The man is indomitable. The only thing that Dave Brown may have failed at is retirement. He lasted about a minute after passing over the reins of our celebrated children’s theatre company, Patch, to the literally luminous new director, Geoff Cobham. Brown had been some 30 years developing children’s theatre for and with Patch. His name was synonymous with the company. And so was his heart.
The wrench seemed to take him by surprise.
“When I left Patch, I couldn’t imagine a life without ‘theatre-making for children’,” he declares.
And so it came to pass that a new children’s theatre movement came into being.
The PaperBoats.
Nothing was done in a hurry. This difference between Brown’s old life and this new one is deadlines. Brown has discovered the luxury of contemplative creativity, of taking time to develop projects and to create partnerships. The PaperBoats has been several years in development.
Interestingly, it is his admiration for former Playschool star, Noni Hazelhurst which underscores this new creative impetus.
He cites:
"Kids are being bombarded, on a daily basis, by the popular media’s increasing focus on commercial values rather than creative ones. Millions of dollars are poured into making junk palatable.”
"She put it beautifully when she said; “Children can be encouraged to grow, develop and participate in the world if we expose them to beauty, truth and the power of their imagination.”
" I reckon quality children’s theatre focuses on creative values; values that Noni Hazelhurst identifies so beautifully,” he adds.
Of course Brown also has a background in teaching. He studied science at university and taught chemistry before he slipped into his destined role teaching and generating theatre.
He established Jumbuck Youth Music Theatre Company before becoming artistic director of Patch.
Now in the world of ThePaperBoats, the Hazelhurst ideas have become core - as has Country Arts SA which was been a key partner.
“It supports the curation of quality arts experiences for early childhood audiences,” he enthuses.
Partnerships is, indeed, the new keyword.
"I wanted to develop a co-creating partnership platform that could use the existing infra-structures of partnership organisations rather than create yet another infra-structure of our own”, he explains.
"In so doing, I wanted partnering artists to be open to sharing their work in a “creative commons” way…. which does not happen much in theatre and I was inspired to some extent by the online arts production model created by the hit record folk. Check out their page here.
And so it came to pass that, steadily over time, new co-productions have been emerging - Especially on Birthdays (Australia and Singapore), Gimme Please (USA) and When the Mirror Bird Sings (Australia and Singapore community artists project).
It’s extraordinarily complex insofar as so many organisations and individuals have been involved in the creative process.”
Around 80 artistes, Brown estimates. All providing different facets if the process - and there are more co-shows in the pipeline.
It’s a triumph of a Community Sharing Agreement which, says Brown, continues to evolve.
He lists just some of his partners: AC Arts, University of Texas, Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Marion Cultural Centre, Country ArtsSA, ArtsSA, Boat Rocker Entertainment (Jim Weiner - NY Agent for Patch and GOM and Key Partner of the PaperBoats) WilderMusic, Artground Singapore and AFC.
Brown cites Especially on Birthdays as the best example of the co-creative development process.
He explains: "We made the work in Australia alongside the creation of Gimme Please in the US and shared our animating idea, design palette, our processes and content across each other’s creative developments which deeply influenced each other’s outcomes - and yet the two works ended up very differently.
"The first through-composed music score for Especially on Birthdays was written by the Zephyr Quartet and voiceROM. Then two Singaporean performers came to Australia to learn the physical score of the work (a non-verbal visual theatre work) and presented alternating performances as part of our Commonwealth Games season. They then returned to Singapore and remounted the work - with a new Singaporean music score by Stan&Soap and a re-interpreted design, for Singaporean audiences.
"Then Matthew Wilder (composer of Disney’s Mulan, singer/songwriter of 80s mega-hit Break My Stride, and brother to Jim Weiner) wrote a new US music score for Especially on Birthdays which was presented at our season of the show in Atlanta alongside the US production of Gimme Please.”
Plans for Especially on Birthdays to do a major tour of China have now been well and truly scuttled thanks to the Cornoavirus pandemic. Similarly, The Space season of When the Mirror Bird Sings scheduled for April is in limbo as the world waits for life to return to normal.
Brown,of course, will not have the grass growing under his feet since taking time over projects has been his retirement luxury.
Not that he has wasted a minute.
He spent 2019 learning how to program lights and then proceeded to design the lighting for the new work,
“That’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years but never had the time,” he says.
Massive amounts of work were dedicated to the new creation, devising a narrative thread which would ensure that children would be engaged, developing a new colour palette with designer Meg Wilson, rehearsing and honing. Thousands of hours, Brown estimates.
“And, I can say that there was never a dull or difficult moment,” he says.
When the Mirror Bird Sings features music based on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and is described as a spirited modern fairy-tale. It is about wondrous birds with mirror-ball eggs and, thematically, it is the age-old struggle between good and evil.
"Responses to the show have been quite emotional especially from adults”, Brown enthuses.
"Kids absolutely love participating in the piece and they are hushed during the scenes of betrayal and redemption. It’s quite a dramatic and serious journey for young audiences - who are usually offered fairly light dramatics.”
When the Mirror Bird Sings targets 3 to 8 year olds and has been created to work both in high tech theatre venues and in low-tech community halls and schools.
Samela Harris
When: Rescheduled to 12 Sep
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
As you let the fantastical throbbing of Orang Orang’s mighty drumming ensemble thrill your core in Botanic Park, spare a thought for the quiet suffering of the drummers.
Drums are big and heavy. They are a serious burden when it comes to travel. And that means expense.
So, reveals Orang Orang Drum Theatre’s tour manager, Damien Leow, the drummers themselves have to travel light.
“They must reduce their luggage, only to costumes,” he says.
“That means just 7 kg personal luggage. Yes. It is hard for women. There is some negotiation for women.”
WOMADelaide has helped the Malaysian group in the logistics of getting to Adelaide for their performances in Botanic Park.
“Air freight, documentation, quarantine and customs, sending all the documents” says Leow.
“Australia is very strict with quarantine.
“Our drum skins are made from cow and goat. Some drums are durian wood.”
For the Orang Orang Drum Theatre’s 24 Festive Drums ensemble there are eight full-time team members and twelve part-timers aged between 21 and 25.
Their drumming skills come from deep in the Malaysian Chinese heritage, linking back to the Lion Dance.
Leow explains that the name Orang Orang derives from both Chinese and Malay words meaning people and also in Chinese “ren ren ren” which means “public” or “community”.
“So it is a community for work and performance,” he says, adding that “orang” also could mean “scarecrow".
“The name makes for good interaction with people. It is a good talking point.”
So do the 24 Festive Drums with history going back to 1988 in Johor Bahru. They represent 24 festivals in the lunar calendar of the Chinese agricultural community, and that agricultural cycle is thousands of years old.
“The ancient wisdom of agriculture,” says Leow.
So the songs of the drums hark back to ancestors and farming styles and even to individual characters. And Orang Orang choreographers create movement to illustrate them.
They create songs to create characters, says Leow, songs which are inspired by people we might see daily, but reflecting their distinctive characteristics, unique aspects of them;
sometimes maybe an old man, a worker from the regions who is working in the city. We think of music for him.”
Orang Orang Drum Theatre’s work delves deeply into the breadth of Malaysian culture. It is alive and evolving.
Leow mentions “lagu walk” which reflects walking to different regions. Herein the musicians can depict their origins and projects.
Thus does Orang Orang Drum Theatre spread its beat to encompass the very, very old and the emerging new. And it does so not only with music and dance theatre. Not only but also, there are different instruments and new collaborations.
Leow is excited to talk about Rosemary Joel, an exquisite singer from Sarawak and player of the very delicate-sounding stringed instrument called a sape.
“She has a very beautiful voice,” says Leow. “Last year we went to her home for cultural exchange and she was our teacher, so we now can include Sarawak folk songs.”
The Orang Orang Drum Theatre company was founded in 2013 to explore the disciplines of drum and theatre. It since has been very busy travelling the world and spreading its Malaysian cultural richness.
Now, travelling heavy with all its drums, light in personal luggage and huge in ideas and talent and cultural imperative, it has made it to WOMADelaide.
Orang Orang Drum theatre have sessions on Saturday at 1pm, Sunday at 3pm and Monday at 1pm.
Samela Harris
When: 6 to 9 March
Where: Botanic Park
Bookings: womadelaide.com.au
Is it bravery or chutzpah that brings a flow of astonishing solo performers to our city each year?
If there’s a medal of merit on offer to any of them, Gavin Robertson should be at the front of the receiving line.
He traipses the world with nothing more than an olde world dress coat, a notepad and a torrent of talent.
He’s a loner, a solo performer who lives on his ability to win admiration from complete strangers.
He achieved that with his persona of the travelling bard, Greg Byron. #StandupPoet
He achieved five-star reviews in 2018 and 2019 for his performances at the Treasury in 1860.
Now he returns bringing that funny show of clever rhymes and perspicacious thoughts to the cool tunnels of the Treasury for just nine special shows.
This season is limited because multi-functioning Robertson is also segueing into the character of James Bond. Quite the extreme contrast.
He is inhabiting the Bond skin at the Bakehouse Theatre in a show called Bond - An Unauthorised Parody.
He’s cunningly pipping the release of the new Bond movie. Putting it into the shade, perhaps?
“There was a time before the Daniel Craig reboot where movies themselves were almost a parody,” he explains. “That’s where I’m coming from.”
He’s had this show on the road for a while, so it is well run-in for Adelaide.
Robertson says he was much amused to discover that the Bond film, No Time to Die, “basically has Bond coming out of retirement, which is the same premise as my narrative.”
“Mine more to do with my age and fitness level!
“I’ve been creating physical theatre for thirty years or so, but I thought I should acknowledge I’m no Daniel Craig! Having said that, I play a pretty sexy Bond girl.”
The most curious thing about the Robertson Bond creation is that it is not based on hard research, but quite the opposite, if one is to believe the actor.
“I ignored the books,” he asserts.
“People assume I spent hours watching the movies but actually I didn’t watch any. I wanted the clichés to be what we all know, not a nerd-fest of trivial!"
He extrapolates: “The common ground for fertile spoofs is films that we all have in common. They’re pretty formulaic really and don’t forget, before the Daniel Craig reboot (when they really went up a notch) they were almost parodies of themselves; Pierce Brosnan in an invisible car given to him by John Cleese?
“I hope they’re embarrassed in retrospect? And Roger Moore got the worst scripts.”
Robertson takes Bond anything but seriously. He can be a bit scathing.
“I think he’s irrelevant, to be honest,” he declares.
“He’s always been an arm of the British Empire mentality.
“Frankly, I’m appalled at the rise of the political Right, seemingly globally - even in Australia - and that nationalistic tunnel vision is a step backwards for inclusivity and tolerance, neither of which Bond is renowned for.
“I think at best he’s a good action movie catalyst. The show is pure escapist stupidity.”
Bond will have twelve performances at the Bakehouse, a venue Robertson has chosen to give himself a less pop-up and more traditional theatre environment. Greg Byron, however, will be lurking in tunnels.
Gavin Robertson comes to the Adelaide Fringe as a super one-man entrepreneur, not only with two solo shows in two high profile comic guises but also as his own booking agent, publicist, writer, director, producer, costumier, et al.
Interestingly, Robertson has one more string to this busy bow. He is a creative partner to the Moscow English Theatre, an outfit he explains is intended to produce shows in English for Russian audiences.
So, as well as travelling the globe as the five-star funnyman standup poet and the sexy action fantasy superstar Bond, he travels to Russia where with the Mayakovsky Theatre, close to Red Square, he is a stalwart of Chekov classics.
“Bond would be horrified,” he laughs.
Samela Harris
BOND - An Unauthorised Parody!
Presented by Company Gavin Robertson’
When: 24 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
GREG BYRON #StandUpPoet
When: 14 to 22 Feb
Where: Treasury Tunnels
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
There is nothing “vague” about Nouvelle Vague.
Marc Collin, co-founder with Olivier Libaux of the gorgeous French musical group, says it is really quite specific. Its musical origin is in bossa nova which is in fact Portuguese for “new wave” and it translates into French as “nouvelle vogue”. So there we have it, it is “new wave” music and it is on an extended curve of the ever-new.
Then again, Collin adds, there is another old-school association to the name of newness. “Nouvelle Vague” also is the name of a renowned French cinematic movement of the sixties.
“Sometimes when we talk about our project, people are confused,” he says.
But there is no confusion when listening to the music. YOUTUBE Link
It simply wraps one in a silken pillow of rhythmic beauty. With the sweetest, softest female voices and catchy beats, it is a world unto itself. And yet, it is a world of covers. Very clever.
Collin explains:
“Bossa nova is a beautiful style of music because it is a mix of samba but slower, so it has a kind of floating rhythm.
“But I don’t think there’s a dance. It’s more something you experience. It was created in Brazil but it very quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Everyone was doing bossa nova, even in France, in the sixties.”
One may think that punk is an art form alien to such descriptives. But no.
Punk is one of the celebrated aspects of Nouvelle Vague.
“The first reviews we had were in England and they said that only a French band could mix these very famous punk songs in a jazzy, sexy way, recalls Collin.
But, while their music makes one feel good, it is emphatically not “feel-good” music, he adds.
From the beginning Nouvelle Vague has resisted the idea that it is like lounge music. It can be very serious music,
“If you listen carefully, there are some really dark themes,” says Collin.
"Interesting stories and lyrics that resonate" are the essential core of the band’s choice of song.
Collin and Libaux’s first Nouvelle Vague album appeared in 2004 after the two Parisian musicians had agreed on the possibly crazy idea of making a bossa nova version of Love Will Tear Us Apart. Into the studio they went with further song titles, and female vocalists with a fresh approach, and within a year there had been 200,000 worldwide sales and Nouvelle Vague was a hit.
Since then it has travelled the world. Collin admits that touring and performing the same music repeatedly can be tiring. But it is clearly a satisfying lifestyle since, he says, “When we are not touring, we’re missing it”.
The female vocalists chosen for Nouvelle Vague are chosen for the way in which their voices “fit a song”.
“But really people are not coming for the singers. They’re coming to listen to cool songs and our way of doing music,” says Collin.
“That's why we’re still touring 15 years later. The concept has stayed stronger than the people."
The punk pop group first came to Adelaide a decade ago for the Cabaret Festival.
Now, while starring during the kickoff of the Adelaide Festival Centre's 2020 program, it will be celebrating its 15th anniversary.
In honour of this landmark, Collin says Nouvelle Vague brings something special.
“It’s a new show that we’ve built for this 15th anniversary, so we’ve tried to get back to what we used to do in the past,” he explains.
“We didn’t have a drummer or bass player back then. It was more minimalistic.
“We’re playing most of the songs people like, and some songs people have never heard live before. It will be covers from different albums over the years - a kind of ‘best of’."
Samela Harris
When: 10 Jan 2020
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
All life is fair game out there for the visiting wonderland of Fringe-Festival performers and no subject is out of bounds.
So, into our theatrical space comes a man with a migraine story; a mighty migraine, the epic endurance of which has been transformed into a theatre work.
The man is Oliver Mol and his migraine lasted for ten horrendous months.
It struck him down shortly after Scribe had published his book, Lion Attack, and, looking back on the agonising experience, he has found enough heart and soul and humour to brave the stage and make his debut as a Fringe performer.
Sydney-based Mol, 31, was born in Brisbane and has devoted his life quite passionately and successfully to the written and spoken word.
“I love the written word but it wasn’t until I began performing that I realised how much I enjoyed the spoken word, too”, he explains via email, hot from Tbilisi in Georgia where he just happens to be living and writing in this part of his rather interesting life.
He’s working on his second book which, he says, has similarities to Train Lord, the autobiographical show he is presenting at the Fringe.
“It recalls through essay and story a 10-month migraine, my recovery in Brisbane, and the job I worked on at the railway when I couldn’t do anything else,” he explains.
“I’ve been working on this book for close to five years, ever since the migraine went away, which wasn’t all at once, but gradually and intermittently. For a long time I wanted to seal my hurt and pain onto pages between book covers and send it out to the world. I wanted to make people feel what I felt and see what I saw. More than anything, I wanted them to understand.”
It was his sister who turned him off the notion by saying it was a bad idea, unhealthy and, well, boring.
“I realised that she was right.
“As storytellers, we have a great responsibility because storytelling is magic. Alchemy.
“We are able to take something like pain and mould it, transform it.”
And thus does Mol promise his Train Lord show will be "a story of hope, laughter, pain, relationships, drugs, failed orgies, mothers, fathers and love. Ultimately, it's about f**king up and figuring it out and… finding out you're not alone”.
He has embellished it with music and imagery and previewed it to an enthusiastic reception in Barcelona.
It will come to life for the Fringe in the Bakehouse Theatre from February 17 to 29.
Mol’s track record to date is quite impressive.
He’s been writing for about a decade and says he wants to keep writing for as long as he is alive.
So far, he has been awarded the 2014 ArtStart Grant, been the co-winner of the 2013 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers, and the recipient of a 2012 Hot Desk Fellowship.
His CV brags appearances at the National Young Writers Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, Sydney Writers Festival, and Brisbane Writers Festival. He has performed at Queensland Poetry Festival and Jungle Love festival, as well as in the United States of America, Canada, Vietnam and Spain.
Not only but also, this very interesting and wildly-travelled writer, has had articles published in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, the ABC, the Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin and The Saturday Paper.
Mol says he grew up living between Texas and Australia which has given him a different perspective on the world and a passionate love for the city of his birth, “the greatest city on earth”.
Reviews for his first book, Lion Attack, note its bright and innovative style and some of its daring subject matter.
Mol relishes the instant response that live performance can give to the storyteller.
“I suppose it is the same feeling anyone on stage receives”, he says. “That instant feedback, that electricity, the laughter, the sorrow, the smiles, the tears.” he explains.
“It’s intoxicating, maybe, because it affirms in real time those questions that the author Alejando Zambra says all literature should ask: can you hear me? And, do I belong?
“A lot of my stories focus on connecting or not connecting, and perhaps that is why I am so drawn to the live experience…because I get to bring strangers together and, if I do my job correctly, perhaps just a few more people will feel less alone.”
Samela Harris
When: 17 to 29 Feb
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au