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Amamus — alternative theatre

Reviewed by Cathy Wylie

The Amamus Theatre Group developed early last year when a number of dissatisfied actors attending Unity workshops coalesced around Paul Maunder whose overseas experience had given him the semi-detachment necessary to feel that there was an alternative theatre to the stodgy fare of Wellington groups (and elsewhere). The members are aware of the lack of an ethnic, popular theatre. They desire theatre based on group involvement rather than individual efforts and specialist 'stars'. Their own approach is to work through improvisation, group research and suggestions, constant experimentation to work out what is most effective and most satisfying to the group. Their scripts, until the last production, have been confined to the plotting of scenes in the form of each actor's 'intentions', which gives the plays enough form and ensures that they don't go on endlessly, one of the chief dangers of improvisation. Each member of the group can feel that he has made an overall contribution to the finished product, but the total value of theatre like this is not confined to performance. The work involves a certain dedication, since it lacks the acclaim of established stage. The emphasis is on the actors doing more than just act. They extend and express themselves, rather than 'make-believe' other characters. Outsiders notice the intensity and warmth of the group relationship, which can arouse envy, but is also clearly much more desirable than the backbiting and bitching of 'theatre people'.

So far, the group has had three productions: I Rode My Horse Down the Road, a well received improvisation of Kiwi childhood and adolescence compiled by pooling together the member's memories and stories, followed by much experimentation towards the creation of 'link' scenes. This was followed by a documentary collage of improvisations, speeches and songs that tried to express how the man in the street felt about and reacted to the Depression; The Wall Street banks in London have closed'. The group also tried to explain to its youthful audience certain traits and attitudes left in the generation that endured the Depression. Our parents frugality in an era of material comfort. Their most recent new production was a double bill of two short plays, both dealing with adolescence and its problems, although Paul Maunder's '3 Sq Chain and 10' went further to explore the emptiness and boredom of Kiwi life beyond the individual centre piece. A documentary collage on the '51 strike will be the next production, in July and also at Arts' Festival. Paul Maunder wants these documentaries to focus on important moments of the countries small history and thereby providing an attempt to understand New Zealanders to explore our background with the ideal of better communication between generations, and groups within the community. It's not quite so naive or impractical an ideal as it sounds, and collage theatre is a good medium to effect it.

Paul readily admits that the 'personal' plays they've done so far are somewhat superficial, but suggests the New Zealand context is limited. He describes Horse as a cartoon strip, a sort of embryo New Zealand play, and notes the high incidence in New Zealand plays, of scenes very similar to those in Horse dealing with the New Zealand childhood experience. Audiences readily and enthusiastically identify with the play and Paul hopes that 'if the context is recognisable, is known, we can experiment more with form'. He would like to use factories, school halls, even Athletic Park, for productions, rather than the unnatural surroundings and artificiality of cozy little theatres. One of the group's best audiences so far was when they performed at Rata Street School to 'two rows of seven year olds with their parents sitting behind them, people who'd never been to theatre m their lives - no preconceptions of what you should be doing'. This is far preferable to more staid audiences, 'the new furcoat brigade'.

The use of improvisation, with the need to draw on the actor's own experience and powers of observation both extend the individual, and demand of him less selfish attitude to work (rather than art). It goes along with a far more communal attitude to theatre, and a feeling that the theatre group is responsible to the wider community, and must participate in its affairs. This emphasis on participation is perhaps the best aspect of communal theatre. Its insistence that working on the play, is just as important as actually putting something on is another strong aspect. It certainly widens theatre's appeal, and reaches both new audiences and new actors (the National Youth Theatre in London is one example). It is complementary to, rather than a complete replacement for theatre as we have grown up with it - though in this respect it is interesting to note that the Drama Quartet, that bastion of theatrical conventionalism, is now using an adaptation of Horse.

New Zealand theatre receives strong criticism from Paul Maunder, who suggests that one of the best things that could happen to New Zealand art would be complete isolation for a period of time, and in support of this, cites the work produced during and after the Depression. Theatre should be part of the culture in which it exists -which it is not in New Zealand at the moment. It is more a sort of ambassador from Britain and the United States -it should be doing the best, but not the mediocre, third rate US plays, if it's going to interpret and mirror New Zealand society, where it exists'. Improvisational work may be the way to a New Zealand style (going with a certain gaucheness, and the 'do it yourself image'?) He would like to see more care and effort put into producing New Zealand plays, by playwrights who are at home in this theatrical situation. Theatre justifies society and life in the sense that it allows us to live with it and accept it, and, perhaps, to understand more of it.

Amamus Theatre gives us a welcome new development on the theatrical scene, and one which I would like to think, heralds a new creative era.