What a Week!

 18 May 2012

It was just another Tuesday at WSB. A steady flow of auditionees for LP6. Some exciting ones too, and after lunch, a signing ceremony with AusAID for funds for rebuilding the clinic and for LP6. Then the Free West Papua movement comes and asks if anyone wants to attend the peaceful demo at the airport against the arrival of the Indonesian plane with aid for police and agriculture sector. Several group members and actors want to attend as is their individual right. Many are cross at the government’s handling of the AFP situation which seems to them a big hypocrisy; on the one hand saying that Australia has acted in a high handed way and then accepting aid from the country that suppresses their fellow Melanesians in West Papua. We beg some to stay for the signing ceremony and a bus load heads off for the airport. The signing ceremony goes off well and as Ausaid leave, news comes that all the demonstrators have been arrested by the police who turned up in full riot gear (what is this, inner city London riots?). Mike, our CEO, heads off for the station; surely they won’t detain them?  It was a totally peaceful expression of their views. But no, they are to be kept overnight in the cells. Most of those who didn’t run away from the police were WSB staff so around 15 are locked up and Michael insists on being charged with them.

They were charged the following morning with unlawful assembly and trespassing on government owned property with malicious intent (the airport). They then gave a brilliant show, Zero Balans, that evening with several bits seeming to have extra resonance …..for them if not for the audience. Afterwards we sat around and people told their stories of the day.

Whilst all who attended did so in an individual capacity it has not escaped notice how many were members of WSB. Time will tell how this plays out and we need to develop some guidelines for participating in direct action. For now, the public reaction has been very supportive.And many are questioning why they were arrested at all.  Several political commentators here and overseas have taken the angle that the AFP story is another example of Australia playing Big Brother to its Pacific neighbours and that Australia should have known it would backfire. In communities and on the radio tokbak show there has been little support for this view.  For the government to complain of lack of respect from Australia elicits little sympathy at grassroots level because they feel the government has not respected them with its talk of stamping out corruption and then taking no action against its own ministers for many breaches of the leadership code. Why also, they ask, was the PM travelling with someone with a past history of corruption? And why is he appearing to defend him?

If anything the expulsion of the AFP has made  Australia into the good guys for the people. Callers to the tokbak show  spoke of how they had returned to education through the new technical college which offers Australia-recognised courses, of how Australia had defended the islands in world war 2. If the AFP had stayed they  would have had a bad week; Tuesday’s headline was about a crashed police minibus, the driver of which was drunk and who was travelling with three young ladies. And there is a masked, armed  gang of robbers appearing in the news a lot. The first armed gang to date. What became immediately clear as AFP left was how much of day to day running costs the program supplies; for fuel , data systems etc.There may be questions of how sustainable that is longterm. I suppose what concerns WSB more is how the police project cannot involve itself with cultural issues like the beatings still handed out by police particularly to youngsters. We had a young 15 year old girl from the youth centre taken in on suspicion of theft who was beaten with electric rope by several officers. 

And, updating this 2 days later, the violence has escalated. An elderly dutch couple murdered and Charlie Pearce, a much loved educationalist here for 40 years badly beaten up in his house We brace ourselves for the blaming of all this on Freedom of Movement and young people, marijuana, and not a mention of  an ever worsening corruption at the expense of those very same young people.

Both plays have been running for 10 days now.The response has been tremendous despite a hiccup in our new presell, no tickets on door policy . The response to Janis ia Nao (JIN) is especially gratifying since it is our first big play in which most scenes are played out by 2 or three characters. Zero Balans too is able to find an audience in this its second year.

The biggest fright in JIN was Titus appearing in his drunken MP scene without a shirt, mimicking the recent photo that appeared in the newspaper of a controversial MP drunk and bare chested outside a night club. It would be the night that I'd chosen to watch the show from the back row where there was no easy escape! Inspired political satire to some members of the audience and unnecessary to others like myself. I mean its not like he's the only MP to be raving drunk in public,  just the only one unlucky enough to be caught on photo. Going on bare chested, to me at any rate, let the others off the hook.

Given the actors' fears that perhaps the central character in JIN would be seen as denigrating women, it is funny to see the way in which the audience identify with her and will her on. Audience watching is fascinating, particularly in an alleyway production where you can see the other side mesmerised by Morinda's wonderfully energetic performance . They love every dreadful thing she says and the way she is actually one of the more honest characters.

Daytimes we're filming the kids play. The first time we have done something like this without an overseas presence. We've kept it all on the stage and used stage lights plus a few 300's. It wont look that great probably but hopefully is capturing the energy of the piece in a better way than just pointing a camera at it. More and more endeared to the youth group and the core actors too seem to be enjoying the link. They are so funny. One girl had disappeared off to beauty class at the youth centre just when we were ready to roll on a big song . Someone went to get her and a senior actor said to the rest that none of them were to admonish her. She arrives, we roll, nothing happens. The girl concerned is in tears. Sure enough like a bunch of piranhas they'd gone for her the moment she came back. Half an hour later they're  gathered together, errant girl included, around the monitor, laughing their heads off at the final shot we'd taken that day!

On the personal front, Jo and I have taken the plunge, applied for citizenship and been accepted. Now the long process of returning our British and Australian passports.

3 years and I can finally put some photos up.Here's some from last years play, Zero Balans which is being revived next month.

Photo courtesy of dmcgarry@imagecity.com

April 5, 20 12. A shot from Janis ia Nao (Now's our Chance!) during a rollicking run through last week. If they appear to be looking away from the seating, they're not. Theatre is set up as an alleyway.

All three productions nearing completion. Janis ia Nao; Zero Balans and the youth group play. Not to mention Health force's revival of their diabetes play. The title of which i have forgotten. Fascinating discussion at an organisational meeting about Nutrition. We'd met to propose that anyone wishing to sell food at the centre had to have it approved by the nutrition department/centre. A lot of junk being sold. Fascinating what people don't know. A great discussion around vetsin (MSG). Much amazement that when you add vetsin...and soy sauce...and salt you are actually adding salt times 3!!! One group member asked well if you shouldn't add vetsin, how do you make your food taste good?

The youth play, Whu nao I rong? has had a couple of previews. The most touching was for WSB actors. It being in the round, the company made a very intimate, one row circle audience. It was the first time we’d had the youth perform exclusively for the company, which is a poor reflection on our inclusiveness of the youth drama club. It was beautiful and the hardened pros were visibly moved. There is a sprinkling of very good actors in the youth club and some very young not very good ones but the overall impact of 25 kids of school going age, but not in school, telling us their story in song dance and drama has an impact that more polished stuff sometimes doesn’t.

It is a struggle keeping that group together. There are some wild kids. Every rehearsal seems littered with thumps usually boys on boys but sometimes on girls, either part in jest or vague annoyance. It is impossible to keep the company quiet when it’s offstage and yet its vibrancy and basic love of what they are doing is equally visible. Given that the play isn’t very kind to parents I asked whether they still wanted a show for their parents; perhaps it would make them cross I suggested. ‘No they have to come’ was the chorused response. ‘ We want them to understand! ‘ So, that show is tonight. Hopefully they will be so thrilled to see their children on stage, the content will sort of pass them by!

Photo courtesy of dmcgarry@imagecity.com

There are some sad stories. For most, school finished before the end of primary and the youth centre has become their second home. My involvement with the youth has come at the same time as my youngest daughter has been doing her teaching practice in quite a tough Melbourne school. The stories she tells us on skype of student dysfunction, difficult home lives and aggression towards teachers are heart breaking and between the two groups I feel a keen sense of how we seem to cast so many youth on to the scrap heap whatever our country’s level of wealth.

Sunday morning and we had the opening for parents on Thursday evening. They did it well .The poor parents though; they had to sit through 40 minutes of saying how half the kids problems were caused by their rowing, beating parents. I enjoyed talking to the parents afterwards. ‘Ooh the play’s a good lesson for all us parents….’ And I felt the play was suddenly very unfair. I mean their own parents probably treated them exactly the same way and it’s not as if their own lives are any easier. Trying to earn even minimum wage would occupy most of their lives. Yet they also said things like, ‘ I didn’t know my son could do anything like this’. ‘I thought they were just messing around at the youth centre, I didn’t realize they learnt things.’

I laid into the main group after the run through of Zero Balans. Reviving plays can be boring for both actors and directors but its not made any easier by actor pissing around thinking the director can’t see what they’re doing. Why should I sit here and watch this for the 60^th time for over 2 hours if you cant be bothered to …etetc. Nice way to go into Easter!

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.

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.