Generation Gap in Melbourne's Theatrical Life
written by Kevin Summers, April 2002
Last week in the Definite Article, Helen Thomson, this paper's theatre critic, described what she sees as a generation gap arising in Melbourne's theatrical life. She referred to David Williamson's long and honourable playwrighting history to make her point.
While paying homage to Williamson's body of work, she wonders loudly about the response of our younger theatregoers to his construction, his determinedly middle-class characters and his moralising. Conversely, she resiles from the youthful offerings of our fringe practitioners, bemoaning their failure to adhere to the basic devices of plot, character and good old storytelling.
I wish not to generate a debate over the merits of Mr. Williamson's productivity, other than to submit that the Noosa based writer of recent time is far removed from the angry Carlton scribbler of the late 'sixties. Nor do I wish to ponder why a critic would fail to mention Hannie Rayson in her pantheon of skilled, serious and impassioned local playwrights.
Rather, I take issue with the whole idea of a generation gap. There is a divide but it is not the one Ms. Thomson perceives. Many writers, directors and performers maintain a jaundiced view of the state of Western society (and the theatre it throws up) and carry it into their work but they are not defined by their date of birth.
For every Raimondo Cortese - a young writer who constantly pushes the bounds of content as well as form - there is a Nico Lathouris, a mature performer and director who has never faltered in his passionate pursuit of a night in the theatre being nothing less than a scalding, visceral experience. Tragically for Melbourne theatre, Lathouris could find little work here and was employed as dramaturg on Sydney ABC's Wildside where his influence could be readily identified in the intense, gripping performances.
For every tyro performer at La Mama or the newly formed Red Stitch company, there are many older actors and actresses who have never lost focus of their craft, who have never seen it in terms of high or low culture, who have always been aware of its political elements. The divide is not one of age but of wholehearted committment.
Melbourne actor and man of letters, John Flaus, recently pointed to what this means in an address to drama school graduates arranged by Actors Equity. He related the story of the discovery, high in the eves of a European church, of beautifully carved figures. They could never be seen by churchgoers. They were created solely for the act of creation. Flaus likened these pieces to performance - don't fret that your work may be little seen or appreciated but nurture the creative experience.
The disappointment of our theatre has little to do with generation gaps or drawing distinctions between subsidised or fringe - a lousy word which makes no sense; where is the centre? - groups but much to do with complacency, banality and preciousness. Recently we have endured major productions so slowly paced and underworked that patrons were exiting within a very long hour. They were bored.
Last year we lost the invigorating Barrie Kosky to Vienna, a city that manages to subsidise scores of theatre groups. This year he will feature another exile, Melita Jurisic, as Macbeth in an all-female cast. Jurisic is a mature actress who rejects the mundane nature of much Melbourne theatre.
This writer is as content to sit on a block of wood or stand in an laneway as to sit in heated comfort to watch a play. He is as happy to sit through a Williamson at the Playhouse as a maiden playwright at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute. He is as delighted to observe the stage craft of a veteran performer who broke his teeth in vaudeville as the tentative first steps of a VCA graduate. If it's not a cynical, cold and empty exercise then he'll depart a fulfilled - to a greater or lesser degree - theatregoer.
So, please, let's not waste our time poking a stick at a straw man. The gap is not generational but inspirational. It was ever so.
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