I open the gates to go to work just as the minister for Home Affairs from 1992 is walking past. As with many politicians here he is a man of the people. This is not a comment on his politics but a reflection that some retired politicians here slip back into village life rather than having another career to go to. I have not seen him for a long time and as he is going down to Tagabe I give him a lift.
We reminisce about that night on Tongoa in 1992.WSB had spent a week in the village of Kurimambe making a play with the village about the only colony of mutton birds in Vanuatu which nested on an uninhabited island off the main island. They were easy targets as they flopped in to lay eggs on the ground. We were trying to look at sustainable harvesting. The whole village took part and it was a great week.
On the last night the village wanted to take the play to a neighbouring village who disputed the ownership of the island where the birds nested. We were a bit nervous about it but they saw the play as very reconciliatory. Sadly the other village didn’t and as soon as the play finished one angry man went round smashing the hurricane lamps whose light we had performed by.
The minister was staying in the village that night and was sent for and he expertly calmed the situation down. When we got back to our village he sent two bottles of wine and food !
Totally unprompted he applauds WSB’s decision to focus its efforts on the communities around the theatre rather than trying to start projects everywhere. He had never been to WSB before so I show him round and he is very polite and graceful to all the young people whizzing around the place.
Then the warm up and a joke I had planned. We tend to count ourselves through one particularly painful stretch and of course people speed up, add in halves. so I said I would be chief counter for the first one today(you do the stretch six times) and they could join in with me. I proceeded to count in German. This provoked a mixture of groans and laughs. I then appointed a counter for the repeat stretch who counted in her island language ( each island would have at least one language in Vanuatu). By the time the exercise had finished, about 5 languages had been used.
FIRST MAJOR BUST UP! About line learning. Growing annoyance at someone’s slackness at learning lines finally bubbled over. I go back to the office. A few minutes later the actor appears in the doorway and hurls the script across the room at me and storms out. Cast all behind me according to Jo who as is normal in these situations , retires to the kava bar with the actors on a diplomatic mission. Well, she’d go there anyway but it gives her an excuse.She hears a lovely story or stories about the response to the second showing on TV in a week of our new film, Las Kad. Titus Joseph, one of our indisputably world class actors was in the bank when someone approached him with a tin of Sprite and a packet of nuts. ‘For you,’ he says, ‘it’s my lunch but I want you to have it’. Titus says he couldn’t possibly deprive the man but the man says that Titus’ performance in Las Kad was so amazing he has to take it!
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A week or so before rehearsals began several of us were asked to document the process for use on publicity material including the web site and posters etc for the upcoming theatre festival.
ReplyDeleteDuring that week leading up to the start of rehearsals, several key players were seen to visibly age as one would expect as tensions build towards seeing the first visible manifestations of a project of this size come to life.
It was with some relief to all that rehearsals finally got underway. The first few days were of course clunky and disjointed with the inevitable constant referring to scripts. The photographs taken at this stage are quite revealing, what you see is visibly older faces mixed with doubt, anger and frustration. The air is heavy with humidity it appears to be constantly raining, actors, directors alike shouting to be heard above the din of water on corrugated iron. A welcome public holiday - Chiefs Day. Back at work Friday last for week, the tension is a little less.
The following week sees a shift occur, a sense of cohesion is moving through the group, lines are flowing on que on pitch, a feel for the whole is forming. Faces seem to have found the miracle cure that western cosmetic companies have been been seeking for decades, expressions are loosening up. Choruses sung now with meaning and not by rote.
A filtering out process is occurring beyond the stage, people stop to listen as if following a radio drama, gathered in small groups outside the theatre entrances, feet begin to tap, favourite lines are whispered in time with those in rehearsal. An ownership or following has already begun beyond the performers.
By now it is time to leave act one and move onto act 2, the scripts are taken up again, the faces again age but not nearly as much. The actors have left the chorus for now but I hear it in the youth beyond the theatre. The play, its message is alive in the community before even a it's first complete run through.