This article reviews the past twenty years of Australian culture and argues that the arts need a ... more This article reviews the past twenty years of Australian culture and argues that the arts need a more expansive engagement. "Like tiny terrorists, a slew of toxic memories from the last twenty years swarm through my mind when considering Australian culture in the abstract.
Australian Theatre after the New Wave charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian thea... more Australian Theatre after the New Wave charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian theatre companies, the Paris Theatre (1978), the Hunter Valley Theatre (1976-94) and Anthill Theatre (1980-94), analysing the growing dominance of government in shaping the nation’s theatre.
Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with ... more Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers. Featuring short, topical articles and debates, polemics where necessary, it's a place of intellectual intervention and creative reflection. It's also where we hope to articulate, perhaps for the first time, the work of new and rising theatre artists in an academic forum.
Ian Maxwell (ed.), ? Raffish Experiment: Collected Writings of Rex Cramphorn (Sydney: Currency Pr... more Ian Maxwell (ed.), ? Raffish Experiment: Collected Writings of Rex Cramphorn (Sydney: Currency Press, 2009).At one point doing what he did so often in his refractory professional life - applying for a grant - Cramphorn quotes the French director, Jacques Copeau.It would take a whole chapter to write about sincerity in directing for the theatre. One would first have to define the notion of leaping in, of youthfulness, easy and audacious, but also the virtue of maturity, in which wisdom doesn't exclude warmth, of reflection, of continuum and choice . . . The man born to the theatre (/ 'homme de theâtre ne) by a mysterious accord comes effortlessly to possess the instincts of the 'born' dramaturge. What is for others just a string of words ... for the director is a world of forms, sounds, colour and movement. These aren't invented; they are discovered. (292)Cramphorn's greatness consists in this: that he grasped that Theatre with a capital 'T' was bigger than its expressions at any one moment in time; that he stilled his ego in the face of such vertiginous realisation and strove, with febrile mind and sincere character, to discover what new, strange forms it was capable of; that he gave the exploration of theatre's potential - in the Agambenian sense - pride of place in his work; that he mined victory and defeat in equal measure and so reached a true understanding of the art to which he was an outstanding contributor; that he never stopped learning. He could write, too, which is the kicker. He put his remarkable journey - which is our remarkable journey, because there was nothing exclusive about his vision of theatre - into conceptually transmissible form: into words.This ecstatic outburst on my part is prompted by the thrill of hearing the dead speak. Historians are aware of the limitations of retrospective accounts - or should be. Whatever quantity of empirical matter we tip into our narratives and tables, the results do not approach the contingent rawness of what actually happened. So this edition of writings by Cramphorn himself has the cachet of those primary documents lugged around by medieval and classical scholars. It is not only about the past; it is from it, too.The book is divided into two sections, roughly equal in length. The first, 'The Reviews', excerpts Cramphorn's theatre criticism - for The Bulletin, the short-lived Sunday Age, and the somewhat longer-lived Theatre Australia - over an eleven-year period, 1968-79. The second, 'The Ensembles', is an eclectic grab-bag of grant applications, diary entries, professional reflections and director's notes from 1970 to 1988. The intention, I think, is to balance diachronic and synchronic imperatives, to give a sense both of the milieu into which Cramphorn was thrown and his ongoing intellectual preoccupations. So rich and varied are the latter that it is hard to pick one as being of signal importance. But perhaps 'process' is the over-determining value. 'Process' for Cramphorn meant no neat working-out of a text's interpretation ahead of time, no facile assumption that the director is the best judge of a play's on-stage life, some equality of decision-making between collaborating artists and an almost masochistic commitment to procedural integrity in the rehearsal room. One of the most arresting inclusions in this constantly arresting book is Cramphorn's systematisation of working methods for the Actors Development Stream at Playbox Theatre in the early 1980s. Divided into three columns - philosophical frame/ practical aims/ practical exercises - it posits:i Operating inside 'faith'.ii The actors, designer, musician and director working in an integrated ensemble throughout the whole project.iii Working with a commitment and a desire to go beyond limitations.iv Taking responsibility for one's feelings, actions and thoughts.v Belief in the idea of the process being contained in the product. (277-8)Cramphorn was forty when he wrote up this schema. …
June rig count 78 July rig count 73 Aug rig count 74 Today’s rig count is 69 (in November 2009 it... more June rig count 78 July rig count 73 Aug rig count 74 Today’s rig count is 69 (in November 2009 it was 63) (all-time high was 218 on 5/29/2012) The statewide rig count is down 68% from the high and in the five most active counties rig count is down as follows: Divide -77% (high was 3/2013) Dunn -71% (high was 6/2012) McKenzie -67% (high was 1/2014) Mountrail -68% (high was 6/2011) Williams -75% (high was 10/2014)
In a groundbreaking assault on the present state of our performing arts, Julian Meyrick examines ... more In a groundbreaking assault on the present state of our performing arts, Julian Meyrick examines the past, accuses the theatre of being stuck in the 1970s and calls for a national overhaul. 'Before anything else, the profession as a whole must embark on a heartfelt examination bent on answering one vital question: what on earth do we think we are doing? ... Unless we have a grasp of our root involvement in the art form, then we are taking a living artistic medium and reducing it down to a mentally-inert production line of variable product whose purpose is mere self-perpetuation.' The solution, he says, lies in the hands of practitioners. In a closely-observed argument Meyrick shows that the theatre has become hierarchical and competitive; that the once-thriving centre has been eaten away, leaving only the major institutions and the fringe. A culture cannot grow richer without a memory, he says. 'When this doesn't happen the result is stunted growth: a theatre culture...
This article reviews the past twenty years of Australian culture and argues that the arts need a ... more This article reviews the past twenty years of Australian culture and argues that the arts need a more expansive engagement. "Like tiny terrorists, a slew of toxic memories from the last twenty years swarm through my mind when considering Australian culture in the abstract.
Australian Theatre after the New Wave charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian thea... more Australian Theatre after the New Wave charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian theatre companies, the Paris Theatre (1978), the Hunter Valley Theatre (1976-94) and Anthill Theatre (1980-94), analysing the growing dominance of government in shaping the nation’s theatre.
Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with ... more Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers. Featuring short, topical articles and debates, polemics where necessary, it's a place of intellectual intervention and creative reflection. It's also where we hope to articulate, perhaps for the first time, the work of new and rising theatre artists in an academic forum.
Ian Maxwell (ed.), ? Raffish Experiment: Collected Writings of Rex Cramphorn (Sydney: Currency Pr... more Ian Maxwell (ed.), ? Raffish Experiment: Collected Writings of Rex Cramphorn (Sydney: Currency Press, 2009).At one point doing what he did so often in his refractory professional life - applying for a grant - Cramphorn quotes the French director, Jacques Copeau.It would take a whole chapter to write about sincerity in directing for the theatre. One would first have to define the notion of leaping in, of youthfulness, easy and audacious, but also the virtue of maturity, in which wisdom doesn't exclude warmth, of reflection, of continuum and choice . . . The man born to the theatre (/ 'homme de theâtre ne) by a mysterious accord comes effortlessly to possess the instincts of the 'born' dramaturge. What is for others just a string of words ... for the director is a world of forms, sounds, colour and movement. These aren't invented; they are discovered. (292)Cramphorn's greatness consists in this: that he grasped that Theatre with a capital 'T' was bigger than its expressions at any one moment in time; that he stilled his ego in the face of such vertiginous realisation and strove, with febrile mind and sincere character, to discover what new, strange forms it was capable of; that he gave the exploration of theatre's potential - in the Agambenian sense - pride of place in his work; that he mined victory and defeat in equal measure and so reached a true understanding of the art to which he was an outstanding contributor; that he never stopped learning. He could write, too, which is the kicker. He put his remarkable journey - which is our remarkable journey, because there was nothing exclusive about his vision of theatre - into conceptually transmissible form: into words.This ecstatic outburst on my part is prompted by the thrill of hearing the dead speak. Historians are aware of the limitations of retrospective accounts - or should be. Whatever quantity of empirical matter we tip into our narratives and tables, the results do not approach the contingent rawness of what actually happened. So this edition of writings by Cramphorn himself has the cachet of those primary documents lugged around by medieval and classical scholars. It is not only about the past; it is from it, too.The book is divided into two sections, roughly equal in length. The first, 'The Reviews', excerpts Cramphorn's theatre criticism - for The Bulletin, the short-lived Sunday Age, and the somewhat longer-lived Theatre Australia - over an eleven-year period, 1968-79. The second, 'The Ensembles', is an eclectic grab-bag of grant applications, diary entries, professional reflections and director's notes from 1970 to 1988. The intention, I think, is to balance diachronic and synchronic imperatives, to give a sense both of the milieu into which Cramphorn was thrown and his ongoing intellectual preoccupations. So rich and varied are the latter that it is hard to pick one as being of signal importance. But perhaps 'process' is the over-determining value. 'Process' for Cramphorn meant no neat working-out of a text's interpretation ahead of time, no facile assumption that the director is the best judge of a play's on-stage life, some equality of decision-making between collaborating artists and an almost masochistic commitment to procedural integrity in the rehearsal room. One of the most arresting inclusions in this constantly arresting book is Cramphorn's systematisation of working methods for the Actors Development Stream at Playbox Theatre in the early 1980s. Divided into three columns - philosophical frame/ practical aims/ practical exercises - it posits:i Operating inside 'faith'.ii The actors, designer, musician and director working in an integrated ensemble throughout the whole project.iii Working with a commitment and a desire to go beyond limitations.iv Taking responsibility for one's feelings, actions and thoughts.v Belief in the idea of the process being contained in the product. (277-8)Cramphorn was forty when he wrote up this schema. …
June rig count 78 July rig count 73 Aug rig count 74 Today’s rig count is 69 (in November 2009 it... more June rig count 78 July rig count 73 Aug rig count 74 Today’s rig count is 69 (in November 2009 it was 63) (all-time high was 218 on 5/29/2012) The statewide rig count is down 68% from the high and in the five most active counties rig count is down as follows: Divide -77% (high was 3/2013) Dunn -71% (high was 6/2012) McKenzie -67% (high was 1/2014) Mountrail -68% (high was 6/2011) Williams -75% (high was 10/2014)
In a groundbreaking assault on the present state of our performing arts, Julian Meyrick examines ... more In a groundbreaking assault on the present state of our performing arts, Julian Meyrick examines the past, accuses the theatre of being stuck in the 1970s and calls for a national overhaul. 'Before anything else, the profession as a whole must embark on a heartfelt examination bent on answering one vital question: what on earth do we think we are doing? ... Unless we have a grasp of our root involvement in the art form, then we are taking a living artistic medium and reducing it down to a mentally-inert production line of variable product whose purpose is mere self-perpetuation.' The solution, he says, lies in the hands of practitioners. In a closely-observed argument Meyrick shows that the theatre has become hierarchical and competitive; that the once-thriving centre has been eaten away, leaving only the major institutions and the fringe. A culture cannot grow richer without a memory, he says. 'When this doesn't happen the result is stunted growth: a theatre culture...
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