Playing it Safe

Standard Safety

by Julie Bovasso

The New Zealand Drama School directed by George Webby Halfway-up Downstage

The New Zealand Drama School is the only government sponsored drama school in the country. The dozen or so students accepted each year for the two year course do not graduate as fully fledged actors, but they have had the opportunity to engage in consistent training and study of the various aspects of their craft without the pressures and obligations a production oriented theatre would force upon them.

They do not often perform in public; in fact Standard Safety, which ran late nights and lunchtimes at Downstage's Half-way-up through early June, is only the second time the current second year students have been seen at all. Last year they presented a show of comedy, song and mime, and have yet to do a major production.

Standard Safety examines employer/employee relationships in a large insurance company, where each member of the staff is allotted a five minute toilet break and no-one but no-one is allowed to eat outside the staff cafeteria.

The play is basically a series of cameo characterisations which allow each actor in turn to hold the spotlight and demonstrate his/her skills in creating a character capable of making the audience laugh. There is a long sequence at the beginning, where two women (later joined by a third) have the chance to develop a degree of interaction, but even this is qualified by the very nature of the play, for no character is interested in establishing genuine communication with another.

The theme concerns the way in which the employees are treated as an amorphous mass and view themselves as such, yet feel completely isolated from each other. Presumably we are supposed to consider this is wrong, yet the structure, with its series of cameos, does exactly the same thing.

Near the end the boss asks the staff what he should do with an employee who has been caught going out to lunch, crying that it is a terrible thing for any of their number to "break the heart that bleeds for them". The employees, who up until that time have commisurated on the plight of the hapless miscreant, break out with the instinctive chant, "Kill him". The boss, on cue to prove his munificance, rejects the idea.

Later, this same instinctive urge appears again when one employee suddenly breaks down and attacks the inhumanity which forces itself on her own little world. This time the response is a chorus of, "She's right", as everyone else joins the melee.

The play comes close to treating people as blind animals capable only of timidity and gut impulse while satirising their surface lives. For this reason, and for its great dollops of simple verbal humour and character business it is a lightweight piece, an "exercise" and little more.

Director George Webbey called it this in his programme notes, and the fact that the actors drew their parts out of a hat underscores it. As such it is valuable to the actors: the development of character is an important part of actor training, and here yields many Fine moments.

Perhaps Webbey intentionally chose a play which does no more, preferring to let us see something of the sort of work the drama school does, placed for form's sake within the conventional framework a play affords. Considering that the school is a training ground and not a haven for experienced actors one can see his point, but there are objections.

The lack of fully fledged characters within the play means that it is limited even as an exercise, for there are no real depths to explore. The lack of potential for interaction also imposes its limits, communication onstage between actors being fundamental to most theatre.

These actor-trainees have now done two comedies. It is unfortunate (for the public as well as themselves) that they have not had their skills expanded into a serious production before the final meat market show at the end of this year. The general quality of the performances in Standard Safety left little doubt about their ability; if we are to pay to see them surely we have the right to expect that ability will be properly utilised.

Simon Wilson