ACAPTA rap_UP the art of directing circus & physical theatre CONTENTS In_House chat Special Feature * the art of directing circus & physical theatre * In Conversation with Robin Laurie & Gail Kelly * Introducing John Paul Fischbach * The Legs on the Wall Story part 2: featuring an interview with Patrick Nolan * Thus Spoke Zeb Zeb Hunter directs the A4 Circus Ensemble Project image: Zoe Robbins, A4 Circus Ensemble © A4 Circus Robbins, image: Zoe Shout Out: * Jane Mullet replies to Mitchell Jones * Ari & Evan need you High Alert: Westside Circus / Circus Works / NICA / The Flipside Circus Roll Call WINTER 2009 Winter is certainly upon us but it has not dampened the spirits of the circus & physical theatre sector. Heaps has been happening all over Australia. Some events that have been and gone are: Circus Oz with their home-town big top show Barely Contained at Birrarung Marr: Oz are now on tour and I will catch up with them in Bathurst at the Catapult Festival, September 23 – 27. Flipside Circus in Brisbane have been busy as always with their Roll Up! … Or Run Away? show which they premiered at the Powerhouse and the Flying Fruit Fly Circus have finally received funding to actually build a brand new space, how exciting is that! A wake was held for the old space in recognition of all that they have produced which has been huge and Impressive and we can all look forward to more, more, more when we cross the threshold of the Fruities brand new building! © Freaky Freaky Cirkidz, image: Brewarrina Youth Circus have been getting around NSW. The Bre trainers have been running the ‘Schools Out’ – Circus Program in conjunction with Outback Arts & the NSW Department of Sport and Recreation. The Bre Youth Circus trainers’ team have been teaching hula-hooping, acrobatics & juggling in Walgett, Collarenebri, Lightening Ridge, Goodooga, Bourke, Cobar, Coonamble and Gulargambone – a mighty effort! ACAPTA | Office: 20/5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne VIC 3051 Tel: +61 3 9329 9600 | email: [email protected] | url: www.acapta.net In May I managed to get to Adelaide to see ‘Freaky’, a collaboration between Circus Monoxide from Wollongong and Cirkidz from Adelaide – an innovative and very exciting project, which I think offers us all some new possibilities in how we can come together to create original & dynamic circus & physical theatre productions. I was inspired and I hope to interview Al & Dan on the art of directing collaboratively in the near future. Freaky was presented as part of the 09 Come Out Festival & it received rave reviews and enjoyed a sold-out season! I decided that the Winter edition of rap_UP would investigate the art of DIRECTING. Now I have to confess that it is a subject that is somewhat close to my heart although I can assure you that there is nothing up my sleeve and I do not have a hidden agenda in relationship to selecting this topic to explore. However I think that we need to talk more about directing as it seems that there is a need. I am often told with great conviction that there are no circus and physical theatre direc- tors! This is simply not true there are lots out there so why do we think that there are none? I am keen to get a discussion or a number of discus- sions going on this subject so as al- ways send me your responses, your opinions or your experiences in re- lation to working with a director or not! image: The Flying Fruit Fly Crcus Fly Fruit image: The Flying I have already had a number of truly inspiring conversations on this topic – so read on and hopefully you too will feel inspired. Keep in touch, as I love to know what all our talented and hard-working ACAPTA members are doing and see you in Spring! Gail Kelly In conversation with Robin Laurie & Gail Kelly A few months ago I was at aperformance of Robin: we were interested in physical per- The Controlled Falling Project by THISSIDE- formance. We thought that live perform- UP, which Robin directed. In the foyer, post ance was going to die because TV was tak- show Robin & I started a conversation. about ing over. Grotowski (a Polish theatre director directing circus and physical theatre (which and innovator of experimental theatre, the we have both done now for many moons)! I “theatre laboratory” and “poor theatre”) de- suspect that our conversation is ongoing & veloped a very rigorous and intense physi- that it is always destined to be accompanied cal training methodology; he was exploring with cups of coffee, bowls of soup and late the physical presence and kinaesthetic in- night post show raves. However on a cold teractions between the physical performer but sunny winters’ day in Robin’s garden we and the audience. He was looking at ways finally sat down for a couple of hours to talk in which he could unify the intellectual, the about directing…and this is what transpired. physical & the emotional in performance. Firstly for those of you who don’t know, Rob- Culture was changing and in times of change in Laurie was an original founding member people always return to the’ known’ for ex- of Soapbox Circus who then became Circus ample, Meyerhold (who was considered one Oz. of the 20th century’s greatest theatrical in- novators) Brecht (was a life-long committed Gail: How did it all start? Marxist who, in developing the combined © Appetite image: Club Swing, image: Club theory and practice of ‘epic theatre’, syn- cause there were so many languages spo- thesized and extended the experiments of ken in the factories We, were also interested Piscator and Meyerhold to explore theatre in how we could make large-scale images as a forum for political ideas.) & Piscator (a with our bodies and we wanted to change German theatre director who, with Bertolt the world…we both laugh but the irony is Brecht, was the foremost exponent of epic that they did! theatre, a form that emphasizesd the socio- political content of drama, rather than the We didn’t have directors in Circus Oz either; emotional manipulation of the audience) all occasionally we had ‘an outside eye’ but not used various circus forms in their ‘theatrical’ very often! works. I think that when a performer performs for a So there we were in Melbourne in the late long time that it is possible for you to actual- 70’s and the decolonisation movement was ly develop a sense of what you look like from happening (the rejection of British cultural the outside and sometimes you can also be models) so we, the performers went back to wrong about that. our cultural roots – vaudeville & circus. We used the physical & verbal vernacular and Performing is about sharing and making we researched it by looking at the work of yourself completely open to the other per- George Wallace - a fine silent comedian. We formers, the audience and the space that were interested in how culture responded to you are in and these perceptions very rarely change. We wanted to take performance out happen in circus because circus demands of the halls and into the parks . We were also a different set of skills and a different focus interested in using contemporary music & and that’s where the director’s ART comes in. technology because they were a major part I often talk to performers about when they of our lives. The Pram Factory was all about need to be completely focused on the skill writers’ & performers’ working together and and when they can actually perform the skill; we did not want to work with directors’ but I It takes time and experience to learn these think that this reaction was based on a very things. Ultimately, I believe that performers’ old fashioned idea about directors. can learn or get a feel for how long it takes to move between this dual focus that is a I interject: is that the notion of the director pre-requisite of every circus artists’ perform- as the ultimate authority – god so-to-speak! ance repertoire – experience help to master That is such an old idea which seems to have these skills. re-emerged today in notions of the boy gen- ius director who is the ultimate visionary! Gail: and circus has so many performance variables, which are unpredictable for exam- Robin: At the Pram Factory, the performer ple circus apparatus doesn’t always behave was the creator of the work and not just an in the same way so focus can shift within a interpreter of text. In circus a primary rela- performance sometimes radically. tionship already pre-exists between the per- former & the audience – this relationship can Robin: yes in circus things aren’t fixed and as be heightened by trickery but it is an exqui- the performer you need to invent your way site relationship and it is one that is, perhaps through those things and the director has unique. to guide you through those things. In Soapbox Circus we worked with the Match- box Band & we wanted to take our work into Gail: when I am directing I can usually feel factories so we used our physicality to make when the performer is not in control of those the shows: we couldn’t rely on language be- ‘unknown’ things or is fearful and distracted by the variables. So I think that it’s important the time constraints & economics. Com- to work on deconstructing the work – pulling panies tend to hire performers with ready- it apart and looking for the moments when it made acts and the directors’ job is to make is solid and then clearly identifying the points the acts flow in & out of each other.