THEATRE

ROBYN ARCHER'S PACK OF WOMEN

A triumphant season of A Star Is Torn in London's West End, a best-selling record on the U.S. West Coast, a sell-out return season in her home country, make Robyn Archer one of Australia's most formidable actresses. She is currently preparing for the publication of a children's book she penned and is directing her own show, The Pack Of Women. BARRY LOWE spoke to her during rehearsals for the political cabaret.

IN the Old School building on the campus of the University of Sydney, Robyn Archer is putting three singer/actresses through their paces for an opening of The Pack Of Women at Sydney's Seymour Centre on May 17. After the gruelling tour of A Star Is Torn she is revelling in her directorial chores and the other projects she has lined up for the rest of this year.

What form does The Pack Of Women take?

Very simply it's a cabaret and, I would say, a political cabaret. It's designed to throw up a lot of images of different kinds of women. If you think of a deck of cards and spreading them out on the table and then imagine they have 52 faces and 52 stories and 52 ideas then it's sort of like the multiple images of women. And these are given to the audience by song and by spoken piece and by the fact there are three women upfront performing and one featured soloist is a woman in the band.

Where did the original idea come from? I don't know really, but I think the first gleaning came when I did Kold Komfort Kaffee here and found the recipe for political cabaret was something I seemed to be able to do quite easily. And it seemed to me quite stupid not to apply the formula to a show that, I use the word feminist and I suppose it is in the sense that we focus on working women and we focus on the politics of women, is very much a celebration.

The aim of the material is to put very old stuff next to very new stuff. There might be a brief passage about love and property from a Russian revolutionary that comes right next to something like She's A Rebel. It's jolting and jarring in respect that it's unexpected. I thought about Kold Komfort and how much enjoyment that gave while debating quite serious topics. It was a great night's entertainment but it was also quite serious. It seemed foolish not to apply that formula to the whole business and I thought about it for most of 1980. I was thinking about it quite a bit and we did the cabaret in London toward the end of 1981.

Considering the political nature of your shows, why do you think you've been accepted so well by the great general public?

Part of it is wonderful work on Di Manson's part. Being a public performer I can't avoid meeting press. It's part and parcel of the business and Di has always managed to be extremely straight with the press. Because of her interest in me as an artist she makes sure I do a lot of different things and a lot interesting things. And she's never said anything to the press like "Robyn's doing the most super fabulous show that no one has ever done in the entire history of the world." She merely says "Robyn is doing something different and I think you could be interested." And generally they have been.

By that careful measuring in the press I think we've eventually been able to tap the sources which make you known to a public audience. The main source has been through A Star Is Torn which, I believe, was a political show but about popular culture figures. And that gives you a relationship to the GP, albeit you're saying something very different to what they thought about them. At least you've got some sort of touchstone with them.

People did come because of the hook of a Judy Garland or a Janis Joplin but then what's terrific is it's the perfect formula for someone who wants to be involved in thinking theatre work rather than nonthinking theatre work. The general public came to hear a favorite singer and they were made to hear an opinion they hadn't heard and I really like that idea. And a lot of my GP success in Australia is because of my success in the West End. 44 CAMPAIGN MAY 1983

How did you "stumble" into political/ feminist theatre?

When I decided to come back into the theatre over seven years ago I made a decision I only wanted to do things worth doing things that said something. I don't know what it is breeds a political consciousness and I don't know what it is that politicises a person or doesn't. It's obvious as the years wear on and one gains a little wisdom there are people who are bothered about the state of the world and there are others who are not, and it's quite as simple as that. And there are people who are complacent and like to look at what they've got and hang on to it. I don't know why it should be I'm the sort of person who is terribly aware all the time there are huge numbers of people in the world not having nearly as good a time as I am. I'm concerned about it, not that I think theatre is a very good political forum. I think you tend to talk to people in the theatre who already know what you're saying.

Its all right because in the theatre it's better good stuff than bad. If there's going to be a theatre I would rather there were honesty and truth than rubbish. As it's 95 per cent rubbish I don't mind being involved in the five per cent of shows that do try to say something and do try to keep people's brains alive rather than spoon feeding them. But I don't know where it is that that springs from. So in terms of doing political theatre it is the profession I've chosen and it's the thing I do and therefore, because I'm politicised and because I'm a feminist, it's likely every thing I do is going to be in the area of show business that demanded I tell lies and be unsubtle and required me to do things that I didn't think or believe or was. And I've been able to make my living out of it for seven years. And because I don't do things I don't believe in, it seems to give them a certain strength.

Judi Connelli, Jane Clifton, Michele Fawdon-The Pack of Women

envy their voices and always have really loved them as singers per se. I tend to be a little bit more of a jack-of-all-trades than either of them and came into the business knowing I would really have work my arse off at everything if I was going to make a living, rather than thinking there was anything that I did that deserved

enormous success.

Had Margret and Jean been born and developed their careers in the United States they would have had the Nina Simone type status. They may have still had a cult following but it would have been enormous and enough for them to go on developing their particular art and their particular bent and make a living out of it. That's the difficulty of being born in Australia. A cult following is not enough to keep you alive here, or certainly not enough to give you the necessary funds to put the money back into huge projects that keep making you better and better and better at what you do.

Maybe, unlike Margret and Jean, I came

Michele Fawdon, Jane Clifton, Judi Connelli and Robyn Archer There are people who actually appreciate that and it gives the theatre I do a certain life and vitality.

You have to make the decision not to fall into the accepted niches of doing any gig that comes along, or accepting any role in a play or a role in a soap. If you don't fall into that then you actually have to invent new forms and go at things in an entirely different way if you want to make a living. Expressing a political opinion, whether it be social or sexual politics, is meant to be anathema to success in a popular way. So it's been a matter of publicity, our approach to the public and in the actual form of the show. And it's obvious the cabaret format is the most adaptable for political comment.

Apart from the publicity angle, why do you think it is that you've made it, whereas other political singers/cabaret performers such as Jeannie Lewis and Margret Roadnight haven't to the same extent?

It's an important question because I always regard Jean and Margret as being much better singers than I am and I really

up through burlesque. I have the music hall background in my family's blood and I'm very much a burlesque performer. The thing I've come to realise is that when I stand in front of an audience then I do have a burlesque performer's rapport with them. I'm actually able to work with an audience in such a way that it feels like it springs from the blood.

My great-grandmother taught me my first songs, my father sang, my family were singers and comedians and slapabouts. What I've been able to do is take all that kind of low-life performance and allow it to serve politics. My feminist songs. have always from the start been from the point of view of rickytick burlesque performance. They've always had a popular appeal rather than a purist appeal.

I would never take it away from Margret and Jean that they've maintained their stance. I think that's fantastic, the only sadness I feel is that Australia is not large enough or witty enough to support them in that. They are revered in the proper circles, they're really not known widely enough. Indeed, they should be well

known internationally as performers.

Unfortunately, in this country, there aren't enough shows because there aren't enough people. And the money gets tighter and tighter and you've got to go for audiences and that's why one finds oneself in the terrible position of all these big musicals coming back. It's a terribly culturally regressive step. I like musicals very much but it's culturally regressive to keep doing rehashes of old American musicals. All that is about is making money in the theatre.

You don't think the musical is a legitimate art form and should have its "classics" revived?

Oh, possibly. But there's so much to be done, and so much talent going to waste here. So many good ideas. If you look at the West End, yes they might have two or three big revivals. They did The Sound of Music and they did Oklahoma! and they've had a wonderful triumph with Guys and Dolls. But that's the sort of town where 20 new musicals will open in a year. When was the last big Australian musical? We will get back to the cultural cringe if something isn't done.

It would be excusable to pour vast sums of money into revivals of The Sound of Music and West Side Story if it were being done in the face of fantastic wads of new Australian stuff, but it's not.

You can't tell me that if people like Geraldine Turner, Judi Connelli or Nancy Hayes had been in America that someone wouldn't have rushed up to them and said "I'm going to write you the most fantastic vehicle." But they've always had to do cover versions of American musicals and that's why they've been wasted. And there was Reg Livermore spending years doing cover versions of those Lou Reed songs. Where were the writers saying, "I'll write you great material?"

Where does Robyn Archer go after The Pack Of Women?

I have a children's book coming out in about four weeks with fantastic illustrations by Victoria Roberts. It's about this woman who eats flatulent vegetables but can't burp. Then eventually she does with astonishing results.

Then it's back to London where I'm recording the second album of Brecht songs. I was very pleased that the first album was number one on the classical charts on the U.S. West Coast for two weeks beating out Placido Domingo. And The ABC has asked me to do a special, and Channel 4 in London are looking at making The Pack Of Women for television. And I've asked my London entrepreneurs to look at having a go in. the U.S. later next year. But we don't know which show to take, whether A Star Is Torn or a Brecht Show because of the popularity of the record.

But whichever way you look at my workload, I won't have a week off before at least next February.