Friday, March 16, 2012

March 16 th.

End of the first week of rehearsal on the new play. Reached half time! The scenes are in the main two or three people and we've belted along.

I don't know whether the group's doubts about the play and what it's all about have been resolved but it rattles along and seems a good story and it is high time Morinda had a lead role . The wooden blocks? Yes, they are heavy but they have also been pressed into multiple shape duty. This works well but requires energy especially for carting around the bigger ones.

Health Force have been reviving their play on diabetes. They abandoned it yesterday to try and deal with the Blacksands plastic soup. It appears that Planet 107 has made a wall and fence on the river bank, in the process digging up the plastic waste dump of a former tenant, Mr Juicy, and sending it floating along the river. They spent all day on it yesterday but Yaxsley reckons thy'll need a net to get it all.

The youth play is a lot of fun to direct. 26 youth lots of songs and dance and performed in the round. We have a wide range of kids , at least half in the year 6 to year 8 age range and none of them in school. It is the most dedicated group we've had in the 4 years the youth drama's been running. We worked from 5.30 to 8 pm last night. They work with their group leaders in the daytime and i see them two nights a week. It is rewarding when even the rascals are relatively restrained and into it.

The joint is jumping at the moment. All this drama work, masses of kids attending youth centre classes and playing sport. At lunch many different depts plus the youth drama group eat soup and 2 salads at the nutrition centre and there're twice weekly zumba classes that bring together peer educators cleaners project managers actors and a few visitors. It's a joyous place to be right now.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

March 2012

So, the theatre season is cranking up now. This week we started a new play with the youth group...in the round for a change. The disabled theatre group have re rehearsed their play for schools from last year and will take the plane to Luganville for a tour of schools there. This is a very exciting event for that group. Then next week we start rehearsals for a totally new major play and a revival of Zero Balans which will play in tandem in Vila before going to Luganville in june. We will stage them both in an 'alleyway' stage.

We came back from tramping in NZ to find one group had already improvised a delightful new play on elections and voting . Two other groups were struggling more with their improvised stories and so in the end one group opted to take on the play already devised and the third group that had a central idea that was strong but stubbornly refused to spin out into a play Jo and I scripted . The groups have just come back from their island tours full of tales of the skulduggery going on out there even with the election still 6 months away, some of which is astounding and so depressing.

One common theme of the plays was trying to look at just what some MPs get up to in town which their voters back home have no idea about. Conversely i don't think we have any idea of the extent to which cash and cargo are swilling around the islands. The new big play also concludes with the lead up to an election. We had a read through before the groups went on tour and it provoked some strong discussion. Unlike some previous plays it's a little harder to say what it's about and that disconcerted some actors. Also unusually every main part is female. It's the story of a rather foul mouthed, kava drinking single mum of a disabled teenage daughter who is living on the breadline. Her reprobate boyfriend appears one night and says Mary and her daughter must rescue this enormous sum of stolen money from the forest and keep it even if they don't see him for a long time. A sort of parable ensues about the way people perceive you if you have money . Mary is not a goody goody heroine. A sort of Mother Courage figure I suppose. Some of the actors worry that the play is somehow doing women down. Jo came in to talk about what she was trying to express through the play. We also talked about how when we put a reprobate drunken man at the centre of the play people dont normally say ah you are saying all men are drunkards or doing men down somehow. Drunkenness, bawdiness seem ok for men but when you have a debauched female at the centre of the play, the rules are somehow different. It was a good discussion. The play may not work because people can't find a tidy message from it but we've agreed to give it a go and have some trial audiences. If it doesn't work there's still zero balans which will be fun to restage.

The final part of the play though , that election coda referred to above, is pretty clear; Mary decides to stand for parliament using what is left of her stolen money. As rumours spread about the source of her money she challenges the community to say why her stolen money is any different from that of the MP whom they have been voting for for the last few elections.

Elsewhere in WSB the youth clubs have opened with even larger numbers than before 50 or more for nutrition, sewing and many of them school going age. In drama we have 28. We have a commission from UNICEF to look at child protection otherwise known if one is being cynical as pissing in the wind. We held workshops with the group, mostly teenagers to ask them what made kids unhappy. Various themes were agreed on; being made a slave at home, often if you're adopted in from other branches of the family; watching your parents fight; cruel punishments at school; neglect at school eg teachers who dont show up. They are such a keen bunch and that in itself is a joy. But it is only the first day of rehearsal!I have had the idea of a basic set of boxes that could be chairs tables stones for crossing a river, mountains etc. It was so clear in my head . I know it's not very original but it seemed much neater and cleaner than stools or chairs. I envisaged actors moving them around at speed to make rapidly changing shapes that other actors climbed leapt over etc. A carpenter made the first prototype set today and they weigh a bloody ton especially when you get to the 600 and 800mm high ones....

Book of the month? The Fear by Peter Godwin. An account of trips to Zimbabwe in 2007/8. The bravery and the horror on display mean you read the book with your jaw constantly dropped. Could the same happen here? Who knows. So far the only people to suffer those kind of beatings are escaped prisoners ...not political opponents.