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Newsletter Reviews
August 2011
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The Clown, from Heart to Heart
by Ton Kurstjens
The title says it all. It is wonderful to find a book about clowning which is all heart. This is not a compilation of lists of ‘funny’ yet empty routines or tricks for people in outrageous costumes and scary face paint. Ton Kurstjens (born in the Netherlands, 1959) is a clown and this is a practical guide for clowning. Yes, it is filled with tools and techniques, is richly illustrated and comes with 25 extensive practical exercises. What marks this as an excellent resource, though, is the author’s focus on the clown’s sensitivity, which gives the power to touch others. This contact-clown can make a connection from heart to heart. Kurstjens reveals much of his own character here, in this comprehensive account of clowning as he would, no doubt, in performance.
Kurstjens shows that from behind the world’s smallest mask, the red nose, the clown invites people to drop their own masks and show their true selves. You are your clown’s starting point. The author inspires us to be playful and optimistic, to make use of the powerful qualities that children possess: imagination, innocence, purity, spontaneity and lust for life. He is convinced that clowns can play a crucial role in our society - they can bring people together through their open communication. Using a very personal approach, Kurstjens addresses not just clowns and clowning instructors: he aims to inspire communication trainers and everyone else who is interested in personal development.
Seven chapters make up the bulk of this 208 page book.
The book is dense with ideas and the through-line is the contact, the interaction with others (the audience) and so, while most informative, the language is about honest emotions, impulses, desires, reactions, the encounter itself. Throughout, there are loads of delightful responses to clowns and clowning. "Clowns are a crossing between a poet and an orang-utan. Only sensitive men and women can let that come across credibly."
While it provides useful information about essential themes in life: ‘setting boundaries, overcoming emotional blockades, and daring to be vulnerable’, have no doubt that it is embedded in clowning. Performers, directors, and Secondary and tertiary teachers would feel well equipped to investigate and embrace clowning in their approach to their work. There is ample here: the language of clowning, technique, examples, structure, clown types, anecdotes, and qualities. It’s a fun, generously written book which has wide appeal.
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Thursday’s Child
adapted by Eva Di Cesare, Sandra Eldridge, Tim McGarry from the novel by Sonya Hartnett
John McCallum, in his review of this play in The Australian, said, "Like a lot of recent theatre for young people, Thursday’s Child is a popular novel on legs." This astonishing story was adapted by Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People from the successful book of the same name by internationally acclaimed and multiple prize-winning novelist, Sonya Hartnett, known particularly as an author for children and young readers.
Thursday’s Child The Play, is set in the Australian countryside during the Great Depression and in the ‘eccentric memory’ of a young woman’s narrating of the past, of her childhood. It is a ‘bush-gothic narrative’ and in adapting it for the stage, Monkey Baa acknowledge the challenge posed by the staging of numerous locations, including the vast expanse of the rural context which was so ‘beautifully rendered’ in the novel, the young character’s underground world, and its broad time span. Monkey Baa and the cast and creative team dramatised this extraordinary story on a simple, beautiful set, using lighting and sound to depict time and place in their production and it is now newly published as a playscript.
Thursday’s Child is a strange kid called Tin Flute (who has far to go), mute son of Da and Mam, younger brother of Harper, Devon and Audrey, who escapes his ragged and hungry life by vanishing into the earth. He retreats in tunnels he digs obsessively in the drought-ridden earth beneath the hovel of the surviving members of his struggling family. The audience learns through the well-crafted storytelling of Harper, his older sister, of Tin’s escapes into his surreal subterranean network. Tragedy is flagged in her opening lines. Boundaries blur between earth-bound Realism and recollection ‘tripping in its own memories’. The play has villains and heroes and elements of melodrama, including a savage and satisfying ending, but its dark reality, such as the raw heartbreak of the death of a child, goes well beyond the boundary of moralising sensationalism. Such disturbing ideas are brought to life sensitively by the imaginative and spirited protagonist, her riveting story of family camaraderie and neighbours punctuated with lighter touches.
Thursday’s Child had its world premiere at Sydney’s Seymour Centre in May 09, and then toured Australia successfully, ending with a short season at Wharf 2 for Sydney Theatre Company. A visit to Monkey Baa’s website reveals heart-warming audience feedback from teachers and students, who variously described the production as being: entertaining, humorous, exquisite, engaging, memorable, surreal, lyrical, original, accessible, whimsical, bright, deeply, deeply moving, rich, thrilling and enthralling! This epic story is all of these and more. Its thematic questions of (mis)fortune and destiny invite investigation by young and old alike. Thursday’s Child is a stunning example of a Youth theatre script, suited to upper Middle School and secondary students, though will appeal to adults of all ages. There are 11 interesting characters and doubling is possible as Monkey Baa toured with 6 actors. Director’s and Program Notes appear in the introduction and Teacher’s Notes are available.
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Prayer to an Iron God
by Caroline Reid
This play for four actors gives an insight into the rough lives of disenfranchised young people living in outback Country Towns, enduring and barely surviving their raw circumstances: ‘This town’s full of dead kids’. Caroline Reid is unflinching in her honest creation of characters: a young woman, TB (Tits and Balls); her boyfriend, Sniff, and his mate, Skunk. The action spans a few days, at the first anniversary of the suicide of one of their own, emotions heightened by the arrival of a stranger, Ben – an outsider whose mystery underscores their unreflective lives.
Aubrey Mellor, in the play’s introduction, calls Caroline Reid ‘an important new playwriting voice’. This powerful new Australian play is unlikely to be seen and read by the wide audience it deserves to reach, sadly: the sensibilities of stakeholders within many schools, for instance, are likely be challenged by the violence and authentic language of the characters. The style is compelling realism, brutally revealing the pain and inescapable frustration of ordinary youth, trapped in an underprivileged environment.
There is no upbeat finale, no hope of a glimpse into a bright future, after all, for the survival of this damaged, macho species. The dialogue, while coarse, is simple and unfiltered: ‘The things you see when you don’t have a gun’. In reference to its title, God’s business is unspoken. That said, (the anagram) dog’s business is, however, a focus for the characters conversation, simultaneously tragic and humorous. Though confronting, the play explores sympathetic loyalty and mateship across gender and family, and achingly, it is a celebration of love and courage amidst life’s most disappointing themes. Prayer to an Iron God includes a potent monologue for an Australian male, under 25.
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FRESH S...KID...S
THIRTY Revised, Updated and Expanded
SKITS for KIDS
by Lyn Hurry
This new book contains 80 pages of short scenes, both original and adapted from children’s literature. It is attractive, illustrated and well-formatted and would particularly suit Speech and Drama teachers, especially those needing pair and small group performance pieces for classwork, eisteddfod and arts festivals.
Of the 30 scenes, 21 are written by the author, Lyn Hurry, and 9 are inspired by or adapted from well known sources: Through the Looking Glass, Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Tom Sawyer. Children will have a chance to discover classic literature in manageable ways; to enjoy playing Scarecrow or Lion, or Dorothy as she sets out on the Yellow Brick Road, or Cinderella being kitted out by her Fairy Godmother, or get to push and shove as one of the ridiculous Ugly Sisters, or play Humpty Dumpty, Captain Hook, Tweedledum or Tweedledee.
These, and the original works are wholesome: never dangerous or edgy in approach. Stage directions indicate that children play (games, skipping ropes and balls, instruments, cards and computers), Father reads the newspaper or watches TV, Mother sews and irons and shops, Grandma approves of pretty dresses and teachers keep order. All is well in this world, so be assured you will discover no confronting or subversive ideas or profanity. Lyn Hurry has again achieved one of her stated early career aims: to provide positive material with an Australian flavour.
In these two or three page scripts, child players will have the opportunity to learn and use the format of scripts (dialogue and stage directions), build tension and create mood, or establish a setting, relying only on action and tempo. The scripts offer flexibility of gender where possible; often indicating Character One, Character Two.
Lyn Hurry is an experienced Australian performance poetry writer. She has written numerous volumes of monologues, duologues and small group pieces for young people and volumes of poetry specifically dedicated to performers with a Christian worldview. FRESH S.KID.S is a compilation of the most popular scripts from Classic Duos, Dazzling Duos and Skids, three books that are no longer available.
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House on Fire
by Debra Oswald
Debra Oswald needs no introduction - save to say that lots of theatre folk and drama teachers will be very pleased to know that she has written a new play, House on Fire. Newly published, it comes with the promise it is "guaranteed to put a smile on your lips and light a small flame in your heart."
Not surprising that the voices in this play ring true - in an interview with the author, Debra Oswald, she reveals that a girls’ school (SKEGGS) commissioned her to write a play to be performed by an ensemble of drama students. Her job was to write a play with lots of young female roles and with a story that would grab a teenage audience. She workshopped with the students, exploring the things in their lives that ‘excited them, troubled them, made them laugh or agonise.’ They performed it and it was subsequently produced by atyp (Australian Theatre for Young People).
The story is based around the three Conway sisters and the laughing, crying intensity of teenage sisterhood and friendship is beautifully represented: "Evie [to Bec] Thanks heaps for not showing up at Dad’s wedding, dog-breath." Bec: "Don’t mention it, tragic try-hard little sister." The perfect daughter lets her dad down. Cool people drink Boost juices at Westfield food court, get caught shoplifting, and one sister stands up for another whose ‘friends’ are users.
The play celebrates true friendship, evidenced by regimented study schedules being abandoned in sympathy (because of the boyfriend who breaks up with one on the weekend before the HSC) "If I fail, it’s going to be his fault" and accepting that Vegan rules fly out the window under study stress. Even friends who are neighbours play a part in the mix. India, the super-intelligent, socially awkward 12 year old next-door-neighbour cuts in and out of the scene in role of narrator and berates characters who interfere with her job of addressing the audience.
From the play’s title onward, the plot builds deliciously towards a house on fire. The adults are away on honeymoon; the batch of vegan donuts are burned; the photo of the rotten boyfriend is burned; the science experiment and colour-coded study notes are just too close for comfort...the smoke detector goes off, and is disconnected and then India states... "That’s when we discovered the house was on fire." In a hilarious scene, all the minor, random factors of the story are shown to combine in one huge combustible blast. And suddenly, the uncertainty of Special Consideration in the HSC is unimportant, and the final scene does light a small flame in your heart, as promised.
11 adolescent roles, from age 12 to twenties. A smaller cast is possible with some doubling, and if necessary, up to four of the roles can switch gender to male with the change of a few personal pronouns.
The renowned Debra Oswald adds House on Fire to her body of treasured writing for stage, film, television and children’s fiction. She is much published and performed, both internationally and within Australian high school programs. Watch for House on Fire - it will go like hotcakes!