Re-visit: No Child...

No Child...
Theatre Works
7 May 2013
Theatre Works
to 26 May
theatreworks.org.au

No Child... sold out at last year's Melbourne International Arts Festival. Melbourne's arts community loved this show so much that the lovely people at Theatre Works have brought the inspirational and very lovely Nilaja Sun back to Melbourne and have already had to extend the season. Don't miss out this time!

The good news is that there are tickets available for later in the season, but you probably won't be able to squeeze in this weekend.

I saw it for the second time and enjoyed it even more than the first time (review). Being in the Theatre Works space is more intimate than the Fairfax and makes it feel like Nilaja is performing just for us, rather than doing a piece of capital T theatre.

No Child... is Nilaja's reaction to working as a teaching artist in New York's poorest schools. Her fictional Malcolm X High School in the Bronx is every school in the US where kids have to go through metal detectors to get to classes and aren't expected to make it to graduation. Her story includes teenagers for whom pregnancy and gang killings are a normal part of life. This is obscene. The richest country in our world can't look after its kids and educate them safely. And we certainly can't sit back and be content as our public school teachers are paid a pittance, schools are forever facing cuts and pressure is put on families to pay for their childrens' education.  This sucks. And then children are blamed if they slip through the system. We are failing as a society when any child misses out on a basic, safe and exciting education.

But this isn't a story about how an education system fails, it's about how to triumph within a system and how to teach when your class doesn't want to be there. Made with love for every student, teacher and their families, it's about people who care and people who know that all children need to feel valued.

Nilaja plays every role, including the janitor who's been at the school since the 60s, a new teacher who gave up a financial job to teach, the teenagers in the class and herself. Directed by Hal Brooks, she's been performing it since 2006 and every season has been greeted with critical gushing and audiences who want to come back for more.

It's an astonishing performance that leaves you unable to walk away uninspired, whether you're a teacher, a student, a performer, a writer, a theatre maker or anyone who has children and teenagers in your life.

It's selling our because it's THAT good. Book now before everyone books to see it again.

What Melbourne loved in 2012, part 7

Today Matt Kelly talks about the "horrific flaying of one's dignity", Tom Molyneux says how LePage sent him to MacDonalds and Nicole Eckersley remembers No Child.

Matt Kelly
actor, poo aficianado

Matt and Richard Higgins (The List Operators) are in the middle of developing a new show (hooray), but he couldn't miss putting his favourites in.

photo by Max Milne: Matt and the giant poo

MATT: Summertime in the Garden of Eden and Miles and Simone's album launch.

SM: My favourite Matt moment was his playing an ass's arse and baby Jesus (in a rainbow adult diaper) in the Last Tuesday Society's Xmas ballet. It made me understand the meaning of "Good god".

MATT: That photo sums up everything that I love about Last Tuesday Society. It's a wonderful collection of weirdos who will do everything they can to make the audience laugh. Often it involves an unquestioned and horrific flaying of one's dignity. Miles playing a donkey, Richard dressing as a giant shit, Bron's jazz ballet. And well, the photo ... fuck it ... use it if it makes you laugh!

SM: It made me laugh. If that's not art, buggered if I know what is.

Tom Molyneux

actor

TOM: I've thoroughly enjoyed the smorgasbord of theatre in Melbourne in 2012; although, haven't been able to see nearly as much as I would have liked. Some memorable moments were the classy performances in The Wild Duck, the unrestrained hilarity and beauty in The Rabble's Orlando, the delicious mind-fuckery that was Enter Certain Outlaws as part of Short and Sweet, and just about everything that was On the production of monsters. 

But the one that stands out above all others was Robert LePage's Lipsynch. Despite being exhausted and hungover, despite the fact that it was nigh impossible to get any food at the Arts Centre (and Swanston St Maccas became the only viable option...) and despite the fact that this sprawling nine-hour epic could easily have been two hours long without losing a great deal, I came out the other end of it with a mile-wide grin and the satisfaction of having completed an endurance theatre event that challenged and provoked in more ways than I can remember. It was pretty rad.

Oh, and I can't neglect to mention the fantastic work that is coming out of the next generation of theatre-makers through universities. Some truly experimental and cutting-edge stuff being done there, it's a shame that so many people miss out on it!

SM: Tom was one of the wonderful cast of The Well, but it was his performance in Falling Petals that made me pay attention.

Nicole Eckersley
Skewers hapless artists in words for Artshub

There was so much deliciousness in theatre this year that I barely know where to start. 2012 has been a great year for genius off-kilter comedy. Fringe was a goldmine of joy, with Slow Clap's Truth, The Unspoken Word Is 'Joe' and The Lichtenstein Nursing Home Massacre burning little holes of hysterical laughter in the programme. At Next Wave, Wheyface's post-apocalyptic museum of 20th-century ephemera was utterly fascinating and deadpan hilarious, and Karlis Zaid and Karin Muizniek's Australian Horror Story (which ran for about 43 seconds at Chapel Off Chapel) had me mopping tears of laughter from my eyes with my delicate lace-edged handkerchief. Okay, so it was my sleeve.

On the serious side, it's hard to go past Nilaja Sun's astonishing No Child at the Melbourne Festival, which was everything a one-human show should be: funny, insightful, immaculately characterised, tearjerking and totally, utterly brilliant. Usually it takes a good thirty seconds for a standing ovation to properly get going; this one took about two. I have never seen an audience leap out of their seats that fast.

SM: I met Nicole at the nine-hour experience of Lipsynch. May we never forget the inspirational bliss of such endless cheese. Not the art, the catering. (Sorry, Tom. We didn't have to go to evil Ms.)

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

part 6

part 8

part 9

part 10

part 11

It's stopping at part 10, so if you're thinking of sending your moments in, now is time.

Melbourne Festival review: No Child

Melbourne Festival 2012
No Child
Theatre Works, Brisbane Festival, Melbourne Festival
9 October 2012
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 14 October
melbournefestival.com.au

Nilaja Sun's from New York and let's hope Melbourne audiences can make up for the disgraceful welcome to Australia she experienced on QandA on Monday night. No Child is beautiful, celebratory and sobering and it finishes on Sunday. See it because it's awesome theatre or just to let her know that there are people in Australia who believe in respecting others.

Yes, we're still going on about it and will continue to go on about it as long as it keeps going on. She was invited to be on the panel to talk about education; she was ignored by most of the panel and witnessed the kind of bullying and disrespect (towards our Federal Minister for Early Childhood and Childcare) that Nilaja works to stop in high schools – and that's before the panel stopped any chance of having a public discussion about education.

Nalaja spent eight years teaching drama in some of New Yorks toughest schools. Schools with metal detectors at the door, where 18-year-olds in year 10 are doing well, pregnancy or jail is expected, drugs are common and graduating is unusual. It's a far cry from my high school days where we all wore our socks pulled ups and trauma was getting a B instead of an A.

Her classes made a difference to teenagers who had no chance and No child is theatre that can and must make a difference.

Playing all the characters from the school, including herself, her performance makes you forget that there's only one person on the stage and her storytelling reminds us that story teaches more than testing ever will.  It's the kind of theatre that proves why theatre is so important.

Maybe we can we pass around the hat to get her to spend a few weeks with our Federal parliament? And Victorians can donate extra for time with those who think it's a great idea to destroy our TAFE system.

I'm happy to give up arts festivals if we can get this kind of teaching in our schools. Even if our worst schools don't have metal detectors, it doesn't mean that the children who go to them deserve anything less than children at 'good' schools. I went to a very 'good' school and doubt I would have cared if I didn't have drama classes. Theatre gives lets us see the world from a different perspective; it gives us a moment to experience what our world could be like without being told 'no'.  With this type of teaching – not only for drama; let's make maths this fun – it wouldn't take long for young adults to start making art that questions and to start demanding festivals to share it and to see the best art from the rest of the world.

How much would it cost to get a drama teacher like this into EVERY school in Australia? What kind of difference would this make?

Sadly the likes of her fellow-QandA guests, Christopher Pyne, Lindsay Tanner and Piers Ackerman, won't see this show. (Can the festival please invite them and see if they even respond?) Nor will the people who make decisions about funding our primary, secondary or tertiary education systems.

This glorious piece of theatre will be seen by people who are generally lucky enough to have had a good education, a tertiary education and are able to buy tickets to an arts festival (or at least exchange then for some words). We'll talk about it and slam down our sparkling chardonnays in anger, but what will we do?

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

And here's a bonus for Mr P.

Photo by Carol Rosegg