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Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 19. August 1 1977

Drama

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Drama

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Impetus at the Maid

Last week Ros Clark, the director of the Maidment Arts Centre at Auckland University, was in Wellington. Andrew Dungan managed to arrange an interview with her for Salient.

Salient: First could you tell us something about the Centre?

Clark : The arts Centre was opened in April 1976. It was built as a multi-purpose hall, rather than a theatre, and since then has been used for a variety of purposes — workshops, classes, lectures, rock concerts, experimental plays and music — everything you could possibly imagine.

Salient: What sort of facilities do you have to handle these functions?

Clark : We have one main theatre with a fairly flexible auditorium, fan shaped seating and a gallery — that seats about 450 — the stage can be altered to have an orchestra pit, a thrust stage and many other staging possibilities. In addition to that, we have the Little Theatre which is basically an empty square space — this is very good for anything from exhibitions to experimental theatre and music.

Salient: What is your function at the Maidment?

Clark : I really am fulfilling two roles which were meant to separate into two separate jobs but haven't as yet. Firstly I'm the Theatre Manager, which involves everything from bookings to the day to day running of the theatre, to policy making. This interests me in that I can make sure that the theatre, which is after all part of the student union, is used more by students than anybody else.

As well as this I also have another job which is basically artistic. I am meant to initiate and direct activities with the students. This involves putting on workshops and productions and aslo special projects — for example every Wednesday we have free lunch time events. I loan the theatre to groups who want to perform — often things they would not normally be able to do if they had normal financial restrictions placed on them. They can do their own thing, whatever that may be, and be assured of an audience. The audience in turn are given free passes to the other events in other parts of the centre.

Salient: How has this been financed?

Clark : We've done this by changing a lot of money to outside groups who use the theatre and in effect subsidise the students.

Salient: What sort of response have you had to this programme of activities?

Clark : Very good — I have been involved in productions using about 70 people and we are constantly having to expand our workshop activities to include such things as mime, dance, yoga — all sorts of things.

Salient: What are you doing in Wellington?

Clark : I'm primarily here to do a seminar which is called, for want of a better title, "Exploration of Theatre through Self and Group Awareness". That sounds a bit peculiar, but what it is, it working on how you as an individual, get into theatre — how much it's you, and how much it's not — how much it's technique — how far you're able to be generous on stage working with other people — how you approach a set text which is particularly emotionally oriented. I did a seminar on the same theme in Auckland a few weeks ago and will be doing the same thing at Waikato University. As well as that, I'm meeting with all the people involved with the productions we're bringing down for the Arts Festival in which we'll be doing several things — one is a kid's play we've just recorded for television, one called "Seven for a Secret thats Never been Told", which will go on at Downstage. It's a piece of modern political children's Theatre based on the corruption of the Press. I'll also be doing "The Punch and Judy Show" which we did on the telethon recently. It's basically a traditional Punch and Judy show but also uses musicians and a live actor. The puppets were made for us by Auckland artist Greer Twis and are superb. And I'm also going to be doing the "Third America Protest for Chile" which is a political piece I worked on with Sef Townsend from Theatre Action.

Salient: What of your past theatrical experience?

Clark : Well, I was trained as an actor and teacher at the Guild Hall School in London. I then taught in the East End at London for a while and then moved up to Edinburgh where my husband was working. I got involved in a Theatre Arts Centre for kids in connection with the Traverse Theatre which was at that stage one of the major avant-guarde fringe theatres in England. Through that I started devising and directing things for kids and running workshops for kids. We eventually moved down to London again where I established another Arts Centre.

Then we moved up to the Lancashire area where I set up yet another Arts Centre which was a mobile community based thing operating out of existing facilities such as church halls and private homes. And then I came here.

Salient: How do you view New Zealand theatre?

Clark : Well, the people who interest me most are as always the students who are fresh to theatre — finding things out for the first time. Working with students you have the energy and impetus which is often lost when you start working in professional theatre.

Because there are so few people in NZ, things are much more exposed and you tend to notice the bad things much more.

I think that overall the attitude in New Zealand towards the arts is very poor and that the inevitably corny statements like "Everybody cares for sport and not the arts" are sadly true. For example the money thats gone into the new Sports Centre at Auckland in comparison with the theatre — it's just amazing.

What's on

Downstage : Otherwise Engaged continues for another week. Its meant to be very good so get along and see it.

Circa : Circa's latest production Busa Fish Stas and VI will open this week. Yet another British comedy.

Repetory : Abelard and Heloise is a very powerful piece of theatre. Hopefully this production lives up to it.

The Chapel Perilous

The Chapel Perilous An Australian Play By Dorothy Hewett directed by adrian kiemander victoria university drama studies memorial theatre august 4,5,6. bookings: phone 721.000 ext 693

Drama Studies' major production for 1977 is the Australian play Chapel Perilous by Dorothy Hewett which will be staged in the Memorial Theatre on 4th, 5th and 6th August at 8 pm. Chapel Perilous is, to an extent, an autobiographical play which spans the years from 1939 to 1970 in the lite of [as Sylvia Lawson, an Australian critic calls her] "the female hero", Sally Banner. Dorothy Hewett acknowledges that Chapel Perilous was her third play after she had broken away from the confines of naturalism and the formal confines of the proscenium arch. She says "I found myself going back continually to Brecht and the Elizabethans, wrestling with the concepts of apparently pure freedom in time and space on an open platform". This has meant that cause and effect structures and the imitation of external events have been bypassed for "ritual, expression ism and musical comedy".

The music, under the direction of Rod McKenzie, is of paramount importance as it enables the compression of an era into a few bars — the years of World War II in Australia being distilled into such tunes as Chattanooga Choo Choo and the White Cliffs of Dover.

Sally Banner's extravagant individuality and flagrant sexuality should appeal to many who affirm a liberationist stand. Sally "would not bow" to the demands of convention, represented in Chapel Perilous by the Authority Figures' — Headmistress/Mother; Chaplain/Father/Thomas; and Sister Rosa/Saul. Joan Freeme plays the dual role of Headmistress/Mother, Paul Barett the Chaplain/Father/Thomas; and Gareth Mundy that of Sister Rosa/Saul. These many faceted roles are crucial to the concept of the play representing as they do, the three types of authority figures within society. The headmistress/Mother is the "natural authoritarian" who takes to authority as if born to it, without self-doubt or uncertainly. Sister Rosa/Saul deliberately seeks authority through positions of power, while the Chaplain/Father/Thomas must be regarded as representing those "who have authority thrust upon them" and who are both uncomfortable and ineffectual within their position of authority.

These are demanding roles for the actors requiring as they do, split-second changes from one character to another within the space of a few lines of dialogue but which add tremendous vitality and pace to the play.

By contrast, Michael, played by Len Nightingale and Sally Banner, played by Phillipe Byrne are solo roles, thereby underscoring their indivuality.

These five major roles are dependent upon the large chorus which represents society's "conservative majority" —. The upholders of the status quo" who comment cynically or mockingly, and who condemn mindlessly following the lead given them by the figures of authority.

In directing this play Adrian Kiernander, has [unclear: partially overcome] "the confines, of the proscenium arch" so that the play's natural energy and exuberance spills over into the audience. Besides the three performances on Thursday 4th, 5th and Saturday 6 th August, it is hoped that Chapel Perilous will be performed during Arts Festival. Bookings may be made through Judy Russell 721 000 ext. 693 during office hours.

Boesman and Lena

The New Zealand Students Arts Council, as part of its National Festival of the Arts, to be held in Wellington, August 20 - 27, is bringing to Wellington only, Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena, in association with the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.

Fugard, is an ex-patriate South African now living in Australia. He has written a number of plays concerning the black predicament in South Africa, and has inevitable collided with the anti-apartheid laws. He was persecuted in South Africa and his black actors were jailed. Against this background, we see his most poignant play — Boesman and Lena.

Boesman and Lena is the story of two South African Cape Coloureds — neither black nor white — driven from their shanty home by the white man's bulldozers — as they have been before and as they will be again. The plot is very simple. We see them on a night like any other, taking shelter under a few pieces of corrugated iron which is their home — Boesman seeking refuge in a bottle of wine. An old black man comes to seek shelter by their fire, is befriended by Lena but beaten by Boesman, as he considers him as only another addition to their problems. The old black dies; afraid of being accused of murder by the white man, they move on.

Fate and South African politics have been unkind to Boesman and Lena — as if moving outside of time, their actions and words are repeated again and again, with no answers or solutions to their predicament being given. Not only do Boesman and Lena mirror the plight of blacks and coloureds in South Africa — but the plight of the have-nots everywhere. Their anger is the anger of all those denied the basic rights of any human being.

Boesman has been reduced by the system to a hardened thug, whereas Lena has been made only more vulnerable by it. They are chained together by despair. The setting for the play is bare with the stage becoming littered with garbage as the play progresses. This starkness highlights the excellence of the acting of the husband and wife team of Anthony Wheeler and Olive Bodill, both South Africans now living in Australia, and Harry Roberts as the Kaffir. This play is not to be missed by those interested in the universal problem of human suffering, and of course by those interested in seeing theatre at its very best.

The play, with the same cast as seen at the Adelaide Festival, will run for a week's season only in [unclear: Wellington, during] the National Arts Festival, Auqust 20-27th at the Concert Chamber.