25/9/2001

It was great to be interviewed by the tirelessly supportive Phil O'Brien on artsound a couple of weeks ago, ostensibly to chit-chat about my head-shaven role of Pilate in SUPA's Jesus Christ Superstar, but also to squeeze out some tantalising snippets of info about Huitker Movement Theatre, its philosophies, aims and plans for 2002 and beyond.

I am quite tired of that pithy, cliched question, "Does Canberra really have room for another theatre company?", (which Phil did ask with his velvety-tongue firmly planted in cheek). I remember thinking of my hero Steven Berkoff's words in Free Association (Faber & Faber, 1998): "Do it yourself and rely on nothing but your imagination and the goodwill of your fellow players. Risk all, since you will not die when it's over." So with some inherited Dutch courage and a touch of Year 9-ish belligerance, I responded something along the lines of: " I couldn't care less whether there was any room or not, Phil. I'll make room." (O'Brien, behind his dandy rectangular microphone, was fraternally smirking, encouraging me to become even more transgressive.)

So why a theatre company that focuses on movement? Good question.

Berkoff wrote in Meditations of Metamorphosis (Faber & Faber, 1995) that his theatre speaks "... the language of gesture and the body, since the first impulse comes from the body before it gets distilled, analysed and communicated into sound and thence into words." I couldn't agree more. Think about it. In most instances, you have to actually somehow move onto the stage before your mouth gets a chance to embarrass the issue further.

Playing Pilate in an action-packed, happening musical like "Superstar" has alerted me to the intoxicating joy and vital necessity of mixing sweeping cliched gesture (the stock-demand for any musical) with some ol' fashioned, intense yet subtle vulnerability (in the eyes, face, hands and walk) and some larynx-shredding Lloyd-Webberian demands on the upper register - in order to maximise your character's effect on an audience that has paid $33 to be moved, wooed and convinced in equal proportions. That's roughly $11 for each. I hope I got it right. Even a little. (Come and see it, judge for yourself, and e me back a crit!) Getting Pilate's movements in-tune to the insinuations of the music and text (and producion aesthetic) suddenly seemed as imperative as singing sweetly and hitting high notes.

And encouraged by last night's Canberra Critics Circle Theatre Award for Gnat's Nightmare (Free-Rain Theatre Company, 2000), I left the Canberra Theatre Centre with a reinforced desire to further explore and experiment with what movement actually means in theatre. And to work with only the young (at heart) who are unafraid to let go of cliche, tradition, expectation and preconception, and to belligerantly, artistically and effectively "make room" for themselves in the Canberra theatre scene.

I'll leave you with Berkoff's final lines from Free Association:

"My plays are performed by the young, and the young have strong hearts and stronger ideals. They are not impressed by cleverness or brilliance. They are not impressed by writers of polemics and people telling them what to feel or think. They do not like to be taught. They do not like to be bored. They do not like to see plays about the angst of the middle-classes or middle-age or be concerned with the tribulations that ageing brings into the workings of the spirit. They are concerned to express their song, their spirit, their sex, their ideals, and if some of them find it in me, then I am proud, since this is the seed that grows into a tree. The young are the adults of the future."