difficult to accept as an inevitability. name Espiritu Santo, attached to a Gradually, however, the land began to When foundations are laid for a new beautiful but lonely island in the South cast its spell and a strange love-hate dam or a new medical school, aren't we Pacific, records the memory of his dream developed in which we resented it (per Australians inclined to feel cheated if and his failure. haps in guilt from the ruthless way we had ravaged it) but were unhappy, rest next day there is not already food from And yet it existed-a vast continent, less and bitter away from it. For many the orchard or if there is news of a sparsely inhabited by a strange primi- years this emotional conflict about the friend's death from cancer? Aren't we tive people who lived a life of extreme land was a predominant theme in our similarly inclined, in the theatre, to sus- material simplicity, into which was literature - perhaps best expressed in pect a policy which gives us perform- woven, in complex unchanging pattern, Henry Handel Richardson's "Fortunes of ances which may not, overnight, be social, ritualistic and artistic qualities Richard Mahony"-a novel about an measurable against those of, say, the that had been laid down for them in the expatriate doctor who lived in grudging National Theatre in London? Very "dreamtime"-the time when their spirit bitterness in Australia, hating its crudity, human, very understandable--but very ancestors wandered this ancient land and fearing its strength, and sick with nos dangerous, too, if sight of the ultimate formed it to meet and fill their needs.