What Melbourne loved in 2013, part Tobias

Some described their favourite moments of 2013 with a mere few sentences, but MKA's Tobias Manderson-Galvin has seen too much long-form theatre this year.

Tobias Manderson-Galvin
Creative Director, MKA

TOBI: Professor Lenore Mandeson gave the opening keynote address at the Australian Theatre Forum (in Canberra) with her colleague, futurist Kristin Alford. It had nothing explicitly to do with theatre and it was wonderful to think about theatre in relation to something else/everything else. One of the highlights was Lenore riffing on Brecht's Threepenny Opera and miming swinging a plastic bag of shit above her head and then throwing said pretend bag in our general direction as a part of her description of conditions in South African slums, but really as a part of a bigger critique of the culture we're more directly a part of.

Also turning up each day to the forum and discovering she and I had worn matching outfits yet again, a sort of superficial confirmation of the synchronicity in having my medical anthropologist mother as the headline act at a peak industry event in my current field. It was like bring your son to work day, which was actually lots of days. If anyone ever wants to know about Giddens or Weber, I've been going to lectures since I was six months old.

Being Dead (Don Quixote) was my favourite show this year, hands down no questions asked. It was Kerith Manderson-Galvin's reworking of a classic book she didn't read via Kathy Acker's reworking of the same text (who knows if she read it or not).

Kerith spearheaded the work but Soma Garner and Amy Lever-Davidson pulled off some design coups. It was only on for two nights in a university, so if you missed it well ok I guess you didn't have much of a chance – but when it returns, make sure you get a ticket or you will be missing one of the most genuinely accomplished works of queer theatre made in years.

I don't know if Kerith'd call it that, but it was that. I've noticed that 2013 was a big year (maybe the last few years even) for calling shows 'queer' or 'feminist' or 'theatre', whether they were any of these things or not. I think this is all them.

A Supple Beauty. When asked, Kerith (from Part 4) also mentioned this as one of her favourite moments and even though Mark (from Part 8) didn't, I'm sure he thought it. MKA went to the Adelaide Fringe and didn't really have the best time audience wise. (We took three shows, one averaged an audience of perhaps 25 a night and the others averaged three to four). So, when I saw there was an anarchic, cabaret/variety night at 3.00 in the afternoon on a Saturday, we were first in line to get on the bill.

The night before the performance Alexis Dubus (aka Marcel Lucont), a burlesque darling (who wishes to remain unnamed) and me were thrown out of the Fringe Club for taking our clothes off on the dance floor to Nelly's "Hot in Here" (a DJ coincidence, as we were getting naked anyway in an effort to promote the event). On the day of the show, Mark Wilson, Kerith and I performed totally naked, save for a leather belt I kept on, and we deconstructed the only State Theatre Company of South Australia show we saw all year.

Kerith did a death scene that went for about 20 minutes. Mark performed a harrowing edited version of the Beethoven inspired Tolstoy novella The Kreutzer Sonata re-written by himself, and I played Chris Brown and Rihanna songs. And why not. Then we spent about six minutes doing a Q&A with ourselves and drinking bottled water. Apologies for not inviting you Geordie Brookman, but, fair warning, we'll be back.

Einstein on the Beach. I saw it two nights in a row. First night, apologies to Andrew Fuhrmann who I went with, I was fidgety and bored. I wanted to be a hero, so I didn't take a break in its 4.5 hours and had a less than great time. Yet, slit my wrists and draw a hot bath, I went back the next night and only left the room for four minutes – because that's how long it takes to take the piss you planned in advance and they know that bit is a little less interesting – but when I realised I'd mistimed and the first ballet had started, I raced back to my seat because this show is in a league (albeit a sort of vintage museum league) of its own. I spent weeks singing "Knee Play 3".

Life and Times. Not only being there, but that they made all the burgers for the audience themselves and we all watched it and it took like 10 hours and Kerith didn't go to her 10-year high school reunion so she could see it (and she went to the most elite girls school in Victoria, not me I went to a public school and even that I got expelled from and then went to another public school, but enough) and Lenore asked Kerith and I to dinner with her and Pat Galvin and also invited Nature Theatre's Pavol and Kelly and wait, omg, I haven't even started telling you about how I got four free VIP tickets and went to a Limp Bizkit concert and got soft tissue damage, tearing my cartilage and ligaments around my spine, sternum and ribs from moshing like I was 17/partying like it was 1999/doing it all for the nookie and that Fred Durst was like "nice jacket dude'" to me and I break danced while I was crowd surfing!!! As in: on people's heads!!! And how when MKA took The Economist to Brisbane Powerhouse for World Theatre Festival there was a girl who came late one night and stood in the back row and was wearing what seemed to be a Norwegian flag as a skirt and she was the perfect image of what I always imagined the lead lady role would be (though it's always been played inimitably by Marcus McKenzie) and then I met her by chance in the basement of the theatre and she had the same name as the character and Kerith didn't believe she even existed and thought maybe I was having another episode but we're friends on Facebook now, so that's as real as it get. And then, oh, working with Shian Law on Psycho for Balletlab was the start of a dream come true – my return to ballet which isn't really theatre, is it?  and this is about theatre isn't it? And also you know Katie Noonan, well she's beautiful isn't she? Have you ever seen her perform? And then there was that time – no I – but maybe that's not what's important now but I don't want to leave anything out in this at all. Not one bit.

SUN from Melbourne Festival was really my favourite theatrical work of 2013. Metal. A dance corps. A pastoral setting. I hadn't seen Political Mother (the companies previous work), so ok some say that was better, whatever, I don't know, this was fuckiing excellent.

And an honourable mention to when Kerith and I snuck into the ska gig at the Festival Club (The Caribs et al) and, to a song called "No More" in which the refrain was "I''ll cry no more tears for you/over you" (or something), the guitarist (about 80 years old) cried throughout. Kerith still isn't sure what ska is and though she does know who Reel Big Fish are, this was a moment of classic half a century old music and a moving performance.

What Tobi is looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

SM: My moment: proofing/editing the above.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 5

Today we go from a 45-minute play in the smallness of La Mama to ten hours of happiness at the Arts Centre and music floating through Docklands, with Patricia Cornelius, Bryce Ives, and Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey.

Patricia Cornelius
playwright

PATRICA: A woman in her middle age stands still, so long she stands still in the half light, half turned into the darkness, buried in a heavy winter coat and a grey mane of unkempt hair whispering almost inaudibly. And these snatches of odd and scattered phrases draw us into a world that lasts 45 minutes at the most and it’s called Bunker and it’s at La Mama.

The creative team are Greg Dyson, Trudy Radburn and Charlie Laidlaw. As in the title the world is a bunker, a place away from danger, an internal place, a place not easy to come back from. I left there moved and elated and yet this piece of theatre had been strange and elusive. I loved that it reminded me of what theatre can be, the strange worlds it can take us to and totally unpretentiously.

And just as Bunker is whispers and scattered phrases, They Saw a Thylacine, with its two story tellers (Justine Campbell and Sarah Hamilton) inside a cage, is a feast of intertwined, beautifully written narratives. The stories are rich and fine and entirely captivating. These are two actors who are making their own work and their use of language is a reminder of the best in the tradition of storytelling or yarning.  I loved their evident love of language. And I believe I was witness to the beginning of two actors who may continue to write for themselves for awhile but will go on to be wonderful playwrights.

What Patricia is looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

SM: Savages. OMG. This is writing that gets into your guts. I felt this play more than I watched it. It's hard to be made to understand men whom I despised for everything they thought and said about women – ugly women.

Bryce Ives
director

BRYCE: 2013 has been epic.


Life and Times by Nature Theatre of Oklahoma was quite possibly the best ten hours I'll ever spend in a theatre. A monumentally long examination of our struggle to express ourselves and describe what has happened in our past, it was wonderfully fucked and awkward. I was somehow moved, informed, entertained and somewhat changed by this experience.

Richard Murphett doing Richard Foreman with the graduating VCA actors was a surprising highlight. We went to poetry city, with Eddie, and it was strange, surreal, hysterical and disorienting. Richard Murphett allowed the necessary space to ensure the graduating actors somehow commanded this complex text. It was a celebration of Foreman and the New York avant-garde, but also was strangely relevant to this time and the work we are making in Melbourne.


Finally, Daniel Schlusshner (M+M, Mengerie) continues to lead our mob of makers. Within his work are regular moments that transcend and go to some place other, and it’s these moments that inform my own understanding of what is possible in theatre: how we listen, how we see and how we construct sense in a chaotic world.

Honourable mentions: 
The Story of O by The Rabble took me to the uncomfortable and disturbing part of my dream space. Palace of the End, directed by Daniel Clarke, gave us three astonishing performances of stories that must (urgently and regularly) be heard. And, finally, Einstein on the Beach gave everything I hoped and more.


On a personal note, it’s been wonderful working with the artists at Theatre Works under the unrelenting vision of Daniel Clarke, and alongside my continued collaboration with Nate Gilkes and the Present Tense ensemble. We’ve spent the past six months intensively training and considering our own process, often alongside the amazing Leisa Shelton, an artist who enables other artists and performance makers to better articulate and understand their work. Training with Leisa IS the highlight of each week.

SM: Bryce and I sat next to each other at Life and Times. He laughed at the same things I did; what more can you possibly want at the theatre. It was such a wonderful and happy-making experience that we said we may never be able to go to the theatre together again.

Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey
sound/music artists, long-term collaborators

Dress rehearsal of 5 Short Blasts

MADELEINE AND TIM: Sitting in the audio booth at the State Theatre with three young people from the St Martins Cross Age Ensemble as they waxed lyrical about their responses and insights  to the Australian Ballet’s production of La Sylphide. Their commentary was heard by a small test group of audience members via audio description headsets. In that booth we experienced a sense of both subversion and the sound of a million possibilities opening.

We also had  the busiest year of our career. The image is from our Dress Rehearsal for 5 Short Blasts: that moment when the imagined becomes real is always extraordinary.

You can see 5 Short Blasts until 25 December. Details here.

SM: My excuse for missing 5 Short Blasts was genuine: I was in hospital (nothing bad) on media day. And, you know, mornings.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

FESTIVAL: Life and Times

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2013
Life and Times: Episodes 1–4
National Theater of Oklahoma, Melbourne Festival, Debbie Dadon and Naomi Milgroam AO
26 October 2013
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
melbournefestival.com.au

Over ten hours with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma may have ruined theatre for me.

Ten hours wasn't enough.

The eventual plan is a 24-hour show, and if the next 14 hours are as joyfully glorious, astonishingly complex, and deliriously insane as the first ten, then I have to make sure that I live at least as long as Kristin Worrell, whose life and times it's based on.

Episode 1 of the Life and Times mararthon started at 2.00 pm, Episode 4 finished just after midnight and, despite hints of DVT from sitting too long in cramped seats and the mania of over-triedness and too much sugar, I wanted to go back in for Episode 5, which has been created but wasn't brought to Melbourne.

There was only one marathon performance in Melbourne, so the next chance to see it is to join them in Paris for their next stop or hope for a return to Australia, with more parts. There were individual performances of the three sections earlier in the week, but seeing them meant missing director Pavol Liska introducing the show in floral pyjamas and the cast barbequing the audience burgers after Episode 1. And there were chocolate brownies with fresh cream after Episode 2 and extra-chocolatey hot chocolate waiting in the foyer after the post-midnight standing and squealing ovation for Episodes 3 and 4.

The Nature Theater of Oklahoma are from New York. Directors Liska and Kelly Cooper took the name of a troop from an unfinished Kafka novel called Amerika. Liska grew up in Slovakia and came to Oklahoma for work when he was 18. There he learnt English and went to philopsophy and writing classes at night, and worked during the day. He met Cooper in 1992 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and in 2004 they founded their company in New York with a commitment to  “making the work they don’t know how to make".

Since then they've toured to festivals in Europe, been commissioned, won awards and I want to go to New York and work with them.

Life and Times is a verbatim re-telling of 16 hours of phone conversations with 30-something company member Worrell. (She's on the stage, but by the time it's clear who she is, it no longer matters.) She was asked, "Can you tell me your life story?". She stared with birth and told her unremarkable, white, middle class suburban story.

And by verbatim, I – um – like mean – it's really like – well – like everything she really said. Hahaha.

There are wrong words and half thoughts and tangents that go nowhere and the endless ums and ahhs that come with finding and telling memories.

One of the, many, genius moments is also having it surtitled; so, from the first sung notes, it's clear what's going on.

Yes sung. Episode 1 is kind of like, umm, well, kind of a musical.

With choreography that's part rhythmic gymnastics and part end-of-year school concert, it begins as a solo, then there's a trio of women in grey 1970s t-shirt style uniforms who are eventually joined by three men and the four musicians – all of whom are the same person telling the story. And there's a rabbit.

The juxtaposition of un-written, un-controlled words with composed music and precise choreography makes the umms and whatevers of the recitative and harmonies unexpectedly magnificent.

Dialogue and song are never written to sound natural, because natural conversation makes so little sense. But when it's scored and controlled by rhythm and sound, this stream of blahblahblahs makes endless sense and draws us in with its perfect imperfections.

Meanwhile, her story is quite dull; as are most of ours. And this might be why this work is so heart-gripping.

With so much time being taken to recount the likes of a yellow bedroom and a scary Balinese mask, the audience have time to remember their own stories.

I don't know if it's possible to watch this show without the barrage of personal memories. Someone said to me it was so intense that he wanted his memories to stop so that he could watch the show!

I could see photos of my first birthday party that I don't remember; I remembered being terrified when I wasn't much older because a rooster (a rooster that attacked) was between me and the back door, and my mother told me to just ignore him; I remembered whispering secrets to a kindergarten friend, but I don't remember her name or the secret; I remembered breaking my milk bottle on my first day of school and being more embarrassed than I could cope with; I remembered being friends with Vanna Morrasini in grade one and telling her she was wearing the wrong shirt, but it was just the summer uniform; I remember my grandmother buying me a new doll and telling me not to take it to school in case I lost it – I took it to school and lost it;  I remembered my cousin and I wondering if we could get married; I remembered my animal wall paper; I remembered eating almonds from an almond tree in our back yard; I remembered screaming when I saw the results of putting tadpoles in my goldfish tank.

And that's what it's like for the three-ish hours of Episode 1.

And Episode 1 is just birth to 8.

So going into Episode 2, there's the attachment to this child telling her story – we know her so well by now and want her to be happy – and the simultaneous anticipation of what memories are going to come flooding back. And not all memories are welcome or expected.

Briefly, Episode 2 covers 8 to 12. It's still a musical, but it's moved into the 80s with recorded music, wonderful atrocious rock-eisteddfod choreography, and brightly coloured tracksuits. And a choir.

Episode 3 is the continued verbatim story (14 to 18), but presented as a parlour murder mystery. Complete with endlessly brown back drops with a painted fire place. And aliens.

And also throw into the mix, performers who look like people. There's body fat, pale skin, frizzy hair, untamed beards, lanky legs, glasses and all manner of beautiful normality.  My first uncontrollable tear was the first scene when a woman who could wear my size of clothes walked onto the stage and danced.  One of my last was as a big-bellied, bearded American bloke dressed like a sea captain with an eye patch sung about the 15-year-old girl's first real kiss. (Oh, those first kiss memories.)

Life and Times was ten hours of pure insane joy created by people who love life and theatre, and know that they will find like-souls all over the world. And it was spent with friends, writers and a good chunk of Melbourne's theatre makers. A day at the theatre doesn't get better than that.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

And in honour of The Lonely Owl book from Episode 1, here's a page from my equivalent, Milo the Mouse. This is the climax, where Milo tricks the new neighbour's cat into running into a pond. Hehehe. And if my brother had drawn birds all over is (as happened in The Lonely Owl), I would have been shattered.