All theatre reflects to varying degree the society from which it springs. The style of the dramatic presentation and the content explored by the playwright is born of the period from which it emerges. Theatre, like all art, offers a reflection of and insight into the society that it emerges from. As a dynamic artistic medium it very often voices the vanguard of philosophical or social attitudes that challenge those of the norm. In such instances drama and theatre become the impetus for shifts in community attitudes and possible social or political action.
Australian theatre has always expressed to varying degree the society from which it emerges. Broadly speaking, Australian plays have reflected the growth of this country as a young nation that grew from the loins of British imperialism. The Australian sense of identity is always at the heart of many of our plays. What is it to be an Australian? What sets us apart from the rest of the world? Early plays often explored and reflected the national character through the Australian landscape. The hardship of making a go of life in the arid and often harsh Australian landscape has helped create a sense of who we are as Australians. Paradoxically, Australia has developed into one of the most urbanised nations in the world and, equally so, city and suburban life has been explored with similar intent. The tradition of many Australian plays has been one caught up in a need to forge some sense of collective identity.
Contemporary Australian Theatre is no different in that it too is a reflection of Australian society.
What becomes apparent, however, with many contemporary Australian plays is that they reflect a much more complex Australian society that cannot be so easily defined by the geographic designation of city or country. In the last thirty years, a broad immigration program and multicultural social policy has reshaped the cultural and social landscape of this nation. In this same time period, Australia has also seen the strengthening of the indigenous Australian voice of protest, and the role of women in Australian society has been challenged and reshaped by the feminist movement.
Though the collective Australian psyche is much more culturally certain of itself, such certainty is not so evident in all sectors of the Australian community. Australia has shaped for itself a strong sense of national identity and has achieved prominence in the world beyond our shores, culturally, academically, in business, sport and political affairs. Such achievements build a collective experience, resonating a broad notion of Australian identity. For many sectors of the Australian society, however, this achievement is an abstraction that does not reflect their concerns or predicament. The voice of the disenfranchised is not heard and a distance is created between mainstream Australian society and those who do not feel themselves represented by that broader voice.
What can be seen in a lot of contemporary Australian Theatre is a search for identity not unlike that which has been at the heart of the Australian theatrical tradition. What is emerging now in contemporary theatre is a more prevalent use of the theatre as a means of giving voice to sections of Australian society that have not previously had such opportunity. Contemporary Australian theatre reflects an attempt by more marginalised groups in Australian society to explore their sense of identity, both in terms of their own values and in terms of their struggle to maintain this identity separate and independent of mainstream culture. Seven Stages of Grieving, is a confronting and often painful journey that searches for a spiritual and emotional truth that will provide insight and understanding into what it is to be an indigenous Australian. Running Up a Dress, offers a profound and insightful exploration of female identity revealing a truth that exceeds the perspective offered by male dominated theatrical tradition. It is representative of the recent feminist theatre which aims to tell women’s stories and express women’s emotions from a women’s perspective.
Contemporary Australian theatre reflects the pluralist society that is contemporary Australia. Australia is a land of many voices. In Gary’s House, Debra Oswald explores the world of Australians who find themselves on the periphery of success; the people who have been marginalised economically, socially and culturally. Each of the characters in Gary’s house are trying to fit in, find a place for themselves in this world or to some how etch out some sort of sustainable identity. Gary clings to the great Australian dream of building his own home and having a family. His dream comes to fruition in a roundabout way that doesn’t in the end include Gary. By the conclusion of the play, a family is realised but it is not a conventional one. In this respect, Gary’s House very much reflects the changing nature of Australian family life. The traditional nuclear family of mother, father and children is more and more challenged and this statistic is presented, on a very human level, in Oswald’s play. Though Oswald writes from the perspective of the outsider, the play is nevertheless insightful in its understanding of these marginalised characters and so does provide, if not an independent voice for them, a perspective that is not conventionally presented.
The Seven Stages of Grieving
S.S.G is, as well, a reflection of the change in attitude of indigenous Australians. It reflects and asserts a spirited and honest assessment of the Aboriginal condition and contextually reflects the cultural need for contemporary Aboriginal people to find a voice that will speak for them. It is an attempt to voice independence and assert identity and so directly reflects the current trend of Aboriginal people confronting their past, owning their Aboriginality and, as Wesley Enoch puts it, “reclaiming their indigenous ancestry”.
S.S.G is a powerful evocation of the Aboriginal perspective in contemporary Australia. Theatrically it breaks ground with earlier more conventional attempts by indigenous playwrights such as Bob Mazza and Jack Davis to present an Aboriginal perspective. Early Aboriginal plays, starting right off with Kevin Gilbert’s, The Cherry Pickers and, more recently, plays such as Richard Walley’s 1987 play Coordah adhere structurally and stylistically to the naturalistic tradition. Though brilliantly honest, powerful and often humorous these plays, written for an Aboriginal audience, still reflected the need for early Aboriginal playwrights to present their stories in conventional theatrical form. In this sense alone, they reflected the need for Aboriginal playwrights in finding their voice to firstly appease European theatrical tradition.
The need to tell stories and to reflect upon our existence and our place in the world is a tenet at the heart of all theatrical, if not all cultural, expression. It is certainly at the heart of the Aboriginal oral tradition. As with all Aboriginal plays, S.S.G is continuing the great tradition of storytelling in that it is very much an attempt to explain the world that Aboriginal people find themselves in. Traditional Aboriginal theatrical forms and early Australian indigenous plays have always done this. S.S.G reflects more recent changes in the attitudes of Aboriginal people and how they see themselves in the context of a mainstream society that is more and more pluralistic in its make-up. S.S.G is a continuation and a development in this great tradition. It is an assertion of the dynamic nature of Aboriginal (specifically, Murri) culture in that reflects the need to depict the changing nature of the world around. Just as society is a dynamic and changing entity, so too is Aboriginal theatrical expression.
As Wesley Enoch points out, early Aboriginal playwrights appropriated western forms of theatre to tell their story. He goes on to assert that in undertaking naturalistic form there was “an over reliance on character and the denial of abstraction”. As in all storytelling, the need to abstract the outside world in the telling of story is an important means of extracting meaning, and creating greater resonance and understanding.
S.S.G breaks free of the naturalistic tradition to assert a new voice. In so doing; in seeking a contemporary Aboriginal perspective and understanding of its place in the world; an identity that has truth and resilience, S.S.G finds for itself a dynamic theatrical voice independent in every respect.
“The performance follows the experiences of an Indigenous everywoman, chronicling the grief present in her life and the means of expressing it” W.E. It is an exploration of the relationship between white and black Australia from a deeply personal perspective that has universal meaning for all Aboriginal people. It is a dramatization of a contemporary Aboriginal perspective which extracts itself from the political and social changes that have imposed hurt, disenfranchisement and confusion upon Indigenous Australians since European settlement.
S.S.G’s strong voice is a reflection of Indigenous Australia’s strengthening sense of identity. It is political in its depiction of the anger and grief felt by those sympathetic to the Aboriginal plight and what they see as a history of misunderstanding and injustice at the core of White and Black relations. The play is also an example of contemporary Australian theatre giving stage to minority voices and so reflecting the pluralistic nature of our cultural and social identity.
In S.S.G, the strength of independent Indigenous thought and culture is appropriated in dramatic form to break ground and emerge as a true blend of traditional and contemporary arts. What is created is an often profound theatrical voice that uniquely depicts the Aboriginal experience in a theatrical form that challenges convention theatrical form and so any conventional notions of what constitutes Aboriginal theatre. The strength of the play lies not just in what it says but how it says it.
The play opens with a powerful image of a large block of ice, suspended by seven ropes. “It is melting, dripping on a freshly turned grave of red earth.” The audience is immediately confronted with a metaphor that resonates meaning beyond which words are unnecessary. We see white and black culture depicted by a thin layer of powder upon the stage floor. One surrounding the other; both thinly spread and vulnerable to the dripping tears from the ice. The audience is immediately confronted with a new way of seeing things. S.S.G opens with a quiet and gentle assertion of truth.
Sc.2 Sobbing, brings words to the stage. The words are presented, again, in a simple and truthful way, uncompromised by any narrative framework. The use of projection confronts the audience with the words which they must read. The audience is forced to engage with each word whilst the emotional truth of the words is depicted by the sobbing of a woman crying in the dark.
The breaking of any reliance upon conventional theatrical forms in order to achieve greater meaning and understanding is at the heart of this play’s intention.
Sc.3 Uses a strong theatrical image to introduce traditional Aboriginal custom, belief and respect. She speaks in Murri and does not compromise this by translating for those who do not understand. There is a quiet strength in this.
Sc.4 The creative use of production elements; sound, lighting and projection is further utilised to achieve strengthened meaning. A very personal story is told as the character of Nana is recreated in the oral tradition. The woman now engages in a monologue that draws us in and shares a very personal experience that still resonates a universal sense of loss.
Sc.5 Again , the play’s strong sense of the theatrical is asserted as a chair scrapes across a wooden floor, footsteps recede, a clock ticks. It is the sound of exit, time passing and pain. Images of family photographs are projected on the screen. We share a sense of loss with the woman. Aboriginal history is for her a personal history, and her personal history gives emotional resonance to the universal loss of the past.
Sc.6 The block of ice takes on further meaning in this scene when the woman embraces its cold form, attempting to come to terms with death, and in particular her father’s future death. At all times, the play is deeply personal, its universality coming from a shared humanity, which is always present. The sense of aloneness is explored. At the heart of this scene, and indeed the play, is the sense of individual and collective identity. Beyond this, is the universal need to reconcile oneself with ones own mortality. The woman concludes with a joke about the shared experience of death. We are reminded that this play is inescapably political.
Sc.7 Family images reinforce the previous scene.
Sc.8 In this scene the woman dances around in childlike innocence. There is purity to her being, her actions and her joy. Again the use of the projected image is used. It superimposes itself upon her. We see her world invaded by letters of the alphabet. At first it is a game but one from which she tires. She attempts to evade the letters by removing her dress. She is left topless with the letter z on her chest.
This is a potent image reinforced by her words, “Black skin girl. I will be strong always.”
She cannot evade the language of the white man. She cannot deny her identity, and she cannot avoid being designated last.
Sc.9 Production elements, again, create metaphor. The door closes forever on pre-European Aboriginal history. Time moves on but there is insight, as a shaft of light from a half-open door frames the woman. A poem is given theatricality through context. It stands, alone, as does the woman. We are left with the optimistic word, To wonder is to think. To wander is to walk. It is the simplistic statement of the obvious that signposts the road ahead. There is still the freedom to do both these things.
Sc.10 1788. The more sombre tone of the preceeding scenes is challenged by a joke: a joke that inverses Black and White roles and succinctly provides an Aboriginal perspective on the arrival of European settlement. The wonderful humour of Aboriginal people is not lost in this play.
Sc.11 The variety of theatrical form and style is expanded in this scene when the woman narrates a personal anecdote of racial prejudice in the style of stand up comedy. The play constantly shifts in style, form and perspective but never loses its aim, giving it a through-line like a spear from a woomara.
To be Aboriginal is to inhabit a distinct perspective; distinct in the pain experienced through the loss of cultural identity and social and political self-determination. This play is a step toward redressing the situation.
Sc.12 This scene, again, uses the technique of focussing on a single character to elicit more universal ideas. Aunty Grace explores the need for Aboriginal people to accept their Aboriginality in each of its forms; their past, their present and their future. Aunty Grace, throws the contents of her suitcase all over the ground and proceeds to fill the now empty bag with red earth, symbolic of her Aboriginality. Crying, at last, crying. Aunt Grace relinquishes the pain, shame and hurt that she, living in London, has tried to distance herself from.
Sc.13 The play’s style of delivery again alters to that of a court report. Another perspective into the prejudice and rough treatment meted out to Aboriginal people. It is matter of fact and distanced until near the end when, as the stage directions indicate, the woman breaks away from the written word to improvise. When she does so, we are reminded that the man arrested was a person like any one else. He had an identity. People called him Boonie! He was known as Boonie…
This juxtaposition of delivery style allows the second perspective a greater resonance as it is contrasted with the formality of the police report which is the perspective received by those in the non Aboriginal community. Again, this scene, like all the others in this play, is about voicing a minority perspective- the Aboriginal perspective.
Sc.14 The Aboriginal perspective is presented defiantly in this scene as the woman recounts her personal experience of making a peaceful, silent march. We are forced to step into her shoes through the vivid and evocative images. The conclusion is as much a statement of fact as it is a declaration of Aboriginal self-determination. Don’t tell me we’re not fighting. Don’t tell me we don’t fight most of our lives.
Sc.15 Is a question: One question, and a simple and powerful image. Hammering, possibly representing the white mans activity, proceeds the act of driving a “For Sale” sign into the red earth of the grave. The woman asks the question, What is it worth? It is not rhetoric, but a real question that is answered in the play and in the hearts of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal people alike.
Sc.16 The woman attempts to explain specific aspects of Aboriginal culture. She does so using words and action. She uses the red soil to illustrate her lesson. Though colloquial in its delivery, the scene is ultimately didactic. She is the teacher, holder of the knowledge and we are the students. The importance of family and kinship underpins all that she explains. The scene concludes with a question and a powerful action as the woman flays her arm through the remaining pile and circle, destroying it. Her question: Now imagine when the children are taken away from this. Are you with me? And we are with her. As we endevour to understand what appears to be a lesson in Aboriginal marriage customs we suddenly find ourselves students to a lesson in humanity.
Sc.17 In this scene, the woman shares a little about her brother. She tells us about him and his up-coming trial. Again, we are invited into her world. The story is an indictment of the law and an insight into how the relationship between Aboriginal people and the law can become a downward cycle. It also explores the concept of shame in Aboriginal custom. But more than all of this, the scene reminds us that this cycle of antagonism between White and Black is ongoing.
Sc.18 Gallery of Sorrow depicts the seven stages of Aboriginal history: dreaming, Invasion, Genocide, Protection, Assimilation, Self-determination, and Reconciliation. This is presented as a series of images, again demonstrating the importance of imagery in this play. Images and words are afforded equal importance in this play, which constantly challenges conventional theatrical narrative as the best form of dramatic communication.
Sc.19 The use of sound is used effectively in this scene to give a sense of catharsis and release as the woman disperses across the floor the theatrical symbols of the family photos and the red earth that were packed in the suitcase. She has painted her face as if preparing for war. She leaves the stage. There is left a sense of purpose. She has gained something from opening up to us. The audience gains, too, as it has become part of the shared experience.
Sc.20 The woman returns to the performance area. Wreck/con/silly/nation poem is projected. She narrates a poem. The poem is insightful and ambiguous. It is funny and sad. Ultimately, it is positive.
Sc.21 This scene simplifies everything in a wonderful moment of clarity when all the words disappear and are replaced with just one word, Reconciliation. She reminds us that it isn’t something that you read or write. It’s something that you do. Again symbolism functions powerfully when she packs away this word in her suitcase. She concludes with the dialogue, Everything has its time. There is a quiet optimism.
Sc.23 Reiterating the previous scene, the need for action is asserted. This is her plea. For the woman, it is the act of performance. These are my stories. These are my people’s stories, They need to be told.
Sc.24 Relief comes from Nothing. The woman in this scene embraces the cleansing light. She stands, face uplifted, as if in gentle rain. Her final words are, I feel nothing. She has purged herself of all pain. She is now void. There is optimism in this. She is now able to move on. But the pain for all indigenous people is not gone. This is where the personal and the broader experience part ways. The play is not meant to provide catharsis for indigenous people so much as impetus to likewise act upon that which they know they must: The search for truth, understanding, and ultimately, reconciliation, in all its forms.
Running Up a Dress
Running Up a Dress, like Seven Stages of Grieving reflects the society from which it emerges. It is innovative theatre that attempts to find an alternative voice to that portrayed in male centred drama. The play is part of the feminist theatrical tradition that has paralleled the development of feminism in western society. In asserting its feminist voice it is representing, if not a minority, a perspective that is not represented adequately by the perspective of male dominated mainstream theatre. Feminist theatre is, therefore, very much about seeking identity and gathering from that a sense of understanding and self-determination not unlike that of Indigenous theatre.
Feminist theatre is often termed as “women’s theatre”. Such theatre dates back to the early 1970’s when theatre performed by women emerged to tell women’s untold stories. “The political upsurgence in women’s liberation campaigns for political and social equality in the late 1960’s and 1970’s viewed the personal as political.” (P.7 Converging Realities Peta Tait.) This coincided with political radicalism in the theatre and so there was provided a means for feminist writers to challenge theatrical convention and create for themselves a degree of theatrical autonomy. Thus started the theatrical tradition of feminist writing to challenge not simply the ideas of male dominated culture but the forms of expression dominant in that culture.
Early feminist plays were concerned chiefly with an exploration of the representation of women “locked into the traditional gender roles of a male dominated society. Feminists worked in women’s theatre groups or they wrote plays for a mainstream theatre in order to confront patriarchal dominance in their lives. Twenty years on, women’s theatre continues to represent a fusion of therapeutic, educational and artistic intentions.” (P.7)
“The increased availability of government arts subsidies through the Australia Council for theatre based on artistic merit, and its affirmative action policies encouraging women practitioners since the early 1980s, have been key factors in the expansion of women’s contribution to Australian theatre.” (P.7) “In formulating how feminist ideas have influenced theatre, however, it is possible to identify a body of experimental and popular style work which continues to push forward in adventurous new directions…..the strength of the work lies partly in its exclusion from the dominant theatre culture. A number of ground-breaking innovations have come out of feminist practice, and continue to do so.” (P.8)
From the outset, there have been two types of feminist theatre. The first is more concerned with educating its audience and so may be drawn to more popularised modes of expression such as semi-realism, to get across its message. These plays emerged in response to demand over the last decade for such publicly funded plays. The second type of feminist theatrical practice is concerned with experimentation in form, structure and abstract and metaphoric styles.
The issue of identity is at the centre of feminist theatrical pursuit. The argument for this is that conventional dramatic action is based on male perspectives and values. Women are, therefore, portrayed according to this perspective. This male perspective ultimately purports specifics in regard to female role and identity. Feminist deconstruction of traditional theatre text reveal belief systems that portray women as objects or others whose identity is realised only from their relation to the male subject. Female subject positions are not expressed. How women appear on stage; what they do and say, and how they react creates meaning and espouses values that, according to feminist writers, is not be representative of the feminine voice.
The need to give release to the inner voice of women is at the heart of feminist plays like Running Up a Dress. Feminist writers argue that the social pressure on women to accept an all-pervasive, male dominated reality has meant that they have often been forced to hide their inner world. Plays such as Running Up a Dress aim to redress this situation by challenging constructed realities of feminine identity. “The company’s work implicitly asks whether it is possible to find an essence of female identity beyond the appearance of social behaviors.” (P.175) The thematic and structural cogency of R.U.A.D is achieved without plot or character. The style of the play is essentially imagistic, as women move upon the performance space to create through action and dialogue a more inward looking and subsequently honest realisation of what it is to be female.
The link between feminist theatre and dramatic form is fundamental. The exploration of feminist perspective is as much expressed through form as it is through content. Feminist theatre is very aware of aesthetics and the importance of creating a uniquely feminist perspective. Feminist theatre often concerns itself with “experiments in the visible staging and physical remaking of identity.” (P.10) “The 1970’s feminist project of creating an accessible theatre has shifted significantly in the 1980’s to questioning how theatre speaks to an audience.” (P.12)
The Home Cooking Company commenced as a unique experiment in theatrical form, developing a “theatrical physicality which uses the form of its theatre to express feminist ideas.”(P.19) The work of the H.C.C rejects both the earlier agit-prop political styles of women’s theatre and the psychological realism of mainstream theatre. (P.19) The importance of the female performer’s position in visual text is tied in with the philosophical need of feminism to redefine dramatic action. The approach of this theatre company is to replace the concept of dramatic action, which is character driven and psychologically motivated with a tension that is conveyed by bodily movement within the visual text. In R.U.A.D, a very physical dramatic tension emerges between the spoken word and movement, static image and action, real and imaginary space, the prop and the performer.
“The apparent simplicity of Running Up a Dress, which emphasised movement and physical action as metaphor over the spoken text, belied the complex meanings about the social construction of gender roles conveyed through the performance.” (P.180)
The theatrical approach taken in R.U.A.D is very much about the relationship of words to action. The juxtaposition of the two in plays such as R.U.A.D creates theatrical insight and feminist perspective. “Spoken language is like a soundscape, providing associative meaning to reinforce the physical actions of the performers.” (P.181) In this play, it is the action of creating a dress that is the central image. This action becomes a metaphor to explore the feminine identity. “The Home Cooking Company has developed its own energetic way of working, with the performer constantly in motion at the centre of a strongly visual text” (P.180). The physical enactment upon the stage challenges socially defined characteristics of the feminine body and accepted beliefs about female identity. Whilst watching the process of running up a dress, we are reminded through the dialogue that this is a learned thing and that in many ways motherhood and feminine identity are likewise passed from generation to generation like the pattern of a dress. Neither the action of creating a dress or feminine identity is innate. They are learned.
Home Cooking Company productions “generate not only a different theatre but also a different biographical form which depicts creative women energetically and physically engaged in the creative process of making their own art and their own realities.” (P.175) The use of biography, furthermore, allows the company to emphasise a commonality of female experience that is associative rather than definitive.
Running Up a Dress demonstrates “how domestic habits, behaviours and appearances establish the pattern of family and social relations.” Act One, “My Mother Made Me a Daughter”, and Act Two, “My Baby Made Me a Mother”, consisted of dialogues set against the actions of the mother cutting and sewing a dress for her daughter and conjured up the commonplace domestic behaviour of succeeding generations of Australian women. The dress was made, worn, washed and hung out, but it was also worn to go out, to escape domesticity. The performance of making the dress conveyed how motherhood is defined by the actions of material production; a physically creative act; a tradition in which the daughter learns to fit into a specific role aided by the mother who relives her own experience of being a daughter.” The two actors interchange “the roles of mother and daughter throughout, forming a continuous chain of mothers and daughters. The dress was emblematic of the feminine behaviours which are remade and modeled by the mother, as she creates the shape and symbol of femininity – the dress – to be worn by her daughter.” (P.180)
No comments:
Post a Comment