THEATRE

Feeling Like A Voyeur

Director Ken Campbell-Dobbie believes we have to make goodness, instead of evil, interesting. He is currently at the helm of The Execution of Steele Rudd for Melbourne's Playbox Theatre. MAX OZBURN talked with him about his attitudes to theatre.

LOOKING less than his 31 years, Ken Campbell-Dobbie, balancing a coffee mug in one hand, gesticulating with the other, emphasises a point about directing. "I simply can't direct plays I don't believe in ... that don't say anything important. And with my sort of literary background, I think my standards are reasonably selective."

This veritable powerhouse of energy and creativity has a log of experience and breadth of theatrical work around Australia that a director twice his age would be proud of.

Although Western Australia has been his home for the past few years, Ken has "come the full circle" in returning to his home town to direct Harry Reade's The Execution of Steele Rudd in Melbourne. He began at the tender age of 15 to work in theatre at Emerald Hill, South Melbourne, then later worked as a dresser at the Princess and Metro Theatres to put himself through a degree course at Latrobe University. A stint at NIDA left him rather more horrified than informed, so he set his sights on stage managing Australian Opera. A few years later, 1977, he attained his goal. "I am absolutely certain," he says "that opera is the greatest of all dramatic arts it's very difficult to get to work, and I can only say I've seen only a few performances in which you actually become immersed in the narrative, the dramatic action; but, when that does happen, it's absolutely miraculous. It's a total theatrical experience, combining both the emotional and the intellectual spheres."

He appears to have capitalised on the operatic experiences and there have been many in his approach to directing drama. "If you really listen to phrasing or pauses in music, you can learn a great deal about how to use vocal techniques on speech. The ability to focus on a word with infinite shadings is just one aspect that has influenced my work in the spoken theatre," he says. Ken also believes that operatic productions tend on the whole

Marc Laurenson

I REMEMBER the Ensemble production of Fortune and Men's Eyes very well. The controversy about whether any homosexual behavior actually occurred in prisons, the lack of understanding of prison conditions, the sociologists pontificating after the show each night. Now it's all faded into obscurity and all but respective Ministers for Corrective Services seem to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality in prison.

So when a group of youngsters from the Ensemble Acting School decided to mount the play after all these years they must have a reason. It seems to be a combination of self promotion and social concern. "We've all just graduated from the Ensemble and we've found it's going to be hard to establish ourselves in the business. We're doing this play to give ourselves a bit of work and hopefully drag in a few people to see what we can do and then go on to more work," says Colin Morganti, looking more like a high school student than a dedicated actor.

"The play lends itself to people our age group, and each of us has a lot of 46 CAMPAIGN MAY 1983..

to be visually conservative, whereas spoken drama and actors can be far more courageous. He recognises also the 'silent gesture' of ballet as a potent means of altering vocal tone.

The Execution of Steele Rudd offers plenty of scope for courageous treatment to Ken Campbell-Dobbie, for the central themes of this work lie close to Ken's own artistic interests. The main characters of the play interweave two moral problems, which he finds particularly interesting at a time the world is crying 'recession'. The choice of risking earning a living through art alone --handled within the play, is presumably his point of reference. A priest in this story also has to choose between his vows of the confessional and revealing the truth, as he is privy to a condemned prisoner's true actions.

The audience will enter the theatre for this production through a large set of bars at the door, and the entire space itself will be converted into a goal.

The author, Harry Reade, an extremely colorful character living in Queensland, is alleged to have spent a week in jail himself recently for 'stealing by finding and coverting to his own use' a pair of two-year-old thongs thrown on a rubbish tip! Harry has also been a truck driver, toffee-apple-dipper, photographer, journalist, museum attendant, wharfie and cartoonist, just to name a few of his former occupations.

Reade's success with this play (produced elsewhere only twice before) is a revelation of what a natural playwright he is.

Ken has also spent time in a Fremantle jail, but as a drama officer hired to explore the notion that theatre could be used as a way to build selfesteem among unemployed adolescents, some of them retarded. He was able to show the inmates ways of protecting their self-esteem by more careful choice of language.

And what does he think of the general

B

Ken Campbell-Dobbie

standard of directing in Australia today? Ken throws up his hands in a despairing wave. "In opera hopeless!" Drama? Rodney Fisher and perhaps one or two others. But his greatest accolade comes for Rex Cramphorn with whom he is also currently associated in another production, Summer, by Edward Bond, which has just opened at Playbox Downstairs. "I think he is the most intelligent, esoteric, intellectually astute and creative director in this country. He sees his craft as an interpretative art as opposed to mere presentation, and he happens to be a complete gentleman... his work is absolutely focused on the project he's involved with, and that's all that interests him."

Does Ken have a particular formula in directing? "A successful director supports his players. If a player can interpret the truth of the word through physicality, the feeling will follow through." Ken's normally passive face wrinkles. "I get really angry with actors who insist they have to 'feel' the

Four Brilliant Parts For Teenagers

Fortune and Men's Eyes was a controversial play for the tiny Sydney Theatre, the Ensemble, to present in the late 1960s. Now, however, all that jail baiting may seem passe. Not so to Scott Pollock, Colin Morganti Marc Laurenson who are mounting a six-week season of the play, this time with the inmates as teenagers. BARRY LOWE spoke with them about their

characteristics of the role we take in the play. So that will show us off to good effect. And the play also has a great number of things to say," adds Scott Pollock, the one with the film star good looks.

"And it hasn't been done since 1968, so I think it's a good time to bring it up again. It has four good parts and very rarely do you get four brilliant parts for teenage boys. We aren't going to be much like the film which went for shock value with as many rapes and as much nudity as possible. Our production will be much more the development of four characters," concludes Marc Laurenson, who plays the much put-upon Mona in the play.

"We've decided prison reform and

production.

conditions are not the main theme of the play," Scott points out. "That's been done to death. We're using the idea of repression and the relationship between men, peer pressures and coping with life itself. I think you can make those parallels in any situation.

""

"We had the idea of the jail being the crime itself," Marc admits, "But it's been done to death. It's an old tale which is quite yawning, so we've gone for repression because the four characters are each repressed in their own way. That way I think everyone can identify because there's not one person in the world who hasn't been repressed in some aspect of their life."

"And you can extend the prison

Scott Pollock

Colin Morganti

emotion (method acting) all the time. The feeling just follows through, and technique definitely plays its part. Explore the possibilities while you are doing the process. You get to be able to recognise a particular director's work in much the same way you can recognise a sculptor's or a painter's style," says Ken. "Fifty per cent of my work as a director is to make sure the text is revealed with absolute clarity".

When Ken was directing a production of Spring Awakening in Perth some time ago, he was required to direct two young male performers in their love scene. "It was extremely difficult for me," he says. "I felt like a voyeur." Another scene he found even harder was to direct a group of youths standing around in a circle masturbating. Ken was surprised at his own reactions. "I had to leave the theatre, and walk about telling myself that this was my job I had to direct that scene," he says.

He feels too many directors these days are stuck with a feeling that they are required to flatter the audience, while too many actors stay with the safe position of playing characters which are only variations on a theme. He has great admiration for the work of Meryl Streep because of her talent and versatility. "But how much more would be presented if she had to get out on stage every night and do it!"

And what of the future of the theatre? What does Ken see ahead in the face of rising ticket prices and fickle tastes? "Let's take our cue from Japanese Kabuki," he says. "The audience needs to be overwhelmed by the sheer artistry, the dexterity, the revealing of living beings becoming real in front of their eyes. We have to learn to make goodness, instead of evil, interesting cut things away to get to the centre. Directors have to learn to trust the play, not push it into form that was never intended." It was time to switch off the dynamo for a few moments before the next rehearsal began.

The Execution of Steele Rudd opens at the Upstairs Playbox Theatre on May 13. Footnote: Artist William Kelly has designed not only the set, but has produced a remarkable poster around the theme of The Execution of Steele Rudd. Signed copies will be on sale at the theatre.

hierarchy into every day social life," says Colin.

Perhaps because the play was considered so shocking in the late 1960s the cast tended to be older than the characters specified in the play. This production sets out to rectify that. As Marc says: "We're emphasising a teenage thing, kids barely out of school. We've changed some of the play because parts of it are badly dated, very laughable. Our director, Kath Leahy, has updated some of it to make it 1983 rather than 1967.

And to the problem of being typecast once they appear in a gay play? Scott assures me none of them is worried by that.

But are people at all concerned about prison reform in this age of escalating violence and thuggery?

Marc answers for the group. "I don't think many people consciously care about people in prison. I don't think many people wake up in the morning and think to themselves, 'Ah, those poor people in prison.' But if a person doesn't deserve to be in prison, and there are a lot of them, I think that's worth caring about. Two of the characters in the play don't deserve to be in jail: Mona is put in through circumstantial evidence and because he can't stand up for himself he gets trodden on..."

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"And Smitty gets put in because basically he loved his mum," Scott adds.

"Nobody deserves the sort of treatment meted out in prisons. It's not a rehabilitating sort of treatment," says Colin.

It's a regression rather than a progression," says Marc. "And prison is supposed to be about getting better. I think, actually, prison probably makes a lot of people worse."

Fortune and Men's Eyes opens at St John's Hall, Oxford Street, Paddington in early May and will run for six weeks.