Don't Make Me Angry

Alison is angry. But not angry enough for The Age to bite back. Her closing statement, "I've been watching the most interesting things in Melbourne get squashed flat...and, my dears, I'm sick of it." reminds me of, hey what do you know? Me! A pansy-assed North Carlton boy if ever there was one. The last time I tried to involve The Age in a stoush it ended up here, in the letters section of RealTime. I mean, really. I don't have the journalistic clout that Alison does but I was similarly yearning for a dialogue, or a fight, even. Looking at the letter with a bit of distance, it was a tad personal, but I only regret that as far as it might have contributed to a response not being forthcoming. Not only did The Age ignore it (including a conveniently shortened version that i politely provided), not only did Helen Thomson completely ignore it but-once published- so too did the community. I would have thought that a company like Red Stitch, whose very survival seemed, at the time, to be thanks to this one reviewer, would come out in defense of her aesthetic platform.

Obviously I'm having trouble letting go! And you would be forgiven for thinking that I have some sort of Socratic yearnings. Perhaps my middle-class soft-centre self had such yearnings then, but this is now. Now, I am simply ruing a lost opportunity for all involved to sell more of whatever it was we were selling at the time.

To continue, or return rather, the thing that so saddened me about the minkshoe comment-fiasco was that the first section of the argument was brilliant (as Ben Ellis pointed out). Chris Boyd and Adam Cass were like a two insulting, attack-minded middleweights. Great combinations, the odd rabbit-punch...offense could have been taken but that would be like "The Man" Mundine complaining about Kessler's handy sharp left; a damp squib, a less-entertaining, or enlightening option for the punters.

So I suppose I am actually taking a different tack from the "why can't we have more sophisticated arts criticism" and going for the much more Australian excitement of, say, a kick in the head, or roo-boxing, or a game against Port Adelaide. "If you can't win the game win the fight," should be heard from the stands. Think of it as a kind of anti-nuance crusade.

I quite like Robin Usher, but before you lynch me, let me tell you why: he is an old-fashioned journo, a shit-stirrer, he uses all the tricks of the trade to generate some heat and is probably the only interviewer that I approach with my own dictaphone, in case he misquotes for his own theatrical uses. I am not being sarcastic. It's a relief to talk to a journo these days who doesn't insist on you naming your favourite bar and the cool cocktail you discovered therein. Much more interesting to be unwittingly involved in some random institutional arson. What confuses me, is why The Age is not interested in availing itself of the nearest can of lead-free. It is certainly antithetical to Usher's poke-the-snake-with-a-stick-even-of-your-are-wearing-a-sock-on-your-hand -and-pretending-it's-a-snake old-skool-style (sorry to mix the metaphors but my German readers are complaining that bush-fires and/or deadly indigenous animals aren't getting enough of a go here.)

Now, as Alison says, the problem is that for many, The Age is the first and last word. A few "insiders" like herself are furiously trying to reason with the monkey, but what has started as a completely onanistic beat-up can only be furthered by shirtfronting the organ-grinder: PLAY THE MAN NOT THE BALL. And I am being lovely and inclusive and egalitarian with this proscription, all of us kids can have a turn, from Arts Editors to Bloggers, from "disgusting from Hawthorn" to Chris Bendall, from Andrew Bolt to, well, let's not get carried away, he's got the edge of practice already...we all get to whack each other (and the less dicriminantly, the better) WE ALL GET TO HAVE A GO. Follow me, through that last un-Australian thought to a world where we meet in the pub afterwards to compare the size of our stats.

Imagine, for starters, two full length opinion pieces, published in The Age side-by-side (yes, this plan involves acquiescence from "The Big Paper"). Imagine Theatrenotes Vs. Supernaut (pick your own supercharged combo) on why the festival fell or soared. Sophisticated analysis permitted, if you must, but sub-editing done according to a napalm-wit-and-savage-put-down-meter, y'know, dredged for the best vitriolic highlights, with staff comments to follow and fuel the flames.

Where's the old Harry M. Miller/J. Jonah Jameson instincts? More debate = more passion = more excitement = a more involved public = newspaper AND ticket sales! It's a no-brainer and surely no amount of looking after your advertisers and/or fellow B-Boomers can alter that fact. Get it together people!

PS: Not much of a leap then to Theatre Criticism as a contact sport, based on Pay TV-friendly formats like Salad Wrestling. I smell funding possibilities from the AIS and a bag of sponsorship opps. Somebody stop me before this descends into Ray Gill-patented self-loathing satire, otherwise known as...Next week: Artistic Directors appointed on the results of bare-knuckle fighting and two-up.

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Melbourne Street Art

"North Melbourne is the land of lost men"

First in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Melbourne's Finest #2

Overdue thankyous, to Jodi, Alison and TQ for shared outrage and lovely buck-up-little-camper notes. It turned out to be nothing that a half-a-dozen mojhitos and some rock'n good friends couldn't fix (well, that's the short version anyway.) And a long overdue thanks to all who welcomed me to this world, particularly fond of George Hunka's description of minkshoe and myself as "contrarians". Speaking of friends, one of my favourite co-conspirators, Mila Faranov, exhibited as part of a VCA graduate exhibition recently, to left you can see a detail from "It isn't easy being me - pair of babies". Mila can be quite outrageous, deviant and caustic but her work here was playful, funny and sad.
Another piece that got me was a computer-generated animation loop from Hao Guo and James (hmmm, credits in my program look incomplete) "kick" & "snow fight with no dick" were downright disturbing, followed by "erection" a man with a lap-top on his, erm, lap...further description probably not neccesary...let's just say that I responded as someone whose relationship with his new powerbook was, at least temporarily, challenging to my significant organic relationship.

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Melbourne's Finest

The black dog has nipped me, I'm afraid. Personal and temporary reasons bear the main blame, but a big reason is both public and ongoing. George Hunka has done a good job of negotiating the ethics of the situation from a distance. Alison Croggon has navigated the whole affair here, and is moderating a good discussion. I am speechless. Gutted. Gobsmacked. Ashamed.

A person without any power has spoken out about a perceived structural illness and she has been lynch-mobbed. There is no other word for it. Alison points out that this is another chapter in Melbourne's history of small-mindedness (and believe me, I know of theatre-workers who have been "punished" for "not playing nice") but this is a new low.

I don't blame Minkshoe for folding, for self-censoring. She started her blog with a very clear statement of vulnerability. As an actor, she had nothing to gain and something to lose. Her aggressors have borne out her fears. I'm grateful that while I am speechless there are more match-fit bloggers who are saying what needs to be said. I'll pull myself together soon.

Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power surely has an apposite quote about the mob (damn that library in a box!). All I can bring to mind is another of his aphorisms, "There are enmities that must be met. Silence is rot."

I only post this if others are using it as a portal. Check it out, follow it up and consider this a very temporary silence on my behalf. 'Til then, I'm going to go and cheer myself up by listening to some Howard Barker.

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Come in, the water's warm

The previous post hoped that the debate around the latest TheatreatRisk show Requiem for the 20th Century: volume 1 might extend. It has and has. I thought I’d see what I can do from this corner. The first point is somewhat extreme, so I very much hope people don’t get stuck on it and miss the second point, which is the one that might contribute to the longevity of the conversation.

I’m just going to start with the issue of leaving shows early. Any theatre piece has an integrity that makes such a thing possible. Coming from Berlin, where early-exiting, often loudly, is not just acceptable behaviour but also the terrific corollary of an engaged audience who have a sense of ownership of the work, I relish these moments. It is also common sense. If someone tells you your sister is a hairy donkey, you might hang around for a moment to see if they are joking (assuming you disagree), but staying to see whether they transform into a nice person, if you just gave them half an hour or so, would be silly. Just as you don’t expect a personality to suddenly transform, neither do you expect a work of art to betray it’s own nature mid-stream. A theatre-maker brings a sensibility to the whole experience, as any artist does, and has to be credited with control. That is, you have to assume that the artist is guiding you deliberately. The hairy donkey analogy might be flippant but who expects a technically shaky violinist to suddenly improve for the last movement? Or a novelist to stop being turgid after you have waded through the first 100 pages? The few people I know that are genuinely adventurous in their DVD watching, are so with one hand poised over the eject button. There is “healthy curiosity,” and there is “wasting large slabs of your life”.

A thoughtful viewer can judge a production by the first half, or even the first ten minutes (aside: or sometimes even the poster, but that should probably wait.) OK, so the debate is really about whether or not a critic, rather than the generic “viewer”, has a responsibility to hang around. I would argue that different rules for critics and audience members belittles the audience member and casts the critic as having parental responsibilities to both audience and artist in a particularly infantile theatrical cul-de-sac. (And don’t get me started on the misapprehension that a reviewer “owes it” to a company to stay because of the free ticket, that is an ethical no-brainer.) Now, I don’t expect to convince even a small minority to share my views on this. I am merely explaining why I feel that a critic has an intellectual and ethical justification for leaving and further, why I respect and even enjoy the reviewer who has such a confidence in their own agenda. Perhaps I also get the feeling that they are big enough to know that all they would be doing by staying to the bitter end would be clocking up point-scoring opportunities.

So, why is this legitimately upsetting to Melbournians? Territorial Pissing, to agree with Ben Ellis, is absolutely key. The weird contortions that happen when money, audiences and career-possibilities are at such an all-time low that everyone gets horribly defensive and things that a healthier system could absorb, become life-threatening.

How much better off would Melbourne be, if the net effect of the three great “I left” moments of recent theatre history (Croggon, Boyd, Rundle) were ripples in a much bigger pond, that is, having less brutal impact but broader radius. These guys are lambs, it will be a sign of great things when Melbourne can support a genuinely vicious reviewer, a Ken Tynan or a Frank Rich (does anyone else remember the short-lived MacSween Bolton?) But that is absolutely not possible while Melbourne has one and a half daily papers that sporadically review. Publishing reviews the day after opening must be a given. Reviewers of different tastes reviewing the same show in the same paper is also necessary… you know, normal stuff, arts reporting as journalism not as lifestyle recommendations.

But the “mass” argument is a digression (and blogging may make the whole newspaper-whinge redundant soon enough). Reviewers have a duty to be consistent and that is all. My understanding of the ‘Faithful Witness,’ is that fidelity improves the clearer the witness can explain their perspective. I am not rude to my friends if I don’t like their show simply because I lack social graces, I want to be believed and understood the next time I have a positive opinion. Reading Alison Croggon is a pleasure because her agenda is writ large. The next time she leaves at interval, everyone will be that bit clearer about where she is coming from (or going to?). To get personal, Jonathon Marshall is another reviewer who has a perspective and clearly articulated opinion that makes it possible for me to enjoy his reviews, even when, as is often the case, he is caning my art. To refer again to the Grand-daddy of the vicious review, Ken Tynan, the man could be a beast but he was always witty, and most importantly, he was pushing a vivid and visionary agenda, one he believed in so vigorously that he ended up co-founding (with Larry Olivier) the National Theatre in London. An argument if ever there was one, for the power of “negative” criticism.

But here is the rub: Croggon is, in her own words, a blogger not a journalist. She is not being paid, has genuine freedom and relishes the deeper intellectual inquiry that is possible as a result. Chris Bendall cares very deeply, because his meagre livelihood depends on it (in Melbourne, a good review won’t make people come but a bad review will put them off, as I know from experience, and, longer-term, what else are you going to show the funding bodies but reviews?) Bendall and Croggon interact. Excellent so far. If there is a systemic problem, they are both working to fix it, politely or not. The genuinely powerful presence in the equation, that is, the one making money out of the whole enterprise is The Age. What disappoints me is that Cameron Woodhead has not engaged in the debate himself. He must be itching to, surely? Without his input, everything is chugging along nicely but although here I am addressing the whole “should a critic leave” thing, and elsewhere there is much interesting stuff, my understanding of Croggon’s original post was that it had the potential to set up a much more interesting dialectic about assumed critical values (“…there are extremes that ought to be noted.”). Clearly Croggon is up for anybody who has the nettle to take her on and, surrounded by such diverse and articulate blogging minds scoring it as they see it, why not engage?

Cameron, do us all a favour and consider that a call out! Use the word-limitless-luxury of blogspace to mount an argument supporting your appreciation of Requiem… (or at least the first half!) That would send what is already an interesting debate into a kind of discursive nirvana. Here in virtual Berlin, you can consider the Lapsang Souchong on the brew and the door open. Email me, I’ll post it.

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I am not a theatre reviewer

that is why Alison Croggon's Theatrenotes link is to the right. She also claims not to be a reviewer (later note: see comments for correction of that fact) but is the best one Melbourne has. Which is all by way of drawing your attention to the fact that she has started something really important, to which Ben Ellis has also added some typically thoughtful comments.If it can go a few more rounds (very un-Australian if it did), it could get even more interesting. In the meantime, Mr. Woodhead and Ms Croggon are united in their appreciation of 11th Hour's For Samuel Beckett. This is my first Melbourne must-see for the last two years (OK, I've been away for most of those!) read Alison again here, see it, and then start suggesting loudly and publicly that Peter Houghton should be knighted for his performance as Hamm (and if there is some technical hitch with that formality, somebody give him a Green Room Award)

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