Interview: Robin Nevin

The first lady of Sydney theatre is moving back from the boardroom to the boards, and speaks about her relief at relinquishing control of the Sydney Theatre Company, and the fresh excitement of performing Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.

You’ve spoken before about the difficulty of changing back into an acting role after not acting for a while. Did you have that problem this time? Not so much, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that I’m no longer doing the big job of running STC, and that’s made a significant difference, a difference I really could not have imagined. For 15 years, I’ve been in management positions, and have been acting and directing at the same time as holding those very responsible positions. I think (as I’ve noted on other occasions) that you do develop a different side of your brain, and different muscles and different skills that are required when you’re running an organization, skills that are very different to those required by an actor. But now, I’m free of the pressure of responding to any of those learned skills – skills that I have really developed quite impressively, as far as I was concerned. Now I don’t need them, I can abandon all of those and just simply be an actress in the room.

How else is The Year Of Magical Thinking different? That’s one reason – really feeling huge sense of relief having relinquished that position. The other one is this is a piece… it’s not like a play, so in a way it requires the same skills but others as well. For a start, it’s an enormous learning task. It’s a whole evening, an hour and a half, where it’s just me. So I’ve had to learn this very quite massive piece of work. And it requires a relationship between the actress and the audience. I haven’t yet had that, because I haven’t yet had an audience and I’m really looking forward to the last piece of the equation. But as I said it’s not like being in a play – it’s a different experience – and so I think for those two reasons. And because I had seven weeks’ break, which I haven’t had in 15 years.

You sound like you could just shrug off that management side of yourself, as if it’s been a separate entity to you. Do you think that’s possible? No I’m still me, I just don’t have all the responsibility, therefore I don’t have to apply my mind to those sorts of issues and challenges that I was consumed by. Apart from the daily issues that might arise, there was the major planning cycle of STC play programming. It’s offloading an enormous number of responsibilities and challenges, and so my brain, the space in there… there’s space to think, I’m not running.

You have to be a bit clairvoyant planning such long seasons. How do you ensure something stays relevant? By responding to artists really. I had a strong awareness of the threat of staying power of various wars. So indeed my programming was influenced by Iraq, our presence in Iraq. But in terms of trying to second-guess the future, the best way to do that I think is through artists. Apart from your general awareness of what’s happening in the world around you, conversations with artists reveal their significant imaginings, and they’re in touch with the world and their own place in it, so you respond to them. But then there’s the politics, and well, what can you do. You’re constantly working with new arts ministers, different politicians, new sponsors – you just learn how to do that. I’m not quite sure how to answer your question.

Was it a difficult thing to let go of the company? No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Have you not picked this up from what I’ve been saying? People were very sympathetic. There were kindly comments last year, predicting that this year I would find it difficult to let go and hand over. The reverse is the case: it was instant. I was very prepared for leaving, very ready, very prepared and looking forward to it. Of course, I did have the question in my own mind, ‘how would I respond to letting go of such an enormous file of challenging matters that had to be dealt with constantly?’. What would I do with the space in my head? What would I do with my ideas? However the space in my head has been absolutely been filled with The Year of Magical Thinking. I think Joan Didion is one of those women you’re happy to have in your mind. She’s a highly intelligent and articulate women whose personal stories are very vividly told. I’m happy to have the brain space filled with Joan Didion’s story.

How have you dealt with this play? What sort of preparation do you do to convey something of this length by yourself, when you have no other actors to work with? And how does a director steer you through that process? It’s not always hard slog, though much of it is. Because it’s structured in such a fascinating and accomplished way the challenges along the road have been many and varied. They’ve really absorbed me. The woman is telling, giving an account of her year of magical thinking, and I think she does it in a very generous way, in service to the people to whom she’s talking. But along the way, while she comes along for the evening prepared to share this story with her audience, she becomes tricked by certain memories, which trigger off little emotional cues and she gets trapped by those things. And they’re quite difficult to uncover and shape and define and relive. Also what I’ve found, which I’ve never encountered in my life before on stage, is that the actor gets tricked also into a sudden uncovering of the emotional well, and so an emotion erupts unexpectedly and I’ve never encountered that before in my life. Each time I do it, I find this emotional response happens in a different place. That’s entirely unexpected and entirely unusual. It must be exciting as well. The whole thing is exciting; it’s kind of tortuously difficult and exciting at the same time, if you can get your mind around that. I mean an actor will know what I’m talking about. It’s a very big challenge, but I’m ready for the challenge. I’m really excited about getting an audience, because that’s where the key to the evening lies, in my relationship with the audience. I talk to the audience directly. There are many examples, and many moments when I get drawn into quite a deep and internal reflection. But I always go back to them. (Time Out Sydney, 2/4/08)

Why the Archibald Prize is like professional wrestling

Take an award, and add history and controversy until it becomes a phenomenon. The result is something like the Oscars, where merit is no longer the chief criterion guiding the judging. Now add farce, and horsetrading. We have the Eurovision Song Contest. Make the controversies endless, the rules diaphanous, rig the outcome and give the administrators, judges and critics roles in the thing being judged. We have the World Wrestling Entertainment Championship… and the Archibald Prize.

It’s a useful analogy if only because professional wrestling has such a powerful vocabulary for describing the workings of public spectacle. There’s no phrase that captures the emotional currency of the Archibald  Prize better than “cheap heat”, the provoked boos and cheers that follow the scripted insults of a Heel (villain) or the “win it for the fans” boosterism of a Babyface (hero).

The chief Heels are the critics. Foremost are the tag team outfit of John McDonald and Leo Schofield, gloves-off veteran fighters who drag chairs into the ring before the match even begins. It’s their job to rubbish the prize generally, and the popular choices specifically. The show of “often dreadful paintings” (Schofield) is “transcendentally awful” (Schofield, 2004); or “one of the worst in living memory” (McDonald, 2007). These two have the benefits of being credible and sincere, but there’s no doubt they take some relish in playing spoiler.

Criticism was always fun, but now, with the internet, it’s also easy. Before, Heels and their fans would have to actually attend the prize to write it off; now, they can form their first impressions online, scrolling through a series of thumbnail-sized, low-res reproductions that are readymade for dismissal. Jammed into a jpeg, Vincent Fantauzzo’s portrait of Heath Ledger looks like it belongs propped up on boardwalk next to a psychedelic poster of Jim Morrison. In the flesh, it looks like an able, rich painting with a rather obvious thematic overlay; in other words, a classic Archibald finalist. But Fantauzzo is also a classic Archibald non-winner: it’s not yet his time.

Calling the Prize rigged is strong medicine. But as professional wrestling fans know, there’s a big difference between something being choreographed and something being rigged. Usually only the outcome, not the course, of a match is fixed, and what pre-determines that outcome is a grand, curling narrative, carefully plotted beforehand. It’s no secret that the Archibald is a prize with a waiting list, those in the queue selected for their talent, but also their seniority and persistence. It’s part lifetime achievement award, part back scratch (or scratch back), part popularity contest and part art prize. Barring illness or insanity, all those on the list will win eventually; it’s just a question of the sequence.

Not only was Fantauzzo not on the de facto list of prospective winners (though he may be on the edge of that list now), he’s just too much of a Babyface to win. The same tide of public sentiment that pushed him to the final two also left him stranded at the high water mark: no matter its merits as a piece of art (and those were debatable), a Ledger win would have resulted in a Royal Rumble, a rush of heels climbing in to suplex the Prize’s already jelly-legged credibility. Too popular to lose, too popular to win, Heath lacked that lack of a certain something needed to be the winner.

For the painting that takes out the Archibald Prize is always what in WWE parlance is called a “tweener” or a “grey”: neither face nor Heel, these ambiguous, chameleonic creatures don’t inspire great passion in friend or foe. The process of picking a winner almost always picks a good artist, and sometimes, like this year, it even picks a good painting. But even Del Kathryn Barton’s very good work is still a tweener, a median point between public expectation and art world tastes, between controversy and anodyne safety. Try to imagine the same painting featuring her vagina instead of her children. It would be both more representative of her practice, and completely inconceivable as a finalist.

Will it ever change? Some, like the Art Life’s Andrew Frost, have suggested the Prize modernise by casting off the rules, or through some curatorial vigour from the trustees. But this would ruin the fun, and start off its own type of hype carousel. Look at the Turner Prize in the UK, where, playing to the cheap heat of the tabloids, it’s the judges, not the critics, who turn Heel.

The arguments in favour of the Prize in its existing format are well-known: it’s better to have people talk about any art than no art, the controversies sell paintings as well as papers, and dragging people to the gallery requires the long hook of tradition, conservatism and routine. There’s a type of fan in wrestling called a “smark”, a port-manteau of “smart mark”. They’re the ones who know it’s not real, but wouldn’t have it any other way. Smarks appreciate that hoopla is itself a kind of art. (Time Out Sydney, 19/03/08)

Interview: Dumpster Diving

Freegans Fez Chepe, 23, and Jason, 24 (who wouldn’t give his last name or be photographed), attempt to live without buying anything at all. They feed themselves by “dumpstering”: combing waste bins for useable food. Both volunteer for Food Not Bombs, a group that uses reclaimed and donated food to feed the hungry.

How does freeganism work?

J: For me, it’s not about not spending money, but trying not to spend money as much as possible. If you can get something for free, do so.

FC: I want to live outside that spending paradigm. It’s not lazy, because you work for your food. Every day is a challenge. We venture out to find food and find a means to cook things. It seems like a harder life sometimes. I do it because I think participating in a capitalist system is very violent. It’s political for me. By the way, that beer you’re drinking now – it came out of a dumpster. I wanted you to see what it was like.

It’s very good. How would you describe your politics?

FC: It’s about harm minimisation. I care for people, which is why I volunteer for Food Not Bombs; and it’s why I want to teach. I’m a semester away from being a high school teacher. My politics and my ethics are inseparable but I am realising that living this way is not a sustainable solution.

You’re eating the products of capitalism. How does that sit with your politics?

J: We’re making up for inadequacies in the system – to ultilise all the resources they’re wasting. So we’re recycling, preventing waste…there’s an environmentalist slant. FC: We’re rats in the system. There’s a lot of different words for dumpstering food. Some people call it skipping, but one of the names for it is recycling recycling food. But it’s not sustainable: if everyone squatted and if everyone dumpster dived, we’d be in trouble. It’s not a solution but my attitude to it is, while I partake in my other activism, I need something to sustain me. J: I differ here. I don’t consider myself an activist; I just want to live for free, and I want to use the system. I’m not opposed to capitalism, and I’m not for capitalism either. I just want to live on the cheap.

Does Food Not Bombs ask for donations?

FC: We do, but the majority of our food comes from dumpster diving. We’ll dumpster every Friday and dive in! The waste is lovely…

Do those you’re feeding know where the food comes from?

FC: We have a moral obligation to let people know where food is from. A “dumpster” has such tainted yucky connotations, when really it’s just a different container of food.

Do you worry about your health?

J: It’s a risk I’m willing to take not to have to work nine to five just to pay for food. There are general rules: you avoid dairy and meat. Most of the other things are sealed in plastic or in packages. When they’re not sealed, I like to wash them.

FC: To be honest, I don’t really mind too much about it, because I kind of have a really dirty life anyway. My squat right now has no electricity. We have running water, but I think my lifestyle has probably pumped my immune system up higher than a lot of people anyway. I’ve not gotten sick in years of eating dumpster food.

Do you pay for entertainment?

J: You can sneak into gigs easily, you can dumpster beer, and if you go to pubs you can drink abandoned drinks. Although I got a spiked one at Big Day Out (I snuck in).

How do people respond to you?

FC: It ranges from just complete confusion to absolute hostility. I’ve been beaten up by gangs of kids before. Security guards just want to save their arses. “You can’t do this. If you eat something from here, and you get sick and you sue, we’re fucked.” People are so paranoid of being sued in this society; it’s kind of taken away the humanity and the whole point of it all… Most people are really generous with you if you’re honest and have an open heart.

What’s the most prized find?

FC: I’d say avocados. I don’t want to get into specifics, but there’s a dumpster in the Leichhardt/ Newtown area which is famous for its avocados. I’m always hoping for the day I find sun dried tomatoes or artichoke, something really nice.

J: Sometimes we’ll go to the bins at Woolworths, and we’ll find 20 loaves of bread and a bin full of vegetables, and five bags of coffee.  I appreciate packaged goods, with long use-by dates: rice, oils, pantry stuff. It’s a treasure chest. I was thrilled when I first started. I just couldn’t believe the things that people threw away. (Time Out Sydney 5/03/08)

Review: Motortown

When the Angry Young Men of British theatre railed against the status quo, they at least had radical politics to buoy their sense of hope. In Simon Stephens’s Motortown, written in four febrile days during the 2005 London bombings, that hope is pretty much gone. On a stark set at the Stables, humanity is swamped by waves of corruption and moral disorder.

Some critics have called the piece the most important anti-war play of the 21st century; leaving aside whether it can be called anti-war at all, it has lost none of its impact in front of an Australian audience.

Danny (Sean Barker) has returned from Basra, brutalised and on the edge of madness. His feeble story about his own life, and own sense of heroism, is becoming disjointed and incoherent, much like the narrative for the war itself. A suggestion in one scene becomes a lie in the next.

Out of sorts with his parents, and compelled towards a distant exgirlfriend who is now only frightened of him, Danny’s sense of dejection and confusion are only kept in check by the order emanating from his autistic brother, Lee (Simon Corfield). But Danny’s feelings are being into rage; and it’s rage that becomes the catalyst for the inevitable, pointless and savage violence he commits.

Sean Barker conveys the sheer physical menace of the returned soldier after a slow-burn start, and the ensemble cast manage their cameos convincingly (Ryan Gibson and Catherine Moore are memorably bourgeois as a couple of young professional swingers), but the standout is an extraordinary dual performance by Simon Corfield.

As Lee, he catches the Aspergers pattern of speech perfectly, finding the phrasing of someone who has learned to load their words with emotion through trial and error. The same actor is unrecognisable as Paul, a crazy-haired bespoke gunsmith, who delivers an incredible screed about Britain’s stench of corruption, just as he converts a replica pistol to the lethal real thing. It’s a transformation so convincing it you’ll be double-checking the programme. (Time Out Sydney, 5/03/08)

Review: Pig Island’s Simply Fancy

People keep calling this show surreal, but a better word for it might be uncanny, in the Freudian sense of “strange, but familiar”. Grasp at some thread of reference, Snow White, Tron, Round the Twist, His Dark Materials or Beowulf – and it slips from your fingers. Simply Fancy will remind you of all of these, but also none of them, because instead of lampooning their form or their content, it captures their feel. It’s like a parody of something that was never made.

Whoever bought the props and costumes could have used an “eight items or less” checkout, as the piece relies on the versatility of its three performers and fluidity of its script to change gear – both are more than up to the task. Charlie Garber excels as Cammeray, a theatre director of the pullover and drawn-breath school, who invites us to “slit theatre open from the sternum to the pubic bone and climb inside”; Brian, a washed-up dad/actor, who last starred in a decade-old film about the Internet; and a sinister old crone who walks like a crippled praying mantis. His colleagues, fellow playwrights Claudia O’Doherty and Nick Coyle bring to life a robotic boy, a bratty teen, a Gollum-like Bunyip and holy manta ray, the latter with a slow wave of arms.

The satirist Craig Brown once said that had Peter Cook been less funny, he might have been the equal of Pinter and Beckett, perhaps  even their superior. Don’t let the sublimely realised comedy blind you to the febrile inventiveness of its language and staging, that most theatre – fringe or otherwise doesn’t get close to. (Time Out Sydney, 30/2/08)

Profile: Adam Elliot

The Australian animator talks about how winning an Oscar changed his life.

An Oscar definitely opens doors, but it isn’t a blank cheque. The biggest thing is that when we release a new film we’ll be able to stick “from the Oscar-winning creators of Harvie Krumpet” on all the posters, so it will hopefully help get bums on seats. But if the film’s crap the film’s crap, and it won’t make any difference.

Interview: Darren Sylvester

Starting with short stories, acclaimed photographer Darren Sylvester creates complex emotional scenarios in hyperreal images.

Your new show has wooden sculpture, which is a departure. They’re wood-carved sculptures based on cosmetic company face masks. These masks are quite Transformer-like in the way they’re designed: each company wants to put a lot of angles or cuts on them, which makes them look quite strange. So as a result, when you carve out of wood, they look like voodoo masks or tiki masks. The idea is that because they have this witch-doctor element to them