Some Plays I Have Seen (And Possibly A Movie)

Right, so a conversation last night totally reminded me that this even existed and that one of its primary functions was to serve as a recorder for the multiplicity of theatrical entertainment I was meant to be engaging with this year. Haven't really been keeping up with that. Whoops. Now I am afraid I have forgotten everything.

I saw The Year of Magical Thinking with Robin Nevin, directed by Cate Blanchett (salivate) at the STC. This was beautiful. I think my favourite thing about it was its simplicity. The sheer beauty of just having a single actor on stage engaging with a very powerful and moving story is nothing to be sniffed at and I thought Nevin's performance was top notch. I sort of want to be her, in fifty years time. My least favourite thing about this performance was all the stupid people coughing the entire way through. For God's sake, get a menthol and shut the fuck up.

I saw The Hitchcock Blonde at the Star of the Sea Theatre in Manly, starring the one and only very fantastic Eleni Schumacher. This is a totally biased review because I have known Leni since she was like, 15. But with that disclaimer I would like to say I was totally blown away by the depth and maturity of her performance and thought she was head and shoulders above the other actress, whose name I don't remember and am also afraid of putting up should she be the sort of person who googles herself, which, let's face it, most actors are. Eleni's performance was infused with the sort of truth and strength that most actors spend their entire lives waiting to attain and if she doesn't go further in this field it will be an abomination.

I saw The Black Balloon which restored a little bit of my faith in the concept of an Australian film industry. Here finally was an excellent story, well written, deftly executed, perfectly paced and beautifully acted, and without an excessive amount of time spent dwelling on questions of "Australian identity." Hallelujah. Kudos to Rhys Wakefield for making the leap from Summer Bay babe to actual actor, and to Toni Collette for continuing to be a ray of light in every film-goer's life. And double thumbs up to the entire movie for making me cry, which never happens.

I'll just take this opportunity to point out that I have a little first hand experience of having a sibling with autism, albeit nowhere near as severe a case as the one depicted in the film. Nonetheless, the experiences of the film rang almost painfully true for me as I sat there watching it. I'd just like everyone to think about that before they think about criticising the film. That it was able to depict such a story in a way that was not preachy, or schmaltzy, or excessively flippant, or patronising, is no common thing and I think should be deeply admired.

All for now. Time to read SEVENTY PAGE SCRIPT just emailed to me. (Thanks Oli, have no ink left now.)

Blackwatch

I should have written this a week ago, when the emotional impact was still fresh in my mind and heart, but I think I couldn't write it last week when the emotional impact was still fresh in my mind and heart because it's literally taken me that long to absorb and process it.
As part of my New Year's "Be Involved" campaign (see entries below) I fought tooth and nail to get tickets to Blackwatch, one of two works by the National Theatre of Scotland being performed at CarriageWorks as part of the Sydney Festival. I literally managed to score the last single ticket left in Sydney. This production has already toured extensively around Europe and America and has received universally positive responses wherever it went, which is obviously part of the reason I was so intent on getting a ticket. On another, concurrent yet perverse level, however, it also made me sort of apprehensive, because I have had some bad experiences with art/theatre/literature/etc that is meant to be The Best Thing Ever and then is somewhat underwhelming (or, in the case of The God of Small Things, just plain hateful.) So I approached the performance - on Friday 25th of January - with excitement mixed with just the tiniest bit of cynicism - "surely no theatre is that good" and trepidation -"what if I'm the only person in the known universe to not like this show?"

Well. Suffice to say I shouldn't have troubled my pretty little head. I can safely put my hand on my heart and say it was one of, if not THE, most amazing peices of theatre I have ever seen and I am sure it is an experience that will stay with me throughout my hopefully long life in said industry.

Because the National Theatre of Scotland have unfortunately packed up and departed our fair shores without most of my constituents having been privy to this performance, I feel no hesitation in spelling out any plot details.

The play is derived from interveiws, conducted by the writer, with a particular group of soldiers who had left the Black Watch after being on a recent tour of duty in Iraq. The Black Watch is the oldest regiment in Scotland and possibly in Britain - important facts like this tend to escape me, go Google it or something. Anyway. So they're in Iraq. And these are tough, Scottish highland boys who want to be soldiers - who have been soldiers for many years - who have been to Iraq before, and Kosovo, and other places. They're not stupid. This is their job. They enjoy it and they're not expecting it to be easy. But from the begining of the play, we know they've left and they're not going back. Why?

The play explores this issue in conjuction with the fact that part way through their mission, the Black Watch - previously a distinct and distinguished and honoured regiment of the British Army - was being amalgamated into the general corps. So they're out there, in a desert, 42 men doing a job that hundreds of Americans had been doing before them, wondering why they're doing it, and then the one thing that they're fighting for - their identity as The Black Watch - is taken away from them.

Combining verbatim interveiws, fictional scenes, battle sequences, video projections and more expletives than even I could shake a stick at, Blackwatch is not really a political play. That is, it does not set out with a political agenda (and thank fuck, and someone should tell Australian thespians to sit up and take note that not all theatre has to Be About An Issue to be about an issue) but it cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Iraq war was and is a monumental fuckup. But more importantly, it is about the people. About why these men are fighting, and what it is like to be fighting. The characters refuse to be pigeonholed, which made it so unbelievably watchable. And emotional. And...connecting.

By the play's wrenching conclusion - the audience watches three characters blown to pieces by a suicide bomber and they fall, suspended on wires, from scaffolding, covered in blood, for a full minute - I felt truly bound to every person in that theatre and in that cast. I wanted to turn to the woman next to me and offer to give her a hug.

As a theatre student, you here a lot about actor-audiences conncections and the catharsis of theatre and all this sort of thing. You know, that truly great theatre involves the audience in a genuine and truthful moment and allows us to surrender ourselves to a different reality. That by allowing theatre to generate certain emotions within us we can feel a certain therapeutic release. You know the stuff. And it all sounds great in theory, on paper, in class. And sometimes you even get close, watching stuff in class or at the STC or wherever. But in the back of your head, you're thinking, it's probably just a little bit of crap. Theatre can't really change the world. This is a self indulgent art form. There will always be a point at which the audience stops and the stage begins.

Well, ladies and gents, I am here to tell you, it ain't so. It doesn't happen very often, but truly, there are diamonds in the sea of shit that theatre can be. Sitting there in this old warehouse, watching these young Scottish men mime the words of love letters, I truly believed that if I could make one other person feel as intensely as I did that night with any work I do in the theatre, life will have been just that little bit more worth it.

Entertainment

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year was "To be involved." (The others were: To be more fiscally responsible, To be healthier, To be nicer, and To write in my journal [real one, not heartless electronic version].) Now, while the others are all fairly self explanatory, Being Involved is a multi-faceted resolution which covers many aspects of my life.
At a recent audition, I was subjected to an hour long lecture about the importance of being aware and involved in the various artistic and cultural activities that take place around us every day - to see plays and movies and concerts and read books and hear lectures and to generally to be a well informed and interesting person, so as to better enrich one's mind and therefore create better art. This made perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, while I generally like to think of myself as a well informed and interesting person, the fact is that I have only seen about four movies in the last twelve months and one of those was Bee Movie. What's worse is that when anyone asks me what good movies I've seen/books I've read recently I tend to go completely blank and wind up mumbling something about "Well, I haven't seen it yet, but I heard Elizabeth is meant to be good..."
Thusly, my Be Involved resolution includes, amongst other things, seeing more good movies and reading more good books and seeing plays and other culturally and academically enriching activities - and probably by association, I should give up giving over huge chunks of my time to watching things like Friends and Gray's Anatomy.
So I don't wind up forgetting everything and embarassing myself at the next audition (having to admit to NIDA that I haven't seen a single Australian film all year was NOT an experience I care to repeat, even if I did try to explain that I wasn't IN the country for nine months) I'm going to write it all down. Here. I'll be like my own little Margaret and David.