That's right, we're on the final countdown! There are only FIVE shows left for Crushed. Put on your favourite 80s band tee, swill away on a Tooheys and get your tickets quick. And remember, tomorrow night is Pay What You Can Tuesday where you can pick up a super cheap ticket for only $10.
On 23 May 2012, Melita Rowston was a guest blogger on Griffin Artist Card. She wrote it for Erin.
Without the turg, there’s too much drama.
Workshops, rehearsal
processes…. For some writers, they are the stuff of nightmares. I’ve always
been a little nervous and a lot excited just before a workshop or rehearsal
process commences. I love working with actors and I love hearing my words come
to life. Although, sometimes I have not loved anyone very much after a workshop
– especially when the actors and director have pummelled my words into a former
shadow of themselves.
Over the years, I’ve learnt how
to come out of this process unscathed, and wildly happy with the results. So,
here’s my Writer’s List of Ingredients for a Great Rehearsal Process. Or
something like that.
The process for the writer is
about listening. Constantly listening. And reading. Reading between the lines,
reading body language, reading motivations, reading gesture. It doesn’t matter
what the overlying structure of the rehearsal process is – in the case of Crushed – four weeks of intermittent
script workshops, then four weeks of actor rehearsal, what matters for the
writer, is being constantly present in the room, reading and listening and definitely
not speaking.
Speaking.
I stopped speaking during the
rehearsals and workshops a long time ago. I found that the more I spoke, the
more destructive I was being to the process. The more I defended my choices or
explained the meaning behind a line or a scene, the less benefit I was gaining
from the expertise in the room.
Listening.
Why does a sentence sound
chewy? Why is a scene falling flat? Why is a joke not playing? Simply listening
to the dialogue, the actor’s inhale and exhale of breath, the words that are
emphasised, laboured over or underplayed is the first step. Listening to the
type of questions the actors and director are asking of you and the comments
they are making, the next.
Reading.
Reading the actor’s body
language while they deliver lines, ask questions and make comments is the third
important step. Is it the text that is the problem? Or is it a gap in the
actors knowledge about the subject matter of the scene they are reading, ie:
they don’t know much about astrology so all the technical terms are falling
flat. Is it that the actor doesn’t want to come across as a ‘bad’ character, so
all their feedback is about twisting that character into someone likeable? Does
the actor want more lines, a bigger role? Is an actor saying something,
anything, just so they look like they are contributing?
And the director, is the
director’s feedback more about driving the text into the directorial vision
they wish to impose on the play? Is there is a problem elsewhere in the scene,
and the director’s instinct is right, but they are articulating the wrong
source of the problem?
Is everyone just tired? And
of course, are they just plain right?
The elephant at the table.
It is an absolute necessity to
have a dramaturg at the table. Now, this comes back to all that listening and
reading and not speaking stuff. It’s tiring work. It is like rocket
science. Especially when a cast of three and a director may all have different
ideas about a scene and are all getting rather passionate about vocalising them.
Who do you listen to without
listening too much? Should you take a hatchet to the lot? Who’s speaking for
you?
The dramaturg. They speak for
you. They back you. They fight for you. They’re your AD, your PA.
They don’t have a directorial vision or a line count running through their
heads. They’re not looking at the play through the eyes of one character or the
shades of ‘shall we turn this scene into a pre-recorded animation?’
They are looking at the
words, the overall shape, the drive, the relationship and action lines, everyone
at the table, and the writer.
Sometimes a writer can be
overwhelmed by too much feedback. Sometimes a writer listens too much or loses
contact with their intuition. Sometimes a writer gets a little lost.
Often undervalued and
ignored, the dramaturg will become the player you will be oh-so relieved to
have beside you, holding your metaphorical hand, a spare pencil and eraser
always close by. They are the ones who will calm the room and suggest an
altogether different solution - perhaps a perfect word to round off a final
scene…
Do yourself a favour and go
out and get one today.
The Crushed team have asked a few of our
close friends to guest blog a response to our play (which is playing now!) Third
to pick up a pen, is Bollywood actor, singer, songwriter, and screenwriter Nicholas Brown. Like our female lead Kelly,
Nicholas left Australia many years ago. We asked him to muse on what’s it’s
like being an Aussie expat and to riff on the notion of homecoming…
‘Leaving Australia was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made.
It’s the build up that’s the hardest. The anxiety, the fear of the unknown,
losing all your personal and business connections and having to start over. You
feel like you’ve spent years getting to a certain point just to throw it all
away.
Once I got on the plane though, it all seemed like a distant memory. In
my new surroundings, all I could do was live in the present.
Most people leave because they’re fed up with things being safe, they’re
frustrated with their careers and need some sense of risk to catapult them out
of the comfortable numb. That was certainly the case for me. Leaving Australia
helped me find my inner electric boogaloo. Although, these days I need to
return home to find it!
I left Sydney in 2007 for Mumbai to pursue an acting career in
Bollywood. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or how I would cope. I
wasn’t sure when I would return, but when I did, I would’ve damn hell have got
my ‘Bolly’ on!
Being an ex-pat was a lot of fun. I was ‘exotified’ for being Aussie,
which was refreshing, because back home being exotic was a hindrance. I think
that’s starting to change…
I remember my first trip home after my initial Indian adventure.
I’d become used to being constantly visually, emotionally and spiritually
stimulated. India is such a fascinating country. Mumbai is constantly evolving.
Bollywood is booming and constant change is part of its psyche. One of the
basic tenets of the Hindu philosophy is that you need to destroy to create and
because of this, Mumbai is progressing at the speed of light! And so, I had
changed. I had grown. I had become accustomed to chaos and risk and I wanted to
bring some of that back home to my friends and family.
Of course, when I returned, the only thing that had changed were a few
restaurants on King St in Newtown.
There’s something about the Australian sense of humour, it’s so dry,
that it often glosses over what’s at its core – racism and jealousy. “Getting
too big for ya’ boots are ya?” The tall poppy syndrome is definitely something
you become more aware of when you return to Australia.
When I come home now, I internalise, because sharing my stories and
adventures often results in being labeled boastful.
I love Australia and am proud of being Australian, but I think we can be
so much more. If we don’t really look at ourselves, how can we move forward?
Despite two new prime ministers and the ridiculous cost of living, not
much has changed since I left. The nostalgic part of me is pleased by this, but
the revolutionary within wishes that we were more ephemeral.
India is steeped in religion, tradition and mythology, but still manages
to evolve. India evolves by embracing its history. I believe the only way
Australia can become an open-minded, free country is to look to our indigenous
past for guidance.
Maybe we could get rid of the Union Jack from our flag and replace it
with the Aboriginal flag?! And can we make Yothu Yindi's 'Treaty' our National
Anthem?’
Like what you're reading? You can learn more about
Nicholas’s projects past, present and future here:
The Crushed team have asked a few of our close friends
to guest blog a response to our upcoming play. Second to take the stand is
Dr Who expert, shark lover, former Senior
Producer/Programmer of ABC’s rage, former
Series Producer of Raw Comedy and
current Researcher for Kitchen Cabinet, Madeline
Palmer. Given her years asrage
programmer, we asked her to use her witty music knowledge for good and offer us
an interpretation of the popular Guns ‘n’ Roses music video: November Rain…
‘It’s a tale as old as time; love is only found before it is cruelly lost. It could happen to any of us, for it happened to Axl Rose in November Rain…
Axl sits on the edge of a four-postered bed lit by the most poignant blue moon in the history of love, poetry and lunacy. He seeks solace in a handful of pills washed down with whiskey, but no relief comes. Instead, he tosses and turns in a suspiciously large amount of silk bed sheets, as he dreams of summers past.
He dreams of the glorious hours wiled away lighting each other’s smokes in the basement of a bikie roadhouse, of the time Jesus himself shed a bloody tear for the beauty that was their love, of their resplendent wedding filled with the most magnificent collection of steampunks ever.
Slash forgot the rings, of course, which should have immediately served as warning… Instead, Axl accepted a ring offered by his drummer, unaware that this small act would directly lead to Four Weddings And A Funeral and the mainstream infiltration of Wet Wet Wet.
As Axl slid the ring onto his bride’s finger, joy flooded his most manly heart. Slash looked on, his jealously burning as fiercely as the cigarette he inexplicably smoked during the entire ceremony. As Axl and his bride shared one of the most tonguiest of kisses of all time, Slash could no longer bear to watch, (I know how you feel buddy), and he charged out of the chapel. For he could not continue to hide his terrible secret – his greatest love was none other than Axl’s leggy bride.
How does one handle such torment? By removing his shirt, standing in a desert as barren as his life, and ripping out one of the most EPIC GUITAR SOLOS OF ALL TIME.
The wails of Slash’s instrument drew helicopters from far and wide for they could not but bear witness to his spread-eagled expression of pain.
And far away, the other side of the church presumably, (for some reason not in the desert and not even the same church), the bride and groom were ushered to their wedding car, rice raining upon them and the bride looking wistfully off into the distance. (Perhaps for her secret lover Slash?)
Ever the entertainer, Slash shredded for long enough to bridge the annoying gap between wedding and reception, giving the guests something other to do rather than wait in a nearby pub trying to make conversation with someone’s aunt.
The wedding party reconvened at a Tuscan villa, (no doubt close to the desert church), for champagne, cake, blue velvet, saxophones and more smoking. The bride and groom looked happy. All was as it should be. Even Slash appeared to have been somewhat relieved of the burden of his secret love.
Their joy was however, as all joy is, ultimately fleeting. The dark clouds rolled over and rain poured down on their special day. This was portentous and tragic and not at all ironic in any sense whatsoever. To escape the deluge, a waiter leapt over the table and their fragile wedding cake collapsed in a way that is not portentous, tragic or at all ironic. The spilled wine flowed like blood.
In the months to come, Axl would dwell on this moment, (he had endless hours to fill), and it is better to think of a wedding day than what came after. The day he would return to that same church with his wife lying in a coffin, her face split with a mirror - apparently common with death by gunshot wound to the head, (and nothing to do with the movie Face Off).
Axl would look to the heavens. His heart would cry out. A dozen violins would play for his sorrows (literally). You know what I said earlier about Slash’s guitar solo being the most epic guitar solo of all time? That was until now. Right now. For Slash is also heartbroken and wracked with guilt about his forbidden love. He leaps on to the piano in front of the screaming masses at the concert I’ve neglected to mention until now, and his guitar screams with grief as Axl pounds the keys in rage.
As red roses lie across his dead bride's coffin, Axl remembers her wedding bouquet, and looks to the sky as another storm rages above him and within his heart.
Because, as he might have sung but didn’t, ‘Nothing lasts forever, except November Rain.’
Like what you're reading? You can follow Madeline
Palmer on twitter: @msmaddiep
Like what you're hearing? Then book your tickets to
Crushed!
The Crushed team have asked a few of our close friends to guest blog a response to our upcoming play. First up is Independent Theatre's Superstar: writer, director, producer and all-round-creativity-facilitator Augusta Supple. We asked her to respond to Crushed's tag line: BITTER SWEET SIXTEEN...
'There wasn’t much that was sweet when I was sixteen.
Living in a small coastal town in the banana belt of NSW, there was little that linked me to the outside world. TV was limited to 4 channels, (I was secretly obsessed with Paul Reiser from Mad About You), and I was glued to Helen Razer's voice and song choice on Triple J like a grommet clings to his surf board. While my face was buried in suspiciously pristine ancient history text-books with the vain hope that education would set me free from the shit hole I was trapped in. It was the 90s. The dawn of the information age. The Gulf War. The Chechen War. The Bosnian War. Kosovo. Australia was having a recession it had to have. Bill Clinton played the sax and his sperm was found on a dress owned by a woman he did NOT have sexual relations with. Kurt Cobain had moaned his way through gritted teeth and a floppy fringe, then blew a hole in his head.
Sixteen for many was not so sweet. It was the age of pregnancy, the school certificate, apprenticeships and expulsion. Sixteen was my year of joining a punk band, writing abusive songs, the obligatory occasional social binge drinking, studying Hamlet, unrequited love affairs with boys who listened to Tool and Pink Floyd, memorizing slabs of T.S Eliot - all while topping my class and dreaming of my emancipated adult life. I dreamed of a bright future where I didn’t have to ever, EVER confront the boring, dull, flat unprofitable world I was forced to grow up in.
I feared the future school reunion hoping I could forever avoid it… and earnestly hoped by the time it rolled around that I had made something of my life. Something. Anything better than the here and now. At my local high school, kids wearing an improvised uniform sucked smoke from juice bottles and grinned through red eyes at their future. Flannelette shirts flapped as teens set fire to bins. Grunge was born. I dressed in my grandfather’s clothes and listened patiently as boys my age fumbled around with Metallica riffs on nylon string guitars. River Phoenix died and girls at my school attempted suicide. We were lectured on AIDS ad nauseum and spent long afternoons rolling condoms onto bananas, whilst the cooler kids were practicing the real thing in the scrubland that surrounded my school. It all felt pointless really. Skinny girls with no opinions got the boys, then had scrag fights on the school bus. Their earrings ripped out of ears. Blood. Torn singlet tops. Swearing. The boys would look on with dull eyes and not dare intervene. I sat quietly and wrote letters to people I had met who went to 'other' schools. Inevitably, someone’s cool parents let us have a party at their place. I’d sit planning my future escape and watch as others had fun: Passion pop and Jim Beam. Malibu and Coke. Bongs. Magic mushrooms. Teens gnawing sloppily at each other's faces, having a casual vomit, a micro-sleep, then continuing. At some stage a posse would form and we’d go on ‘missions’ stealing street signs or garden gnomes from unsuspecting homes. We ventured into the banana fields and sang Nirvana songs to keep each other awake. Lying on the ground on deserted country roads under the stars, we soaked up the warmth from the black bitumen and raged over arguments about reality and perception (teenage philosophy a plenty.) We knew it was all empty, all pointless – the universe too big, the world uncaring. Everything had been thought of before, everything had all been said before. We knew poverty could not and would not be ended by Bono or any other aging rock star who chose to wear rose-coloured sunglasses. It wasn’t sweet. It was bitter. Flash forward 16 years. At the start new millennium the school reunion is unavoidable. It’s not a phyisical thing – it’s the casual surprise of a Facebook 'friend' request… sometimes from someone who has changed their name and judging by their photo has either regressed thirty years or had a baby. Although I’m a world away from a drunken pash in the banana fields, the sting of school remains: the pointlessness, the feeling of being trapped in a shit hole, the dreams I had, the pressure I felt, the boys I loved, the friends I had. I watch the film clips, sing along to Hole or Pearl Jam. Yet the memory is not bitter. Not at all. It’s sweet.'
Actor Jeremy Waters, who plays Jason in Crushed, shares a spooky story with us....
Actors can be a superstitious bunch. Curses,
ghosts and rituals carry a lot of currency within the board-treading fraternity.
We’re attuned to any ‘signs’ that shape our theatrical destinies. I think the
ephemeral nature of theatre encourages this. It makes sense that strange parts
of our universe can be stirred as we go about the business of telling stories.
While rehearsing Melita
Rowston's brilliant new play Crushed
at Queen St Studios, Sean Barker, Lucy Miller and I were diligently working
through some of the complexities of the play when something occurred that left
us all open-mouthed…
There’s a strong
balloon motif that runs through the play – literally and figuratively. So,
there we were, three actors alone in the big Queen Street Studios space working
on a scene that centres around this motif. We were actually doing work. Really.
We were. I was offering a piece of blinding insight towards this crucial scene
– really, I was, when I saw a flash of colour in the corner of my eye and Stone The Flamin' Crows Elsa! a cheeky clutch
of helium balloons hovered mid-air between Sean and I. They must have been clinging to the high ceiling then deflated and floated down while we gabbed about
the play.
After the requisite
‘Whooooahs’ and ‘What the....s,’ we agreed this was a sign from the theatrical
powers that be, a quiet little nudge to let us know that we were not alone as
we pushed off from land in the good ship Crushed…
I mean, when was the
last time you sat in a room and a bunch of coloured air balls parked themselves
next to you while rehearsing a scene in which they figured prominently?
Coincidence you say? Methinks not.
When our esteemed
director Lucinda Gleeson returned from a production meeting, she was suitably
impressed by the cool shit we had seen. Being of our ilk, she quickly
recognised ‘The Happening’ for what it was. So, to ensure our director caught a whiff of
its presence, our friendly spirit let one last balloon float down and nestle
gently at her feet.
Call me crazy (it’s
been done) but this was an intervention. We now know that the Crushed
team are not alone as we embark on this significant theatrical journey.
In case you missed Melita as 'Artist of the Week' on Griffin Theatre Company's blog last week, here's the repost:
What are you working on currently?
I’ve just handed in the locked down script
for my play Crushed, which starts
rehearsal on Monday. I had the luxury of a month of staggered script workshops
with the cast, director and dramatrug. We workshopped each scene on the floor,
questioned relationship and action lines, rewrote chewy dialogue and sharpened
the turning points. The actors start rehearsal knowing that any further changes
are going to be super slight. How awesome is that for an independent
production?
Who, or what, inspires you to create?
Well, I love my country.
Call me unfashionable or just plain downright weird, but I really love this
country! I don’t have a Southern Cross tatt, I hate sport, and I’ve never
gambled, but there’s an essential part of me that feels such a strong
connection to this place, to our stories. I started writing for theatre because
I felt a strong pull to tell the many stories of this beautiful, fraught and
complex country that I am so proud to call my home.
What was the most interesting thing you saw recently?
I’m a bit obsessed with Brene Brown at the
moment. I recently caught her TED talk and it still hasn’t left me. Brene’s a research
professor who studies vulnerability and shame. ‘Only when we are brave enough
to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.’ I’m
writing a new play called Goodnight Moon
and in that context, her work reaffirms much about the human condition. It’s charged
me to want to write flawed, vulnerable and very confused characters!
What is the best piece of advice that you've been given?
Margot Nash, my screenwriting mentor at UTS,
said to me, ‘Don’t listen too much.’ She was talking about listening to
feedback. Feedback can get in the way. I’ve learnt this the hard way! Ultimately,
I’ve learnt to trust my own impulses and tell the story my heart wants to tell.
I think of what Margot said every time I go into a script workshop.
Who, past or present, would you like to share a meal with and why?
Berthe Morisot. She was a French Impressionist
painter. I saw quite a few of her paintings when I was living in Paris. Berthe
was good friends with Manet and also sat for him. In those paintings, there’s a
delicious unspoken relationship that plays out between Berthe, the sitter, and
Manet, the artist. (I might be writing about this)… They were both married, but
I totally reckon they did it. I’d ask her if they did it. And if she has a good
recipe for homemade pate.
'Generation X... It might still take some ecstasy, if it knew where to get some. But probably not. Generation X has to be up really early tomorrow morning.' Awesome blog about our generation:
Day 1 of rehearsals as part of our Queen Street Studios Performing Arts Residency, and here's what our leading lady Lucy Miller has to say!
'Great rehearsal today! Hours of vibrant talk, chats, flirting, laughing, chilli chicken at the pub, questions, some answers, good answers, no answers, epiphanies, brain freezes, skull fucks, chewing gum, singing, 'Who's better Madonna or Cindy?' A few renditions of Nirvana, 'shut up ya big shut up', ciggies, Freudian slips, trapped souls, horns locking, childish recriminations followed by adult hindsight, star gazing, 'Jelly Kelly', Sweet Child of Mine...
In 2010, Crushed was selected for Queen Street Studio's 'Off the Shelf Residency.' We performed 4 scenes and the audience was asked to fill out anonymous feedback cards for the writers. Here's my fave - it quotes a joke from my play. I have carried this with me around Europe, propped it up in my studio in Paris where I finished writing Crushed, and it now lives in my Newtown studio. It inspired me to keep going against all odds. So mystery artist, whoever you are, thank you for touching my life in such a beautiful way.
