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Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 20. August 8 1977
Drama
Drama
Probably the most important production which will be presented will be Fugard's Boesman and Lena which was previewed in last week's 'Salient' — so if you want more information check out last week's copy. Also previewed in last week's issue was The Chapel Perilous by Dorothy Hewett which has just completed a short season in the Memorial Theatre here at Victoria.
Sef Townsend will be returning to present a more extended season of his Third America Protest for Chile which was presented two weeks ago as a lunchtime production in the Memorial Theatre.
Workshops : "Chameleon" will be presenting workshops on clowning and street theatre — Also Robert Bennet, as well as performing with his troupe "Mime International", will be holding a series of mime workshops.
Chameleon Anywhere and Everywhere
Chameleon — "small lizard with power of changing colour and living long without food".
- Steve Mathews, trudging around Northland as a postie, thinks : 'A Theatre Group' I
- goes to see Helen Pankhurst who is recovering in her garden from the Great South Island Tour of Ace Follies.
- rings lan Prior who is dancing in Dunedin.
- sees Millie Clayton who is dancing full-time plus supporting herself teaching full-time while waiting for an Arts Council grant.
- A flexible group drawing on our different skills — dance, clowns, trad, drama, masks. To work with a group of musicians. Self-supporting.
- Millie goes overseas on her grant.
- Aileen Davidson arrives from Dunedin.
- We work for two weeks swapping techniques, and come out the other side with five pieces, some masks, and four clowns : Snazz, Ernest, Wanda, and Drangoon.
- the musicians decide to try and make it alone as a group called Meantime
- we call ourselves Chameleon.
- work mainly as clowns for some months (in the streets, at Polytech., Forest Lakes Festival, fairs, schools) ; then start doing other pieces as well (Ugly Brother at Cabaret Captial Strut ; a piece on whales for Project Jonah).
- rumours start about an Arts Festival in Wellington.
- lan has a piece he wants to do ; he starts organising it.
- we decide we'd also like to do tome clowning in the streets
- approach the organisers, they agree to it and would like us to take a couple of workshops on clowns and masks as well.
So : You'll probably see us during the week somewhere at some time doing something — (look for any unusual shapes, four clowns, a blue bicycle called Beatrice, and some strange masked creatures). and if you come to the workshops we'll give you some ideas on how you can join in and make your own streets places of drama and festivity.
— Helen Pankhurst.
Decomposition the Process Group
Music, painting, dance, clownwork, sculpture acting, film, mime, slides, poetry, puppetry and more go into the making of this show. The processes involved in each form, of putting them together and of relating them to the audience are the subjects of investigation.
Decomposition is a performance, exploiting the tension between inherent artistic qualities and the use of chance in its overall composition. A random structure provides the basic dynamic force, leading participants and spectators into undeveloped areas of perception. Because it is an experiment the outcome is not predicted ; the excitement will be in its discovery on the night. If the name suggests rottenness, it is because this show aims to break down old concepts, and must flirt with danger to do so. One of the most unusual festival events.
C.A.P.
C.A.P. stands for co-active play; a term used to describe our activities when we participated in the first Sonic Circus held in Wellington in 1974, and sponsored by the then NZBC.
Co-active play is an activity requiring the participants to focus upon their bodies as abstract objects in an objective space, but to respond to any movements they may then perform in a totally intuitive manner. It began as an attempt to allow a person the experience of feeling as intense as possible very small alterations in state with the overall goal of increasing his awareness of the concept of Change ... in our case as it relates to the area of self expression. It has now developed to a stage where we have codified our experiences into a number of simple exercises, and a series of mental 'attitudes' which we can institute and develop at will.
These exercises produce movements which are essentially unrelated, but stem from a similar mental attitude on the part of each 'player'. We do not interact in any overt way. The juxtapositions produced by our individual movements being purely chance. However, because the movements happen only as a spontaneous result of our hightened sensibility to changes, the movements contain a remarkable congruity and unity, within themselves, and often produce startling relationships within the sequence of one individual, and between individuals.
Circulus
Nick Thompson is a fine arts student at the university of Canterbury and he has written a play Circulus which is being both performed and directed by students under the direction of John Kim. It is an essentially experimental production, having grown out of acting workshops and represents the growth of original NZ work during the last few years.
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Ros Clark's 7 for a Secret
The title refers both to the setting of the play — a circus in which the characters play ringmaster/ down type roles — and to what becomes increasingly obvious as the play progresses, that the circus is the world in microcosm, the circularity of existence. Theatrical illusion and reality are indivisibly interwoven ; actor and audience roles become confused and belief and doubt appear to be one and the same thing, Circulus thus explores the boundaries of theatre and ultimately asks the central question ; who are the actors and what is the play ?
Weka'ed
Weka'ed is a collection of new satirical pieces by Gary McCormick (whose first one-act play, 'The Moon-lovers', was sponsored by the Museum & Arts Centre last year) together with excerpts from a new farce entitled, 'A Very Religious Story'. The package show, presented with psychopathic intensity by McCormick, McCullough and Rickard, is intended to make people laugh where it hurts.
Special guests include a Headless Clergyman ("Burnt Offerings") and A Loyal National Party Supporter on Five Pints of Unsubsidised Milk a Week. Keren Rickard and Doug McCullough publicly bury the Nuclear Power Debate and examine such pressing national issues as how to avoid razor rash ; white in a nearby park, a dried-up Irish poet, a very pregnant young woman (herself of indeterminate parentage) and the mysterious 'M', examine the philosophical and social foundations of demogoguery . . . "We are concerned here not with infinite wisdom, but with infinite gullibility" !
Dr Goudron Otago University
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A grande guignol written in the early 1900's Set in a pyschiatrist's office in a 19th Century asylum, Best described as pleasurable horror.
Punch and Judy
Sef Townsend and Tooki Garett, Richard Smith, Karen Hill, Sally Gillespie, Ian Rogers
Based on the traditional Punch and Judy show with puppets by Greer Twiss.
- Punch
- Judy
- The Baby
- The Policeman, The Hangman, The Crocodile,
- The Clown
- The Magician
— As well as puppets in booth, actor out front is link between audience and puppets, as well as band providing the musical accompaniment — plenty of audience participation.
A Phenomenon of Short Duration
A Phenomenon of Short Duration is an experimental production which brings together movement, sound, design, mime, and contemporary dance exploring firstly childhood experiences and then abstract movements between extremes.
One of the aims of the production is also to investigate the relationship between the performers and the technical and musical aspects of the production.
The production was directed and conceived by Ian Prior who is a member of Chameleon, Wellington's most exciting experimental Theatre group. He brings to this production a wealth of experience in mime, dance, clown, and "straight" theatre.
Measure for Measure
Performed earlier this year at Christchurch, Measure for Measure is the largest campus production at the Festival, with a cast of over thirty, and performed on a revolving stage with massive set. It is a fast moving story of sexual blackmail and cunning intrigue, leavened by some of the funniest (and earthiest ) scenes Shakespeare ever wrote.
Director's Note
In the last twenty years, in England and Europe, "Measure for Measure" hat become one of the most frequently revived of Shakespearean plays. Though it has held the stage as an always exciting, often bawdy and entirely coherent piece, it has taken on a special meaning in our generation.
In this era of great sexual frankness, Angelo's hypocrisy and his attempts to enforce laws governing erotic instincts, come very near to our concerns with the relationship between a politicians public office and his private conduct, and the rights and competence of the stage to interfere in the intimate lives of its citizens. Alspthe moral twilight of "Measure for Measure", in which the good characters are not altogether sympathetic, and the bad are often the more appealing, is a fictional atmosphere to which we are more accustomed than, say, the Victorians.
But, for me, the most important aspect of "Measure for Measure" is its insistence on the insamity of goodness. Shakespeare seems to be saying, as he does from "Romeo and Juliet" to "The Tempest", that unless we can make an entirely irrational move to forgive those upon whom we have every reason to visit our revenge, we will never get off the treadmill of evil, Isabella, despite her intellect, her rigid moral sense, and her very real wrongs, begs for the life of the man who would have raped her, and whom she believes has murdered her brother. It is toward this supreme gesture, against all sense', that the play and the mysterious workings of the Duke move.
"Measure for Measure" was written at the height of Shakespear's power as a play-smith, poet, philosopher, psychologist and comedian.
— Elric Hooper
Die Tote Tante
A hilarious farce dealing with the moral dilema of a hypocritical professor facing an unexpected twies of fate : the Professor's daughter will inherit a huge fortune provided she becomes the mother of an illegitimate child with her father's consent.
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