The reviewers are Kylie Eastley, Anica Boulanger-Mashberg, Gai Anderson and Mark Cutler.
Two Pairs of Shorts: A rehearsed reading of four new plays
The Tasmanian Theatre Company
The Backspace
28 March-5 April (various venues)
In the Beginning is the Word…
At last year’s launch for the new Tasmanian Theatre Company – Tasmania’s first professional, adult, text-based theatre company since Zootango more than a decade ago – artistic director Charles Parkinson announced the company’s dedication to telling Tasmanian stories. In a diverse cultural and artistic island community, what makes a Tasmanian story?
These four short plays are still in development, and are the result of a project jointly commissioned by the Tasmanian Theatre Company and Australian Script Centre in celebration of the Centre’s 30th anniversary. Each writer had a week-long residency in a rural Tasmanian community, their mission was to create a short work somehow connected to that place. Here, then, a story is ‘Tasmanian’ through its connection to place. The participants – Finegan Kruckemeyer, Adam Grossetti, Sue Smith, and Debra Oswald – are established writers, of varying Tasmanian association.
All four playwrights chose to set their stories in their adopted communities, and each play features ‘outsiders’ to those communities. In each of the plays the characters are caught between nostalgia for the comforts of small communities and resentment of the claustrophobia of those same communities.
But the emphasis on place never restricts the narrative. Even at this stage of drafting, characters are well-drawn and varied, and their stories of love, sex, death, and charmingly quirky Scots who drift in to shore with the kelp, are universal experiences.
In Kruckemeyer’s The Exceptional Beauty of the First and Last, ex-resident Nick returns to Swansea and negotiates a history he thought he had left behind, coming to terms with the transience of life in the process. Grossetti’s Sex Death & Fly Fishing features a young man dealing with a loved one’s death, and at the same time re-evaluating his connection to place (particularly Miena). Smith, in Zeehan, came up with The Seagull, a play intimately concerned with the pervasive influence of the mining culture in this town, and the impact of an old mining disaster on even the most transitory resident. Oswald’s Bull Kelp detonates an eccentrically astute outsider onto King Island and briefly into the lives of Kim (recently returned home to the Island from New York) and Brendan.
In Two Pairs of Shorts, all fifteen characters are performed by five versatile Tasmanian actors, four of whom also variously direct the readings. The actors are proficient in their economical preparations of character and their nuanced interactions, even while working from a script.
Rehearsed readings are a mutual privilege. They offer writers a glimpse of their work off the page while there is still time for redrafting. They offer theatre companies and directors a chance to see new work, and they offer audiences an insight into works that are still evolving. The absence of set and other technical elements offers incredible freedom for the script to communicate a raw potential, and the focus is shifted to the language itself. Rehearsed readings are a wonderful advocate for the power of text-based theatre.
Anica Boulanger-Mashberg is a Hobart-based performer and writer.
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Two Pairs of Shorts
Tasmanian Theatre Company
The Backspace, Hobart
29 March
Not Long for Shorts…
Four prominent Australian playwrights will soon be able to gauge the success of their latest works in the Tasmanian towns that inspired them.
In an innovative project co-commissioned by the Australian Script Centre and Tasmanian Theatre Company four writers spent a week in a Tasmanian community; King Island, Miena, Swansea and Zeehan. The Two Pairs of Shorts brief was to incorporate these locations into their short plays, but how to do this was left up to each writer.
Play readings of the second drafts of these four works, were presented at the Backspace Theatre, Hobart as part of Ten Days on the Island. Written by Adam Grossetti, Finnegan Kruckemeyer, Debra Oswald and Sue Smith, the short plays reflected the character or essence of each of the towns.
Performed by Hobart based actors Jane Johnson, Guy Hooper, Steve Jones, Fiona Stewart and Carrie McLean the readings provided the opportunity for audiences to experience the text of these works and respond to the story telling. For two of the writers who attended the readings, Kruckemeyer and Oswald it was the chance to hear the plays read and to gauge audience response.
Finnegan Kruckemeyer spent his time at Swansea and chose to focus on personal stories as opposed to locality focused narrative. More familiar with 50 minute plays, he found it easier to write the 20 minute work, The Exceptional Beauty of the First and Last. For this Hobart based writer it was a particularly exciting event.
‘This is the first time I’ve had the script read, let alone in front of an audience.’ He confided.
One of the most experienced and prominent playwrights, Sue Smith has not long moved from television writing to theatre. Well known for writing some of Australia’s most iconic television shows, including Brides of Christ and Bastard Boys, her play, The Seagull, is based in Zeehan and captures the essence of the West Coast.
Tasmania Theatre Company’s Artistic Director, Charles Parkinson, said that new work usually involved a 3 year process; commissioning, creative development and then production and programming. This project was a new approach with a shorter time frame. These plays will continue to be developed by the writers and are expected to be programmed in TTC’s performance schedule.
Parkinson said that TTC was interested in telling Tasmanian stories and supporting local writers, and the development of these plays represents an opportunity to encourage new work in theatre. The company also support Monday night play readings of works from local writers at the Backspace Theatre.
The litmus test will be the touring of works to each of the four locations, giving local audiences the opportunity to measure the quality and authenticity of each depiction. Whether the playwrights get shouted a beer at the end of the night will gauge their success.
Audiences can experience the two hour readings, that commemorate the Australian Script Centre’s 30th anniversary and coincides with the National Play Festival 2009 in Swansea, King Island, Zeehan and Miena as part of Ten Days on the Island.
For dates: www.tendaysontheisland.com
Kylie E Eastley a freelance arts consultant based in Hobart, Tasmania
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Two Pairs of shorts
Tasmanian Theatre Company
Venue -Backspace, Sackville St, Hobart
Swansea , King Island , Zeehan , Miena, various dates and venues
Dates 29th March and 5th April, Hobart
Telling our stories
Stories are important. Our lives are filled with them – it’s how we navigate the world and make meaning of our lives. But well written stories about Tasmania, about us here in this place, are heard far too infrequently as we are bombarded with those from everywhere else.
So it was a great thrill to sit in the Backspace on Sunday afternoon and listen to four short plays set in Tasmania, presented as staged readings by The Tasmanian Theatre Company and the Australian Script Centre, as part of The Ten Days on the Island Festival.
In 2008, four experienced playwrights were dropped into four diverse communities in Tasmania, to be inspired by the place and the stories they found there, and then create a new work for 3 actors. Developed to second-draft stage the plays have been directed and rehearsed by a small company of fine Tasmanian actors (Guy Hooper, Jane Johnson, Steven Jones, Carrie McLean and Fiona Stewart).
They were then read out loud – simply staged, without set, costumes, lighting design or sound effects. No distractions – just the words and your own imagination to fill in the details.
The results were delicious – as over the next two hours I too dropped straight into Swansea and Miena and Zeehan and then King Island: on the beach watching the sea; in the endless rain of the West Coast; dancing at the Hospital Ball; working down the mine; fly fishing in the highlands; collecting kelp; and meeting a mix of colourful, comic, heartfelt and well-conceived characters along the way.
Themes and styles as diverse as the writers and the communities were carefully prised open before us, to be explored, expanded, illuminated. ‘Place’ – as often seen through the eyes of a blow-in or a local just back in town was a common thread. In Sue Smith’s gritty and poetic west coast drama for example ,a blow-in is a Sea Gull who “…flies in, eats all the chips and leaves.”, while in Debrah Oswald’s Bull Kelp the young woman returning to King Island speaks of being “incarcerated by water “ , and Adam Grosseti in Sex Death and Fly Fishing finds “people done with society”.
Writing a play is no mean feat, it’s a process that takes time, patience and skill, but these are already multilayered, poetic and complex beasts, full of laughter and tears.
Still fresh, some more fully honed than others, but the process of rewriting and refinement continues, as they are developed over the next year to be shown in full production as part of the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s Season in 2010.
As co-commissioners of this project, The Australian Script Centre, (who are based in Hobart), has a responsibility to support playwrights Australia-wide, so I imagine that is why three of the playwrights were brought from interstate. When we have so many skilled writers here in Tasmanian with a such limited opportunities, this seems unfortunate, but I was still very glad hear these stories and look forward to seeing them in full production next year.
Gai Anderson is a writer and performer, based in the Huon Valley, Tasmania.
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Two Pairs of Shorts
Tasmanian Theatre Company
The Backspace, Hobart
29 March
Well Fitted Shorts
What does it mean to be Tasmanian? Is there a quintessential Tasmanian-ness? Moreover should we look for a point of difference?
Before those questions are addressed, I’d better own up straight away, I am not Tasmanian. OK … I live here and I have strong connections, my partner and my maternal grandfather were born here, but in essence I have BIG island blood running through me. So when I sat down at the Backspace Theatre on a Sunday afternoon I was hoping for some insight into the questions posed. I wasn’t left wondering for long.
Two Pairs of Shorts was a reading of four short plays in development but how they were developed is of particular interest. The Tasmanian Theatre Company (TTC), in conjunction with the Australian Script Centre, commissioned four, Tasmanian connected, playwrights to each produce a short play. Before pen was put to paper each writer was despatched to four different Tasmanian locations – Finegan Krukemeyer to Swansea, Adam Grossetti to Miena, Debra Oswald to King Island and Sue Smith to Zeehan. Their brief was to live among the locals for a week, and then produce a first draft by the end of 2008. Literary refugees!
Further development ensued in early 2009, until the second drafts were laid bare in the public reading as part of 10 Days on the Island. Using five Tasmanian based actors … Guy Hooper, Fiona Stewart, Jane Johnston, Steven Jones and Carrie McLean, each of the four works was literally given theatrical mouth to mouth. Not that the works were in danger of dying … far from it. Although the writers themselves might be another thing after their enforced entrapment, three of the pieces did examine death. TTC creative director Charles Parkinson informed us that he is looking to produce all four works as part of the company’s 2010 subscription season. So how did they stack up and what did they tell us about Tasmania and being Tasmanian?
The first play by Kruckemyer, The Exceptional Beauty of the First and Last examined the idea of returning home, staying put and preparing to die. Grossetti’s piece, Sex Death & Fly Fishing, was the only play not set in entirely in Tasmania and, as the title suggests, used death as a key plot device. Sue Smith’s The Seagull, although using death to advance the story, was more concerned with connection, while Oswald’s offering, Bull Kelp, avoided death concerning itself more with the going away/ returning home/ reconnecting concept. Interestingly all contained an outsider character which, given their creative secondment experience, is understandable.
I would not wish to review the readings; they are just readings after all, except to say I would welcome seeing them in production. All four plays were well written for second drafts. All four neatly juxtaposed humour and fragility. Sue Smith’s The Seagull and Oswald’s Bull Kelp seemed to connect most strongly with the audience, if straight laughter and applause are used as the measuring stick. And all four works were given a fine airing by the uniformly talented cast (special mention to Hooper for his delightfully over-the-top Scottish brogue).
Naturally enough all carried a notion of what it is to be Tasmanian, within a rural setting. Not overtly Tasmanian mind you, it came almost as subtext. And like Australians, indeed human beings, in being soooo Tasmanian each play also showed me the things that connect rather than the things that make us different. So while still not personally sharing a deep Tasmanian connection, I was nonetheless left with a better understanding of the little island.
This is a different way to create plays, not earth shatteringly different, but nevertheless unusual. The TTC is a newly formed company … well, morphed actually, out of the former IS Theatre. Parkinson wants, and needs, to quickly establish the company as a theatrical voice for the state. This is an excellent way to begin things. The novelty of the process doubles as a marketing and branding tool, as well as a creative connector to the various communities. Each play will be read in each of the formative locations. When they are produced it is hoped they will be toured as well. What better way for the TTC to announce “Here we are. We are of you, and by you, Tasmania!”
Mark Cutler is a Hobart based writer/performer
